Daniel Fry - Personal Life

Personal Life

Daniel William Fry was born on July 19, 1908 near a small steamboat landing on the Mississippi River called Verdon Township in the northern part of Aitkin County, Minnesota to Fred Nelson Fry and Clara Jane Baehr. Clara died in 1916 and left Daniel and his older sister, Florence, to be raised by their grandmother while Fred found work where he could as a carpenter and labourer. Fred died two years later in 1918 during the influenza pandemic and left Daniel orphaned at the age of ten. He and his sister were reared under the guardianship of his grandmother and came with her to South Pasadena, California in 1920. Daniel attended the now defunct El Centro Elementary school and went to high school in Antelope Valley.

His parents left practically no estate and at the age of eighteen he found himself entirely dependent upon his own resources. He completed high school but because of increasing unemployment that preceded the 1930s depression he abandoned plans for university. However, he found what jobs he could and studied during the evenings. He worked through the subjects he would have taken at university by using material from the Pasadena Public Library. He became interested in chemistry and eventually specialized in the use of explosives finally settling on the new field of rocketry.

He married his first wife, Elma, in 1934 and had three children. He divorced Elma in 1964 while in Merlin, Oregon and took up common-law residence with Bertha (aka Tahahlita) until moving to Tonopah, Arizona in the mid 1970s. There he married Florence, and before Florence died of breast cancer in 1980, they retired to Alamogordo, New Mexico. Fry then married Cleona, a local Alamogordo resident in 1982 and lived with her until his death on December 20, 1992.