Ivan Walker Harker was born on March 25, 1922, in Lewisville, Jefferson County, Idaho, to Parley Harker and Elizabeth Boyes Walker Harker. He grew up in Lewisville among an extended Harker family that had settled in the area across multiple generations.

During World War II, Ivan enlisted voluntarily in the United States Navy. He served on a destroyer in the South Pacific, reaching the rank of motor machinist mate 3rd class. He was a skilled, practical man whose interests and abilities were broad: he played accordion and organ, sang old songs, gardened, canned produce, and was an accomplished woodworker, turning bowls on a lathe he kept in his own shop.

Ivan married Gayl Velda Lovell on August 8, 1944, in Bay City, Michigan. They had two sons: Van Glenn, born in 1945, and Norman John, born in 1948. The family lived in Lewisville but moved to Idaho Falls and also spent a period in Little Valley, Oregon, while Ivan worked survey jobs in that region. After the divorce from Gayl around 1960, Ivan worked as a surveyor in Louisiana and later lived in Salt Lake City and Spokane. He eventually returned to Lewisville, where he built a shop on the property around his trailer and lived out his later years.

Ivan died of a heart attack on December 4, 1981, in Idaho Falls, at the age of 58. He had suffered a prior heart attack in Spokane before returning to Lewisville. He was buried at Lewisville Cemetery, Jefferson County, Idaho, on December 7, 1981. His funeral was officiated by his brother, who was serving as a bishop at the time.

Norman has described his father as a man of considerable talent — musical, mechanical, and horticultural — whose presence in his sons’ lives was irregular after the divorce.

Note: Norman gave Ivan’s birth year as “1922 or 1923” in the oral history. The GEDCOM records March 25, 1922; this date is used here.