Richard Furstenau

Richard “Dick” Furstenau passed away after a brief but courageous fight with lung cancer on Monday, Jan 27th, 2014 Dick was born in Riverside, California on April 14, 1937 to Carl and Mary Furstenau. He grew up in Riverside and graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1955. He served in the United States Navy from 1956-1960 where he studied Radio Operation and Theory, and Teletype Maintenance. He worked as a field service engineer for Dunham-Bush, Inc. and Arctic Refrigeration in California until he moved to Washington in 1974. He then began working for Pepsi Cola, Yakima as refrigeration, air conditioning and heating engineer. It was during this position that Dick met and married the love of his life, Joyce (Hovde) Furstenau, in 1977 at the Selah Covenant Church. They lived and raised their blended family in Selah for the past 37 years. In 1985 Dick left Pepsi-Cola for a promising position at St. Elizabeth Hospital, which became Yakima Regional. He finally retired from his long and successful career in 1999. While employed at Yakima Regional, Dick touched the hearts of many of his co-workers as he often helped with things that were “above and beyond” his duties. He was blessed with a surprise “retirement party” at the hospital where many friends and family joined to wish him a fond farewell. Dick was a smart and innovative young man. As a young boy, he spent a lot of time with his Great Aunt Margaret. His aunt took him to Sunday school at the First Baptist church every week where he was eventually baptized. He enjoyed spending much of his free time as a youth at her cabin at Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains. She took him on many excursions to broaden his education as a young boy for which he was eternally grateful. Dick was a “Jack of all trades” and had an engineer’s mind when it came to creating or repairing things. He created and designed everything from hip socket holders, for hip surgery at Providence Hospital, to sets for every one of Joyce’s classroom musicals. He repaired everything from boilers to bracelets and loved to “tinker” with anything, studying and carefully understanding the ins and outs of everything he did. His tried and true method before tackling any job was to “think it through first,” which always gave him a high success rate! Dick was also an amazing chef. He enjoyed every kind of cooking. Since retirement he baked and gave away more than two hundred ninety six loaves of his moist and delicious zuchinni bread. He often prepared entire meals for holidays and family gatherings and always made “special” dishes for family members. His secret ingredient: Love! One of his fondest memories of cooking was attending the cooking school at La Maison in Cowiche last spring with good friend Jim Fuhlman. A very intelligent and gentle man throughout his life, he was quick witted and enjoyed making people laugh. He was the most dependable man you could ever know, and his word….well, you could take it to the bank. Dick is survived by his wife, Joyce, her son Matthew (Melissa) Miles: his son Fred (Lona) Furstenau and four grandchildren: Garon Furstenau, Michael Miles, Myleah Miles and Mason Miles. He was preceded in death by his parents, Carl Fredrick Furstenau and Mary Furstenau Bivens. In lieu of flowers, donations may be given to the Union Gospel Mission. A memorial service will be held this Saturday Feb 1st at 1pm at the Valley Hills Funeral Home Chapel. Please share your condolences on Dick’s obituary at www.valleyhillsfh.com To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of Richard Furstenau, please visit our flower store.