Roger Gilhooly

Roger Gilhooly, 79, Bismarck, died May 6, 2018. A memorial service will be held at 10:30 am Thursday, May 10, at Church of the Ascension, 1825 S 3rd St., Bismarck, with Rev. Msgr. James Braaten officiating. Burial will be at 2:00 pm Thursday at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery, Mandan. There will be no visitation, cremation has taken place. Roger was born on November 8, 1938, in Grafton, ND, the only child of John Henry and Florence Elizabeth (Lizakowski) Gilhooly. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1958; and was assigned to a base in Maine before being shipped to Guam in the Pacific. He met and married his high school sweetheart, Cleone Fried, while attending St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, ND, and the couple had five children. Roger learned his trade as a plumbing and HVAC technician before serving in the Air Force after high school. His passion from a very early age was building model aircraft from wood. Sculpting precise replicas of scale model military Air Force and Air National Guard planes of all types. In 1978, while visiting the Fargo air base to do research for his next models, he was recruited to join the ND Air Guard and commissioned by the ND Air National Guard to create a large one tenth scale model of the F-4D Phantom. Roger loved to read, had a great sense of humor and was a good story teller. He was very creative and could fix or build most anything. Roger especially enjoyed reminiscing about his years in the service. Roger is survived by his wife of 57 years, Cleone; his children, Beth Gann (Jim), Viborg, SD, Barbara Gilhooly (Ayn Hanna), Fort Collins, CO, Shannon Gilhooly (Dave Ding), Annandale, MN, and Patrick Gilhooly (Trina), Bismarck; his grandchildren, Jessica Duncan, Sean Gann, Ryan Sauvageau, Brandon Ding, Amanda Raisanen, Chelsea Trebas, Kayla Bryant, Rylan Gilhooly and Bryson Gilhooly. He was preceded in death by his daughter, ShaRae Gilhooly Bryant; and his parents, Jack and Florence Gilhooly.