Eighty years ago, on March 16, 1943, in a big white Victorian house/hospital overlooking the Lords Park lagoon in Elgin, Illinois, a four pound baby boy was born to Jesse and Wesley Landwer. He was named Gaylo and taken home to be cherished by his ten-year-old sister, Barbara, and  five-year-old brother, Robin.  Many ask "Why the name Gaylo?" His explanation: "After my father's parents died, he ran away at the age of 13 to be a cowboy in South Dakota. He was taken in by a family with two brothers--Milo and Gaylo. I was a WWII surprise baby and a difficult birth for my mother and she may have just said to my father 'Name him whatever you want'."

Gaylo was an accomplished youth. In 1956, at 13, after bowling games in the high 200's, he was named Elgin Junior Bowling League Champion. He also purchased an after school paper route of 30 customers which he increased to 100.   For two years, six nights a week, rain or shine, he delivered, although "Sometimes it was hard to get my bike through a foot of snow." During summers, he also worked at Trout Park on the Fox River, where he grew to love the river and being on the water. Another of his lifelong joys was playing his guitar and during college he played the bass guitar and sang with The Crusaders.

On May 21, 1960, he met Sharon Lynne Postma, daughter of Henry and Roberta Postma and sister of Jean and Phyllis. In 1961, Gaylo and Sharon graduated from Elgin High School and went off to earn college degrees from Northern Illinois University where, through rain or shine, their love endured.  They were married on August 20, 1966, a marriage that lasted until Gaylo passed the day before their 57th wedding anniversary.

Gaylo's Bachelor of Science in Education with a major in history took him to teaching in Elgin, Illinois, Forrest, Illinois, and Petersburg, Michigan, where Kerstin Gayle was born in 1968. They then returned to the Elgin area, where Heather Lynne was born in 1971 and  Brett Henry Peter in 1972 . In 1974, a visit to family in Nixa, Missouri, brought him to the beautiful Ozark Mountains and that is where he settled to raise his family. There, Jason Wesley was born in 1979. In 2000 daughter-in-law Robin joined the family and in 2005 Brett and Robin made him a grampa when James Wyatt was born.

In 1974,  Gaylo began a thirty-four-year career in quality control for Paul Mueller Company.  For thirty-four years, through rain or shine or pushing his vehicle through the snow, he supported the biggest joy in his life, his family.  We will miss his integrity, kindness, keen mind, witticisms, memory of every joke he ever heard and, most of all, his love for us.

Funeral services will be held at 11 AM on Saturday, August 26, 2023 at the Klingner-Cope Family Funeral Home at Rivermonte, 4500 S. Lone Pine Ave., Springfield, MO 65804. Memorial donations may be made in his name to the Sierra Club Missouri Chapter, PO Box 432010, St. Louis, MO 63143 or the Parkinson's Group of the Ozarks, 1136 E. St. Louis St., Springfield, MO 65806. Online condolences can be made at www.klingnerfuneralhoome.com