Not Fit For Print

Sometimes, little tidbits you stumble across can sprout into great stories.

I first heard about Levis Pizer through Mark Hazelton, the boss man at Kings Valley Charter School. While I was doing a story about a new modular building at the school, he happened to mention that there would be a potluck reunion there soon, and passed along Levis’ phone number.

I figured I would just write a brief about the event and be done with it. But when I called Levis up, I discovered that she was the unofficial historian of the old Kings Valley High School. And her meticulous scrapbooks also had plenty of great stuff about the Kings Valley-Hoskins area.

I’m probably going to call and make sure Mary Gallagher, at the Benton County Historical Museum, knows about Levis and her collections, which include plenty of mementos about Summit, where she lived for years. She’s also writing down her life history. Anyway…

An interesting tidbit that didn’t make it into the story is that, when she was a girl, Levis Kopplien lived on the land that is now Fort Hoskins Park. The school that used to be on the park land already had closed, and Levis attended elementary grades at the Alder Grove School, about five miles west of Fort Hoskins.

It was neat to talk with her about all the small schools out in the rural areas, as well as the small stores. Levis’ mother worked at the store in Hoskins proper, and there were pictures of soldiers with local ties on display there during World War II. Because of her mother, Levis ended up getting the photos, but she knew all of the soldiers, including one sailor who was killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Her high school principal even ended up going into the Armed Forces.

“I think I probably wrote to 30 to 35 servicemen during the war,” Levis said. “A lot of the local guys didn’t have family who would write to them. They wee just happy to get a letter. A lot of them would send me things from overseas or bring me home something.”

And it’s not like she had much better to do. Her family had no gas to get anyplace because of rationing, she had no television, and after she graduated, she had plenty of down time working at the railroad office in Hoskins.

Her husband, Dallas, was a soldier, too, though not a local boy. She met him when he came home on leave. Dallas’ father had moved into the area to work at the railroad. Levis met Dallas while he was changing a flat tire, which, probably wasn’t the best circumstances. But things kind of evolved from there, and picked up steam after Dallas’ dad died.

They were married in January of 1946. Dallas died in April, 2008.

While Levis thought a new high school would be great for the community, she wondered how many students there would actually be from Kings Valley and the surrounding area.

In 1945, when Kings Valley High School shut its doors, local kids were angry that they had to go into the big school of Philomath. There was a lot of local pride.

On a final note, there’s an interesting new Web site developing about the Kings Valley-Hoskins area. It appears to still be in its infancy, but who knows how big it could grow. Regardless, check it out.

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