Floyd Elton Bolkan
Floyd Elton Bolkan was born on 10 October 1924 in Griggs County, North Dakota, the fourth of the nine children of Gustavus O. Bolkan and Mary Ethel Parfit. His grandfather Ole P. Bolkan, who had come from Norway as a boy, farmed a few miles away, and Floyd grew up among more than forty Bolkan cousins in the Sheyenne valley. In 1930 the family was at Sverdrup Township: Gustavus 40, Ethel 30, Mildred 11, Eunice 9, Selmer 7, Floyd 5, Lois 3 and Vern 1.
The Bolkans left North Dakota in the Depression. In 1935 they were still in rural Griggs County; by April 1940 they were farming in the Needy precinct of Clackamas County, Oregon, south of Oregon City. Floyd was 15, at home with Eunice 19, Selmar 17, Lois 13, Vern 11, Iola 9, Beulah 6, Robert 4 and Lynn, 1, the only one born in Oregon.
He registered for the draft at Redland on 22 December 1942, two months past his eighteenth birthday. The card describes him: five feet ten, 170 pounds, blue eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion, working for his father. He served in the Naval Reserve as a ship's cook third class, SC3, and the Navy stone over him reads World War II.
In April 1950 he was 25 and single, living at Macksburg in Clackamas County in the house of his sister Eunice and her husband Wayne Watson, a logging truck driver. Floyd's work was falling and bucking, cutting the trees and sawing them to length, in the logging industry. His sister Mildred and her husband were on the same census page. Eunice died in 1954 at 33.
Some time after 1950 he married Caroline. Their daughter Teri was born at Silverton in 1960. Floyd died on 8 August 1969 at Portland, Multnomah County, aged 44. The Oregonian printed his obituary on 10 August, naming his wife Caroline and his brothers and sisters: Mildred Trost, Selmar, Lynn, Earl, two married sisters and the rest. He was buried in Willamette National Cemetery at Portland, section S, grave 3282, under a government stone: Floyd Elton Bolkan, Oregon, SC3 USNR, World War II, Oct 10 1924, Aug 8 1969.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Floyd Elton Bolkan (1924-1969)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/floyd-elton-bolkan-1924-1969-51447b.