William Burdette Roush, age 78, passed away at home in Gardnerville, Nevada on May 10th, 2023. He was born on April 26th, 1945 in Sheridan Wyoming. Bill was the eldest child of the late Burdette and Margaret Roush.
Bill was raised in Wyoming, Montana and Washington and spent many summers on his Aunt Gladys and Uncle Bob’s CU bar ranch outside of Sheridan, Wyoming. Bill grew to have a love of the west and its wide-open spaces. Upon graduating from High School in 1963, Bill joined the United States Air Force and became a Radio Intercept Analyst. He worked in the USAF Security Service, San Antonio, Texas and Wiesbaden, Germany. He supervised airmen in the analysis and reporting of timely intelligence information. In the years he spent in Germany he became fluent in German and got to travel extensively across Europe.
After serving in the Air Force, Bill attended Brigham Young University and obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Animal Science. He completed his education with his PhD in Poultry Science from Oregon State University in 1979. During his studies, he married Ara Noreen Hiatt in 1973 and they had two children, Sarah and Michael Roush. Upon graduation he took up a teaching position at Penn State University and was a professor there for the next 23 years.
In 2003, Bill and Noreen moved to Starkville Mississippi where Bill worked as a Research Scientist for the USDA-ARS for the next 6 years. It was while in Mississippi, Noreen died an early death from cancer. In 2009, Bill retired from the USDA and remarried to Susan Christensen and moved to Gardnerville, NV where he lived out the rest of his life. Bill was a voracious reader and loved playing chess and he had an especially deep love of animals and their welfare. He was a life long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and had a strong testimony of the gospel. He was a man of deep faith.
Bill is survived by his sisters, Linda (Ralph) DeWitt, Lei Lani Marie Roush; children Sarah Roush and Michael Roush and grandchildren Kairi Windsor and Rebecca Roush and many nieces and nephews.
Services will be held on Saturday, May 20th, 2023 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at 891 Mahogany Dr. in Minden, NV. The viewing will be at 2:00 pm with services starting at 3:00 pm. Burial will be on May 22nd, 2023 at the Eastside Memorial Park at 10:00 am. A special thank you goes out to Eden Hospice Services for their compassionate end of life care.