Thomas Lowell Risk

Broomfield Colo. — Memorial services for Thomas “Tommy” Lowell Risk, 66, Littleton, were held Friday, May 15, at the Rocky Mountain Regional Airport in the Air Tanker Base in Broomfield.
Mr. Risk died Saturday, April 25, 2009, in a tanker plane crash in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City.
He was born Feb. 27, 1943, in Lawrence, Kan., the son of Lowell and Kathryn Risk.
Mr. Risk was a 1962 graduate of Lawrence High School and a member of the Order of the Arrow and an Eagle Scout. After graduating, he worked in the six ski areas of Colorado.
Mr. Risk had a passion for flying. He joined the U.S. Marines Air Service, serving from 1963 until 1967. He also served extended tours in Vietnam in helicopter gunships. He had 42 years of aviation experience and flew crop dusters at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. He worked for 24 years flying heavy firefighting tanker aircraft: C-119, C-97, PB-4Y and P2V Neptune.
Survivors include his wife, Janie; two daughters, Sunny Shepherd and Shelly Golgart, both of Littleton; five granddaughters, all of Littleton; his mother, of Lawrence; and two sisters, Janiece Scribner, Lawrence, and Peggy Hulteen, Rossville, Kan.
The family suggests memorials to Wildland Firefighters Foundation, 2049 Airport Way, Boise, ID 83705 or through wffoundation.org/donation.asp.