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WW II veteran enjoying breakfast in Heaven

by KERRI THORESON/Main Street
| November 18, 2020 1:00 AM

This year everything has felt magnified and amplified while the passing of time has a distortion, like a fun-house mirror without the fun. Emotions are right at the surface. So on Monday morning when Lynnelle Wagner called to tell me a man I’d written about last year had died over the summer, my sadness at the loss came in waves.

In April 2019 we were seeing and hearing about 95-year-old World War II veteran Dan Rankin of Post Falls, who’d captured the hearts of just about everyone and become an internet and media sensation. The wisp of a man was a regular customer of Dueling Irons and it had been a couple of years since he’d bought his own breakfast. Customers and even people from all over were sending money to buy his breakfast to thank him for his service.

After his story made the news I had a lot of people ask if we were related. Amazingly, since we’d both lived in Post Falls since the 1980s, we had not met despite having an uncommon surname in common. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America’s population is over 327 million. Of those, there are only 27, 989 people with the surname Rankin.

So one April morning Bert and I stopped at the restaurant to see if he was there. We pulled into the parking lot and I saw Mr. Rankin just getting out of his 1973 Buick. I walked over to his car, introduced myself and told him I was a Rankin. And then we were off to the races!

We shared a table and stories, and like most veterans of his era he was less interested in telling stories of his military service but rather of life and travels and family. Dan was fascinated when I told him how many, actually how few, Rankins there were in the U.S. He said in his years of driving truck through 48 states he always looked for the name in phone books, rarely seeing any Rankins. I had to laugh because I’ve always done the very same thing.

Bert and Dan hit it off, sharing some similar interests, both diesel mechanics who have no use for everything automotive that’s now computerized. They talked “shop” and both kidded me about my smart phone while comparing their preference for flip phones just to make or take phone calls. And at 95 Dan posed with me for his very first selfie.

The next month we appeared in People Magazine when they wrote about the phenomenon of his admirers buying him breakfast for years and used a photo of the two of us Bert had taken during our breakfast.

Dan’s father, Henry H. Rankin, who lived to be 90, was from Harrisburg, Pa., and as a young man found his way to Montana. He cooked in the logging and mining camps and then in a cafe in Helena where Henry met a pretty, and much younger, French-Canadian girl, Marion (Mary) LePlante. The two were married and eventually had nine children, four girls and five boys. Dan was the youngest and had outlived all of his siblings.

The Rankins homesteaded in Newport, Wash., until the family farm was wiped out in the fire of 1910 and they moved to Cusick. Dan survived two wives, he and his first wife losing their two children in infancy.

Dan told me I reminded him of one of his sisters. I similarly felt like I’d known him long before sharing breakfast in 2019. At age 96, the fiercely independent and humble Dan Rankin died in a nursing home where he’d been since February this year.

Our crossing of paths was brief so it may be hard to understand how I’m feeling the loss of the kindred and kind spirit that was Dan Rankin. When spring arrives I’ll make a trip to Newport to pay my respects where he’s laid to rest next to his mother, Mary.

On behalf of a grateful nation, we thank you Mr. Rankin.


Happy birthday today to my very first nephew Leighton Scharf, Dennie Thorpe (21!), Gina Mote and Michelle Rielly. Tomorrow Aaron Baldwin (30!), Nate Ziegler and Debbi Thostenson turn the page. On Friday Kim Jacklin, Kristina Jacklin, Sandi Bloem, Dave Oliveria, Dr. Bob West, Michael King, Brian Smith, Kristin Hoppe, Linda Alby, Pat Thyssen, Chase Blakley, Rob Clark and Kayla Pleger take another trip around the sun.

On Saturday Maureen Dolan, Chrissy Kaye, Bob Driscoll, Noel Adam, Kaci Medlock, Bill Storlie Sr., Susan Martin, Barbara Bryan, Gary Schwalbach and Vonnie Satchwell celebrate. On Sunday TJ Barnhart, Dustin Ainsworth, Sam Inman, Kim Anderson, Rodney Duncan, Tyeson Bennett, Brenda Hanson and Leland Johnson share a birthday.

David Eachon, his daughter Dana Ortega, Dennis Hall, Dee Dee Morris, Julia Hopkins, Ronda Mitchell, Stephanie Morrison, Tim Williams and Carol Daniels will have their cake and eat it, too, on Monday. On Nov. 24 Mike Jarrett, Jeff Morrison, Lisa Black, Jesse Gunderson, Debbie Magnuson, Mike Lindquist and Eric Knudtsen blow out their candles.


Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email mainstreet@cdapress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kerrithoreson.