The Elder Statesman

By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here

When she was attending the writing classes I teach in Roseburg, Oregon, Ursa Heinz had one goal in mind, to complete her memoirs. According to her daughter, Georgianna Lukens of Portland, Ursa has completed that task, “A Walk in My Shoes.”

Ursa is under Hospice care at the Basil Adult Care Home in Tigard. The 117- page manuscript was mailed to me. If I were grading it as a class assignment, it would get an A+.

It is my fondest hope, that the family shares Ursa’s story with others, because it is a story about a life – not without its tragedies, but also it is a story about a love greater than all the tragedies. I am richer for just reading that manuscript one more time, this time without an editing pencil in my hand, but for the pure pleasure of Ursa sharing her story. It left an indelible mark on me.

The story begins when her mother, Georgianna Coffell came as a small child with her family to Roseburg in 1911. At age 17, she married Aurthur Leroy Copeland, a brakeman on the railroad.

Her family was opposed to the marriage and the couple decided to elope to Portland, but Georgianna’s brother, Dan, discovered their plans and tried to stop them at the Roseburg train depot. There was a scuffle, an incident reported in The Roseburg News-Review, by a cub reporter named Charlie Stanton, who would one day become editor of the daily newspaper. The couple were convinced to having the wedding at the Coffell home.

Ursa was their first child, born Oct. 18, 1915. Ursa was two years old when her mother, then 20, died of pneumonia and her father left her in the care of her grandmother, Anna Coffell, whom Ursa called “Mamma.” Her memories including growing up in Roseburg and her colorful narrative describes the “Hoo-Hoo” man who delivered vegetables in a horse-drawn wagon and also the ice man who artfully chipped from a 100 pound block the exact amount of ice purchased by housewives along his route. Her memories as a child include getting slivers of chipped ice as a treat on a hot summer day.

Her grandmother taught her to read even before she attended school and her memories are of the wonders of the Roseburg library, then located in a two story home on Rose Street. She describes carrying her school lunch in a small lard bucket.

In the scenario, she says that her father after years of separation returned one day and took her away from her beloved grandmother and placed her in a convent in Portland. She details the painful years of this lonely existence in the convent and later in a private school for boys and girls in Portland. One day her father mysterious showed up and returned her to her grandmother in Roseburg. She continued to live with “Mamma” into adulthood.

In 1934, she joined a church youth group to visit the young men in the Civilian Conservation Camp in Melrose, Oregon. There she met Theodore Herbert Heinz, a corporal in the CCC. He was so taken with her that he drove a CCC supply truck into Roseburg to visit her. The romance was soon to meet an interruption when Herb was transferred to Deadwood, South Dakota to build a new CCC camp.

She writes in her memoir that he was a faithful letter writer and for two years they corresponded by letter. The romance had not cooled and after he had finished his CCC training, Herb hitchhiked to Roseburg. By this time Ursa had completed high school and on Jan. 26, 1934, the two were married in a radio station on-the-air wedding ceremony and spent a honeymoon in a tent in the Umpqua National Forest.

Herb was hired by Douglas County Creamery as a deliveryman. Children began to come, first Georgianna, then Tommy and Greg. The family continued to live in Roseburg, but Ursa’s tragedies had not ended. Her beloved Mamma died at age 92 in November 1959. Herb lived past their 60^th wedding anniversary but later died of cancer. At the time of his illness, Ursa had never driven a car, but at age 72, she took the driver’s test in order to transport Herb to medical appointments.

Ursa tells a story with great emotion and detail and ends her saga with:

“The most important thing was knowing that I was loved and my immediately family has shown me in many ways that they loved me, mistakes and all.”

Ursa certainly didn’t make a mistake in putting down so elegantly her life story, one certainly worth telling and a pleasure for her old writing coach to see in print. Ursa also proved how important it is to write those memories so that others may share and learn from them.

(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470) 
 

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