HISTORY: Sellwood-Ardenwald resident reaches 100, with many memories

Published 12:00 am Sunday, November 24, 2024

One of the pleasures of researching and writing history-focused stories for THE BEE is the opportunity to spend time with longtime residents. Recently, I was fortunate to spend a few hours with Winifred Haldors, who has been called “Freddi” since the fourth grade, when she decided she wanted a nickname like some of her schoolmates. She is part of the third generation of her family to live in the Sellwood-Milwaukie area, and she had many stories to share. . .

Her (paternal) grandparents were Erik J. and Gurli M. (Ohrn) Westling. Swedish-born, they arrived in the United States in 1906, and settled briefly in Northwest Portland. Accompanying them was their 18-month old son Eric Dan Westling, and Gurli’s mother Marie.

They moved to Westmoreland, settling in a house on S.E. 18th between Bybee and Knapp Streets in time for young Eric to enter Llewellyn School. He had three siblings, Theodore (Ted), Howard, and Ellen. Their father worked as a motorman on the interurban railroad (now the route of the Springwater Corridor Trail) and later for the gas company, while their mother Gurli cleaned downtown office buildings. While attending Llewellyn, a seventh grade girl caught young Eric’s attention.

The youngest of four children, Mable Bennett was born in Philomath, Oregon, to Ina Alice (Howell) and Albert R. Bennett – who would become Freddi’s maternal grandparents. The Bennetts moved to Alhambra, California, for a period, and then returned to Oregon, settling in Boring where Albert was a crew boss in the timber industry, and Alice worked equally hard cooking for the hungry loggers.

By 1921 the Bennetts lived in a house on Umatilla Street just across from Sellwood School. Albert had a variety of jobs, as a laborer, gardener and groundskeeper at the Waverley Golf Club. His son Harry was in charge of the dye house at the Oregon Worsted Mills (the remaining buildings are now housing the Pendleton store on McLoughlin Boulevard). By 1930-31 the Bennetts moved to Ardenwald, into a house on a half-acre where they had a large garden and chickens. Connected to the house, Albert added what would now be known as an ADU, (Accessory Dwelling Unit) in which his father Oliver lived.

The youthful Llewellyn-sparked crush smoldered as Eric Dan Westling and Mable M. Bennett continued their educations – at Benson Polytechnic and at Girls Polytechnic High Schools, respectively – and they married soon after graduation. The couple initially lived in a small house on S.E. Yukon off 14th. Freddi was born in her grandparent Bennett’s house on Umatilla Street on October 13, 1924. Eighteen months later she was joined by her brother Norman, and the young Westling family moved to S.E. 7th and Umatilla Streets.

Although S.E. 13th Avenue was then becoming the center of Sellwood’s business district, Umatilla remained Freddi’s “main street.” It was her route to school, as it passed by Knipe’s Grocery Store and Benz’ German Bakery where her mother worked before her marriage. Sellwood Park was another short walk for summertime swimming and a few blocks in the other direction was the Sellwood Community Center (now the Community House) where she participated in children’s dramatic classes and performances. On Sundays her family attended the Baptist Church on Tacoma Street. By the time Freddi was a fourth grader, she and Norman often walked to the eastern end of Umatilla and along the railroad tracks there, until they reached their Bennett grandparent’s home on Balfour, just off 32nd Street.

Freddi enjoyed school – mentioning three close girlfriends, Bonnie Lee Shipley, June Nelson and Ruth Doern. Pupils at Sellwood School went as a class to the public library on Nehalem Street (now a private home). In the fifth grade she began taking piano lessons, at first traveling to downtown Portland for instruction. She soon became proficient enough to play hymns on a pump organ for the Sunday School kindergarteners at her church. When she reached high school age her teacher was Westmoreland resident Elsie Leech Wood. Freddi paid for her lessons by cooking dinner for Mrs. Wood, and babysitting her son in the evenings.

When she completed the 6th grade at Sellwood School, her family moved to a house at the northern end of 7th Avenue across from Sellwood Park. The school’s boundary line was Lambert Street so she transferred to Llewellyn. Missing her familiar base and friends, she returned to Sellwood a few times, but finally settled into her new school – finding solace when she noticed classmate Robert Haldors who lived with his family just across the street at the corner of S.E. 14th & Henry Street.

Freddi expressed enthusiasm for the practical classes that were offered in junior high (now middle school) – the workshop where the boys made coffee tables with tile tops, and the sewing and cooking classes that the girls took. Reinforced by her mother’s sewing skills, Freddi became a skillful seamstress, creating a prize-winning dress in the 8th grade. Later, she worked in the fabric department at the Meier & Frank department store downtown, its entire fifth floor a magical destination for those who sew well into the 1970’s.

Freddi was poised to enter high school when her family elected to move to Klamath Falls for eighteen months. She expanded her drawing skills through classwork and membership in the art club there. Returning to Portland she caught up with Bob at Washington High School; he and Freddi had their first date at the Oaks Park Skating Rink, and began going steady. As he walked from his house to hers, Bob plucked a white flower for her from a shrub in the crematorium grounds.

Recalling the romantic gesture, Freddi later included gardenias in her wedding bouquet, and subsequently every Mother’s Day Bob presented her with a gardenia corsage (purchased from a florist).

But that was later. After high school, Freddi took a secretarial course at Hastings Business School to refine her typing and accounting skills, while Bob entered Lewis & Clark College. After three years his studies were suspended when he joined the Marine Air Corps. While he served in the WWII Pacific Theater, Freddi worked in offices – first at the shipyards under the Ross Island Bridge, and later in North Portland. After the war, they married, renting a house for $14 month in Hillside Park, a wartime development in Milwaukie (across from Providence Hospital on S.E. 32nd – the houses there were very recently demolished). Bob finished his final year of college, and began work in sales and service for office supply businesses: Charlie Helwig, and then Smith Brothers.

Freddi’s Bennett grandparents alerted them to a house for sale at S.E. 42nd and Kelvin, which the Haldors purchased. By this time, there was quite a colony of Bennetts-Westlings-Haldors within a few blocks of each other, because Freddi’s parents had moved to Kelvin Street in 1937. The Haldors’ home was their anchorage for the rest of their married life and beyond. It was there they raised their two children, Lynette and Melvyn, students at nearby Ardenwald School. Sadly, Bob passed away at age 73, but Freddi remained in their home until she moved into her retirement apartment thirteen years ago.

As their children became more independent, Freddi began to pursue new interests, expanding on her love of art, music, and sewing skills, and her secretarial experience. Although she and Bob were charter members of the First Baptist Church in Ardenwald in the early 1950’s, after a visit to Mt. Angel Abbey they became curious about the Catholic faith, entered a Bible Study course, and eventually converted.

They found St. Agatha Church in Sellwood to be a good match for their new faith. Freddi offered her musical skills as the pianist and organist – a volunteer position she maintained for decades. For 23 years she also served as secretary to the assistant pastor, and after joining an art group at Mt. Angel Abbey, she used her sewing experience to make vestments and decorative banners for St. Agatha and other churches.

In the late 1970’s Freddi participated in a class at Mt. Angel on the history and making of religious icons. These storytelling images painted on wood panels, fabric, and church walls, are common in Eastern Orthodox churches in Greece, the Ukraine, and Russia. St. Agatha was established by the Benedictine order at Mt. Angel Abbey, known for its contemplative worship practice, and neither institution used icons.

But for Freddi, icon-making meshed her love of art with her religious beliefs. For forty years she traveled to week-long workshops throughout the United States, studying and refining her painting skills. She explained that, as a beginner, you copy historic icons in order to understand and develop the techniques of applying the layers of rich colors and gold. When you achieve some mastery, you select a religious story or image of your own. A contemplative and devotional art practice, icon-making requires a clear plan, careful preparation, mental focus, and meticulous application of materials.

Freddi began making her own icons with small 7×8 inch wooden panels; and, while making 113 icons, she experimented with larger ones – with multiple figures, and even a triptych. As they began to accumulate, they were never sold but gifted to friends and churches. She enjoyed teaching, and shared her knowledge with four pupils. Today her small apartment glows with dozens of her vibrant icons, large and small – displayed on walls, table tops, and occasionally next to her entry door.

Although her eyesight no longer allows her to create icons, Freddi keeps busy, and remains in service to others. She crochets matching sets of hats and scarves that are donated to women and girls who need them to stay warm while living on the streets. Another resident knits squares of colored yarn, and Freddi connects them to make cozy throws which are also given to charity. She did offer repair and alteration services and her sewing machine stands ready, but she admits there is not much demand for these skills in her retirement community. She enjoys puzzles (jigsaw and sudoku) and problem solving, including watching TV programs such as “Say Yes to the Dress”, “Restaurant Impossible”, and fixer-upper house programs.

Now, having reached age 100, her advice to enjoying life is to “keep watching for something new to learn, or to expand your existing interests.”

While she is unable to return to her familiar communities of Sellwood or St. Agatha on a regular basis, Freddi remains interested in the neighborhood news through copies of THE BEE provided by a church friend. And, of course, she visits the neighborhood in the memories that she generously shared with me, and are now being passed along to readers of this newspaper.