AUGUST 15, 2006 SMOKE SIGNALS
A Life In The Old Way
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Family Tribal Elder Dale Langley poses with Tribal members and
granddaughters Bryanna (I) and Ashley Langley, daughters of son Bryan.
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Happy Couple Tribal Elder Dale Langley with wife Shirley of 50 years.
LANGLEY continued
from front page
to school in the small four-room
schoolhouse that was torn down at
the site of the current Grand Ronde
Middle School.
He was born in the Depression,
he said, "but I don't ever remem
ber being hungry," he said. "My
grandfather (Tribal Elder, now
deceased, William Langley) had
12-14 milk cows and had a little
money coming in from that. He
sold calves for veal and we always
had a few dollars coming in from
that, too. We raised a garden all
the time. My uncle (Tribal Elder,
now deceased, Clint Langley) was
staying with us at that time. He
and my dad brought home meat, so
we had that all the time."
Like many in the community at
that time, Dale grew up thinking
that deer meat was the only kind
of meat.
Langley's dad, Tribal Elder Ivan
Langley Senior (now deceased),
and his mom, Tribal Elder Grace
LaChance Langley (Who now lives
in Elder Housing), also had cows.
It fell to Dale and his brother, be
fore they were teens, to milk them
because his dad worked graveyard
at Murphy's mill. The boys were
up by five-thirty every morning and
worked for a few hours to get the
work done.
Even before that, they were re
sponsible to bring the cows in from
the field and to clean out the barn
every day.
"We never paid much attention to
it," he said. "We just had to do it, so
we did it. Just a part of life."
This is also when he learned to
hunt. His uncle, Clint, took the
boys hunting. "The days you want
ed meat, you went out and killed it
and brought it home. They used to
hunt three to four miles out on the
big ridge between state highways
18 and 22, and then "pack it out."
His uncle Clint "was real good at
hunting," said Dale. "He taught a
lot of young people how to hunt. He
could just about tell where deer were
at, with the weather and stuff."
"We didn't bother with (hunting
seasons)," he said, "but we wouldn't
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Three Generations Tribal Elder Dale Langley and son, Bryan and granddaughter Kara.
shoot a doe with a fawn. It was
kind of hands-off in those times of
the year."
In school, he played basketball,
softball and in the summer, he
joined the local baseball team. He
grew up Catholic and went to the
old St. Michael Church in Grand
Ronde.
His dad had worked as a logger,
and Dale and his brother were
ready early to do the same.
He started working in the woods
when he was 17.
"I lied," he said. "I told them I
was 18."
Today, Dale's son, Bryan, says
that it was seeing how hard his
dad worked that convinced him to
go to college.
Dale married, brought Michael
and Kathy into the world, and
went to war. For two years at the
end of the Korean War, he was an
ordnance man for the Navy in San
Diego.
"I was loading rockets, bombs,
missiles," he said.
When he came home, he started
over.
"When I got out of the service," he
said, "my second wife got me going
to church, and I just started going
to the Pentacostal church..."
Tribal Elder Ken Haller came
through the room. Haller himself is
a Pentacostal preacher. And Lang
ley continued, "...where they've
got these wild preachers," he said,
pointing the joke at Haller.
Religion has been good for "him.
He has been alcohol free for 23
years, he said. "Like everybody
else, on Friday and Saturday
nights, we'd drink a little beer and
run around. At the time, I never
thought it caused a problem. Now,
I can look back and see it was a
problem. I didn't spend enough
time with family and I spent dollars
you shouldn't spend."
Bryan said that when his father
decided to quit, "God just took away
the craving and he hasn't had a
drink since."
"I just started going to church,"