Staff Reports
Franklin "Hap" Fisher was born Nov. 18, 1919, in Carson City, the son of Virginia & Truckee Railroad Station Manager Gerald Walter Fisher. The Fisher family moved to Carson in 1906, when Hap's father got a job with the V&T. The family moved to Minden in 1923 when Gerald Fisher became station manager.
"We moved when I was 41⁄2 years old because my dad, who'd been a freight agent in Carson City, accepted the position as station master," said Hap Fisher, who lives in Carson Valley. "For me, life there was fabulous, because the railroad always went past my front door."
When the railroad business ended in 1950 and everything was up for sale, Fisher said, the house he grew up in was purchased, moved, and remains in Gardnerville off Circle Drive.
Hap rode trains through seven western states before graduating from high school in 1938.
"Dad and I had an agreement. If my chores were done, and I was up on my studies, all I had to do was tell him where I was going," he said. "I traveled every mile of the V&T and the Carson & Colorado."
Hap Fisher was president of the Douglas County Historical Society and is a retired IBM employee.
