Klyver died Wednesday. Burial was in Belmont Memorial Park.

Working with wood had been Klyver's, main interest since he was 16 in his native Illinois. He came to Fresno in 1912, just long enough to earn money to move to Iowa, where he learned the carpentry trade.

In 1916, he returned to Fresno with his wife but moved again shortly after. But in 1926, the Klyvers moved to Fresno permanently.

When he hurt his back in later years, Klyver turned to whittling. Soon, he began winning prizes in the San Joaquin Valley Art Annual and the Fresno Theatrical Fair.

All off his impressions, which range from nuclear blasts to politics, were fashioned from wood with old root systems and stumps comprising the majority.

"Whenever I see, read or hear of something which interests me, I sit down and carve out my impressions of it," Klyver once said.

On one occasion, when Fresno was seething with talk of vice and what to do about it, Klyver began work on several figures depicting, as he saw it, all the ramifications of vice.

"I carved prostitution, gambling, narcotics, thievery, murder, drunkenness, and some of the other vices on a piece of stump," he said. "I like to put into pieces of wood what I call the "human equation." Anything which stems from everyday life goes into my carving."

Klyver was a member of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod and also attended Our Saviour's and Redeemer Lutheran Churches.

Klyver's survivors include his widow, Anna Cornelia; daughters, Joyce W. Stieers of Visalia, Eunice S. Parsons of Hayward, Betty A. Harting of El Centro and Dorothy J. Schorling, and Grace P. Nagel of Fresno; sons, Thomas F. of Orange and Kenneth B. of San Fafael; sisters, Priscilla K. Phillips and Ethel K. Hobbs of Fresno and Eleanor Woodside of Merced; 18 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
September 5, 1975 THE FRESNO BEE

Thomas Hougard Klyver
Birth March 25, 1893 Chicago
Death September 3, 1975 Fresno, California
Burial Belmont Memorial Park, Fresno
Wife Anna (Kruse)