Vera Margaret Huffman was born on April 6, 1910, the first child of Chester Ricketts Huffman and Elma Maude Hedrick. She was born in her parents home on their homestead near Westwood on the Alsea Highway, west of Philomath in Benton County, Oregon. Her parents had been married for more than 11 years without having any children of their own, but they had adopted the son of Elma's half sister Elizabeth, who had died after giving birth in 1903 to a son of her husband Martin Emerick. They named the child George Huffman, and he grew up on the Huffman homestead. Red-haired Chester had taken over the homestead from his parents, John Parker Huffman and red-haired Sarah Jane Spencer Huffman, a few years earlier, after they had decided to move to Portland, Oregon, where they built and lived in several houses. Two years after the birth of Vera, a brother, Claude Vincent Huffman, was born to Chester and Elma.
Vera went to the Westwood Community grade school, which was about two miles from where she lived, on the Alsea Highway. It was a small brick building and the local community banded together to hire a teacher to teach all grades of children together. Vera grew up on the farm doing the chores for the animals, some cows and some chickens, pigs and horses. Vera had a pony as a young girl which she dearly loved. She had a doll which her grandmother had given her that she also dearly loved. After she graduated from the eight grade, Vera went to Philomath High School, about six miles from where she lived, riding the school bus most days, which she and her brother caught on the Alsea Highway, which required them to walk about a half mile from their house to the highway. Vera graduated with good grades in June, 1928. Vera had enjoyed learning to type and take shorthand while in high school and was considered to be one of the fastest students in Philomath High School. Some years earlier she had cut her very long hair off and had a short hairdo called a bob, which was popular during the 1920's. Vera wore most of the fashionable dresses of the 1920's and learned to do the Charleston. For some time she had worked as a housekeeper for Mr. Ernest Castle, the superintendent of the school, whose wife was an invalid, and the 1930 census lists her as a servant living in his home in Philomath. Vera diligently had saved almost every cent of her earnings so that she would have enough money to attend secretarial school. Unfortunately, her parents had been having a very rough time earning much from their ranch, and had fallen behind in paying the second mortgage. They were about to be foreclosed upon, when Vera decided to give up the few hundred dollars she had saved for her future, in order to save her parents home. Shortly after that time, the great Depression set in around the world, and jobs were very scarce, so she was unable to find work other than housekeeping.
Vera dated several men who lived in the Philomath area. One of those she dated was named Elmer Patterson, a nephew of Mr. Castle, and he later became the main barber in Philomath, for many years. Late in 1930 or early 1931, Vera met Byron Abernathy, who had moved to the area from Kansas, with his family. He was just a few months older than Vera and they hit it off pretty well. But Byron had not been able to find any steady work because of the Great Depression, and after Franklin Roosevelt became President of the U.S., he formed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), to employ young men in public works projects. and Byron joined them for over a year and was stationed at a camp on the Oregon Coast where he learned the tradeof surveying. Vera's brother Claude also entered the CCC and was stationed in Baker, Oregon, where he met and married Alma Hall about 1934. Byron wrote to Vera every few days, and visited her whenever he had any leave time. On one occasion, Vera and a friend traveled to his camp and visited him for a couple of days. After he finished the CCC camp Byron was not able to find any work for many months and traveled around Oregon and Washington When they were together, they enjoyed dancing, playing cards, particulary Pinochle and Bridge, and being with mutual friends. In 1933, Byron and Vera attended the wedding of two of their best friends, Melvin Hawkins and Ella Best, and they were also very good friends with the parents of a future governor of Oregon, Barbara Roberts. Vera and Byron decided to get married on June 2, 1935 and the wedding was held at Vera's home, and attended by Vera's relatives and Byron's relatives.
Vera and Byron lived in rented houses after their marriage, whenever Byron could find any work, including work at the local lumber mills. When Byron couldn't find any work, Vera moved back to her parents homestead for short periods. When Vera became pregnant in late 1935, they were both very happy, but unfortunately she had a miscarriage. Her second pregnancy in late 1936 resulted in the birth of a son, Glenn Donald Abernathy, in July, 1937. Byron had gone to Portland to visit his parents over the fourth of July holiday, but unexpectedly, the baby was born in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis, where Vera's parents had taken her. Byron was notified by phone, but did not see the baby until the next day. Vera always remembered his absence at the birth of his first son. Because of the poor economic conditions and employment prospects, Vera developed a nervous and somewhat pessimistic outlook. Shortly after the birth of her first son, Byron found work with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which required him to travel to Eastern Oregon and Washington.. Vera went with him to some of the towns near where Byron was working, but when she became pregnant in early 1939, she went back to her parents home near Philomath, and her second son, Robert Alan Abernathy, a redhead, was born in August, 1939 at the Corvallis hospital. After she was able to travel with baby Bob and 2 year old Donald, she took the train to join her husband in Eastern Washington. During the next two years they lived at Shelton and two other Eastern Washington towns, mostly renting cabins without electricity or plumbing. In early 1941 they had moved to La Grande, Oregon, but in July of that year, Vera received a phone call from her mother telling her that her father had died. She took Donald and Bob and traveled on the train to Philomath and stayed with her mother through the funeral and until her mother had sold the farm, with the aid of her brother George, and her mother bought a house in Philomath at 160 G St. Vera was pregnant again, and in January, 1942 she had another son, they named Keith George Abernathy. Vera later traveled with the new baby and her other two sons to join her husband in Eastern Washington. In 1942, they moved to Portland, where Byron applied for and got a job as a surveyor with the City of Portland. They moved into a rental house on S.E. 18th St., next to Buckman School, in early 1942. . They lived in that house for over a year, while the oldest son, Glenn Donald went to kindergarten at Buckman Grade School. Then Byron borrowed $1000.00 from his dad, who lived about a block away on 18th and S.E. Oak St., as a down payment on a house about 1 1/2 blocks east at 1913 S.E. Oak St.
They moved into the new house the same day that Donald began the first grade at Buckman School, and another son, Gary Warren Abernathy, was born in that same month. A few months after they moved in, Keith crawled out the upstairs bathroom window and fell two stories to the ground, but fortunately, he missed the concrete retaining wall about 5 feet from the house, and was only bruised when he fell into the dirt next the house. Vera was very busy taking care of four young sons and doing the houshold choirs. She did the washing with a hand wringer washing machine in the basement, and hung the clothes out to dry on clothes lines in the back yard. The house was heated by coal in the first few years, and the older boys learned to shovel the coal from the driveway into the basement, and stoked the furnace with coal. After a few years, they installed a sawdust furnace, and the boys switched to shoveling sawdust. For many years the phone was mounted on the wall in the hallway next to the kitchen door and anyone who answered the phone stood there to talk. Everyone slept upstairs on the second floor, Donald and Bob in one room and Keith and Gary in the other spare bedroom, and Byron and Vera slept in the master bedroom. In the back yard was a very large cherry tree that provided cherries for many years until it developed rot and had to be cut down, though there was a second smaller cherry tree closer to the house. During the war years, while they lived there (1943-1945), they grew a victory garden in their back yard with vegetables, potatoes, beans and carrots, sometimes lettuce, and the garden became a yearly practice. The older boys learned to spade up the garden and weed and water the plants. The family car was a 1937 Hudson Terraplane, throughout the war years, but since gasoline and tires were rationed, the car was not driven very much, just for grocery shopping and other errands. During those years, the City of Portland had trolley cars for public transportation, and all members of the family learned to travel on them. Vera always took the boys downtown in June to watch the Rose Festival parade. The boys learned to take the trolley cars to many places around Portland, especially on Saturday when they went to the downtown theater, especially The Blue Mouse, for the matinee cowboy picture, cartoon and serial. During the war years, both Vera and Byron were active with the Air Raid Civilian Patrol, to make sure that neighborhood houses had their lights out during air raid drills and alarms.
After the war had ended, Byron was very busy working for the City of Portland, and studied for his license as a private surveyor. Vera was also very busy raising her family and taking care of the house. The boys were soon all attending Buckman Grade School, and came home for lunch at noon. Vera always fixed them breakfast and usually had soup and sandwiches for lunch. Some of the boys developed tastes and distastes for certain foods, and Vera always made accomodation for their tastes. For instance, Donald couldn't stand the taste of salad dressing, so his mom always made separate salads for him without any dressing, and she omitted cheese for his portion when she made macaroni and cheese. Vera and Byron sent their sons to Sunday School at the Centenary Wilbur Methodist Church, where she had them baptised, and during the ceremony, she was baptised herself. In 1948, Vera was upstairs cleaning and changing the bed, when an earthquake shook Portland, and she yelled downstairs at Donald, to stop jumping on the davenport.
Byron's relatives lived only one block down the street and the family visited them often, but Vera's mother lived in Philomath, so every year the family drove to visit her and Byron's brother Roy, who lived in Philomath, and later his sister Mary married Darrel Henderson and lived on his family farm near Corvallis After the war, Vera's family bought another car to replace the Hudson Terraplane. In 1949, a record flood of the Columbia River hit Vanport and Byron's father's house, near the Portland Airport, was washed off its foundations and moved about a 1/4 mile away. When the flood had subsided, the family went out and saw the damage that had been done, the house was a total loss, with mud inside several feet deep. About that time, Byron's mother, Anna Castle Abernathy, passed away, and his dad, Lemuel Peter Abernathy, sold his house on Oak St. and later lived with Byron's family,until about 1952, during which time he worked as a night watchman at the Franz Bakery on N.E. 12th St. He later moved to Corvallis and rented a room there, until his death in October, 1953. A relative of Byron's, Newton Castle, a brother of Anna and former school teacher, often visited the family when traveling through the area. He was a bachelor who never married, and in the late 1940's he went up to Alaska, and he often wrote to the family in Portland. About 1952, a letter came from some people in Alaska, which said that Uncle Newt was very ill, without funds, and wanted to come to Portland. Arrangements were made for his travel to Portland and the family took him into their home, he was about 82 and had intestinal cancer. For several weeks the family cared for him, but as he got sicker and sicker, Vera could no longer care for him and her family as well and they decided to send him the County welfare Hospital. Newt resented this move very much, as he expected to be cared for at home until his death, and when Vera and Byron went to visit him at the hospital, he refused to talk to them or look at them. Vera always regreted the action that she had to take then, and Newt passed away a few days later.
Durning the 1950's, Byron and Vera learned to square dance and enjoyed going to these type of dances, mostly on week ends. They had many friends and enjoyed traveling with them and going to other social occasions. Vera did most of her grocery shopping at the Kienow store at S.E. 14th and Morrison, and also shopped at the Safeway store, where Vera always remembered that the Safeway vegetable stock man often complimented her on her appearance. When television sets began to be available to some families who could afford them, the family was often invited to watch the programming on Saturday nights at friends houses such as the Chappells, where they saw such programs as The Show of Shows and The Jackie Gleason Show. In the fall of 1952, Byron got a refund from his pension plan, and he used the money to buy a 21" black and white television set with a wood cabinet. This became very popular with the boys who watched all the available programming, which at first was limited to one channel with limited hours of TV programming. Vera did not have much time to watch television, since doing housework with none of the modern conveniences and taking care of four growing boys was a full time job. Vera enjoyed talking with the neighbors and became close friends with a family that lived across the street, a widow named Mrs. Kyle, who had had about six children. The oldest daughter, Pat Kyle, was 2 years older than Donald, another daughter named Helen was about two years younger than Donald, and the youngest son, Tim Kyle, was about 6 years younger than Donald.
Vera was an immaculate house keeper and kept her house very clean, mopping floors often and always dusting and sweeping often. She was an excellent cook and prepared many varied dishes for evening meals, but avoided certain dishes that her sons disliked. For instance, Bob hated peas, so she rarely fixed them and when she did, she never dished many for Bob. She used a small wood burning stove in the kitchen as a trash burner, and occasional used it for cooking, when the elect ric power went out. For many years she had a natural gas stove, but several times the family smelled gas when a burner had been accidently turned on or the pilot light had gone out, but they were able to avoid any explosions or other disaste r . Later, they switched to an electric stove, and by the early 1950's they had converted their sawdust furnace to an oil furnace. The only bathroom was on the second floor, but in the late 1950's Byron, with help of friends, added another half bathroom and bedroom in the basement, and with the help of a close friend he installed hardwood floors in the main hallway and living room down stairs. An ongoing problem in the basement was flooding when high water due to heavy rain occured, and Byron installed a sump pump, but had to redo and replace it several times.
During grade school and high school, Donald was a good student, but Bob had trouble concentrating and was in trouble many times, and failed to graduate from high school. Keith was slow at learning and so Byron and Vera employed an older girl who lived down the street as a tutor to help him learn to read and write, which proved to be effective, and he went to Benson High school where he learned the trade of printing. Gary, the last, and unexpected son, was an average to good student in grade school and high school. After Bob got in trouble with the juvenile authorities when he was about 16, he was held at the juvenile detention center for many days, because he and another friend had held a weapon on two other boys. When he reached the age of 17, Bob enrolled in the Air Force and was stationed first in Texas and then in Arkansas where he met and married his first wife, Barbara. Keith also joined the Air Force in 1960, after deciding that he didn't like college, which he tried for a few months. Donald went two years to college at Portland State U. in downtown Portland, and two years to Oregon State where he graduated in 1959 with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Gary also graduated from Portland State U. in 1965, with a B.S. in Liberal Arts and Business. In February, 1960, Vera and Byron were driving to visit friends when they were struck by a vehicle driven by a young man who had borrowed his parents' car and ran a red light. Vera suffered a broken collar bone and was hospitalized for several weeks, but Byron was only suffered some bruises and contusions. Vera recovered to come home and return to her home in late February, 1960. Fortunately, their son Donald had the month of February on vacation leave from his job with the Bridge Construction crew of the Oregon State Highway Division, in Eugene, and he was able to help his dad and mom after their accident.
Later that year, 1960, when all of her sons had left home for the military, career or college, Vera decided to take a job as a kitchen staff worker at Buckman Grade School. She enjoyed doing this work, which only involved a half day's work for five days a week. However, in June, 1965 she received a call from her son Bob, whose wife had just given birth in Arkansas. His wife had died from a sudden cerebral hemorhage, and Vera quit her job at the school and she and Byron flew to Arkansas and brought the baby back to their home in Portland and in their mid 50's began raising another baby.
Unfortunately, the child, named Alan, turned out to be autistic and was very slow in learning to walk and talk. It was a considerable strain on Byron and Vera. However, their youngest son, Gary had married a girl he had met at college, Sharon King, in 1968, and they later took over the care of Alan for about a year. In October, 1962, when Vera's mother had come to visit her, a major typhoon storm struck the Pacific Northwest on Columbus Day, Oct. 12 and did considerable, knocking out the power all over the Western part of Oregon for many days. When Vera's mother went back to Philomath, a few days later she was struck by a car driven by a young driver while she was attempting to cross the main highway. She almost died, but was cared for at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis, and made her recuperation in the Hospital and a nursing home, which she greatly disliked. While she was in the nursing home, a fire broke out in her house in Philomath and badly damaged the home, making it unliveable without complete remodeling. Since she had no income or pension, she was forced to sell the house at a loss and rented a very small house nearby for $40/month. Elmas was in her 80's when struck by the car, and was very sad about the loss of her house. In the last year of her life, Vera hired a young woman whose husband was in Vietnam, to live with her mother and take care of her. In early December, 1968, Elma had a sudden internal hemhorage and was hospitalized. She died in the hospital a few weeks later. The young woman who remained in the small house for a while, had a great deal of misfortune all at once, when she accidentally killed her beloved little dog, and her husband was killed in Vietnam. Vera had a very bad cold that December when she attended her mother's funeral in Corvallis. Her brother George's wife, Bertha, had died from lung cancer just before Elma died. Four months later, George died from a heart attack while on a hunting trip in the state of Wasshington. He had only just retired from working for the City of Portland parks department a few months earlier. Vera inherited the estate of her brother and his house and rented it to Gary and his new wife, and they later bought it. About 1970, Gary and Sharon decided that they would take Alan and attempt to raise him. It was a considerable relief for Vera and Byron, but by this time, Bob had married and divorced two more wives, had a daughter by his third wife, and by the early 1970's he had married a fourth time while still in the Air Force. Glenn Donald, who went by his first name after college, was still a bachelor who worked for the Bridge Design Section of ODOT in Salem, and Keith worked as a postal carrier and lived with his parents in the basement room. In 1973, Glenn met his future wife while on a trip to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and married her in November, 1974. In 1975, Byron retired from the City of Portland, as a senior surveyor manager, at the age of 65 and Vera and Byron were able to travel to many places, Mexico, Alaska, New England, and other places around the U.S., including Washington D.C. and New York City. They often traveled with close friends including Ray and Martha Kindorff. They continued to maintain their house well, but as they aged, it became more difficult to maintain, and especially to go up to the second floor for the bathroom and bedroom, and to go down to the basement.
On New Year's Eve, 1984, after going out to dinner, Byron and Vera were taking Martha, now widowed, to her apartment complex near 42nd and N.E. Halsey, when they were suddenly assaulted by two young African-American men who knocked Vera to the pavement and stole her purse. She suffered a shattered left hip and had to have a steel pin hip replacement, but she was never able to walk or get around the same after that, and suffered a great deal of pain in her left hip. She recuperated in the Keizer hospital in North Portland for several weeks, and during that time, Byron had a heart attack brought on by the stress. He had double bypass surgery and almost died, and never recovered his former health, at the age of 75. That same year, in June 1985, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, with many friends and relatives attending. A few years later, Byron almost died from a blocked and perforated intestine, which required his to wear a colostomy for many months. They lived in their house on Oak St. until 1990, when their son Gary, who worked for the City of Albany, convinced them to sell their home and buy a mobile home in Albany, so he could easily check in on them. They moved to Albany in September, 1990, with the help of their three sons.
Vera did not really like to make the move because she missed all of her long time friends and neighbors in Portland, but decided it would probably be best for them. The new mobile home was very different from the house they lived in for more than 45 years, and it required a lot of adjustment for both of them. In December, 1991, Byron had cataract surgery. He also suffered from tonitis, arthritis and constant back pain, and Vera's left hip and leg were very painful constantly, and she occasionally had attacks of Sciatica Rheumatism. Some years earlier, Vera also had been diagnosed with a benign brain tumor in the right side of her brain, which eventually caused her deafness and blindness on her left side. Vera enjoyed visiting with her grandchildren and great grandchildren who lived in Albany and Beaverton. In January, 1992, Byron suffered a second heart attack and was hospitalized with a badly damaged heart. He returned home a few weeks later, but came down with pneumonia and was hospitalized at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis. Their son Bob had flown in from Florida to stay with his mom and drive her to the hospital. On February 8, at 3:00 a.m., Byron passed away in his sleep. Vera was very grief stricken when her husband of 56+ years passed away. Bob remained with her until after the funeral and then flew back to Panama City, Florida.
Vera lived as a widow in the mobile home for another 5 years, when she began have severe short term memory problems about March, 1997. The doctor put her on medication, and with the other medication she had to take for her high blood pressure and heart murmur, she had to take many pills every morning. Eventually, she wasn't able to remember to take her medication, so her son Gary employed the sister of his son Bret's wife, to live with her and give her medications. However, Vera continued to deteriorate and stopped eating. The local hospice program was brought in and they had a hospital bed brought in, and Vera was placed in the living room of her home. Her son Bob came from Florida to be with her during the last three months of her life, and about noon, on August 22, 1997, Vera passed away. She was buried next to her husband on the hill of the Old Rugged Cross, Skyline Memorial Cemetery near Portland, Oregon. Her family missed her very much. Vera was a loving woman who sacrificed much for her family.