July 11, 1936 - December 8, 2023
Lester Richard Eastman, known by friends and family as ‘Rich’, was the second eldest of the four children of Lester Roosevelt Eastman and Hazel Renshaw Eastman, a farming family of Big Stone County, Minnesota. Richard descended from Swedish, German and English ancestors.
Rich attended a one-room country schoolhouse for grades 1-8 and high school in Ortonville, graduating in 1954. Always interested in construction, as an early teenager Rich built his own tree house. He believed that his fall from that tree house probably contributed to his life-long struggle with asthma. That illness played a key role in his later move to Denver, Colorado, where the climate is healthier for someone with asthma. By 1956, Richard was fully settled in Denver, where he first worked for the American Crystal Sugar Company.
In 1957 Richard met an intelligent and beautiful young woman, Harriette Landis. After a tender courtship, Harriette and Richard married in September 1958. They first lived in Arvada, where they helped Harriette’s grandmother with her country general store. In 1961 they moved into their own home in Westminster, where their two sons were born. Harriette tended their growing family while Richard, by the late 1960s, was working with the US Geological Survey, including field expeditions to Nevada and other western states.
Richard always enjoyed the great outdoors and had a lifelong interest in fishing and hunting, interests that began in the late 1940s and continued throughout his life. On one occasion in 1965, brother Mike, Rich and family went on a mountain adventure in Rich’s jeep. On that trip, involving multiple challenging switchbacks, they also found gemstones high on a mountain top. Discoveries of this kind kindled Rich’s interest in jewelry-making.
In the early 1970s, Rich and Harriette moved into a larger home in Broomfield. During the late 1970s as the boys were growing up, Richard worked for Martin-Marietta. He later worked for Bond Coach of Arvada, where his expertise and interest in RVs (recreation vehicles) and RV-travel expanded. Over the years, Rich and Harriette made numerous trips throughout the country in their own RV.
By 1985, Richard’s major employer came to be the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats facility northwest of Denver, where he worked as a precision engineer, including exercising his specialty in tool and gauge systems. He retired in 1995. After Harriette also retired from Rocky Flats in January 2000, they moved into a beautiful home east of Loveland that reflected their strong interest in native-American-themed artworks.
Richard long enjoyed making jewelry, having special skills in faceting and in creating pieces that evoked western or native-American styles. This passion in turn inspired his son Brad to take up jewelry-making as a profession. In addition to interests in jewelry and native art, Rich and Harriette shared a delight in watching the great variety of birds that visited their birdbaths and feeding units each day.
Richard and Harriette actively participated in their church communities and maintained close ties with many friends and neighbors over the years. Lester Richard Eastman was predeceased by sister Donna Gene Eastman Kanne (1932-1970) and son Jeffrey Todd (1963-2010). He is survived by wife Harriette Landis Eastman, son Brad Allen, two brothers, Mike and Timothy, and their families. We will miss him dearly.
