Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The letter was noted at the Palouse school board meeting June 28. It was the resignation of Bev Spencer from the kitchen cook position, after 10 years.
“What if we just didn’t accept it?” asked Brenda Brown, a member of the board.
“It’s 10 years of wonderful experience that I had,” said Spencer. “When I look back at my past, for jobs, this was the best job I ever had. It was the best one. I consider myself very lucky to have worked in this school.”
Spencer’s immediate retirement plan includes the vegetable garden she and her husband, Steve, keep outside of town.
Spencer retires after a working life that took her from First Montana Title Company in Helena to another title company in Coeur d’Alene, then a few jobs in Palouse, including the former Rose’s Café and Palouse Tavern.
This winter she started thinking about retiring. She decided just as summer beckoned.
Since June 14, when the school year ended, Spencer has been out of the kitchen. All that’s left now for her to do is turn in her keys, transfer the year’s inventory and take down the pictures and keepsakes from the commercial refrigerator.
“You hang up your apron, so to speak,” Spencer said.
While she leaves the job, she said she is not going anywhere.
“I loved my job. I love the people I work with, I love the children,” she said. “I hope to go back as a sub, I want to volunteer, to read to the kids, to see if they can use me.”
She already signed up as a substitute for next year.
“Now I can go to the concerts, to the ballgames, because I don’t have to get up so early,” she said.
Her son Guy moved to Palouse eight years ago and the family began raising Icelandic sheep and growing vegetables. Steve is also retired.
In early June, Spencer started to sell vegetables at the Pullman Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays, under the name Runner Bean Ranch.
Also, bags of wool hanging in the Spencers’ barn and a spinning wheel are available. Spinning is one of the things Bev would like to learn in retirement.
“We really need to concentrate on the family farm now,” she said. “This is our little piece of Palouse heaven. There is a lot of work to do. My son couldn’t do it by himself.”
The Spencers grow hay on most of their 10 acres, then on one, they grow lettuce, peas, kale, beets, corn, garlic, green beans, onions and squash.
This fall, they will invest in a high-tunnel/hoop house to extend the growing season.
Spencer said she eventually hopes to sell straight from her property.
Now, well settled into life in Palouse, Spencer first returned to the area in 1999 after she was laid off from First American Title Company in Coeur d’Alene. She and Steve moved to his parents’ old property outside Palouse where Steve grew up. Steve’s parents are the late Robert and Margaret Spencer.
Bev got a job with the former Rose’s Café as a dishwasher and waitress.
Soon she did some cooking and after Rose’s closed (at the site of The Family Café, which came later), she was hired at Palouse Tavern, working for Mike and Julie Wells, running the bar and cooking on Friday Steak Nights.
She also became a substitute custodian at Palouse when Sandy Boone was the cook. She washed and stacked dishes at times as part of the job.
Boone retired and a co-worker at the Palouse Tavern mentioned she had applied for the school’s cook job. Spencer asked her if she would mind if she applied too.
She ended up getting the job.
“It was the happiest day of my life,” Spencer said. “Besides my kids being born and all that. I was so grateful to get to work at such a wonderful place.”
Since then, Spencer said she enjoyed it all.
“There’s so many things I liked about it. I just love seeing the kids every day. I like the environment. You’re in a warm, safe environment at a school,” she said. “I love the laughter of the children. People are really lucky to have their children go to that school. Everybody cares.”
She originally moved to Palouse with Steve in 1970 after growing up in Kennewick.
The couple moved to Helena in 1972 where they raised their kids.
Her retirement coincides with longtime Principal and Superintendent Bev Fox, who marked her final day at the school last week after 38 years.
“The school’s going to be Bev-less now,” Fox told Spencer.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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