Posted on: Clark Co. Wi Obituaries Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Wi/ClarkObits/11897 Surname: Flynn, Hamm ------------------------- For Clark County, Wisconsin: John Alvin Flynn October 8, 1911 March 6, 2001 John A. Flynn was born in Kendallville, Iowa to James Albert and Amelia Agnes Flynn. He was the last of at least four generations of blacksmiths. He began smithing at the age of 12. On June 27th, 1935 he married Gladys Irene Hamm of Lynxville, Wisconsin. Those were the deepest days of the Great Depression. During World War II, he was a production supervisor at the naval ordinance plant in Hawthorne, Nevada. After the war he bought a blacksmith shop in Waucoma, Iowa. In 1952 John & Gladys moved to Neillsville, Wisconsin, where he worked for the Coast to Coast store delivering bottle gas and doing appliance installation. Several years later he went to Auto-Test Inc. He worked there designing and making production tools. He also worked at Neillsville Milk Products and the Dells Fargo Stagecoach Company. He was a past Master in the Free and Accepted Masons and past Worthy Patron of the Eastern Star. Although he was an independent spirit and not a joiner, he was most proud of being called a Mason. He had a wide field of interests and his mechanical abilities were amazing. He could fix any machine. He built an automatic machine that made clocks. Just take out the parts and assemble them. Before the age of computers he built a large Christmas star for our rooftop. It would pulse and send down apparent beams of light to the house. It was made of pinball machine parts. One of his pastimes was making miniature tools that worked like the big ones. This was fine, however the wooden box that he kept them in was chewed to pieces by his children using the Ÿ inch long wood plane (with adjustable blade). He liked to sail box and x-wing kites. They were on the order of 6 feet long or more. His mischievous side gave Neillsville one of its earliest documented UFO scares. He sailed one of the big kites at night near the high school water tower with a battery and flashing light attached to it. The police got a number of frantic calls. He was preceded in death by his wife, Gladys Irene Hamm; three sisters and one brother: Alberta Mae, Mary Katherine, Bernadetta Louise and James Henry. He is survived by two sons : John Charles Flynn and Michael William Flynn; Seven Grandchildren and two Great Grandchildren. He was a kind and loving husband, father, grandfather and a good man. He will be missed.