Richard Finney

A Shared Life ... Richard Day Finney was born in 1937 at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. (Exactly 3 months later Jerry Walter, who was to become his life partner, was born 2000 miles away in a small Wisconsin community.) Rick attended Hoover High School in Glendale, during which time his father Howard passed away, and from which he graduated in 1956. He then attended Pomona College from which he graduated in 1960 with a BA in mathematics with a minor in linguistics. He then embarked on a 2-month tour of Europe with his mother Frances Day Finney. He took numerous graduate courses from UCLA. Rick met Jerry on September 1, 1962, and they soon started making a life together. Rick joined Jerry in Salt Lake City where Jerry was completing his engineering education, and found a one-semester position teaching math at East High School. Rick started teaching math with Los Angeles City Schools in the fall of 1963 at Portola Junior High School, and Jerry became an engineer at a local utility. Before Rick’s mother passed in 1975, he accompanied her on summer trips to Africa, Australia and Alaska. In 1976 Rick and Jerry made a 3-week trip to Norway. In 1986 Rick relocated to Eagle Rock High School. Rick and Jerry bought a tiny house as joint tenants in Los Angeles in 1964 in which they lived until 1995. Meanwhile, in 1964 they bought a lot at elevation 5600 feet in the Lake Arrowhead area in the mountains above San Bernardino. A year later they had a U-finish cabin built on the lot. They drove to the cabin nearly every weekend that they were not traveling elsewhere, and from then on it became their way of life. They rented a dock on the Lake, bought a boat, and enjoyed water skiing every summer weekend. They enjoyed winter cross country skiing in the local mountains. They discovered backpacking and made 8 extensive trips into the High Sierra. Their joint passion was photography, and through a national organization attended conventions, and were encouraged to produce several slide shows which they shared extensively. In 1981 they discovered Taos and in 1993 bought a small house there under construction, which eventually became their permanent residence after they both retired on the same day in 1995. Soon thereafter they sold out in California. At long last, after 45 years together, they could finally get legally married in the United States, which they did in October 2007 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. As the years passed, they built several additions to the Taos house, and enjoyed playing house and garden and raising their dogs together as the years advanced. Rick continued to learn Esperanto on line. They celebrated their 60th anniversary of meeting with an Open House on September 1, 2022. The end came for Rick on August 23, 2023 after declining health. The void is enormous. Donations may be made to the Taos Community Foundation in the memory of Richard Finney.       

Arrangements by Rivera Family Funeral Home, Taos.  To share a memory, please visit our website at www.riverafuneralhome.com