By Amanda Robbins
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Saturday, June 14, 2008 12:00 am
Inez Elizabeth Hanson enjoyed growing up on the coast in Seaside, where she moved from Portland when she was 3.
Some of the details of her childhood may be a bit hazy now, but you can't blame her - it was more than 100 years ago.
On Tuesday, Inez will celebrate her 104th birthday. She lives at Wynwood of Albany Assisted Living Residence.
Her father, Elias T. Stafford, was a conductor on the street car system in Portland and her mother, Harriet Dunning Stafford, had studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and gave private piano lessons.
In Seaside, her father had a small milk business and later owned the Stafford Wood and Lumber Yard. Inez and her younger sister, Marjorie, helped with the family garden and Inez remembers delivering milk with her father.
"It was fun," she recalled recently. "I was simply growing up like every other child."
One of her favorite memories is going by train to Portland with her mother to attend special musical events in the city.
Inez graduated from high school in Seaside and attended Oregon Normal School, now Western Oregon University, in Monmouth. After graduating in 1924, she returned to Seaside and taught at Clatsop School.
She married Henry L. Hanson in 1927, and they settled in Seaside. Henry was a plumber, and the couple later bought the Stafford Lumber Yard from her father when he retired.
Henry and Inez had two children, Barbara Steers of Albany and David Hanson of Washington. The family has now grown to include six grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
Barbara remembers when Fort Stevens, up in the northwest tip of Oregon, was fired on during World War II.
"We could hear the shots from Seaside," she said.
Barbara and her mother also remember the blackout during the war. They had to eat dinner in a back room while all the curtains were shut, and climb the stairs to their rooms without any light.
During this same time, Henry patrolled the beach with the Civil Air Patrol.
"I was scared to death," Inez recalled.
In 1977, Inez wrote a book about early pioneer life in Clatsop County, called "Life on Clatsop." The book was reprinted for her 100th birthday, and is currently in all the museums in Clatsop County and at Powell's Books.
Inez and Henry liked to travel. They made trips to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Alaska, Canada and Mexico, as well as to many of the continental United States. They were also a part of a hiking group and hiked over Tillamook Head, on the south end of Seaside.
"It was rugged, but pretty," Inez said.
Her hobbies have included bird watching, gardening, knitting and writing. She wrote occasional articles for her local paper and for the Oregon Historical Society.
About 10 years after Henry died, Inez moved to Albany to be close to her daughter, and she enjoys seeing the rest of her family when they can come to visit.