Found: My Dad, Frank. He always said he was an Idaho boy. Born in Hazard, Nebraska in 1914, in a little sod house on the prairie, he later lived in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and died in California. This is near Stanley, Idaho, high in the Sawtooth Mountains between 1930 and 1935. He looks about 16 to me, but he was a mannish boy. A farm boy from the prairies, but his heart was won by the mountains. The son of a Nazarene preacher, he read and wondered and questioned traditional and dogmatic thinking, and though an agnostic, he was as good a man as any that God could look upon. A kind, caring, and loving man. Monogamous, married and faithful to Mom for 52 years. A friend to his fellow man. Always ready to give an encouraging word or a helping hand. As he described it, he worked almost his entire life. He said that he never had a childhood. Consequently, he enjoyed relating with others in the most playful ways. Kidding, ribbing, teasing a little, he had a terrific sense of humor, and enjoyed looking at moment-to-moment things with whimsy. What we do in life was not too terribly important to him, but how we choose to do it meant everything to him. Maximum effort with an eye to quality yielded the greatest satisfaction. Seeing how fast or easily a thing could be done, generally sacrificed quality, wasted time in the long run, required things to be done over again, and for him had no heart. He was the last born child in a family of 9. Most of his brothers and one sister were grown ups when he was born. His father developed a crippling form of arthritis. With no one to work the farm but his mother, one other sister, and himself. He did a man's work as soon as possible. Consequently, he did not go beyond the 5th Grade (the 5th McGuffy Reader, as he put it). He was a devoted son and cared for his mother and father to their graves. He lived out back in a batten and board shed to manhood. He loved reading and studying things on his own. Many things were not "acceptable" for a good Nazarene boy, so he hid many of the books he brought home in behind the wall next to his bed. It wasn't immoral materials he craved, but history, physics, geometry, philosophy, mathematics, and cosmological theories. Books opened his young mind. Reading his letters as a young man and those of his later life, one would swear they could not have been written by the same person, so great were the changes that came in his life. When I moved away from home, I began receiving letters from him. He never wrote the mundane, "Dear son, how are you, wish you were here, Uncle Fudd is suffering from the croup" type of letter. His letters were a real delight. I really got to know him through them. Receiving a letter from Dad was more like getting a short story from Mark Twain, and he could always make you laugh at his twisted, tangential way of looking at the most common things going on at home or in his mind. He wrote almost one per day after his long-looked-forward-to retirement. He signed them all, "Love, Uncle Dad." He traveled a great deal with the great depression, somehow managing to keep himself fed and sending money home to support his aging mother and father. He cut wood, tried prospecting, did odd-jobs, hoed beets, dug potatoes, lived on turnips, rode the rods from city to city hiring himself out and always studying something whenever and wherever he could. He tried to enlist for World War II upon hearing of the Japanese attack but was turned down and classified 4-F because of a punctured eardrum (from a fever). He taught himself Trigonometry and took a job as a surveyor rising to party chief rather quickly. He surveyed some of the most remote areas of California in the Mojave and Imperial Deserts. While in Calexico he met a pretty Mexican Senorita. He courted her and married her. Soon after he took work in the little coastal town of Santa Barbara. From his trailer court, he sent off for a correspondence course to become a Civil Engineer, he taught himself the Calculus and completed his requirements. My father always wrote his name with the letters S.I. after it, after that. Occasionally someone would ask him what that stood for. That's a sivil ingineer that never went to college he would always reply. He didn't waste time with people who had no sense of humor. He rose as high as he could through the government ranks in the Bureau of Reclamation. Not having a college degree, he was not permitted to go beyond GS-10. He became an expert at reinforced concrete design and was training all the engineers who would go on beyond him to earn more money. He was one of the designers of the Flaming Gorge Dam, and his boss recognized his value and went all the way to the people in Washington to get him the impossible raise. He was the only GS-11 without a degree. It would have surprised them that he never went beyond 5th Grade. (His kids all completed college degrees.

In 1979, ex-Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne was forming a new band. Future Slaughter bassist Dana Strum recommended Rhoads to Osbourne. Rhoads got the call for the audition just before his final show with Quiet Riot. He walked in with his Les Paul guitar and a practice amp and started warming up; Osbourne immediately gave him the job. Rhoads recalled later, "I just tuned up and did some riffs, and he said, 'You've got the gig.' I had the weirdest feeling, because I thought, 'You didn't even hear me yet.'" Osbourne described Rhoads' playing as "God entering my life." Rhoads subsequently recommended his friend Greg Leon, who also taught guitar at Musonia for Rhoads' mother, to replace him in Quiet Riot, and then departed for the UK to write and record with Osbourne in November 1979. The band, then known as the Blizzard of Ozz, headed into the studio to record the band's debut album, which would also be called Blizzard of Ozz. Rhoads' guitar playing had changed due to the level of freedom allowed by Ozzy and Bob Daisley and he was encouraged to play what he wanted. His work with Quiet Riot has been criticized as being "dull" and did not rely on classical scales or arrangements.[1] Propelled by Rhoads' neo-classical guitar work, the album proved an instant hit with rock fans, particularly in the USA. They released two singles from the album: "Mr. Crowley" and the hit "Crazy Train". The British tour of 1980-81 for Blizzard of Ozz was with Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake. After the UK tour, the band wrote another LP before the US Blizzard of Ozz tour. But before the US Blizzard tour, both Lee Kerslake and Bob Daisley were fired by Sharon Osbourne. For the US Blizzard tour, Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo were hired. Diary of a Madman was released soon after Blizzard of Ozz in October 1981, and since Kerslake and Daisley were already out of the band, Aldridge and Sarzo's photos appear on the album sleeve. This was the source of many future court battles. Around this time Rhoads remarked to Osbourne, fellow Ozz bandmates Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo, and friend Kelly Garni that he was considering leaving rock for a few years to earn a degree in classical guitar at UCLA. In the documentary Don't Blame Me, Osbourne confirmed Randy's desire to earn the degree and stated that had he lived, he didn't believe Randy would have stayed in his band. Friend and ex-Quiet Riot bassist Kelly Garni has stated in interviews that if Randy had continued to play rock, he might have gone the route of more keyboard-driven rock, which had become very popular through the 1980s. It was at this time that Rhoads was beginning to receive recognition for his playing. Just before his death Jackson Guitars created a signature model, the Jackson Randy Rhoads or Randy Rhoads Pro (though it was recommended to be called the Jackson Concorde). Randy received two prototypes — one in black and one in white — but died before the guitar went into production. Rhoads also received the Best New Talent award from Guitar Player magazine. Wikipedia