Elizabeth Schmid

Betty started first grade in 1932 in the one-room school that served the lower Trout Lake Valley.

Betty worked as a dental assistant in Hood River the year after graduating from high school and walked across the Hood River Bridge on the original wood-plank decking every Friday to meet her dad to come home for the weekend.  

Betty married Leonard Schmid March 4, 1946, at her parent’s house on Little Mountain Road. She and Leonard were already friends and sweethearts, having worked together on Leonard’s parent’s dairy farm. Leonard taught her to shoot; took her hunting; and pushed her to develop her physical courage.

Leonard’s parents, Adolf and Eava Schmid, helped Betty and Leonard buy their first 70 acres on the east side of valley, with the river on one side and Sunnyside Road on the other. The farm is currently headquarters for a successful organic diary. When Betty and Leonard bought the place, it had a two-story log-cabin house, a big traditional barn that’s still in use and a wood grain silo. 

Leonard was an innovative and visionary farmer and dairyman. By the time Norman was born April 2, 1947, Leonard had already built the first lowered-pit concrete milking parlor in Trout Lake. Their dairy was one of the first to use electric, vacuum-powered milking machines.  

Tragedy struck in the spring of 1949 when first-born Norman wandered out of the house looking for his father and drowned in a shallow pool in the White Salmon River. He was almost two. Betty and Leonard didn’t speak of his death with the next-born children until oldest daughter Patty found a picture in a cedar chest when she was eight. Betty loved having children and said this tragedy ultimately “made her a better mother.” In later years she described having five children under six as “the best time of her life.” Leonard told her he only wanted two things from her; to always vote yes for the school levy and to always have plenty of food. 

By the 1960s the farm was prospering and had expanded, but the family of seven was still crowded in the log-cabin house. Betty put her foot down and insisted that she wanted a new house for the family. Leonard agreed and they finished a big house in 1964 – with an attached two-car garage, dishwasher, and modern heating. When Betty wasn’t supervising kids, she worked the farm. 

A teetotaler her whole life, she had a strong sense of right and wrong. When the industry switched from cans to bulk tank handling, one of the truck drivers brought a six-pack of beer as a gift at Christmas. That didn’t go over too well. She hid the beer from the family and made the driver take it back on the next trip. The driver figured out who was boss and returned with a box of chocolates for Betty.

In 1969 Leonard spent a month looking at farm ground in Brazil with a friend. The next year Betty and Leonard were driving to Portland twice a week to learn Portuguese. Leonard sold the dairy herd to finance the purchase of two blocks of undeveloped farmland near the new capital of Brasilia. The first crops planted were dry land rice and coffee. Sons Terry and Tracey came from Trout Lake to help build a concrete block building with a farm shop on one end and living quarters on the other. Betty remembered causing a sensation in town by riding a bicycle and wearing pants. 

For a decade, the Schmids farmed in both Brazil and Trout Lake. The Trout Lake farm expanded into certified seed potatoes. In August of 1982, Leonard suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. Betty became both a widow and the farm operation’s main decision-maker at the same time. She adapted to widowhood with courage and grace; selling the farm in Brazil; surviving a bad potato year; and beginning a new life focused on helping others. For the first time in her life – with her kids grown – she didn’t have to work from dawn to past dark. She had time to babysit grandkids.

Betty and her long-time friend Bernice Duke revitalized the Trout Lake Fair and were the main organizers for several decades. She helped start the Trout Lake Quilters group; that group started the Saturday Market, both community activities are still going strong today. She was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and active in the Grange for over 50 years. She started a clothing exchange that also provided USDA food commodities to needy families.  The clothing exchange grew into a Labor Day weekend rummage sale, now run by the Trout Lake Community Foundation. That event raises $20-25,000 each year for scholarships.

Betty was passionate about what needed to be done. She tried to leave everything better than she found it.  She believed the next generation deserved open spaces and working farms. The front door of her home has bumper stickers that say, “No Farms – No Food” and “Healthy Forests – Healthy Planet”. She wasn’t afraid to let you know where she stood.

Betty lived her life in service to others. She was intelligent, well-organized, no-nonsense, and plain-spoken. She was careful not to be too critical, but occasionally broke her own rules if she knew you were operating with incorrect information. She never forgot how poor she had been as a child, and throughout her life generously donated both her time and money. She helped build three farms on two continents; all are still working farms. She left a legacy worth remembering.

Betty was predeceased by son Norman in March 1949 and by husband Leonard in August 1982. She is survived by five children - Patty Gray, White Salmon; Terry Schmid, Trout Lake; Bruce Schmid (Wendy), Trout Lake; Tracy Schmid (Trishia), Packwood; Suann Orr (Ken), West Linn, Ore.; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.