In the 1940s, Vashon Island was a slow, 30-minute crossing from West Seattle on the old 1927 ferry boat, MV Chetzemoka.
During the years from 1944 to 1957, anyone driving toward Vashon town from the ferry dock passed a large sign out by the highway that read, “HEBERT.” Odd, really. The big mailbox in fading paint still read “Goodwill Farm,” but the sign glowing in your headlights was our family’s name. That sign guaranteed that my parents stood behind the important community work that went on there.
An early 20th century manor, the Goodwill Farm had been established in the late 1920s as a home for unemployed men, often from Seattle’s Pioneer Square-Skid Road area. It operated as a small, Utopian, self-reliant colony through the Depression. My parents maintained this spirit.
These men were not “winos” and “drunks,” but working men, some beat up by the world. I grew up with Alaska sourdoughs, Norwegian bachelor farmers and the miners, loggers and switchmen who built western America.
Like a small village — a community unto itself — the 25-room Big House was surrounded by 15 outbuildings, two cabins and a large farm that was worked in large part by the men who lived there. It was a truly self-sufficient place with big hogs, two draft horses, 100 rabbits that I took care of, many fruit trees, Vashon’s only public stud bull — the famous Boeing Bull — milk cows grazing in the front yard, 500 chickens, a huge vegetable garden and plenty of goats. We originally produced most of the food that was served there until, little by little, county and state regulations forced us to use processed food entirely except for the many dozens of half-gallon jars of fresh fruit canned each summer. The men were called to meals by a big train bell that the neighborhood set their clocks by.
They came to Hebert’s after screening by King County’s welfare department. The men would arrive from Seattle with a note from the caseworker attesting to their sobriety and good morals with their possessions in a valise or just a bundle.
Mother’s given name was Elene. Her childhood nickname was Lady Nell, but hardly anyone called her Nell, it was always Mrs. Hebert. And let me emphasize that Mrs. Hebert ran the place. No one took Mother lightly, but the door was always open and the light always on. She, with my father, created for Vashon an institution that, in spirit and values, remains in the publicly-owned, comprehensive Vashon Community Care institution that now occupies the same land.
As men grew older, they moved from outside into the Big House with the other men. By 1953, we finished the transition from boarding house to nursing home. This because my parents wouldn’t abandon these men to inferior care. They stayed in touch with many of them even after we sold and moved.
It was a kind of settlement house, and I thrived there from 1944 until I left to Linfield College in 1956. The place held 50 acres of barns, old buildings, fields and pastures, a horse named Billy and huge old-growth cedars in that canyon back where I could trap a 16- to 18-inch long Coho salmon with my bare hands in Shinglemill Creek. And a crew of old men who watched me grow up.
A lifelong public servant, in my youth I learned much about the practicality of rules and sometimes uncomfortable standards:
Mrs. Hebert’s Rules
• I once asked mother the motto of “Hebert’s.” She replied instantly, “No colds, no sores, good food and a warm room.”
• Mother’s key to hiring her fine nurses and aids: “Do they like people?”
• She once said that to “keep a healthy person, keep them in the stream of life. Patients need all the life they can get.”
• Mother was proud that “all our men looked good when they got dressed up.” She bought them clothes for that purpose.
• In the eighth grade, I was doing a paper on the “Golden Years.” I had found a quote: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” Mother snorted. “That’s nonsense. Being old is just the same, except more so.” What people were like during their youth was easy to see. She also said that the people who did best in their old age were those who actively read.
• Mother also once said that the bachelor men were more content than the once-married. That innocent remark stuck to me like glue. I’m still a bachelor.
My father’s rules:
• “We eat what the men eat.”
• “There will be no meanness here.” And my mother would fire a staff person who showed any meanness or negligence, even once. There were no second chances. As I said, uncomfortable.
• If one of our residents had done but one good or interesting thing in his life, he had my father’s attention. It’s been my rule also.
• When a man died, he was “buried from the house,” with the funerals held in our living room. At the cemetery, Lundberg, always a pallbearer, would inevitably forget to take his hat off and dad would loudly order, “Lundberg, take off your hat!” And I would giggle.
Hebert’s was a place of great life and lots of laughter. Dozens of island women worked there as nurses, cooks, aides and friends. They worked hard with my parents to make it the treasured place it was and remains.
— Tom Hebert is a former islander now living in eastern Oregon. This column originally ran in the East Oregonian newspaper.
