Dean D. Burton of Pomeroy, passed away quietly on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, after losing his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Dean was born in St. Louis, Mo., on Oct. 5, 1934. His family moved to Butte, Mont., where his father worked in the Anaconda Copper Mine. When Dean was 3 years old his family moved to Globe, Ariz. His father worked in the copper mine and disappeared in 1937. At the time, his mother was left with five children to care for on her own. She abandoned Dean and his 6-year-old brother at a gas station where they were picked up by the authorities and put into foster care.
Foster parents Arthur and Kathryn Burton took the boys in and raised them as their own, on the Burton Ranch in Burton, Ariz. Dean took on the Burton name, and after graduating Snowflake High School, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps stationed in California.
Dean served aboard the U.S.S. Boxer, an aircraft deployed off the coast of Korea during the war. It’s there that he met his wife, Nettie Ann Popejoy in 1954. They married in June of 1955. Dean and Nettie had two sons, Dannie and David.
Dean took a job with Los Angeles Department of Water and Power where he stayed for 15 years. Strongly motivated to get his family out of California, he started looking for work in the Pacific Northwest. In 1970 Dean started receiving job offers from Inland Power and Light in Washington state. After several visits to different towns in Washington, they settled in Pomeroy in 1973.
Dean worked for Inland Power and Light as a lineman for 20 years. He was valued by everyone in Garfield County, dropping whatever he was doing, including running out in the middle of his son’s wedding, to get the power back on. He quickly became involved in the community when the levy to support Pomeroy Pirate athletics was rejected. After working hard to find funds for the school sports program, Dean was urged to run for a school district director position and was elected in 1975.
A funny side note to Dean’s life is that he was never legally adopted by the Burtons. He didn’t find out his legal name until he applied for a passport in 1984, so that he could fly to Germany to see his son Dan and his family. So, after 50 years, it wasn’t until after graduating high school, serving in the military, getting married, signing up for a social security card, a voter registration card, buying a home, and applying for a passport, that he found out he wasn’t legally “Dean Burton.”
A few years after leaving the school board, Dean was approached to run for county commissioner. He was elected in 1994. During his time in office, he worked hard to get the funding to modernize the courthouse and organized funding for a county transportation system. When lack of funding threatened to shut down the transportation system, Dean offered to drive people himself to their appointments in the Lewiston Clarkston Valley.
One late evening, Dean received a phone call from the Washington Association of Counties executive director. He asked Dean to be in Olympia by six a.m. the next morning to make a presentation to the Historic Preservation Committee. So Dean got in his car, drove all night, and gave his informal presentation, for which he received $1 million from the state to restore the courthouse.
Dean was also involved in getting the funds for the Agriculture Museum at the Garfield County Fairgrounds. He was a part of Butch Klaveano’s cattle operation for 20 years. In his later years he needed the younger party members to saddle his horse.
Dean enjoyed wood working, restoring vintage cars and driving his cars in the Garfield County parades.
Dean is preceded in death by his parents Arthur and Kathryn Burton, and his son David Burton.
A celebration of life is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, at Church of the Nazarene, Corner of Columbia and S. Ninth St., Pomeroy, followed by a covered-dish dinner at the Garfield County Fairgrounds.
