Stories Can't Be Separated from History Article from the Oregonian 12/19/99
By Nancy McCarthy, Special Writer

When Mildred Thayer starts telling stories about Silverton's history, a listener may as well settle in for a spell. Her tales begin with early pioneers and wend their way to the present.

Thayer takes her listeners aboard the wagon trains that came around Mount Hood and turned south into silverton country. She recounts skirmishes with the Molalla Indians, she describes life on farmsteads in the 1930s and ‘40s, and she winds up in downtown Silverton at the end of 1999.

Thayer finds the telling easy. An elementary school teacher in Silverton for 34 years, her first assignment was a one-room schoolhouse in 1947 with 33 students in five grades. She retired, she said, "when I started having my students' grandchildren in my classes."

Thayer has published three books of history, and she taught a class for the Silverton Historical Society. But some of Thayer's most interesting historical stories are the ones she lived herself.

Thayer's family fled the Depression in South Dakota in 1938, carrying with them only a box of linens, pots and pans, a chair and a $10 bill. Her father had friends near Silver Creek Falls, and the family stopped there, picked strawberries and living in cabins build for migrant laborers. At 25 cents an hour, the wages were twice as good as those in South Dakota, where pickers were lucky to earn a dollar a day.

Thayer also picked hops as a youngster.

"We would put black electrical tape on our fingers so we wouldn't but them," Thayer said. "We would reach under the plant and strip the hops. We earned two cents a pound, about $14 a day in the hops field."

Eventually the family moved to a 168-acre farm they bought from Edgar Hobart, a wealthy local farmer, for $4,000. There her mother raised 1,000 chickens, and the family grew beans, thornless blackberries and cucumbers.

Electricity came to the farm in 1945 after a stream was diverted to power a mill on the property. "Boy, were we modern!" said Thayer, laughing.

Thayer said she has seen a lot of changes in silverton. Students in the Silver Falls School District are scoring above the state average, Thayer noted, and the Silverton Hospital, which recently underwent a major renovation, is good hospital

Not all the changes are good, however, Thayer said. A department store and some clothing stores have moved away, replace by small delis, antique stores and gift shops. Residents have to drive to Salem to do much of their shopping, she noted.

In Silverton, there are 40 service organizations that offer opportunities for residents to become involved in their community, and Thayer is involved in nearly everyone. She was the school district's Teacher of the year in 1974 and the Silverton Chamber of commerce's Distinguished Service Citizen of the year in 1991.

She also holds officer positions with the Silverton Retired Teachers Association, the Business and Professional Women's Association, the local grange and the Willamette Historical Auto Club. She writes life stories in a class she attends, and – in her spare time – she volunteers for the Chamber of Commerce.

Her expertise, though, is Silverton's history and the people who lived it. "Lots of character," she said. "We've had them."