Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
It started in a pasture three miles outside of Oakesdale.
LaVerne Pittmann had quit school as a sophomore in high school to help run his parents’ farm in 1938.
Out in the pasture he’d see a girl on the neighbor’s property going out to pump water.
“Mama always said she never had to worry about her water bucket after I met Verne,” said Ruth, who married LaVerne a day before her 18th birthday.
This Saturday, 71 years later, she and LaVerne will be Grand Marshals of Oakesdale’s Old Mill Days Parade.
“It’s quite an honor, I think,” Ruth said. “We’re gonna ride in a convertible and get all gussied up.”
“It’s wonderful,” LaVerne said. “It’s something new.”
“They’re well thought of in the community,” said Gail Parsons, president of the Oakesdale Historical Society and one of the organizers of Old Mill Days. “They’re very generous and giving people, and we wanted to honor them.”
After farming for 50 years on leased land near Oakesdale, the Pittmanns moved to town in 1993.
“A day after our 50th wedding anniversary,” Ruth said.
They are the parents of Dennis, a newly retired Ag Technician from WSU, and Doris (Johnson), who ran the Farmington Post Office for 33 years. They have six grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild soon to arrive.
“I’ll have to add it up again to be sure. So many boyfriends and girlfriends and marrying,” Ruth said. “In another year or two, this family is going to explode.”
As for that courtship along the fence line, Ruth and LaVerne kept an eye out during chores.
“We got to where we were looking for each other pretty close,” Ruth said.
After she finished her junior year of high school, LaVerne was 21 and she was to turn 18 on July 4.
“Verne didn’t want to wait any longer to get married,” said Ruth. “One of my classmates said, ‘You’re not gonna marry that old man. Well, he’s an old man now.”
On July 3 of that summer of 1943, they got in a 1940 Chevy coupe that Verne shared with his brother and went to a place LaVerne had never driven to himself.
“We went to Spokane and picked up my aunt and went to her minister’s house,” Ruth said. “We were married in front of the fireplace.”
After the wedding, Ruth’s job became cooking for hired men on the farm.
Over the decades to come, the couple went to many parades and local events.
“We’ve never missed any celebrations like that,” Ruth said. “We’ve seen a lot of parades. We go to a lot of them. This is going to be different.”
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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