ECHEVERRIA, Dom

Wickenburg Sun, Wickenburg, Arizona March 26, 1970, page 19 A con-celebrated mass was celebrated in St. Anthony’s Catholic Church at 10 o’clock last Saturday morning for Dr. Dom Echeverria of Longmont Colorado, Officiating were the Rev. D.F. O’Sullivan of St. Anthony’s and the Rev. Gregory Hudson, O.S.B., his Longmont pastor for the past seven years. Rosary was recited the previous evening at the Wickenburg Funeral Home. Burial was in the Wickenburg Cemetery beside his infant son John Dana Echeverria. A shock to the community was the tragic death of Dr. Echeverria at 11 p.m. March 17 in a one automobile accident near Goodland, Kansas. Accompanied by one of his sheepherders, he had left the farm where he wintered one of his many flocks of sheep when his car went out of control on the icy highway at a cloverleaf exchange and crashed into an abutment. He is believed to have been killed instantly. The sheepherder was taken to a hospital with critical injuries. Mrs. Echeverria and their seven children were in Wickenburg at the time, visiting Mrs. Echeverria’s mother, Mrs. Sophie Burden. They had planned to take Mrs. Burden back to Longmont with them. Dom Echeverria, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Miguel Echeverria, long time Wickenburg residents, was born April 7, 1925 in Burgete, Navarra, Spain. His mother was visiting relatives in that Basque country at the time. The parents and infant son returned to Wickenburg in July of the same year and he was raised here, attending the Elementary School and graduating from Wickenburg High School with the class of 1843. Like his older brothers, and the younger ones later, he was an all-around athlete, starring in all of the sports available at the high school. During World War II he served 2 ½ years in the U.S. Navy as a Hospital Corpsman and Dental Technician. He was an aviation cadet when the war ended. He attended the University of Arizona at Tucson for two years as a pre-dental student and while there met Sophie (Toody) Burden of Remuda Ranch. They were married May 1, 1948 in St. Anthony’s Church here. Following two years at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he attended Colorado State University at Fort Collins for four years, receiving his degree as Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. After practicing in Berthold, Colo., Dr. Echeverria went to Peru as U.S. Government sheep management advisor to Peruvian Government. He was stationed at Cajamarca in the Andes Mountains. Mrs. Echeverria and the children spent nine months of that time with him in Peru. Returning to this country, he located in Longmont where he gave up the practice of Veterinary Medicine to enter the sheep business, following in the footsteps of his father and of generations back in the Echeverria family. Starting with only 250 old ewes, he became one of the leading sheepmen of the nation with six ranches of 90,000 acres in Wyoming on which he raised both sheep and cattle, with leased farms in Colorado and Kansas. His flocks numbered more than 40,000 head. Just a few days ago he was the subject of a feature article on the wool and mutton business written by the New York Times News Service and published in daily newspaper throughout the nation. The surviving children are Elaine, the oldest; Peter Miguel, Paul Fletcher, Anne Reed, David Whitford, Sophie Dominik and Joseph Burden. In addition to the surviving parents, he leaves six brothers and four sisters. The brothers are Mikel, Robert, Dr. Roy, Rudy and Julio, all of Casa Grande, Arizona, and Donald of Phoenix. The sisters are Mrs. Josephine Pemberton of Wickenburg; Mrs. Ross Ferris of Reno, Nevada; Mrs. Yvonne Hall and Mrs. Lloyd Miller, both of Phoenix.