John Roger Pickering, 77, a Northern Nevada resident for 29 years, died April 11, 2003, at Grangeville Health and Rehab Center in Grangeville, Idaho, of emphysema.
He was born Aug. 15, 1925, in Eureka, Calif., to Roger Bryan and Catherine Goodwin Pickering. He graduated from high school in Ammon, Idaho.
He married Mary Fitzgerald in 1953 in Salt Lake City. They later divorced.
He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943 during World War II and became a pilot, attaining the rank of second lieutenant.
After his discharge, he attended college in Bozeman, Mont., and continued flying for many private sectors such as Civil Air Patrol, bush pilot and flight instructor. In later years, he was a long-haul trucker throughout the West.
Mr. Pickering moved to Carson City in 1970, where he tested vehicles for the government. He married Lea Rousseau in Virginia City on February 1971, and they moved to Dayton. She preceded him in death in 1999, and he moved to Idaho.
Among his survivors are his daughter and son-in-law, Mary Catherine and Ken Marshall of Windsor, Calif.; granddaughter and husband, Collette and Reese Burrows; great-granddaughter, Kennedy Burrows; stepdaughters Barbara Nix of Tyler, Texas, and Jeri French of Laughlin; sister and brother-in-law, Lila C. and Jim Gribble; niece, Mitzi I. Cover of Gahanna, Ohio; and nephew, Bill R. Van Dyke from Reno.
