Scott Swanson
Sue Claasen may be slowing down a little now, but that’s mainly because she can’t get her driver’s license renewed.
That’s one reason why she hasn’t been a regular fixture at the Sweet Home Senior Center, where she’s been a stalwart in the kitchen on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for years, in recent months.
Claasen was born Jan. 15, 1918 in Chelsea, Okla., one of 15 children of whom only two survive. The driver’s license issue is due to the fact that she never got a birth certificate, says her daughter, Rita Kay Schuler of Scio.
Up till her license expired, and she had a bout with the flu that she says she’s still recovering from, Claasen worked for three years as a caregiver for a Philomath resident and then two years for a woman in Crawfordsville.
“She was in her middle 80s, driving back and forth every day in the snow and ice and everything,” Schuler noted.
Claasen grew up in Oklahoma and, after completing school, got a job in the kitchen of a hospital in Tulsa. One of her friends had been to California and, because they both expected to be laid off, her friend suggested they move west.
“She said, ‘Sue, let’s go to California,’” Claasen recalled. “I don’t know why I said OK, but we moved.”
They arrived in Hayward, in the South Bay area, in the early 1940s, and got jobs at a restaurant, which she describes as “like a soda jerk.”
One day she was literally run into by the man she would marry, her daughter said.
“She was getting ready to cross a crosswalk in Hayward,” Schuler said. “I don’t know if he almost hit her or if he hit her. I think he might have knocked her down. She still has a ruby ring he gave her to tell her he was sorry and she still wears it.”
Jacob Claasen was a plumber and jack-of-all-trades who also grew mushrooms. They married on June 4, 1940 and Rita arrived as the mushroom business grew.
“He would go to market in San Francisco and I would take the baby and go to market in San Jose,” Claasen said. “We also sold mushrooms at our house.”
The mushrooms were a major component of their lives, she said. They grew both white and brown varieties.
“You had to be so darn particular watering them. You couldn’t spray them because it would bruise the mushrooms. You had to use a mister.”
Schuler said the operation grew from “five or 10 acres to 20” in Hayward.
Sue Claasen also worked for some 20 years at the Alameda County Juvenile Detention Center, dealing with incorrigible, unwanted and homeless children.
Then, in the early 1960s the Claasens, who now had three sons, Johnny, David and Randy, visited a friend in the Sweet Home area.
“He took us and showed us around and said, ‘Why don’t you move up here?’” Claasen said.
She said Jacob had been growing concerned about the environment in the South Bay.
“My husband wanted to get out of Hayward,” she said. “It was getting pretty rough, you know. He did not want to raise three boys there.”
They found some land on Sunset Lane, about a mile southwest of Crawfordsville, which bordered the Calapooia River.
“The boys just fell in love with the river,” she said.
They bought the property and Jacob built a new house on the land, and they moved there in 1964. All three boys graduated from Sweet Home High School and, she said, they loved the land, but they didn’t like mushrooms.
“Jacob built two mushroom houses and he thought the boys would get interested but they didn’t want to do it.”
She said David, who lives next door to her, did help with the business from time to time, but none of them wanted to take it over.
She liked living in the Sweet Home area, she said, though she prefers living in the country. She recently lived in town for two years, “but I could not take that,” she said. “I told (family members) I was moving back home.
“I’ve never regretted moving here. I’ve always liked it here.”
After retiring from a job as a supervisor at Stokely Van Camp cannery in Albany, where she worked for 17 years, she got active in the community, particularly in Sweet Home.
“I never was involved much in Brownsville,” she said. “Probably because the boys went to school in Sweet Home and everything.”
She’s been active in Sweet Home Emergency Ministries and she’s still a member of Royal Neighbors and the Sweet Home Garden Club.
Claasen also started the Bridge Day celebration in 1989.
The low-key reunion-style gathering brings the community and visitors together on the historic covered bridge on the last Saturday of August.
“The women (in Crawfordsville) didn’t have much to do,” she said. “So we had Bridge Day. We got a lot of support from the community. They’d rent tables and paid for advertising and everything.”
The event includes historical displays and information, bake sales, a barbecue and various vendors selling crafts and other items.
“When we first started it we didn’t know what it was going to do,” she said. “We’ve had really good luck with Bridge Day. Everybody has been so willing to help.
Claasen has also been active with the Senior Center.
“She was absolutely a die-hard,” said Joan Riemer, vice president of the Senior Center Board of Directors. “She worked in the kitchen and she would not miss coming and serving lunch. We’d given her lot of options not to come but that’s what would get her up in the morning.
“I’ve been there six years, going on seven. She’s been there long, long before I came along. She had a sweet attitude and she loved to serve people. When she wasn’t there, people wondered where she was.”
Claasen said she believes the key to a healthy life is work and friends.
“I think friends are the most important thing you can have,” she said. “