Husky alum comes back to celebrate, 70 years later

Megan Stewart

It’s 1 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, July 14, in an almost empty Sweet Home High School hallway.

Three women, of varying ages, gaze up at the endless wall of black-and-white senior class portraits lining the hall.

Suddenly, the women break into cheers and laughter. The oldest, a woman who looks like someone straight out of a banking magazine, side-hops underneath the photo of the Class of 1950 and points at the picture of a young lady: her.

Straight dark brown hair cropped at the ears, the woman flaunts a pressed white jacket and pants, with a matching red blouse, high heels, and a giant rectangular red ring on her finger. She clutches an old yearbook in the crook of her arm like a teddy bear.

Dolly Williams is 88 years old this year, but she looks as if she’s ready to strike a deal with a client, sporting the toothy, red-lipped smile of a young girl on a field trip.

Her daughter, Cheri Chapman, who’s dressed in white capris and a salmon-colored blouse with her blond hair clipped back in a southern-style updo, takes a few steps back to snap a photo on her phone, her grin just as broad as her mother’s. Sweet Home High School’s assistant principal and fellow alum, Chris Hiaasen, clad in a blue-gray Huskies T-shirt and khaki shorts, watches with a small smile.

It’s been 70 years since Dolores “Dolly” Freborg Williams walked the halls of Sweet Home Union High School, which once stood approximately where the three are now.

Williams currently lives in New Braunfels, Texas, near San Antonio, where she still works full-time as the assistant to the president of Frost Bank. Every year Williams and Chapman, who’s a teacher, go on a vacation during the summer, and since this was Williams’s 70th high school graduation, Chapman suggested this time they visit Oregon.

“My daughter wanted to experience my history, which is kind of her history, too,” said Williams, who started her first banking job and met her late husband in Oregon.

They flew on Saturday, July 11, into Portland, where Williams lived before moving to Sweet Home. They spent a few days exploring various places from Williams’s childhood in the Rose City, even snapping a picture at Lincoln High School, where Dolly said she attended for “three years and six weeks” before transferring to Sweet Home.

Williams said she didn’t have “any special memories” of Lincoln High School, despite attending there for much longer.

“It was all good, but it wasn’t outstanding,” she said.

“Sweet Home was outstanding to me.”

Williams said it was at first “devastating” when, at the beginning of her senior, her stepfather moved the family to Foster to work as a shingle-weaver. But quickly that dread turned into elation.

“I came to this small town and was accepted because I this ‘big city girl,'” said Williams, who ended up snagging a leading role in the senior play as a gypsy and the first chair in clarinet.

“I just remember them opening their hearts and minds because I was the new kid in town,” Williams said. “I had a great time.”

Williams said she enjoys many characteristics of small-town life.

“I’m a dirt farmer from North Dakota, historically, so I like grassroots and I like to be around people who like each other and like to work,” said Williams. “I just like the small town feeling where everybody’s friendly and caring for each other. That’s important.”

Due to her “home life not being very enjoyable,” Williams spent much of her time participating in “various activities” at the high school. She also had “no problem with boyfriends” when she first arrived at SHHS, and even went to the prom with the class president.

Williams said it felt “beyond belief” to return to SHHS.

“I’m thrilled,” Chapman said. “I keep going around corners asking, ‘Mom, do you remember this? What do you think of this?’ It’s really fun to be able to see where see came from and put a visual with all the stories I’ve heard over the years.”

“It’s a birthday gift to be able to bring her here,” said Chapman, whose birthday is on July 14.

After graduation, Williams “left home when I was legal” and began her banking career, for which she is also celebrating her 70th anniversary. Since leaving Sweet Home, she has also made a name for herself in the athletic world, earning medals at the National Senior Games in both tennis and cycling.

The health fitness magazine Moxie! featured an article about her biking exploits. No longer able to play tennis, she has switched to pickleball. She also volunteers and is a member of several boards. She has four children, 12 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

“The main thing people get excited about is that I ride a bicycle,” said Williams, who took up cycling at 65, which has served as “an inspiration to get out and exercise.”

“That’s my main claim to fame,” Williams said.

But few people know about her Sweet Home “beginnings,” Chapman said.

“Mom never talks about herself,” said Chapman. “This part of her history no one really knows.”

Williams described her stint at Sweet Home High School as the “foundation of who I became.”

“Emotionally, I thought (moving) was the end of the world, but this small town just accepted me and utilized what talent I could contribute to them,” said Williams. Even if when you’ve encountered “a major change – what you think is a major change – the good Lord might have a plan for you.”

“I feel like it was a launching point for everything,” added Chapman. “From this point on, she became herself. She found her own way and her own life, and I always think of Sweet Home as the beginning of that.”

To her mom, she said, “So I guess the school and this experience contributed to your confidence to be able to go out and build your own life.”

“That’s why I wanted to come here, and I’m so impressed with it. It’s so beautiful,” Chapman said.

“Small towns can usually be all locked up, unless you’re from here and your great grandparents are from here, you don’t belong,” Williams said. “Sweet Home just opened up their arms and their heart-whatever–to me and I just really appreciated that. Helped me accept myself along the way.”

When Williams and Chapman arrive home to Texas, they will have to enter into a 14-day quarantine.

“It’s worth it, right?” said Chapman to Williams.

“Absolutely,” Williams said.

Despite her positive experience at SHHS, Williams said she hasn’t been able to contact anyone from her graduating class since making her first attempt in 2000, around the time of her 50th class reunion. She also signed up with the Alumni website, but “didn’t get any hits.”

“She tried, she wanted to connect with people,” Chapman said.

“Anybody out there?” Williams joked.

Any 1950 alumni who are interested in catching up can contact Williams at her work email: [email protected].

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