Elmer John Grossen died peacefully in his sleep on the morning of Sunday, July 4, 2021. He was 98 years old, still living in his home “independently” with daily visits from his children. He was excited about the big cherry crop and eager to get cherries picked, on his plate and in his freezer.   

Elmer was born October 24, 1922, in the Helvetia community of Hillsboro OR to Peter Fred Grossen and Marie Sigrist. He was the 3rd of 6 boys. His mother was very ill at the time of his birth and nearly died. Marie Nussbaumer, a neighbor and midwife of sorts, delivered him in their home and nursed his mother back to health. Her two daughters cared for Elmer. Little did he know, someone put the name “Ernest Henry” on his birth certificate. Apparently, when his mother came to life, she renamed him “Elmer John” without attending to the paperwork. Not until he tried to get a passport did he find out that his birth certificate didn’t have his name on it. He was able to get things straightened out by taking neighbors in as witnesses.

Those who only knew Elmer in his later years may not have realized that Elmer was very athletic in his younger day. As a child and young man, he went a lot of places on a bicycle over gravel and dirt roads. He could ride very fast. He remembered that it took him 8 minutes to bike to school. That was the entire length of Phillips Road (gravel) from where his home was, to the other end, where the Rock Creek School was. One time, Helvetia School sponsored a bicycle race where hotshot riders from Portland, on hotshot bicycles, came out to compete. Elmer beat them all in the race. In his mature years, he’d use a bike to get home from a field where he left his equipment over night.

His kids remember seeing him pulling less-used things up into the high ceiling of the big red barn, then walking on the beams up there like a trapeze artist. He had no fear of heights and was quite a dare-devil. He put a new roof on the barn cupola all by himself because no one else would go up there with him. His guardian angel saved his life so many times, we can’t even count.

Elmer was also technically gifted. After his grandparents died, their home was rented out to Joe Wenzel, the local school teacher. The home had no electricity, having been built before electricity was available. Joe wanted to have electricity in the house. So Elmer, age 16, and his younger brother Roy set about wiring the house. They even got the wires inside the walls and did a pretty fancy job for 1938. Elmer also built the first electric fences to keep cows in their place. Those fences weren’t always cow-proof. We all can remember the cows getting out regularly on Sunday morning. He’d rush to get the cows back in their spot, have breakfast, get ready for church and then jump in the car to go to church, stepping on the gas and sending the gravel flying behind the car.

Elmer was an inventor and problem-solver. He invented more than one working machine to do jobs. One of his first big mechanical accomplishments, at age 19, was to build a buck rake for the farm, so they didn’t have to gather hay with pitch forks. The buck rake worked really well. Horses pulled it. One time Elmer’s dad found him lying in the field. Somehow Elmer had been thrown off the buck rake. He had a serious back injury from that accident that bothered him for years and probably accounted for the back issues that resulted in him being turned down for service in WW2. At about age 19, the Elmer and Roy put a working motor in a junk truck with a blown-out motor and started using the truck for custom work, hauling peas mostly. They started to make money with that truck as the depression was ending. As he earned money, he bought the first automatic-string-tie baler in Washington County. Elmer and Roy were quite a team.

His family did their farming with horses. (Mabel was the smartest horse there ever was.) When they had to take care of his grandfather’s farm (John Sigrist’s) on Jackson Quarry Road, the 4 horses could not be all the places they were needed. So Elmer’s family harnessed the bull for jobs at home. The bull’s favorite job was to bring in the kale for the cows. The cows loved kale. Elmer said that bull knew he was popular with the cows for bringing them their kale every day. So the bull happily pulled the sled full of kale to the barn.

On June 2, 1944, Elmer married Lillie Wagner. They got to know each other in the Helvetia Band. They both loved music. She could sing, play the piano and the clarinet. He fell in love with her when he heard her sing a solo, “Somewhere over the Rainbow” at a Helvetia School program. They moved into the house he and his brother had wired with electricity and then, when they started having children, Lil persuaded him to install indoor plumbing: a tub with a shower, a sink, and a toilet that flushed. The tub was an old tub with claw feet. Elmer enclosed it with a wall so that it looked new and in the style of the day.

In the 30’s and 40’s, the area had a lot of one-room schools. In 1948 Elmer served on the founding school board of West Union Elementary School, a consolidation of 5 or 6 one-room schools into one school with a teacher and a classroom for each of 8 grades. He was the clerk, with Lil’s enormous support, when the school opened. The clerking job was paid $200 a year. The board wanted to reduce his pay to $150. Elmer turned that down and resigned as clerk. The board couldn’t find anyone who would be clerk for even $200 a year, so they finally had to hire someone for $300 a year.

In 1950, he got lucky with his malt barley crop that sold for $100 a ton. He was able to buy a truck, a car, a tractor, a combine…lots of equipment to really set him up for efficient farming.

In 1953, Elmer and Lil bought “the Bailey place” across from their home. It was 100 acres of stumps and blackberries. Ten acres or so at a time, they cleared the land for farming. Elmer became an expert in the use of dynamite to blast stumps. Other neighbors came to him to learn how to use dynamite. For 10 or more years they cleared more and more of the 100 acres. It was extra work on top of all the farming. Elmer blasted stumps and then used the cat to shove big pieces into piles. Then Lil and her kids and her sister’s kids came after, picking up smaller sticks and throwing them on the wagon pulled by a tractor that only one kid got to drive. Turn-taking was a detailed science. Then came a huge fire with a wiener roast. Only we couldn’t get close enough to the huge hot fire to roast our wieners. We’d build a smaller fire nearby from where we could watch the huge fire as night fell.

In the early days of rural Oregon, a lot was do-it-yourself. The telephone (four shorts, two longs) was a “farmers’ line,” which meant the phone company didn’t maintain it. Elmer was the guy that people called when their phone didn’t work. He’d go out driving along the line to find the trouble spot. Once identified, he had special claw stirrups he put on to climb the pole and fix the problem. Remarkably, Elmer and a neighbor, alone, replaced the dilapidated telephone poles with new poles that were bigger and better.

Anyone who knew Elmer knew that he loved to work. Hay is especially a lot of work. He raised lots of hay in the early years, oats and vetch, clover, and alfalfa, and hauled truckloads to the dairy farmers in Tillamook, Astoria, Grays Harbor, and Puget Island, to name the most frequent destinations. As a preschooler, Bonnie went on as many trips with him as she could. As a treat, he would buy a loaf of raisin bread and a can of smoked oysters to make sandwiches for them on the beach. Seaside turnaround was a favorite spot for a smoked oyster sandwich. The truck couldn’t fit in those tight turns, so he parked the truck on the main road and carried Bonnie and the sandwich fixings the long way to the turnaround.

Elmer and Lil became a vibrant part of the farming community of Washington County. Elmer was a Hall of Fame member of the Oregon Farm Bureau and a founding member of the Washington County Farm Bureau. He was active in leadership roles of Farm Bureau for 65 years. In the Oregon capitol, Oregon state legislators would come up to him to greet him by name. He received awards for his soil conservation from the Tualatin Valley Soil Conservation District. He enrolled in “green” power from PGE for the farm. He was recognized by the Hillsboro Jaycees and the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce for his excellence in agriculture.

Elmer and Lil were on the board of the Washington County Fire District #2 for 27 years. In the early years, fire-fighting was done by volunteers, of which Elmer was one. Eventually, there were some paid firemen and additional supply came from volunteers. Elmer was instrumental in hiring the first fire chief, Dick Duyck, in 1970. Elmer said that Duyck’s winning qualification was that he had hands that looked like he had done a lot of work. And Duyck was a super fire chief.

Elmer was very active in the Bethany Presbyterian Church. He served many years as elder. He was the youngest person called to serve as elder at the time. His faith was at the core of his life. He was the main caretaker of the cemetery for about 40 years. As much as he worked all his life, Sundays were always a day of rest. After church and lunch, he’d have a nap, and then often take his family to visit some shut-in or old-timer in the neighborhood. He was interested in community history.

He led a 4-H livestock club for 17 years. Summer fair activities added to the excitement of farm life. Many neighbors’ children benefited from their membership in the Contented Munchers Livestock Club. Many neighbors’ children also benefited from the opportunity to work in the Grossen strawberry field. Elmer always kept the field well-watered and maintained younger plants, so that the berries were big and pickers could fill their boxes faster.

Elmer always loved his Swiss heritage. He got to go to Switzerland one time in 1974, traveling with Phyllis Jossy and Bonnie. (Lil didn’t like to leave home that much.) Even in his last month of life, he retold every detail of that trip. He remembered those details because he had reviewed them in his mind so many times.

He spent more than 75 years with Lil on the farm in Helvetia. In their 80’s and early 90’s, Elmer and Lil went dancing every Saturday night at the Pumpkin Ridge Grange. On June 2, 2019, they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary. Elmer taught his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren many important things. He taught them how to work hard and love it, drive tractor, bale and stack hay, build swimming pools out of straw bales and tarp, plant and sell corn, make sausage, make apple cider, listen to polka music, do the chicken dance, be patient, be calm and love God, to name just a few. He loved life. He loved to get up in the morning with the sun and see what was going on outside. He loved watching crops grow and mature. He loved harvesting food and eating it fresh. He loved visiting with friends and neighbors. He never was at a loss for words.

Elmer is preceded in death by his wife Lil and 4 of his 5 brothers. He is survived by his 4 children, Bonnie Grossen, Lori Swenson (spouse John), Calvin Grossen (Gayle), and Anita Mayer (Bernie); by his 6 grandchildren, Patti Swenson, Matthew Swenson (Sarah), Daniel Grossen (Willow), Kristi Atkins (Peter), Cassandra Bergstrom (George), and Shannon Kennedy (Carson); by his 11 great grandchildren, Andrew Swenson (age 15), Madeline Swenson (13), George Bergstrom (15), Henry Bergstrom (12), Maximus Kennedy (9), Pendleton Kennedy (7), Marcus Kennedy (3), Rennie Jo Grossen (5), Fred Grossen (2), Eloise Atkins (3); and Veronica Atkins (1); by his brother, Ben Grossen of Helvetia; and by 19 nieces and nephews.

Donations in Elmer’s memory may be made to Bethany Presbyterian Church 15505 NW Springville Rd, Portland OR 97229 or to the Salvation Army.

Memorial and burial services will be held July 14 at 1 pm at the Bethany Presbyterian church cemetery 7480 NW Kaiser Rd. Portland. Bring a chair and an umbrella if you like.

Viewing is possible on July 13, from 3 to 6 pm at Duyck and VanDeHey Funeral Home, 3615 NE John Olson Ave in Tanasbourne