Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Tasker, CloIse F. (Mr.) April 20, 1979
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Maureen Cross mcross3454@gmail.com October 14, 2021, 2:22 pm

Lake Odessa Wave - April 26, 1979
          CLOISE F. TASKER
   CLOISE F. TASKER, who grew apples, peaches, cherries and other fruit for the Lake
Odessa area for more 
than 40 years, died Friday at 76.
   Services were held Tuesday at Pickens-Koops Chapel, with burial at Lakeside
Cemetery.
   Mr. Tasker, born in Odessa Township in 1902, bought 40 acres of farmland
southeast of Lake Odessa from 
his grandfather's estate in about 1935.  He started the first major orchard in the
area, growing Northern 
Spies, McIntosh, Jonathans, Wagners and other apples.
   He later broadened the orchard to 120 acres, with peaches pears, plums and
apricots, employing as many 
as 25 workers at harvest time.
   In cherry season, many Lake Odessa residents also came to pick their own.
   In 1960, Mr. Tasker earned the soil conservation award from The Kalamazoo Gazette
for devising a plan to 
terrace the land to plant cherry trees, which usually grow poorly in local soil
conditions.
   Mr. Tasker was a member of Ervie's Athletic Club, a group of members of the 1920
Lake Odessa football 
team, well known in its time of gang through its entire season without being scored
against.
   He attended a one year horticultural course at Michigan State University, which
then was known as 
Michigan Agricultural College.  He was a life member of the Michigan State
Horticultural Society.
   He is survived by his wife, Connie (Hiller), a daughter, Alice, of New Berlin,
Wisc., a son, Fredric, of Miami, 
Fla., and a sister, Hildred Clum, of Lake Odessa.

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