Hollis Duane Brooks

Hollis Duane Brooks died peacefully in his sleep at home with his wife on October 14, 2015. Hollis, who in two months would have been 92, had been hospitalized with flu and severe heart failure before being told his illness was terminal and being placed under Hospice care.  Services will be held on Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 2:00 pm at the Copeland Cemetery with interment to follow.

Characteristically, just last year, Hollis cut all the trees and split them up for the couple’s firewood, an example of physical vitality that Hollis exhibited all of his life. Born to Clyde Eugene Brooks and Laura Joyce (Fleener) Brooks on December 17, 1923 in Minnesota, Hollis had two sisters, Shirley and Cora. Clyde Brooks worked on President Hoover’s infrastructure projects and later bought a farm in Michigan where Hollis learned many of his farming skills.

At the age of 19, after graduating from Schoolcraft High School in Michigan and joining the Army to fight in World War II, Hollis trained as Pack Artillery Specialist with the 12-mule pack team that was to join Merrill’s Marauders in India.  Enroute to that engagement, Hollis’s unit was informed that all of Merrill’s men had been massacred by the Japanese.

 Asked what he did for the Army after the massacre ended the Army’s use for his unit, Hollis used to say, “I fought mosquitoes” because he retrained and became a mess tent cook for 2,500 soldiers. He thought that was pretty funny because he was a farm boy and with two sisters at home, he said, he’d never even learned to boil water.

During his three years in India, Hollis had many adventures he used to share with his wife and friends, including the time he was driving a supply truck as a huge crowd listening to Mahatma Gandhi blocked the road.

Among his many awards for service during the war are a ribbon from the China/Burma/India campaign, a medal for taking part in the World War II Army of Occupation, medals from the American Campaign and European/African/Middle Eastern Campaign and the Good Conduct medal.

“We had such peace in our home because Hollis had such a love in his heart for everyone just as Jesus taught us,” according to his wife, Shirley Brooks. Hollis became a Christian as a 67-year old, she said, after he suddenly surprised his first wife by asking if he could come to church with her.

Jo Berteen, Hollis’s first wife had been covering him with her prayers since they had met as 14-year olds when she was visiting her grandfather at the next farm over from the Brooks. While he was in the Army, Jo waited and prayed, and the two wrote many letters to one another until he got out and they married.

After discharge from the service, Hollis first went back to help on the farm. Then he went to work for Kalamazoo Stamping and Die becoming a die setter and the first man to run a hydroform there, then becoming an inspector and finally a supervisor. Three months before retiring after 40 years, in 1985, Hollis moved his wife and their belongings to a piece of property in Copeland they had heard about from their daughter, Brenda Brooks, who already had moved to Bonners Ferry. While he returned to work the last few months in Michigan, Jo put a herd of goats to work eating the brush down and she milked them.

As Shirley explained this, she gestured around the cozy, attractive cabin that she and Hollis shared and said Jo Berteen created it all. “Bitsy, the goat, and their Airedale dog would sit nearby while she grazed a lot of goats,” Shirley said. After a happy marriage lasting more than 50 years, Jo Berteen passed away in December of 1997, and Hollis buried her in the Copeland Cemetery.

After Jo’s death, Hollis busied himself with the Nazarene Church, going on a “Working Witness” program to Honduras.  He helped build a church there for people he said were living in cardboard boxes, but he told Shirley that the people had “the greatest worship” he ever had seen.  Although he wanted to stay in Honduras, he returned to Bonners Ferry and volunteered not only his time but also his amazing work ethic to many people, local businesses and farms. He truly gave anything he had to so many.

A love of animals probably did not begin for Hollis when he worked with the mules in the Army, but among those he and Shirley have added to their spread are horses, from their first foal in 2004 to as many as 40 at one point. Shirley bought him their first Miniature Dachshund, Lady, as a wedding present, and during the years it was typical to find Hollis in the evenings sitting in his easy chair covered by Dachshunds.

Among his many hobbies was hunting, and he also collected antlers. In 2010, he had two knee replacements, and although he was 86 at the time, Hollis recovered well and returned to his farming chores. When he was diagnosed with severe heart failure, Hollis asked to die at home. After the ride home by ambulance, Hollis was visibly relieved when the ambulance doors were opened and he saw Shirley waiting for him.  Shirley said that within just a few days, he shocked her and the Hospice nurse when he suddenly left his ventilator behind on the main floor of their home and headed upstairs. Five days later, at 12:12 in the afternoon, he died in his own bed. 

“Hollis loved the Lord with all his heart, and he had nothing against anybody. He never worried about yesterday and always hoped for tomorrow being a great day,” Shirley said. “The years with Hollis are the best of my life because he truly shared with me.”

 Hollis was preceded in death by his parents, both of his sisters and his first wife.