Scott Swanson
Retirement for Mona Waibel hasn’t been a matter of giving anything up, really.
She’s simply replaced her jobs with other activities – so many that she stayed just as busy as she did when she was working 20 years as director of the Chamber of Commerce and then of Linn-Benton Community College’s Sweet Home branch. She did both simultaneously for a while.
“Can you believe that?” she said. “There wasn’t any money for one of them in the beginning and I got it going.
“It was a lot of work, driving around and going all those place. I went to White’s Electronics and the Willamette Industries mill in Foster and they gave me money to pay staff and get it going again.
After that, I went to all the businesses in town and told them, ‘We need to do things together.’ They’d slip $10 into my hand.
“We had a lot of people who moved to Sweet Home and they came and joined the chamber because they knew it would help the town. It’s a whole different world now.”
She served as director of the LBCC Sweet Home branch for some 35 years before turning the job over to her assistant.
“I was local director of LBCC until I decided I was too old to do it. (Current Director) Mary Sue Rey-nolds was my secretary. I trained her and I did everything I could to get her ready. She got that job.
She’s been active in the Presidents Club, the Sweet Home Alumni Association, the Oregon Jamboree, and more recently, writing a monthly column for 55 Plus on her memories of life and various personalities of the past here in Sweet Home.
Mona has lived in Sweet Home nearly all of her 84 years, most of them in the house that she and her husband, Bob, occupy on Oak Terrace. She was born on the property on April 1, 1930.
“Everybody loves that house,” she said. “My son says he and his wife will come live in it when he finishes teaching school.”
She served on the City Council for nine years, resigning when, in 1998, her husband Bob “was really ill with cancer.”
“I thought about running again, but I’m too old.”
With new publishers in town, who had ideas for the senior insert that appeared monthly in The New Era, Mona was approached early in 2006 about writing “Remembering the Good Old Days” each month. Her efforts took on a life of their own, resulting in five published books of collected columns that have sold thousands of copies.
“I just wanted to write about all the old things I knew,” she said. “I figured I wouldn’t last very long. As long as I could do it and The New Era wanted me to, I’d keep going. I kept looking for things to write about. I’d ask friends. I love to write about the old things, the old families.
“I think it’s a friendly, small town. It meant something to me.”
Her first story was about her childhood, her brothers and her pets, the goat that hauled her around in a cart.
“I had to have milk from that goat because I was lactose intolerant, though we didn’t know about that back then. But I could drink it without getting sick.”
She wrote about her favorite people.
“Dr. Langmack. He was my hero. Even after he quit being a doctor I used to go visit him nearly every day after school.
“I had a mastoid (inner ear infection that spread to the skull) and it was bursting. We didn’t even have a car. Dr. Langmack said, ‘We’ve got to get you to the hospital or you’re going to die.’ He put me in his car. We didn’t have painkillers then. He drilled into my head. I was 5 years old. I was mad.”
She recovered though and still has plenty of fond memories of the doctor who served Sweet Home for many years and built the first hospital in town.
“He was so wonderful and I’m so sorry he isn’t alive. He never charged anyone, really. When we were sick, we’d bake him a pie.”
She wrote about many of Sweet Home’s leading families, long-gone local schools, about picking berries and hops, swimming (and almost drowning) in the South Santiam River, Frontier Days and the birth of Sportsman’s Holiday, about some of the colorful characters who’ve graced the town in the past, the local communities around Sweet Home, the timber industry, the wars, and many other topics.
“I really liked to write about these old families,” Mona said. “I knew a lot of things about them, but not everything. I got to talk to them and learn more. There were so many of them and they’re all old now.
“I loved writing about the Cardwells and the Kikels because they were my neighbors. I didn’t have any money so I had to work for it. I picked black caps, hops. I bought my school clothes at Cardwell’s (Department Store).”
She particularly enjoyed her column on the bank robbery that occurred in Sweet Home in 1947.
“It was on the Gangbusters radio show. National news.”
Schools and teachers were also some of her favorite topics.
“I loved writing about the teachers from Sweet Home High School. I knew so many of them. We stayed real close friends until they all died.
“There were wonderful teachers at the high school. George Wenzel, I planted a tree in front of high school in his honor. I gave a speech out there and there must have been 100 people out there crying.
“I loved the male teachers.”
Above all, though, she enjoyed writing about the logging industry.
“I love those old sawmills,” she said. “My favorite things were the loggers. My family all logged. My brother, my husband were loggers.
Mona said both she and Bob are feeling their years and it’s time to call it a day – though it goes against her nature.
“I wish I wasn’t so old and can’t think good any more. You get old and you know you’re messing up. I think I can go back and be the chamber manager. But I can’t do that.
“I loved doing the column. If I wasn’t so old, I wouldn’t think about stopping. Gosh, it’s hard to do things.”