Wesley Monroe Shrum

Wesley Monroe Shrum (92) died on September 21, 2018 in Merced, California.

Born October 7, 1925 in Henryetta, Oklahoma to George Monroe Shrum and Arizona MacDaniel Shrum, he grew up on a farm in Lamar County, Texas (now Paris, TX), where he attended high school and junior college before volunteering to serve in the U.S. Navy as a torpedo operator aboard the U.S.S. Cusk submarine during World War II.

He married Kathryn Ann Pitts on Christmas day of 1949 in her family’s home in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. (The two remained devoted to each other until Kathryn’s death in 1998.) A graduate of Oklahoma University Law School, he worked as an attorney, and then as an employee of Farmer’s Insurance Group for forty years (as a claims manager, a branch claims manager, and a regional claims manager). Wesley and Kathryn lived in Norman, Oklahoma, Birmingham, Alabama, Kansas City, Kansas, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, California, and Merced.

Among many other roles he took on in life, Wesley was a clarinetist and a skilled whistler; briefly, he was a boxer; he was an amateur oil painter who once had a brush with Walt Disney; he was an avid traveler with a near-photographic memory for the countless corners of the country he visited (one person close to him said, “He could remember every place he ever ate at”); he was a man with an appetite, who maintained that the only food he didn’t care for was parsnips; he had aptitude to fix practically any mechanical thing; he was an outdoorsman, who enjoyed fishing, camping, and playing sports; he was a loyal fan of the Oklahoma Sooners and the Kansas City Chiefs; he was an active member of the United Methodist Church; he was a school board member in Kansas City; and he was an ideal father and grandfather.

He was known to family as Monroe, to colleagues and friends as Wes, and to his grandchildren and their contemporaries simply as Granddad. But this range of names did not reflect a multiplicity of character: for, to all who knew him, he was a constant: Always patient, always charismatic, always kind, and always brimming with quiet wisdom, with his unparalleled story-telling abilities and his earnest interest in others, Wesley Monroe Shrum was a source of joy and comfort to all who had the privilege to know him.

He was preceded in death by his parents, his sister Medrith Ann Shrum Saxon, and his beloved Kathryn.

He is survived by his son Wesley Monroe Shrum Jr., his daughter Kathryn Kem Shrum, and his grandchildren Benjamin Brandon Bates and Landon Monroe Bates. His friends are too numerous to list.

He is said to have departed from this world with a smile on his face.