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09/22/2023 04:56 PMLawrence Robert “Larry” Timmerman of Essex passed away quietly on Sept. 8, 2023. Larry was born the middle child to James and Lucille Timmerman at home on the farm in Nodaway, Iowa, on Oct. 29, 1940.
Larry was an outdoorsman and an adventurer from an early age. At the ripe old age of four, he made himself a pair of wings and proceeded to learn how to fly by jumping off the roof of the hen house. After that, he began trapping raccoons and sold the pelts to Montgomery Wards. He rode his horse, Beauty, to the one-room schoolhouse he attended just up the road from the farm. By seventh grade, he began attending school in Corning and immediately got involved in sports. He was an outstanding wrestler and football player. While in college in Maryville, Larry met Carolyn Wiltshire, who would go on to marry him and form a partnership that spanned 57 years. As a sophomore, he signed up to be a U.S. Marine and spent his summers in Basic Training at Quantico, Virginia.
After five years in the Marines, he went to work for Roerig Pharmaceuticals, which would later be acquired by Pfizer. His work at Pfizer took him all over the world, including such places as Kenya, Hong Kong, England, and Germany. It also led to a series of moves across the country to Springfield, Missouri, Arlington, Virginia, San Francisco, and finally to a headquarters job in New York. This is when he first settled in Connecticut, renovating a Tudor house in Stamford. The Stamford house had great gardens and also a sandbox where he taught his sons, Erik and Cole, about “interlocking fields of fire” and the “school solution” when they played with their army men. After almost 20 years at Pfizer, he started his own business, Pharmedica, a medical education business in New Haven. Around this time, the family moved to Essex, where he would remain for the next 40 years.
Larry had boundless energy and loved the out-of-doors. He loved sharing his adventures with family and friends. When the boys were young, they built model rockets and shot them off in the town park. If it snowed, he would help build an igloo in the front yard; soon, the whole family was skiing. He enjoyed clamming on Block Island, biking with Carolyn in Italy and France, and rock climbing with his sons. He climbed Mont Blanc and went bungee jumping in New Zealand. He was an avid fly fisherman and fished the Hammonasset River, as well as in Kamchatka, Patagonia, Christmas Island or just about any other place with fish. He had a passion for hunting with dogs and trained his French Brittanys, Purdey, Danny, and Tig, to point and retrieve game birds.
Larry leaves behind Carolyn W. Timmerman, his wife of 57 years. He also leaves behind his two sons, Erik Timmerman and his wife Bonnie and their daughters Alsacia, and Freyja, and Cole Timmerman and his wife Denise and daughter Veronica. He is also survived by his younger brother, Lyle Timmerman, and several nieces and nephews.
Memories with his family and friends will be celebrated starting at 5 p.m. on Sept. 29 at the former Essex Firehouse, 19 Prospect Street, Essex. Burial will be private at the family’s discretion.
Life with Larry was never boring!