Walter "Rowe" Gilbert

FLORENCE- Walter "Rowe" Gilbert, 75, of Florence died on Aug. 13, 2015.
The funeral was held Monday at J. Warren Funeral Services, Cole & Maud Coolidge Chapel. Burial was in Florence Cemetery.

Mr. Gilbert grew up on a Maryland farm with seven brothers and sisters. His father, Leon, had ridden with the 124th Cavalry Regiment in Texas, patrolling the border with Mexico on horseback during World War II. Young Rowe plowed with horses and drove horse-drawn farm equipment. The day after he graduated from high school, he went to work for a contractor. One of his later jobs was to restore a log cabin constructed in 1649 that was the heart of a farmhouse. He also restored Charles’ Gift, a home built in 1650 on 1,000 acres in Maryland - a gift from King Charles I.

A relative who lived in Glendale had a copy of the Coolidge Examiner with an ad for 10 acres in the Cactus Forest area. He saw it, liked it and bought the property in September 1979. The property had a house, a shack and a wash. In the early 1980s, he began hauling horses for Lenny Dee’s Wild West Revue. He also built sets and did stunts. When he left the show in 1983, he took the sets he had built, set them up on his property and turned them into real buildings with backs. He filled them with the antiques he started collecting in the 1960s and named the little town Houdge City after a friend who lived there until his death. He also worked as a set builder on a TV movie in 1983, "Command 5" with John Matuszak. The movie was shot in Florence. He joined the set builders union and continued working on movie sets. In 1991, he married Barbara Kerstetter, whom he had met at a Thanksgiving dinner a few years before.

Survivors include his wife; seven daughters and sons, Debbie Kent of Apache Junction, Tina Specht of Lusby, Maryland, Meredith Denney, Brandon Quinnett and Colt Gilbert, all of Phoenix, Nadine Dowdy of Coolidge and Walter Christopher Gilbert of Broomes Island, Maryland; four brothers, Leon Gilbert Jr. of Ashland, Wisconsin, David and Timothy Gilbert of Maryland and Gareth MacKenzie of Bisbee; two sisters, Madeline Hutchins and Ann Dibble of Prince Frederick, Maryland; 14 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a brother, Alan Gilbert.