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Craig — The times were many that long-time Craig resident Earl David Camp didn't have two nickels to rub together.

He was a hardworking sort - the kind of man who toiled at jobs ranging from picking cotton to pumping gas at a filling station. Some jobs, especially in his early years when work was scarce and good money hard to come by, paid 25 cents a week plus room and board.

Still, what he lacked in material and financial wealth he made up for in the area that mattered most to him - family.

"He was very rich in family and love," his son, Craig resident Jack Camp said. "He thought so much of his family."

"It was his No. 1 priority," said Fran Clare, Camp's oldest daughter. "My dad loved children. He loved his grandchildren dearly.

"Every picture he got he would carry in his wallet. His wallet must have been 4 or 5 inches thick."

Camp, a Craig resident for 63 years, from 1940 to 2003, died Jan. 16 at Mesa View Retirement Center in Grand Junction. He was 89 years old and would have celebrated his 90th birthday in February.

"He worked hard to provide for his family and we loved him very much," Clare wrote in her father's obituary. "He was a good man and everyone loved him. He will be missed so much by his families."

That family included five children: Clare, of Vernal, Utah, Jack David Camp, of Craig, the late Vernon Earl Camp, Roy, and his wife, Linda, Camp, of Craig, and Howard, and his wife, Terri, Camp, of Grand Junction. He also had 13 grandchildren, 17-great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.

The work ethic Camp was well known for - he retired three times in his life only to go back to work each time - was ingrained in him at an early age.

"That's what he knew all his life, and that's what he knew the day he died," Clare said.

Born Feb. 19, 1918 in Vinita, Okla., Camp quit school at 10 years old and went to work to support his family after his father died. His family was poor, Clare said, and as a child "most of the time he had no shoes."

His work ethic was passed down to his children, even to his oldest daughter who earned no breaks simply because she was a girl.

"He was a very hard working man," she said. "He taught us all to work. I was his first son."

Camp met his wife, Lura Edna Kincade, in Vinita, and they wed April 26, 1938. Their first child was born a year later, on April 15, 1939, and Camp worked a host of odd jobs, including one at the Vinita Sanitarium, to support his new family.

"He would do any odd jobs he could pick up," Clare said.

But, it was the lean years of The Great Depression and Camp was no different from millions of other Americans trudging through hardship. That's to say hard times were made harder without available work, and he was obliged to span the country to find it.

Looking for work in Rocky Ford, where his relatives went "because they heard there was work in the melon fields," Camp packed his family and their belongings in a Model A Ford and left for Colorado.

They slept where they could at night and, in the morning, ate eggs from small chickens stowed away for the trip. It took weeks to get to Colorado.

In Denver, police escorted the Oklahomans with the Model A stacked to the brim through town.

"We have laughed many times thinking we must have looked like the Beverly Hillbillies," Clare wrote.

She added, "Everything we owned was strapped inside. (The police) probably wanted us to get through town."

At Rocky Ford, Camp learned of mining jobs in Craig, and the family uprooted again. They lived in an old, one-room log house where Craig City Park now stands.

Camp worked in the mines in Hayden and Mount Harris. He worked as an ice man, truck driver, railroad docks foreman and managed a pipeyard for oil companies. He was on call every night to load out drilling mud for Milwhite Mud Company, worked as a janitor at an electric motor shop and as a weed sprayer for Moffat County.

"My dad was kind of a jack of all trades," Jack Camp said. "Seven days a week, he worked."

"He had so many jobs that it is hard to remember them all," Clare said.

He volunteered twice to fight in World War II, but a previous injury - sustained during one of his odd jobs, no doubt - prevented him from serving "even though he wanted to go for his country and for his family," Clare said.

In 2003, he moved to the Mesa View Retirement Home, where he lived for five years. He "loved it there and everyone knew and loved him there," Clare wrote.

Still, old habits died hard. That work ethic, by now as regular a habit as breathing, Clare said, never left him. Camp walked four miles each morning, without fail.

He fought cancer for the past two years.

He was reunited with his wife, Lura Edna, on Saturday in the Craig Cemetery.

At Mesa View, his family found a room decorated with an assortment of photos of his children and grandchildren, further proof that what he lacked in monetary wealth he made up for in family prosperity.

"Even though he was not a rich man," Clare said, "he would support people as best he could. He would do something, and he usually did it on his own.

"My father," she added, "was one in a million."