A reception will be held on Friday, April 18, 2014 from 2:00 P.M.- 4:00 P.M. at Renner-Wikoff Chapel & Crematory, Urbana, for H.S. 'Frenchy' French. A private family graveside service will be held at a later date at Woodlawn Cemetery, Urbana.

Born Harold Sherman French on June 5, 1921 to Mary Jane (Gaddy) and Sherman French, he didn't care much for Harold so he went by Frenchy most of his life. He grew up in southern Illinois Lawrenceville hunting rabbits and quail (with his Texaco boilermaker father, cousin Tom Gaddy and WWI veteran great-uncle Esco) and lied about his age to drive gravel trucks at 15. In high school, Frenchy played leather-helmet football, basketball, traveling swing-band trombone, and somehow he thought himself qualified to enroll in the U of I like his better-off friends, working as a waiter-dishwasher to put himself through school while making the U of I wrestling team and meeting his future brother-in-law Robert Miller, brother to Charlotte June Miller, wife of 72 years. Frenchy and Bob (Robert) enlisted as juniors in the original Flying Illini, the forty-or-so in fighter-pilot training who saw the war coming in 1941. He survived a bailout mid-air training collision over the everglades, thunderstorms that took several lives in California, landing an F4-U Gull-Wing Corsair without landing gear and received a medal for pulling a fellow pilot from a burning plane, which he never mentioned on his own (just part of his job). Frenchy rode horses, swam the Rio Grande, married Charlotte in a crossed-swords 1942 wedding in Long Beach with Navy decorum, piloted for American Airlines after the war, and finished his U of I engineering degree with brother-in-law Bob, living in Stadium Terrace, that big field west of Memorial Stadium with Charlotte and his daughters Judith Kay and Nancy Jean. While giving flying lessons at old Taynor Airport north of Urbana and attending the U of I in Mechanical Engineering on the GI bill, he met his new employer, the Vance brothers of the Universal Bleacher Company, eventually becoming their Production Manager while also serving in the Naval Reserve for twenty years as Commander French, including leading wings to Morocco and Italy. Frenchy later worked as a steel and timber industry liaison, enabling research at the U of I while serving as a graduate school advisor. His three children, and many grandchildren graduated from our beloved U of I (for honest labor and learning we stand). He is survived by Charlotte, children Judy French (Larry Canavan), Nancy Frakes (Jim Frakes) and James Robert (Uncle Bob) French (Wendy Smith French), nine grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. Frenchy didn't expect anything extra but he gave his family, inspired and loved by his wife Charlotte, a model to always live by. May we measure. A noble rebel, bless you.