Benjamin Frantz Stout

A memorial service is noon Friday for retired Senior Chief Petty Officer Benjamin Frantz Stout, who died Feb. 21, 2010, at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center in Carson City. He was 83.

Born Jan. 7, 1927, to Esta Mae and Guy Stout in Oklahoma City, Okla., Chief Stout received multiple service medals, ribbons and stars in his 30-year service as a senior fire control technician with the U.S. Navy. He served on six ships, the last of which was the USS Galveston.

After retiring from the Navy, he was a technical writer for the Department of the Navy Civil Service, Fleet Combat Direction Systems Support Activity, at Point Loma, Calif.

Chief Stout married his wife of 45 years, Katherine "Kay" C. Rodney-Stout, on Jan. 19, 1957, in Chicago. The Stouts lived in Spring Valley, Calif., and moved to Gardnerville in 1988. The couple moved to Longmont, Colo., where Mrs. Stout died on March 5, 2003. Chief Stout moved back to Gardnerville to make daily visits to his wife's grave at Eastside Memorial Park.

He was a talented golfer, loved reading history and mysteries, and was a writer of short stories and poems.

He is preceded in death by his parents, wife Katherine, brother Robert Stout, who was killed in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and sister Betty Stout-Worden.

Chief Stout is survived by daughter Carolyn S. Foster, brother William Stout, and sister-in-law Brenda Stout of California.

The memorial service is at FitzHenry's Funeral Home in Gardnerville followed by a graveside Navy honor guard and the playing of taps at Eastside Memorial Park in Minden.