Gary Frank Vervair

Gary Frank Vervair, age 86, of Capitola, California passed away on Wednesday, April 26, 2023. He was born in Spokane, Washington on August 15, 1936 to Esther Björk of Spokane and Frank Vervair of Kansas, who was born in a sod house. He graduated from Albany High School in 1955. He then worked with the Bureau of Land Management in the U.S. Forest Service in Medford, Oregon, where he worked in the mountains at Hansen Saddle in the Siskiyou National Forest in Russian blister rust control. Gary served in the U.S. Navy from May of 1956 to April of 1960 and was stationed in Japan. He became known as Sasabo Slim in southern Japan and later served as a firefighter in northern Japan. He later worked for Standard Gas, Union Carbide, and the City of Placerville.

Gary married Nancy Vervair, the love of his life, on October 12, 1973. He converted to Catholicism (and later Buddhism) and helped raise 4 children: Nancy Frampton, Jesse Frampton, and Mary Kedzior of Fresno and Walter Frampton of Capitola (deceased).

Gary spent his retired years in Capitola by the Sea, where he and Nancy lived in his grandparents’ little cottage and in the mountains of West Point in the home that they designed. Gary is known in social as well as medical circles as the Jalapeno Man. He ate pickled jalapeno seeds twice a day to treat splenic lymphoma, which he was diagnosed with in 2007 shortly before his wife’s passing. The success of this treatment baffled doctors at Stanford University and elsewhere.

Gary loved to tell stories and was definitely the talker in the family. He joined the technology era at age 75, when he bought his first computer to write his memoirs about serving in the Navy in Japan. He had wonderfully amazing and funny stories about his adventurous life. Gary was an avid reader whose family always told him he should have been a professor because he was so intelligent and well-informed.

He is survived by his three step-children as well as two nieces, Yvette Delarbre and Yvonne Vervair, and a nephew, William Vervair. He is also survived by his first cousin, Dixie Immoos.

Gary will remain forever in our hearts...