MARYSVILLE – When Bill Langford died, at 88, he had a big-ticket item on order. What it was says much about his freewheeling approach to life.
“It was a brand new motorcycle with a sidecar,” said Joan Langford Bunney, Langford’s daughter. “He had just ordered it. He had motorcycles his whole life.”
William Louis Langford died July 23. The son of a Snohomish logger, he started a business, Commercial Refrigeration, in Everett when he was 19. In the 1950s, he moved his business and family to Marysville, where he lived the rest of his life.
Although he worked until a few months ago, Langford’s life was defined as much by adventure as it was by toil.
“He was a most colorful person. Both he and my mother were free spirits,” Bunney said.
Langford was preceded in death by his wife of 64 years, Merle Langford, who died earlier this year. He is survived by three children, Ron Langford of Montana, Joan Langford Bunney of Redmond, and David “Billy” Langford of Marysville. He also leaves grandchildren Minda Bunney of New York City, Doug Stephens of Spokane, and Hunter Nelson of Marysville; and four great-grandchildren.
Born Nov. 23, 1917 to William and Grace Langford, Bill Langford lost his mother to tuberculosis when he was 4.
“My dad had two brothers and a sister. With his dad working in the woods, the kids were on their own,” said his son, Ron, who lives near Whitefish, Mont. “He grew up in a hurry. He was real adventurous.”
That spirit of adventure was manifested in a lifelong wanderlust.
At 65, he rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to Chile and back – by himself. “He was gone nine months,” said Bunney. “People ask, ‘Did he call?’ Heck no, he didn’t call.”
While he’d go off on his motorcycle, Bunney said, her mother would get on an airplane. “She’d been to India, Africa, Portugal, Spain, everywhere in the world,” she said. Merle Langford’s sister and brother-in-law were involved in Christian missionary work.
“They were married a very long time, but still had that marvelous independence,” Bunney said.
A highlight of Joan and Ron’s childhood was a three-month road trip in the summer of 1954. Their father, normally a Ford man, bought a new Cadillac for the journey around the United States.
In the years before interstate freeways, Bunney remembers driving through Oregon and California, swimming along the Gulf Coast of Texas, riding in a glass-bottom boat in Florida, and eating fancy meals in New Orleans.
“It was a Route 66 kind of trip,” Bunney said. The baby of the family, Billy Langford, stayed home with relatives. His parents made up for that in 1968.
For a whole year, beginning when he was 15, Billy accompanied his parents on a driving trip through Mexico, and Central and South America. The family took a 1-ton truck with a camper on it, and towed a Willys Jeep.
They went down the west coast of Mexico, through Central America and to Panama. “From Panama, there was no road through the Colombian jungle. We put our trucks on a ship,” Billy Langford said. “We unloaded them in Guayaquil, Ecuador.”
They saw Lake Titicaca on the border of Peru and Bolivia, and went through Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. They spent two weeks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “None of us spoke Spanish. I picked up more than they did,” he said.
Earlier in his life, Langford had homesteaded land on Bonaparte Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Ferrying supplies on a raft because there were no roads, he built two cabins, which he later sold.
In the 1940s, Bunney said, her father was an avid skier. He stayed on a farm at Sun Valley, Idaho, long before it was a resort destination.
His zest for life never faded.
Lynne Bennett, a neighbor of the Langfords in Marysville, is an usher at the Everett Events Center. A couple years ago, she invited Bill Langford to see motorcycle racing on ice at the arena. “He had a great time. He loved everything,” Bennett said. “The next day, he went to the library and found out everything about those motorcycles.”
Another neighbor, Mike Biringer, knew Langford for years. He provided refrigeration equipment and work for Biringer Farms. “He was always there if anything needed attention. He wasn’t afraid to do anything. And he could talk your ear off,” Biringer said.
“I think he had an enormous curiosity about life,” his daughter said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet. com.
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