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- PENDLETON - Former Niagara County Legislator and Town Justice Gordon L. Haseley, a dairy farmer and lifelong Pendleton resident, died Tuesday in Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center after a long illness. He was 83.
Mr. Haseley was a self-employed dairy farmer on the family's 200-acre Lockport Road farm until the early 1970s. He also was a life-fire-casualty insurance agent, stock broker, certified state nurseryman and landscaper. He served on the boards of the Dairy Council of Western New York, the Niagara County Milk Producers, the state Fish and Wildlife Management Service and the Sea Grant Lake Ontario advisory council.
He also was active in local civic affairs. He was founding chairman of the first Town of Pendleton Planning Board, served on the Pendleton Town Board in 1960, and as town justice from the late 1950s until 1970. He was a Niagara County legislator from 1970 to 1976, and a member of the Starpoint School Board for a decade after his legislative service.
Mr. Haseley was a member of St. Martin Lutheran Church in North Tonawanda, where he had served as treasurer, trustee and elder. He was a member of the New York State Magistrates Association, Tonawanda Sportsmans Club, Lions Club, and the Farm Bureau. He was a charter member of the Shawnee Volunteer Fire Company, and a member of NASDAQ and the 4-H.
"After he got out of dairy farming, he did his stone mason work, but I think he was really [most] proud of being on the Sea Grant board," said his daughter, Holly O'Connor. He helped Sea Grant with development strategies and environmental issues along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway, O'Connor said. She said her father also enjoyed being a town justice.
His hobbies included fishing, hunting, woodworking and gardening.
His first wife, of 19 years, the former Helen Thiele, died in 1968. Surviving are his wife of 31 years, the former Alice R. Widzinski; six children, Peter of Germany, Holly O'Connor of Chicago, Nancy Haseley of Las Vegas, Thaddeus M. Piechalak of Cheektowaga, Paul Piechalak of Buffalo and Gary Piechalak of Lancaster; a brother, Louis of Holiday, Fla.; two sisters, Mildred Hijazi of Carlsbad, Calif., and Ruth Berger of Annapolis, MD.; seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held at 11 A.M. Monday in St. Martin Lutheran Church, 322 Old Falls Blvd., North Tonawanda. Interment will be in White Chapel Memorial Park, Amherst
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