Irene Rampone and Fred Gabel

​Fred was born in Estonia, Saskatchewan in 1917 and moved to Kelowna, BC, in 1927.  Fred's first job was at the Simpson sawmill when he was 14.  Years later, he worked in the Braylorn mine, west of Lillooet, BC.  He enlisted in the army and served overseas in the Second World War.  Fred returned to Kelowna where he met Irene Rampone and they married on January 18, 1947.  They had two sons, Wayne and Marc.

Their first home was what they called the “Muskrat Farm.”  They were only there a short time before moving to the Rampone farm, where they lived in one of the homes for a few years.  Fred and Irene then bought twenty acres on Spiers Road, across from the Rampone farm.  Fred cleared the farm with a team of horses while working on the tugs on Okanagan Lake.  They eventually started a dairy farm and added another thirty acres from a farm that was next door.   They stayed on the farm until approximately 1968, when they retired to a small acreage on K.L.O. Road. Once again, they downsized and moved to a property in Glenmore, before moving to Hawthorne Park.  Fred passed in 1996 and Irene in 2002.

Contributed by Wayne Gabel, son