Mason, farmer was in C.C.C., Marines

10/29/2001

CLAYTON, Mich. - Kenneth D. Yeutter, a retired brick mason and plasterer who enjoyed the outdoors, died Friday of pneumonia at Provincial House in Adrian. He was 91.

Mr. Yeutter owned and operated Yeutter Construction Co. from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. The firm specialized in building fireplaces and other residential brick masonry and stone projects in the Lenawee County area.

After retiring from construction about 1963, he bought the family farm in Rome Township just west of Adrian, where he grew grain and fed steers for about 10 years.

“He was always easygoing,” Mary Sue Proudfoot, his daughter, said. “He felt people should be treated fairly. He would sometimes talk to families, if they had problems, to help them work things out.”

Active in the Rome Grange for more than 70 years, Mr. Yeutter helped construct an addition to its hall on Forrester Road in the 1950s.

Born in Rollin Township, he graduated from Adrian High School in 1926. During the Depression he served on a crew of the Civilian Conservation Corps, building roads and planting trees in Michigan's Houghton Lake area.

During World War II he was a flight crew chief for the Marines, serving in the South Pacific.

“When the war came about he was 30 and nobody else would take him,” Mrs. Proudfood said. “The Marines were the only ones who would. I think they called him `Pops.'”

Mr. Yeutter enjoyed deer hunting and fishing. He was a board member and treasurer of the Lenawee County Conservation Club. “He taught us kids about all kinds of plants,” his daughter said.

He was a charter member, treasurer, and president of the Lenawee Bowman Club. He once was a 4-H Club leader for the Rome Blue Ribbons. He was a member of the Oddfellows for 30 years and a member of the Cadmus Presbyterian Church.

He married Elizabeth Brittian in 1943. She died in 1994.

Surviving are his son, Stanley, daughter, Mary Sue Proudfoot; brother, Lysle; sisters, Delores Lewis, Genevieve Mason, and Marie Ziss; two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the Anderson Funeral Home, Adrian, where the body will be after 4 p.m. today.

The family requests tributes to the Cadmus Presbyterian Church or to the Lenawee County Department of Aging.