Richard A. Farrar

Richard A. Farrar, 91, of Moline, Illinois, died Sunday, August 18, 2024, at home. 

Services to celebrate Dick’s life will begin with visitation from 4:00 to 6:30 p.m. Friday, August 23, at Trimble Funeral Home, 701 12th Street, Moline. Funeral services are 10:00 a.m. Saturday, August 24, at Trimble. A luncheon at the funeral home will take place immediately after the service. Burial will follow at 12:30 p.m. at Riverside Cemetery, Moline. Per Dick’s wishes, he was cremated. 

For those unable to attend, the Saturday morning service will be livestreamed at https://www.trimblefuneralhomes.com/obituaries/richard-farrar. The family suggests that in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Two Rivers YMCA or the Moline Public Library.

Dick was born March 12, 1933, in Moline, the son of Arthur R. Farrar and Hazel M. (Shellberg) Farrar. He married Margaret Victoria Thompson on June 20, 1959, in Summit, Iowa. They had three children, all born at Lutheran Hospital in Moline.

Dick’s father died when he was nine years old. His mother went to work and Dick became a true latchkey kid, spending his hours outside of school at neighborhood movie theaters in Moline’s west end. He attended Ericksen Elementary, John Deere Junior High, and Moline High School. He was a lifelong Moline resident with the exception of his senior year of high school, when his mother moved out of the Moline house her father had built and bought a house in Rock Island, He spent his senior year of high school at Rocky, graduating in 1951. 

After high school, Dick took some college courses at Augustana and Black Hawk and worked in carpentry and other jobs. He was drafted in July 1956 and always said that the Army was the making of him. He had many great and few bad memories of basic training at Camp Chaffee and microwave radio training at Fort Monmouth. He was a signalman at Fort Huachuca and participated in Exercise Sage Brush in Louisiana. He was grateful for the training and discipline he gained in the Army and knew he was fortunate not to have been called into combat.

Dick had a nearly forty-year career with Deere & Company, starting in 1958 at Malleable Works as Supervisor Industrial Engineering. While working at Deere he completed his Associates degree at Black Hawk College. He held a variety of positions within Deere related to information services, retiring in 1997 as Manager, Parts Information. He was proud of being a fourth generation Deere employee. He was instrumental in development of a computerized parts catalog system and a competitor parts matching program for dealers. His retirement bulletin notes his vision and commitment to excellence, characteristics he demonstrated in all aspects of his life. 

Dick loved the outdoors and took the family on many camping and fishing trips. Into late middle age he was an enthusiastic tennis player and through 2024 he never missed watching Wimbledon on television. He was an ace ping pong player in his youth and still played a mean game into his eighties. He was a lifelong chess player and in recent years a primary activity was playing chess online with his friend Chuck Sanders. 

Raised in the Lutheran church, as an adult Dick occasionally attended services at First United Presbyterian Church, Moline, where Margaret was a devoted member. He was active in that church’s Photeinos senior fellowship group.

Dick was the last survivor of a group of neighborhood boys who stayed friends throughout their lives: Norbert Allen, Bob Sohlberg, Bob Staes, and Dick’s best friend Ken Reffitt. 

Dick is survived by his three children, Victoria “Vicki” (Shaun) Graves of Moline; Valerie Farrar of Moline; and Arthur Richard “Rick” (Dena) Farrar of Martinez, Georgia; and four granddaughters, Charlotte and Clara Graves, and Cordelia and Gwenyth Farrar. Other relatives grieving his loss include his cousin Carol Shellberg, Rock Island, and his many nieces and nephews on the Thompson side of the family.

The family invites friends to share stories and condolences at TrimbleFuneralHomes.com.