2A — THE OBSERVER
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019
LOCAL
D AILY
P LANNER
Road
crews
ready for
winter
TODAY
Today is Wednesday, Nov.
6, the 310th day of 2019. There
are 55 days left in the year.
By Bill Bradshaw
EO Media Group
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On Nov. 6, 1984, President
Ronald Reagan won re-
election by a landslide over
former Vice President Walter
Mondale, the Democratic
challenger.
Bill Bradshaw/EO Media Group
ON THIS DATE
Gladys Huffman, a World War II veteran of Britain’s Royal Air Force, sits covered in a quilt presented to her by the
American Legion, of which she is a member in her own right. She was a war bride to a pilot in the U.S. Army Air
Forces and has been a U.S. citizen since 1945. She now lives at the Alpine House at Joseph.
In 1814, Adolphe Sax, the
inventor of the saxophone,
was born in Dinant, Belgium.
In 1860, former Illinois
congressman Abraham
Lincoln of the Republican
Party was elected President
of the United States as
he defeated John Breck-
inridge, John Bell and
Stephen Douglas.
In 1861, Confederate Presi-
dent Jefferson Davis was
elected to a six-year term of
offi ce.
In 1956, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower won re-
election, defeating Demo-
crat Adlai E. Stevenson.
In 2012, President Barack
Obama was elected to
a second term of offi ce,
defeating Republican chal-
lenger Mitt Romney.
In 2016, FBI Director
James Comey abruptly
announced that Democrat
Hillary Clinton should not
face criminal charges related
to newly discovered emails
from her tenure at the State
Department.
Making her home in Joseph
■ Gladys Huffman’s century-long storied life brings her to Wallowa County
By Bill Bradshaw
EO Media Group
JOSEPH — How does
a young English girl who
served in the Royal Air
Force end up in Joseph,
Oregon? To tell the full story
would take a long time to
tell — just about 100 years.
That’s because Gladys
Huffman will turn 100 in
January.
But for this Veterans Day,
she’s one of the few World
War II veterans left in
Wallowa County — and the
only one living at the Alpine
House in Joseph.
Born in January 1920
in Birkenhead, England,
Huffman was just 19 when
Great Britain declared war
on Nazi Germany after Hit-
ler’s Sept. 1, 1939, invasion
of Poland.
Like many of her country-
men — and women — she
wanted to join the war
effort. At fi rst, she volun-
teered as an air raid warden
and spotter in her home-
town. Both Birkenhead and
Liverpool were prominent
shipbuilding centers and
thus targets of the Luftwaffe
— the German air force.
“We had an anti-aircraft
gun parked right outside
our house,” she recalls, say-
ing she was based near her
home.
She even remembers
after one Luftwaffe raid, the
building in which she was
taking shelter was hit and
heavily damaged, but she
and others survived in the
basement.
“We didn’t know how we
were going to get out until
a pickax came through the
wall and somebody asked if
we were OK,” she says.
As an air raid warden,
she helped enforce blackouts
during the Blitz — Ger-
many’s early, unsuccessful
effort to bomb Britain into
submission that culminated
in British victory in the
Battle of Britain — and
after a bombing by the
Luftwaffe she would call in
where emergency services
CORRECTION
In the Nov. 4 article, “Union
County Girl Scouts take
Manhattan” on page 1 A,
Angela D’Antonio’s last name
was mispelled.
LOTTERY
Megabucks: $5.7 million
8-22-26-29-36-40
Mega Millions: $145 million
2-9-24-49-54-19-x3
Powerball: $40 million
3-23-32-37-58-22-x2
Win for Life: Nov. 4
14-17-55-58
Pick 4: Nov. 5
• 1 p.m.: 4-3-9-2
• 4 p.m.: 0-9-5-3
• 7 p.m.: 2-3-5-2
• 10 p.m.: 0-4-6-1
Pick 4: Nov. 4
• 1 p.m.: 2-1-2-6
• 4 p.m.: 3-5-2-9
• 7 p.m.: 3-4-1-9
• 10 p.m.: 2-1-7-0
NEWSPAPER LATE?
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Monday through Friday, please
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If your delivery is by
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should be by 6 p.m. For calls
after 6, please call 541-975-
1690, leave your name,
address and phone number.
Your paper will be delivered
the next business day.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The illiterate of the
future will not be the person
who cannot read. It will be
the person who does not
know how to learn.”
— Alvin Toffl er, American
writer-futurist
Courtesy of Gladys Huffman
Huffman, then Favager,
is shown in her Women’s
Auxiliary Air Force uni-
form while serving for
Britain’s Royal Air Force
during World War II.
were needed. She says that
on one occasion, her family
spent 10 days in an air raid
shelter.
She says the bombings
during the Blitz and the
blackouts were the worst
parts of the war she experi-
enced personally.
“You couldn’t see any-
thing (at night),” she says.
“You couldn’t even see the
street signs to know where
you were. That was the
hardest to take.”
Of course, the worst expe-
rience for her and her family
was what happened to two
of her brothers, Reginald
and Victor Favager, who also
were in the RAF.
Huffman said that one
night, during the same raid
over occupied Europe, both
the Lancaster bombers
her brothers were aboard
were shot down. Victor, who
had lied about his age and
enlisted at 17, was killed,
and Reginald, 19 at the
time, was taken prisoner.
Reginald was captured near
the site where the Germans
were doing rocket tests and
he was accused of being a
spy.
“He was treated very
badly by the Nazis,” she
says, adding that he did
survive the war.
As a plane spotter, she
would identify whether
fl ights of planes were friend
or foe and count the num-
bers of enemy planes. Later,
she became one of the early
volunteers in the Women’s
Auxiliary Air Force.
“At fi rst, the RAF didn’t
want women,” she says. “You
had to be able to do a man’s
(desk) job to release him to
go to the front.”
Later on, she says, as
Britain got more desper-
ate for manpower, women
were conscripted, something
American women haven’t
experienced.
Huffman was given a job
as an accountant handling
the fi nances of British and
foreign pilots. That’s how
she met her fi rst husband,
Willard W. Davis.
An American, Davis went
to Canada to try to enlist
in the Royal Canadian Air
Force.
“He wanted to go in right
now” to be a fi ghter pilot,
Huffman said.
But since the process of
becoming a pilot with the
RCAF was going to take
too long, he instead got his
wings with the air force of
the Polish government in
exile. He got his training
and wings from the RAF,
wore an RAF uniform, but
fl ew in a squadron with
Poles and other non-Brits.
Davis fl ew for the Poles
and the RAF until Amer-
ica came into the war in
December 1941.
“He wanted to fl y under
his own colors” and trans-
ferred to the U.S. Army Air
Forces, Huffman said.
The couple married in
June of 1943 and her RAF
service ended. By then, the
Allies were pushing back on
nearly all fronts, but Davis
didn’t want his bride in
harm’s way and sent her to
America.
But that in itself involved
danger. She sailed on the
RMS Aquitania — a former
ocean liner — to New York
and at times was chased by
U-boats.
“It was kind of scary to
know they were following
you,” she says, but added
there was no serious danger
since the Aquitania was so
much faster. She said no
U-boat ever got close
enough to fi re a torpedo.
After V.E. Day in May
1945, Davis served in the
U.S. Army of Occupation in
Germany and his new fam-
ily joined him there. That’s
when Huffman became a
U.S. citizen.
“He said it would be bet-
ter being in Germany with a
U.S. passport than a British
one,” she says.
She said Davis died in
1954, of a heart attack,
induced by the stress of the
war.
Today, Davis has four
daughters, 16 grandchildren
and 17 great-grandchildren.
In 2018, she moved to
the Alpine House since her
daughter, Gockley, was liv-
ing nearby and had lived in
Joseph for 16 years. Gockley
moved to Peck, Idaho, this
year.
Huffman said she had vis-
ited Wallowa County once
before moving here and fell
in love with it.
ENTERPRISE — Colder
temperatures, shorter days
and occasional snow indicate
winter is on the horizon, and
those responsible for keep-
ing Wallowa County roads
and streets clear are getting
ready for it.
Oregon Department of
Transportation keeps clear
about 127 miles on the state
highways — OR82, OR3,
OR350 and OR351 — including
where they go through cities,
while each city is responsible
for its own streets. The Wallowa
County Road Department
clears a total of about 700 miles
of paved and gravel roads.
Brandon Tanzey, roadmas-
ter for Wallowa County, said
his crews have been preparing
for their coming winter work.
“We hope for the best and
expect the worst,” he said
of the likelihood of a rough
winter ahead. “We’ve got
everything geared up and
ready to go.”
Tanzey said the county
has a fl eet of 10 vehicles of
various sorts — graders, plow
trucks, sanders, etc. — to
handle the approximately
700 miles of county roads
and a crew of 11 people to
operate them.
“If it’s really bad, with me
it’s 12,” he said.
He said the county gets
much of its sand/gravel mix
from ODOT. After the snow-
fall of the night of Oct. 28-29,
county crews deposited sand/
gravel on areas that didn’t
get the sun and still had com-
pacted snow, Tanzey said.
Each road department
determines for itself the
circumstances at which they
break out the plows.
Ronnie Neil, public works
director for Enterprise, said
his crew normally comes in
about 4 a.m. if there’s more
than 2-1/2 inches of snow on
the ground.
First, the city takes care
of the downtown and main
emergency routes and school
areas, and then concentrates
on residential areas. Similar
priorities are common in
other cities in the county.
Some road departments
take a less specifi c approach.
“We play it by ear,” which
usually means 2 to 4 inches,
ODOT’s Tanzey said.
All the road departments
except Joseph use sand or a
sand/gravel mix, particularly
on hills and at curves. Joseph
doesn’t use sand because of the
few hills in town, said Larry
Braden, city administrator.
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