10
community
april10
2012
Senior Stars: Ken Smejkal
By Karen Miller
From time to time, before my
family and I moved to Vernonia, we used
to drive way over here from Scappoose
(it seemed like such a long way!). On
those trips my husband Frank and I
would drop in and visit with a friendly
couple—the men would talk business
and trucks and the wife was a gracious
hostess, entertaining me
as we listened and chatted.
When we decided to
relocate here in 1993 I
already had a warm and
fuzzy feeling about this
rural wilderness land as
a result of knowing this
special couple, Ken and
Penny Smejkal. So I
am honored to interview
Ken, along with wife
Penny, as the Senior Star
for Vernonia’s Voice.
Ken Smejkal was born of Czech
decent; his grandfather Joseph came
over to this country via a ship called the
SS Frankfurt, a one funnel, two masts
with a speed of 13 knots. The ship was
launched in March of 1900 for service
from Bremen, Germany to Baltimore and
she made her first voyage from Bremen
to Galveston, Texas in December of
1901. It was on one of her Galveston
voyages in 1904 that Ken’s grandpa
Joseph arrived on U.S. soil. According
to Ken, many immigrants, especially
Germans and Eastern Europeans entered
the U.S. through the Port of Galveston.
One year later Joseph sent for his
wife, Ken’s grandmother, Teresa, who
packed up her four children, including
Ken’s father Tony, aged 2 and set sail on
the SS Koln. The Koln was later seized
by the United Sates and served as a troop
transport ship during WWI.
The family arrived by train to
Vernonia and made their home around
the Buxton area. Ken fondly remember
that his grandma spoke five languages,
but didn’t know English, so the story
goes, she would trustingly hold out her
Ken Smejkal
hand and let shopkeepers take the right
amount of change.
Transportation in 1905 around
Vernonia consisted of mainly horse and
buggy, wagon or carriage, depending
on your standard of living. For Ken’s
grandpa it was quite a switch, from being
a tailor in Pressburg, Czechoslovakia to
working in and around the woods of the
great northwest.
Ken’s mother Louise was
born on a homestead near what is now
Leonard Schmidlin’s place. Louise’s
Father, Gustav Schmidlin, arrived from
Switzerland; Louise’s mother, Emma
Wunsch set sail for America at the age
of 19 from Germany.
Ken’s father Tony worked as
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a timber faller and began working for
himself in 1948, gypo logging they call
it. According to Ken, Tony had his share
of near misses: In 1926 a log rolled and
pinned him down, he lost an eye in his
teens when a tree limb hit him in the
woods and lost a kidney in the 50s. He
was shot by his brother one time, who
thought he was a cougar.
Tony met and fell in love with
Louise Schmidlin and they were married
in the Catholic Church in 1930. Louise
went to school in Monmouth and
became a teacher in the Braun school off
Highway 47. Ken remembers that his
older brother Jim, now a Timber buyer
in Banks, OR, was paid $8 a month to
go to the school every day
to build fires, sweep floors
and clean blackboards. Ken
also has a younger sister,
Lucille, who lives in the
original family home.
Ken was born in
April of 1937, a home
birth at his Uncle Crue and
Aunt Mary Ohler’s house,
(formerly the Chick Jensen
place) on Timber Road just
outside Vernonia, delivered
by the well-known Dr. Eby.
Ken
remembers
Matilda Bergersen as his first and
second grade teacher at the school in
Kist, named after the gentleman who
homesteaded the property where Ken
and Penny reside today. His name was
Stephan Kist and he had fought in and
survived the Civil War, only to meet an
untimely death, found frozen in a snow
storm when a fallen tree blocked his way
on Peterson Road off Timber Road, then
called Grindstone Road.
Ken and Wayne Golden were
the only two kids in first grade. In 1943
Kist School consolidated with Vernonia.
Ken says back then every six miles or so
there was a school building. Seems the
rule of thumb then was not allowing kids
to walk much more than three miles to
school.
Ken had his fair share of fun
times riding the bus—he describes
himself as a bit of a hell raiser—once
getting kicked off the bus and walking
straight home and writing on his mailbox
in letters big enough to be seen, “H-E-
L-L.”
Ken played basketball in high
Penny Smejkal
school, as a center he stood, “5 feet, 14
inches.” He remembers spending lots
of time warming the bench with Dick
Gwin.
Ken must have learned his
perseverance and entrepreneurial skills
from his father—he shares how he used
to sit and wait for hubcaps to fall off of
passing cars on the rough gravel roads
continued on page 15
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