Sean C. Morgan
“Grampa” Tom Hufford, longtime local restaurant owner and log truck driver who died Dec. 8, was about to be recognized for his longtime membership and involvement in the American Legion.
Hufford was an enterprising businessman who, with his family, founded the Cedar Shack drive-in restaurant in 1965 and kept it going for nearly 40 years, until it was burned down by arsonists – and then rebuilt several years ago.
“I’d drive truck, then work at the Cedar Shack at night,” Hufford said. “I’d jump in bed and roll out the other side and go to work in the woods.”
He founded a car show that continued for two decades, partly because he loved old Studebakers. He drove a log truck until he was 87.
Hufford served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945 aboard the USS Dewey. The Farragut-class destroyer had been in Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack there and was believed to have shot down two Japanese planes during the battle.
The Dewey was primarily responsible for guarding the rest of the ships in the Third Fleet, which cruised from Australia to Alaska for a nine-month stay in 1943 to help drive the Japanese out of the Aleutians.
Hufford was aboard the Dewey for 13 battles, some as gun captain on a 5-inch gun. He entered the Navy as an apprentice seaman and was a gunner’s mate first class when he finished his duty. He was involved in the Mariana Turkey Shoot in 1944 during which the combined fleet shot down more than 350 Japanese planes.
He was aboard the Dewey during what was believed to be the worst storm to hit the Philippines in 500 years in December 1944. The ship rolled 82 degrees, a Navy record, during the storm. Two ships went down, and 790 people were lost.
Hufford returned to Sweet Home and the logging business and started driving trucks after the war. He married Mardy on April 6, 1946; and in 1964, they opened the Cedar Shack, which also became the site of the annual Grampa Tom’s Get Together car show.
“I enjoy working,” he told a reporter in an interview 10 years ago.
Dale Jenkins, commander of Sweet Home’s American Legion Timber City Post 133, planned to present Hufford with a certificate for 70 years of membership on Dec. 4. He was unable to make the presentation when Hufford went to the hospital.
Jenkins hopes to present the award to Mardy Hufford, and he said he’s warned the auxiliary president she’d best be prepared to present a 70-year certificate to Hufford next year when she reaches 70 years of membership.
Tom Hufford would have been only the second to receive the recognition, Jenkins said.
“I found out there was one other person presented with a 70-year certificate.”
Jenkins plans to work with others to restore the annual Grampa Tom’s Get Together, held in mid-June, in Hufford’s memory.
The show was canceled this year in the wake of Hufford’s son-in-law Marvin Wilson’s death on April 17. (Wilson was the American Legion commander, and Jenkins inherited the role from him.) He said he plans to consult with Mardy Hufford about how it can be re-established as a memorial for Grampa Tom.