Published April 28, 2003
Clyde Oren Rice
Oct. 15, 1900 — April 24, 2003
Clyde Oren Rice of Big Oak Flat died Thursday at a Sonora care home. He was 102.
Mr. Rice was born in Conway, Mo., and had lived in Big Oak Flat for many years. He first lived in the Groveland area from 1947 to 1959, and again after he retired to Big Oak Flat in 1974.
His family moved to Utah in 1913, when he was 13 years old, and he and his brother went to Arizona to work in the gold mines. He next moved to Santa Barbara, where he worked as a cowboy on a ranch.
He spent the next several years hauling hay from Yerington, Nev., to San Francisco, then ran pack horses in eastern Utah, where he met and married his first wife, Fawn. The couple had one son.
In 1935, he returned to California to build a log house for his brother at Bower Cave, Mariposa County. He then returned to Utah, where he met and married his second wife, Ella, and they had two daughters and a son. He and his wife raised cattle and sheep on several acres.
The first time he lived in the Groveland area, he ranched, worked in sawmills and worked in gold mines. In 1959, he moved to Utah again and spent the next several years doing road construction for W.W. Clyde Construction and tending cattle for Tony Masscaros Rodeo.
After he retired in Big Oak Flat, he tended his vast vegetable and flower gardens.
He was a member of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He was preceded in death by a sister, Edna Glitteg of Big Oak Flat, a son, Marvin Rice of Sonora, a son-in-law, Jack Henderson of Big Oak Flat and a great-grandson, Tyson Rice of Arizona.