CHARLES RICE REDDING, JR. , age 96, a resident of Irving, died Friday, March 9, 2012 at a Lewisville hospital. He was born on a hot summer day in Texas, July 12, 1915 to Charles R. Redding and Ida Jane (Hay) Redding in Winnsboro, Texas. He grew up with 12 other children, brothers and sisters, on a small farm outside Winnsboro, attending the local schools and playing on the Winnsboro High School football team. He moved to Dallas in the early 1930's and worked in many jobs during the next ten years. The jobs included training horses for a local dairy and working as a security guard. In 1941, a chance meeting with a long time friend who was driving north to Shenandoah, Iowa, caused him to leave his security guard job and get hired by a drilling firm which was operating in the Northwest Missouri and Southwest Iowa area. In early October 1941, he met Dorothy Dunham of Westboro, Missouri, and, after a three week courtship, they married on October 28, 1941. When World War II broke out two months later, he joined the U.S. Army and spent the next few years in Australia and the South Pacific war front. During his military service, he earned the Philippines Liberation Medal, Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Returning from World War II, he and Dorothy took up where they left off. He worked in the oil business and they lived in many states including Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. In 1947, Carolyn Sue was born to them. In 1949, Charles R. Redding, III was born and, 8 years later, Michael B. Redding was born in Dallas, where they had moved in 1955. After working at Republic National Bank and Texas Instruments during the next 15 years, in 1970, Charles and Dorothy took over the ownership of her family's farms near Westboro, Missouri, and split their time between the farms and their other home in Irving, Texas. Dorothy died in 1994, but Charles continued to be a full participant in the family's agriculture and ranch business, Fourteen Pines Corporation, with holdings in Northwest Missouri and near Glenrock, Wyoming. Charles was active in the Disabled American Veterans and served a term as treasurer of DAV Chapter 42 in Grand Prairie. He is survived by his three children, many cousins and friends across the country. He will he buried at 2:15 p.m., Thursday, March 15 at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.