Harbert Family Stories
Dick
Harbert was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1886 to Beulah
and John Thomas Harbert. Eventually he would be the second oldest of a
family of ten children. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to a new town called
Phoenix in the Territory of Arizona where his father established a successful farm. The
photograph at left is Dick with his older brother Roy on
the left in Arizona. The family moved again by wagon train to Oregon’s
Willamette Valley in 1904.
In 1913, Dick married Gladys McHenry who was born in Carrington, North Dakota. Dick and Gladys had their first child, Wayne, in 1914 and moved east to Walterville, where they started farming on their own property. After a financial disaster due to poor hop crops, Dick got a job in the lumber milles working his way up from the "green chain." Dick and Gladys first lived in Harrisburg, where their second child, Derald, was born in 1918. Later they made their home in lumber mill towns of Mable, Cottage Grove, and Vaughn, west of Eugene. Mill towns were centered around a saw mill. There were one-story, working-class cottages for those mill-workers who were married and boarding houses for bachelors. These towns usually had a church, school, store, and sometimes a dance floor. The mill had a log-pond, wigwam burners, and the buildings where logs were sawed into lumber. The principal source for these lumber products was Douglas Fir. Wigwam burners were large metal chimneys standing about 80 feet high and shaped in a cone like Indian tepees and had an opening that was screened on the top. The mills would burn lumber scrap or waste in these burners as smoke and sparks could be seen rising from the top.
This photograph of the Harbert
family about 1925 shows, from left to right, Wayne, Gladys,
Derald, and Dick. Dick was kind and
possessed a positive attitude throughout his life. He was a Democrat and Gladys
a Republican. Because they each voted a party ticket canceling out each other’s vote,
many wondered why they bothered to vote at all! Gladys loved music and
taught herself to play the piano. She was a charter member of the Eugene Women's Choral
Club in 1935 with which she sang for more than 20 years. Dick, like his
brothers, was an avid hunter and fisherman. Dick and Gladys
emphasized the need for their sons to pursue a formal education. Their sons had different
interests but were close friends. Wayne loved classical music,
literature, flowers and had an aptitude for writing. Derald was active in
sports, hunting, and fishing and had a reputation as a poor speller. Both boys graduated
from the University of Oregon.
For many years Dick was a foreman of the yard, planer, and shipping
operations of the Snellstrom Lumber Co. The owner, Charles Snellstrom, was married to Gladys's
sister, Mona. Dick and Gladys
eventually settled in Gladys's father's house on South 3rd up on the hill
in Springfield with Speck, a Springer Spaniel who was a good bird
retriever. Their backyard was a huge garden filled with vegetables, strawberries,
raspberries, and blackberries. Gladys’s yard was surrounded with
gladiolus, hydrangeas, bearded iris, and roses. The flowers from her garden beautified her
home and brought cheer to her visitors. 
The Harberts were active members of the First Christian
Church. Gladys earned spending money by selling magazine subscriptions.
After retirement from the lumber mills, Dick worked part time in a
carpentry shop and for his brothers' construction company. While working on a highway
construction project with his brothers, Dick was hit in the hand by a
rock thrown from a dynamite blast and lost the little finger on his right hand.
Dick and Gladys were lifetime partners.Gladys was famous for her cinnamon rolls and huckleberry cobbler. She enjoyed swimming and even water skied around the lake when she was 74 years old. Dick was often complimented on his beautiful wavy hair which he had to his death at age 80. Dick is pictured on the left with his granddaughter, Shelley Harbert, at Cape Creek on the Oregon coast. While starting the lawn mower on October 3, 1966 he suffered a fatal heart attack. Gladys passed away on April 6, 1974 five days after her 82nd birthday (which was on April fools day).
