Black History
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Colbert
continued from page 10
You could sign up to be a merchant seaman
or work in the shipyard.”
The Colberts moved to Vanport and began
arranging for other family members to join
them. Colbert drove down to Texas to bring
the children to Portland.
“She was very instrumental in
bringing people here,” says Kelly.
“First she sent for my youngest sister
and her husband. Then she sent for
my dad and my mom and five of my
siblings. There were eight of us and
three of us stayed behind for another
six months. I was 10 when my dad
sent for us. That was our family in
1946.”
Colbert only gave up driving three
years ago, when she was 97. And she
still has a great memory, vividly recalling
the events of the Vanport flood of 1948.
“The kids were at school,” she says, “and
they told them ‘Go home and tell your
mother to get to higher ground.’ The kids
were running in the streets and people were
saying, ‘What’s wrong with the kids?
What’s wrong with the kids?’ I remember
looking out of the window and seeing water
just water for as far as you could see.”
Kelly, who was 11 at the time, also
remembers that day. Everyone believed that
Chapman Elementary, others to Elliot. Fam-
ilies had to stay in makeshift shelters for
more than six months.
“They didn’t have anything,” Colbert
says. “Just what Goodwill and the Salvation
Army gave them.”
Colbert gave birth to two children,
Fay, now deceased, and Margaret, a
retired Washington County Deputy
Sheriff. She bought a house on N.
Commercial at N. Blandena. She also
held down a variety of jobs, working
for some time at a poultry factory and
also for a Dr. Buck who lived in the
Laurelhurst neighborhood.
One of Colbert’s lasting legacies is
her contribution to dozens of neigh-
borhood children. Every summer she
would rent a school bus and organize work
parties, taking young people from the
neighborhood out to farms to pick produce.
For many it was their first job and a source
of pride.
“We grew up picking everything they
‘Aunt Stell was our role model
and she was the best role
model you could have’
a lot of people were drowning in the flood,
he remembers. Even now he finds it hard to
believe that the official count was just 15
lives lost.
After the flood the children in the family
had to go to different schools. Some went to
grew in Oregon,” says Kelly. “She drove the
bus and took us out to farms where we’d
pick beans, strawberries, walnuts, cherries,
cucumbers. We went 50 miles in every
direction.
“We learned a good work ethic through
her. She led by example. I never knew her to
smoke or cuss. Aunt Stell was our role
model and she was the best role model you
could have. I felt that way and I know
everyone else did too.”
To this day, people come up to Colbert to
thank her for taking them to the fields to
work and giving them their first chance to
earn money.
“If I took you on the bus you couldn’t go
fishing,” she says. “You had to work or you
weren’t’ coming back.”
For more about your
neighborhood go online to
www.TheSkanner.com
February 22, 2012 The Portland and Seattle Skanner v BLACK HISTORY EDITION v Page 11