When Al Severson picks up the microphone on Monday, Nov. 11, to announce the Albany Veterans Day Parade, it will be his 50th year of service in the event and his 30th doing the talking.
In the fall of 1974, Severson, now 73, was a drill instructor in the Oregon National Guard’s 2nd
Battalion Infantry, headquartered on Maple Street in Lebanon.
His day job was with Dan B. and Larry Roth’s New and Used Furniture and Auction in Albany, and his bosses – especially Dan B. – were very active in the Veterans Day events.
“The Roth family used to help raise money for veterans’ causes,” Severson said. “(Dan B.) was one of the main guys who was the head of the Veterans Day (activities) back then. He was the head announcer and his son Larry was a pilot in World War II. So they were real involved. They were the backbone of the parade.
“When it got to be Veterans Day, he’d just hand you a list and say, ‘That’s what you’ve got to do.’ You didn’t question it. You just did it.”
The Albany Veterans Day Parade was founded in 1951 by a group led by local ex-Marine named Jim Barrett. It is one of 54 sanctioned Veterans Day events recognized by the Veterans Day National Committee, which qualifies it for what has become an annual flyover by military jets (this year’s, by the Coast Guard, is scheduled for approximately 11:50 a.m.).
A Sweet Home native, Severson was born at Langmack Hospital, at the corner of Highway 228 and Main Street, in 1951 and grew up on Old Holley Road graduating from Sweet Home High School in 1970.
During high school he and classmates worked for the Weld family, operators of Sweet Home
Sanitation, collecting trash, Severson said.
“You’d go to work at 4 or 5 in the morning and work till 8, then you’d go to school,” he said. “We made good money when we were kids. Those were the good days. Nowadays, kids don’t want to work like that.”
When he was a senior in high school, in the fall of 1969, Severson signed up for the Oregon National Guard and went to Fort Polk, La., for Basic Training.
“That got me out of the draft,” he said, adding that the pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church, Rev. John Reehl, was the chaplain for the local National assigned to be a drill instructor stationed in Lebanon, where he trained recruits before they headed off to the real thing at Basic Training.
“That’s what kept me out of Vietnam,” he said. “It was a great experience. I was really lucky.”
He said his only other posting was at Fort Greely, Alaska, near Fairbanks, where he was sent for cold weather training in the summer of 1975.
“I was there for a month. I went up two weeks in advance before the troops got up there, to set up the camp. It was the best tour of duty I ever had. The mosquitos were swarming. You could dig down in the permafrost and you were in frozen ground in six inches.
“We were right on the border with Russia and I remember seeing Russian planes flying over in the distance. It was quite an experience.”
He served until December 1980.
Meanwhile, Severson was learning the auctioneering business, which proved to be his catapult into veterans activities. His dad Orvin was a millworker and farmer in the area, he said. Orvin also worked at auctions, which became a big part of Al’s life.
“My folks went to the auction every week and I remember being fascinated by this guy,” Severson
recalled of his first interaction with Dan B. “I started working for Dan when I was 13 years old and I worked for him for 27 years. He was known as the Pacific Northwest’s premier auctioneer.”
Roth, who led sales from as far away as Cheyanne, Wyo., “to wherever,” taught Severson the trade.
“The ’70s and ’80s were when I really made it,” Severson said. “I couldn’t ask for a better teacher and a better education.
“Today, young guys don’t want to do this. I remember getting in front of crowds of 400, 500 people from Astoria to Klamath Falls to Pendleton, and every place in between. I used to do a lot of estate auctions.”
Nowadays, online auctions and estate sales have become the rage, he said.
“Now they have sales and they have a lot of stuff left over. We’d be there three hours and everything would be gone.”
But the Roths’ biggest legacy to Severns has been his involvement in veterans’ causes.
“That was drilled into me 50 years ago: If it wasn’t for our veterans, we wouldn’t have freedoms we have today.”
Larry Roth was a World War II pilot who got shot down “twice, if my memory is right,” in the Pacific, Severson said.
“It’s funny how I got involved in the Veterans Day Parade because, as a kid, I was told, ‘You go to the Linn County Veterans Day meeting tonight. We’ll feed and water you.’ I would have been 23.”
When Dan B. died, 30 years ago, Severns took over as parade announcer and he’s been in the booth ever since for what was, for many years, the largest Veterans Day parade west of the Mississippi. (Las Vegas has recently risen to the top, he said.)
He has operated The Frame House in Albany since 1996, moving to that occupation after the Roth family sold their business.
He’s also been active in leadership of the Veterans Commemoration Association, which stages the event and has chaired the annual Veteran of the Year Banquet, held the night before Veterans Day at the American Legion Post in Lebanon, which honors the individual(s) selected as Veteran of the Year.
The parade is one of the reasons why Linn County has been designated as the “Most Patriotic County in the Nation,” Severson noted, listing some of the famous personalities who have participated over the years he’s been involved: then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, Oregon Gov. Tom McCall, Oregon Gov. Vic Atiyeah, Sen. Wayne Morse “who had a large Hereford cattle ranch outside Eugene,” and, in the late 1970s, World War II hero Jimmy Doolittle.
“The reason Jimmy Doolittle liked coming to Oregon is he loved duck and goose hunting,” Severson said of the commander of the bold long-range Doolittle Raid air raid on some of the Japanese main islands on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“One of his perks was to hunt ducks and geese in Oregon. He was a great guy. We presented him with a big western Oregon rocking chair, with a big plaque on it, made by R. Veal and Sons Furniture, which was a big western maple and alder furniture factory in Albany.”
Other memorable guests were astronaut John Glenn, who participated with the capsule in which he became the first American to orbit the earth, and in 2015, the Vietnam River Rats boat.
“Jim Willis brought that down on a big semi from Vancouver,” Severson said. “He had to get special permits to bring it down I-5 because it was oversized. It was one of the two actual boats they ever used in Vietnam.
“That was quite an honor to step onto that boat after the parade. How those guys would have survived was incredible. To step onto the boat, it was just something.”
Severson said he started announcing in 1974, after the death of Dan B. Roth.
“There used to be a big bunch of announcers. I got involved with them because I was working for Dan B. I got pulled into the circle. I’m the only one left now. It is kind of a real honor.”
Over the years Severson has announced not just the parades, but “all kinds of events all over the state.”
“In my 50 years, I’ve done close to 3,000 events at no charge – granges, conservation groups,
agricultural events, logging shows, whatever.”
He was a longtime member of the Lions Club in Sweet Home before it shut down.
“It was a lot of fun. We used to meet on Monday night at Mollie’s Bakery and she used to serve family-style dinners.”
Severson said he would like to see younger generations get involved in the Albany parade and he’d really like to see more participation from Sweet Home, his home town.
“The sad thing is no young guys are coming up, wanting to do it,” he said of the need for announcers. “Young people today are too involved in their computers, phones and this and that. When I was young, you listened to them and you learned from that. You picked up on their lines, what they said and how they acted. If a parade gets out of line, you wing it.
“I had good teachers. They basically just said, ‘We’re just going to step aside and you’re going to take over.’
“I’ve just basically stayed involved over the years, in one capacity or another. I don’t know how many years I’ll be able to do it, but I’ll do it as long as the Good Lord will let me.
“I want to keep this alive because Linn County is looked upon as one of the most patriotic counties in the nation,” he said. “It’s because of what we do for our veterans. We campaigned real hard to get the Veterans Home in Lebanon.”
When Severson was young, Sweet Home High School entered a float and its band marched in the parade each year.
“I’d love to see that happen again.”
The parade’s 75th year will be 2026 and Severson has big plans, though he said he can’t go into detail.
“I’m hoping to get some big names, some participants that people would recognize, things we’ve never had before or haven’t had since way back,” he said.
Severson was recognized as the local Veterans Day celebration’s Distinguished Veteran of the Year in 2019, and he said one of his greatest treasures is a Quilt of Valor he received earlier this year, created for the Brownsville Pioneer Picnic Quilt Show by Carolyn Stegall.
“Certificates are nice and awards are nice, but when you get a blanket that someone put hours into, that means a lot,” he said, adding that the quilt won “the top award” in the Brownsville show.
“It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s about our veterans. They’ve given a lot more than I ever have.
“Every day is Veterans Day with me. That’s the way I’ve been brought up: Past, present, future veterans are never forgotten.”