When Marilyn G. Ericksen, a history buff and cherry farmer from The Dalles, began recording oral histories of Wasco County back in the 1980s, one name kept surfacing: “You should talk to Ernie Kuck,” she was told, again and again.
So she did – he was her uncle by marriage – although he declined to speak on tape. “He didn’t want to be on tape.
He said, ‘It would be I, I, I, and I don’t want that,’” Ericksen explains in her new book, “Remembering Ernie Kuck.”
After his death in 1992, Ericksen was again encouraged to do a story on him – especially after it was revealed that he had left a large bequest for the Wasco County Historical Museum. “Overnight, this ‘tightwad’ became a magnanimous philanthropist,” Erciksen writes. “When the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, with the Wasco County Historical Museum (that Ernie made possible) housed in the same building, I elected to gather as much information about Ernie Kuck as I could.”
Tape recorder in hand, Ericksen began recording stories about the man she describes in her book as a “cattleman, historian and philanthropist.”
So Ericksen again got out her tape recorder, recording 25 of the over 40 interviews she conducted in search of Ernie Kuck. “Each person had a little different opinion of Ernie — each saw a different facet of his personality. He became a challenging enigma for me, and I wanted to know him better.”
Her search for the “real Ernie” was lengthy, and often interrupted — the loss of her husband, surgery, a move to a retirement facility in Hood River.
She persisted — for over two decades — joining a writing group, and began creating little vignettes from her notes and interviews. “In my mind, these disconnected stories became a book,” she said.
Yet faced with a mounting number of essays, Ericksen was overwhelmed. “My daughter, Irene Hill, came to my rescue,” she writes. “She helped me evaluate my stories and make them into a connected account.”
“I helped outline the book, and I created the maps and I gathered and selected the pictures,” Hill explained in a recent interview. “Mom wrote the stories.”
She had her own reasons for helping get the book together: “She often talked about how wonderful these interviews were. She said, ‘I ought to do a book about that.’ Then one day, she started saying, ‘You will do this book after I’m gone, won’t you?’”
“So I made sure she did the book before she was gone,” Hill said with a chuckle.
“She did the interviews 20 years ago, and started writing the book three years ago,” Hill said. “It was in bits and pieces, a piece here and piece there. We talked about how to tie it all together.”
“Mom wanted to preserve an accurate history of his life,” Hill explained.
He found the histories fascinating, especially the many ways he was viewed by those who knew him.
“They all saw different facets of his character,” she explained. “There were people that really liked him, and there were others who would turn their back on him, because he had crossed them in some way.”
Who was Ernie Kuck? Born in The Dalles in 1896, the son of a successful saddle and harness maker, Kuck graduated from The Dalles High School in 1916. He served in World War I, was a devoted member of the Elks Lodge, served as a councilman and mayor of the City of The Dalles and chaired the Wasco County Republican Central Committee.
Described as a millionaire, Kuck created a cattle empire by purchasing marginal farmland in the region for, he said, an average of $2 an acre.
He had extensive grazing lands west of the Deschutes River, around Five and Eight Mile creeks southeast of The Dalles, upper Mill and Chenowith Creeks south of town and extensive acreage in the Mosier area.
At one time, he was the largest landowner in Wasco County, with 23,000 acres of pasture and timber.
He was also known for his superb horsemanship, riding as flag bearer for the grand entry at county fairs and rodeos for many years.
It was his horsemanship that ultimately defines how Ernie Kuck is remembered today: On the cover of “Remembering Ernie Kuck” is a photograph of a deep-relief wall sculpture carved in wood, titled “Ernie Kuck Memorial (1997). It is displayed at the Wasco County Historical Museum.
In the sculpture, by Wasco County artist Jeff Stewart, Ernie Kuck is portrayed on horseback, his back to the artist, pushing cattle down Auction Yard Hill toward The Dalles.
The cattle drives were yearly events in The Dalles between 1929 and 1949, as each spring Kuck moved his cattle down Auction Yard Hill on Old Dufur Road, through town and out Chenowith Creek to summer pasture.
Kuck died March 19, 1992 and was buried in The Dalles. His memory, captured so well by Ericksen and Hill, and the many who contributed the stories in their book, lives on.
Rembering Ernie Kuck is available at Klindts Booksellers in The Dalles, the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Waucoma Bookstore in Hood River.
Price is $14.95.
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