Hersman has 100 years of Northwood memories

Tim Newcomb
Tribune assistant editor

Mildred Hersman

LYNDEN -- Nobody knows the history of the Northwood Road area like Mildred Hersman. After all, she has seen it evolve for 100 years.
  Hersman, who celebrated her 100th birthday on Sept. 22, has lived nearly all of those years in Whatcom County, mostly at a lumber mill and later a chicken farm at the corner of what is now Northwood and East Badger roads. In fact, she had lived all but 14 years of her life on Northwood until 2002. Then, when she was well into her 90s, she moved from the family farm into Meadow Greens Retirement Community in Lynden.
  A recent visit with Mildred, her eldest son Don Hersman and granddaughter Lynn Hersman provided a rare glimpse into life before and during the Great Depression and the many years after.
  Hersman said she remembers moving, with her mother, to live with her aunt in the cookhouse at the Roo and Van Leeuwen Mill at the corner of what is now Northwood and Badger roads when she was about 4 years old.
  Her mother then remarried to a mill worker and the family stayed on the mill site.
  Mildred, who contributed to the Lynden Community Center local history books, wrote that she remembered watching trains roll by and all the activity surrounding getting large horses ready for mill work.
  That corner for the horse barn is now where the Northwood Market stands.
  Her trips into Lynden to do shopping were first on a horse and buggy and later on in a Ford Model-T coupe, purchased for $25.
  While growing up, Mildred also lived for a stint with relatives on a farm on Pole Road and then back inside Lynden.
  Mildred attended Northwood
School (now Covenant Christian School) off and on until the eighth grade and then graduated from Lynden High School in 1927.
  She would later serve on the Northwood School Board, she said.
  Mildred then lived for a time outside of Whatcom County training to be a nurse at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle.
  But she was soon home to marry Lewis Hersman in 1931. While the two graduated in the same LHS class, they “didn’t go together” in those days, she remembers.
  “I got tired of waiting and got married,” she said.
  And while Mildred didn’t think it was a great idea, Lewis served in the U.S. Navy in the engine room of a battleship in an effort to learn a skill that could make the couple money when married. She said he didn’t learn anything other than how to work in an engine room on a battleship.
  “How do you earn a living on a battleship?” she still questions.
  Lewis worked at mills off and on and the couple also lived in Ferndale for a short time. But to make enough money to live on during the Depression, they moved onto Mildred’s parents’ property next to the mill on Northwood Road approximately in 1934 to begin the process of raising chickens.
  The couple then moved next door to property of their own -- with chickens of their own -- three years later.
  While she doesn’t remember much about life on the chicken farm, it is there that she remained the rest of her life until the move into Meadow Greens.
  “We got in the routine and gathered eggs at a certain time and had to feed (the chickens),” she did say.
  Mildred and Lewis had four children: Don, Sharlene, Kenneth and Richard, the latter dying at an early age from whooping cough.
  Between the other three, Mildred has been treated to eight grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and now nine great-great-grandchildren.
  Lewis passed away in 1995, after 64 years of marriage.
  The chicken farm started small, with Lewis working stints at mills when they were running to keep the family afloat. The Hersman dream house took shape over decades, and the poultry operation grew to have -- at its peak -- over 20,000 chickens, Don said.
  Lewis and Mildred were early members of the Methodist Church, Lynden’s first congregation, and she still makes it to services when she is able to get a ride.
  Mildred grew up a Baptist, but that had to change. “My husband was a Methodist and he wouldn’t change, so I did,” she said.
  For 25 years, the couple spent winters in Arizona.
  Mildred said she also remembers loving to fish the local lakes, but even more enjoying fishing trips to Canada because there are “more fish up there.”
  Over the years, she has also spent time writing local history, working on genealogies and, when Lewis was alive, square dancing.
  And Mildred still keeps up on family happenings and e-mails relatives all across the country.
  E-mail Tim Newcomb at tim@lyndentribune.com.