SIOUX FALLS — Henry Reinhold Bartell, 88, after several years of battling lung cancer, went home to be with the Lord and loved ones May 4, 2018.
Henry was born February 2, 1930, to Reinhold and Amy Bartell in Silver Leaf, N.D. The second oldest of six siblings, they moved when he was in his teens to a farm near Gwinner, N.D. which the family still owns.
After graduating from high school in Gwinner, Henry joined the Navy where he served for four years from 1950 to 1954. He served on a destroyer, the U.S.S. Jeffers, which did duty in the Atlantic and Mediterranean as a mine sweeper. When he left the Navy, he completed his education at the State School of Science in Wahpeton, N.D. In 1957, he joined Northwestern Bell Telephone Company as a lineman and soon transferred to a special assignment with the Defense Projects Organization of the Western Electric Company helping to build and test radar stations across the Arctic, famously known as the DEW Line. After 19 months on the DEW Line he transferred back to his lineman position at Bell Telephone and while living in Linton, N.D., met the woman who would become his wife in 1961. He later left the phone company and spent the rest of his career working for the federal government as an Electronics Technician at the National Weather Service in Joliet Ill., Kansas City, Mo., Sioux Falls, and Huron, where he retired in 1989. While in Huron, he fulfilled a life-long desire to own a farm and raise his children in that environment.
Henry’s passions included HAM radio and photography. He had several radios and kept up at that passion through 2006, and even after. He usually had a scanner listening to the chatter, and even recently had brought a radio back out of storage and had it running in his apartment the last month of his life. Henry also had a passion for flight and took lessons shortly after leaving the Navy, qualifying for solo flight in 1954. He also had a reputation as a jack-of-all-trades who could fix anything! When visiting friends and relatives, he was nearly always recruited to fix whatever was broken, to the point where he always claimed he needed a vacation from vacations!
Henry is survived by his children, William (Lisa) Bartell of Sioux Falls, Crystal Gassman of Marshalltown, Iowa, and Christopher (Melissa) Bartell of Grand Prairie, Texas; five grandchildren, Robert, Daniel, Erin, Katherine, Caroline; six great-grandchildren, Martin, Eli, Elle, Alaythea, Owen, Odessa; two sisters, Alice Bartell of Gwinner, N.D., and Janet (Jerry) VanBruggen of Jamestown, N.D.; and brother, George Bartell of Dayton, Ohio.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 56 years, Vera (just 8 months ago); a son-in-law, Paul Gassman of Marshalltown, Iowa; two sisters, Elsie Cone of Rufus, Ore., and Leona Adermann of Gwinner, N.D.; and his parents, Reinhold and Amy Bartell.
Funeral service will be 10 a.m., Thursday, May 10, at Trinity Lutheran Church, 2400 W. 18th Street in Sioux Falls. Visitation will be one hour prior to the service at the church.
Any memorials received will be donated to Trinity Baptist.
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