Joseph Melvin "Mel" Friend

The funeral service for MEL FRIEND will be at 11:00 am, Friday, November 29, 2013 at Hull & Hull Funeral Home. Interment will be in Eagle Point National Cemetery, Eagle Point, Oregon at 2:00 pm that afternoon.

Those who wish may pay their respects at Hull & Hull Funeral Home from 9:00 am to 10:30 am on Friday prior to the funeral service.

Mel was born June 5, 1926 in Wintersburg, California to Joseph Allen and Pearl May (McDowell) Friend. He graduated from high school in Santa Ana, California in 1944 and received the Most Valuable Baseball Player award his senior year. For two years following high school he served in the U. S. Navy in the South Pacific.

Baseball continued to be an important part of Mel’s life, including a season of minor league professional baseball in 1949, and many seasons as a catcher and outfielder for the Grants Pass Merchants Baseball team. A medical diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis in 1961 forced him to hang up the baseball mitt and into a lifelong pursuit of health through alternative treatments and diet, which eventually suppressed or eliminated the MS symptoms.

On April 14, 1947 at the First Christian Church in Grants Pass he married the former Betty Lee Pruitt. They lived in Prospect, Oregon where Mel operated the service station, from 1948 to 1950. After moving back to Grants Pass he worked at an automobile dealership for several years before leasing the Richfield service station at the corner of 6th and “M” Streets, which he operated from 1953 to 1957. In 1958 he leased and operated the (Associated) Flying “A” service station on South Sixth Street near the Caveman Bridge. For the next 32 years he was a driver salesman for various businesses, including Dri-Power automotive products, Beck’s Bakery out of Medford, and French Laundry in Grants Pass. He retired in 1992 after several years of working in the parts department of Roe Motors in Grants Pass.

Mel enjoyed his yard and flower garden, hunting and attending any sporting event his grandchildren were involved in.

On March 3, 1993 Mel’s wife of 45 years, Betty, passed away in Grants Pass. On September 20, 1997 in Medford he married the former Marguerite Doris (Miller) Tanner, who passed away February 16, 2002 in Grants Pass.

Mel is survived by his five children including daughters Pearl Lee Wedmore (Ken) of Springfield, Oregon; Celia May Clark (Jeff) of Grants Pass; Katherine Louise “Kathy” Dechenne (Tony) of Grants Pass; son Ernest Allen Friend of Grants Pass; and son Melvin Eugene “Mel” Friend (Terry) of Medford; two brothers, Wallace R. Friend of Grants Pass and Lawrence Friend of Florida, and sister Allene Pearl Blackburn of Grants Pass; eleven grandchildren and eighteen great-grandchildren; numerous nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers memorial contributions can be made to Meals on Wheels, a service that Mel enjoyed the last couple of years.