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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 19, 2006 Parker and Gertie Hess will ride in the seats of honor this year in Ashland’s July 4 parade By John Darling Tidings Correspondent As they ride in the Fourth of July parade as Grand Marshals, Parker and Gertie Hess will be looking out on an Ashland much changed since they were children here in the 1920s. Their lives are colorfully braided through the regular, everyday life of this town. Parker, who moved here as a child in 1927, was Ashland’s first motorcycle cop, a cook at the Palace Café, where Key Bank is now, and a mailman – serving as town postmaster from 1951 to 1973. He was a star in football, basketball and baseball at Ashland High and Southern Oregon Normal School (now SOU) and made all-conference quarterback in 1934 for AHS. Born here in 1921, Gertie went to first grade in Lincoln School’s opening year, was named Miss Ashland, tap danced at the long-gone Lithia Theater (getting paid in free movie tickets), dedicated the Varsity Theater when it opened, broke a bottle of champagne over the first Greyhound bus, made milk shakes at Ingle Drug (now Rosie’s Sweet Shop) and, most important of all, raised three children with Parker, her husband of 65 years. The Hess’s tried to say they didn’t deserve the honor of being Grand Marshals, but the Elks Club, where Parker has been a member since 1939, wouldn’t hear of it – and both Parker and Gertie Hess were nominated to the Ashland Chamber of Commerce and will ride as co-marshals. Parker learned early to make his way in life. He was one on 10 children, born 1917 in Idaho – and his mother died when he was 10, three years after they got to Ashland. Although this town is a wonderful place to live, life back in the 1920’s and onward has been difficult, Parker says, because jobs then -- as now – are not easy to find. “It was during the Depression. A kid doesn’t think too much about that. When I grew up, I got a job as handyman, cook and dishwasher with the Palace Café,” says Parker. “Ashland is a nice place to live but hard to make a living. One day, (the police chief) asked me to be the motorcycle cop and mark cars parked overtime and double-parked. He sent me up Winburn Way in the park to learn to drive it and I rammed into a car and almost went in the creek.” But Parker mastered the bike, Ashland’s first, made $55 a month at a 6.5 hour day and got to live in the fire hall, eating at the café where he worked. He married Gertie in 1941, became a letter carrier in 1942 and – with his police experience, joined the Navy in World War II as a shore patrolman in San Francisco. His postal career continued here once the war ended. Their community activities are many – Parker in Toastmasters, Rotary, Elks (67 years), Boy Scouts, Square Dance Club and Gertie in Ashland Garden Club, PTA, Parks and Recreation Board and Cub Scout den mother. Both love camping, fishing, the friends at Ashland Hardware and sports at the high school. Another pleasure is tell tales of old Ashland, far enough back that Parker actually knew one of the town founders, Abe Helman, a wagon train pioneer and namesake of the street and school. He yarns about hunting jack snipe – small birds you could shoot in what is now Quiet Village and take home for a “decent meal.” The normal school they both attended was a two-year college mostly oriented to making teachers. Gertie’s ancestors extend in Ashland back into the mists of the nineteenth century – her grandfathers, Will Wenner and Frank Bess being railroad men. The freight trains brought in a lot of “hobos,” during Depression years and they would knock on your door, asking for a sandwich, Parker said, and complain about the “bulls” (railroad cops) who kicked them off the trains. In her late teens, Gertie recalls the first years of the Shakespeare Festival, where they would set up folding chairs in a space no bigger than her living room and maybe 25 people would show up to watch performers, mostly town folk (including her older sister Gerry) deliver their lines in the shell of the old Chautauqua Theater. They both had Angus Bowmer, the Festival founder, as an English teacher at SONS. “Nice guy,” said Parker. “No matter who you were or where you were, he treated you like you were the most important person on earth.” Ashland in their eighty-some years has become “radically and dramatically different, where even the well-to-do people can’t afford to live here,” says Parker, adding that, during the Depression, his family got evicted from their Terrace St. home because they couldn’t come up with the $10 a month rent. As things got better, the family bought their first home on Mountain Ave. for $4,800. Gertie was born in 1921 to Gerald and Grace Wenner. Her father was a city councilman and manager of the First National Bank. She’s 85 and he’s 89. The key to long life? It’s not that complicated, says Gertie: maintain a lot of interests, stay active, raise kids and have a good marriage. Their children, Steve, a retired teacher in Scottsdale, Az., Tod [cq], a retired forest ranger in Beaverton and Susan, a city planning department employee here, will all attend the parade with most of four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren – and take plenty of pictures and videos for the family history book. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Ceramic Piggy Banks Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Mailing Lists Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hammocks Water Filter Custom Made Computers Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams