Lisle Hubbard

Lisle Hubbard, 96 of Rock Island, IL, died peacefully on January 6, 2024, with family at his side.

A memorial service with a luncheon to follow will be held at 11:00 AM on Saturday, February 3, 2024, at Saint James Lutheran Church, Rock Island. Private burial of cremains will be at Western Township Cemetery. Esterdahl Mortuary & Crematory, Ltd., Orion, is assisting the family.

Lisle Eugene Hubbard was born on June 30, 1927, in Sherrard, IL, the seventh of the eight children of Mary and Arthur Hubbard. After surviving a hardscrabble childhood during the Depression, at the age of 17 Lisle convinced his mother to sign papers allowing him to enlist in the Navy during World War II. He served two years on a ship in the Pacific, and often told his fellow sailors of his intention to marry the girl he left behind, Carol Jean Bowman. They married on October 22, 1949, and soon moved into their first house, a four-room bungalow in Moline that Lisle built himself.

A self-taught engineer, Lisle could build or repair almost anything, a skill that served him well both personally and professionally. In 1950 he began working in the pattern shop of John Deere Harvester Works in East Moline. In 1957, looking for an adventure, Lisle accepted a similar position in Los Alamos, New Mexico, subsequently returning to John Deere and the Quad Cities in 1959, where he worked in the pattern shop until retiring as supervisor in 1980.

Lisle and Carol raised their two sons, Kevin and Bradley, in Orion, IL, where Lisle was active in the community, including serving as assistant scoutmaster in Boy Scout troop 123 and sitting on the church council at Saint Paul Lutheran. On one memorable scouting trip to the Boundary Waters, one of their canoes sprang a leak in the middle of a lake. Ever resourceful and always unflappable, Lisle distributed sticks of gum to the boys and used the resulting blob to temporarily patch the hole and get them paddling again. Lisle always had a project underway. Along with his sons, he built a 34-foot wooden boat and sailed it down the Mississippi to Florida. He also built a vacation cabin in the Adirondacks with Kevin and a long flight of stairs over the Lake Michigan sand dunes with Brad.

Energetic, adventurous, impatient, generous, and loving, Lisle will be sorely missed by his wife of 75 years, Carol; his sons and daughters-in-law, Kevin and Susan, and Brad and Ann; and his five grandchildren, Timothy, Elizabeth, Benjamin, Lily, and Noah.

Memories may be shared at esterdahl.com.