George William Ward was born Oct. 4, 1908 in Glenview, Ill. He attended school there for two years until his parents bought a farm near Wheeling in Lake County, where he completed his schooling.
Following graduation he worked on his parents’ farm until the late 1920s. Next he worked at local nursuries and then as an automobile salesman. In the late 1930s, he and his two younger brothers, Herbert and Arthur, founded Ward Brothers Excavating Contractors.
He married Grace Sherman in 1934, a marriage that lasted more than 65 years until her death. They lived in Deerfield, Ill., and raised two daughters. When he retired from Ward Brothers in the early 1970s, he and his wife relocated to Pirate’s Cove in Elberta. In 1995, they moved to Westminster Village, a continuing care community in Spanish Fort.
Survivors include two daughters and their spouses, Joyce Ward Fox of Lake Forest, Ill., and Rosalie Ward Delaney Neuwirth of Philadelphia; brother, Arthur Ward of Prarie View, Ill.; sister, Shirley Ward McConnell of Wheeling, Ill.; one granddaughter, two grandsons, and two great-grandsons in Illinois; three step-grandsons and six step-great-grandchildren in New York.
