Hugs and Warmth Aplenty

I walked through the door of Oden Hall yesterday morning to drop off some donated books before the auction began. 

Before having a chance to take the books to my friend Cherry, I received half a dozen hugs. 

I thought at that moment that, happily, there are still a few places around the area where hugs are free and generously given from the heart. 

An event like yesterday's fundraiser at Oden Hall is one of them. 

It felt good to have given something away only to be given something even more meaningful given back half a dozen times. 

When I returned later, the auction action was in full steam with homemade pies and cinnamon rolls selling for more than $50.  A large crowd was either seated or standing keeping close track of what was being held up for sale. 

Still, the warmth and well-seasoned friendships among the mostly local crowd in attendance was palpable. 

People know each other and, in many cases, the connections date back decades and generations. 

Conversation flows with ease because no lengthy explanations are needed when a name is mentioned.  

Both parties usually know what and about whom you are talking, so the story involving that person or others can move along without extra identifying details.  

All in all, the visiting was excellent as were the results of the sale.  Thanks to a successful auction, the Oden Busy Bees are looking for someone to put a fresh coat of paint on the building which has been home to functions since 1929.

Twas definitely a scene filled with "dear hearts and gentle people who live in my hometown."

Hope you enjoy the photos of some of the above.  

 

Dear Hearts and Gentle People

Song by Bing Crosby

I love those dear hearts and gentle people

Who live in my hometown

Because those dear hearts and gentle people

Will never ever let you down

They read the good book from Fri' till Monday
That's how the weekend goes
I've got a dream house I'll build there one day
With picket fence and ramblin' rose
I feel so welcome each time that I return
That my happy heart keeps laughing like a clown
I love the dear hearts and gentle people
Who live and love in my hometown

There's a place I'd like to go and it's back in Idaho
Where your friendly neighbors smile and say hello
It's a pleasure and a treat to meander down the street
That's why I want the whole wide world to know

I love those dear hearts and gentle people
Who live in my hometown
Because those dear hearts and gentle people
Will never ever let you down
They read the good book from Fri' till Monday
That's how the weekend goes
I've got a dream house I'll build there one day
With picket fence and ramblin' rose
I feel so welcome each time that I return
That my happy heart keeps laughing like a clown
I love the dear hearts and gentle people
Who live and love in my hometown

Home, home, sweet home
Home, home, sweet home
Home, home, sweet home
Home, home, sweet home

  

Sweet Wendy Hansen Franck (above) posted after the event: 

Today, the Oden Hall auction achieved outstanding results. It would be an understatement to say that the community demonstrated exceptional support for our fundraising efforts aimed at maintaining this historic building and preserving its rich history. 

We hope you will acknowledge the individuals, businesses, and people who generously donated to the auction. Please show your appreciation for their kindness by supporting them, as businesses are frequently solicited for donations. 

Remember to patronize them while shopping and spending. Notably, Tim and Lisa Laude from T. Laude services donated the hot dogs, Super One donated bottled water, Frito Lay donated chips, and Franz donated buns. The Eagles provided drinks, and Sandpoint Cinemas donated movie passes for us to sell. Jeff Sater and Tom Spade gave us the gift of their time and did an outstanding job auctioning. 

We had some delicious desserts and numerous great items to auction off. I'm afraid I'll miss someone if I try to list everything and everyone who made this a success, but just know that it takes a collective effort from many people. 

Thank you to everyone who came out today and to everyone who contributed.

💙💚💛💜💙💚💛💜

Finally, I love the writings of Tim Henney, and, like any of his fans, I'm sad for him and his family as they grieve the loss of their wife and mother.

I knew Jacquelynn only through Tim's writings and from one meeting at DiLuna's Restaurant. 

It was obvious through his writings that the two had found their lifelong soulmates.  

Sending condolences to Tim and his family. Once again, his exceptional and insightful writing published in the Sandpoint Reader provides a wonderful portrait of his beloved and her life well-lived.  

Jacquelynn Pelton Henney, 1935-2026

My beloved “1957 bride” Jacquelynn Henney of Sandpoint, Idaho (“Mumsie” to her loving family), passed away Sunday afternoon, May 31, at home after a lengthy struggle with dementia. Born Jan. 25, 1935 in Los Angeles, Jackie worked her way through the University of California, attending the Santa Barbara and Riverside campuses before graduating from Cal-Berkeley. Asked if she had become a famous Berkeley physicist, Mumsie replied, “I went there to have fun and to find a man. I did both, and got an A in archery.”

Her family — husband, three children and four grandkids, plus horses and dogs — were the lights of her life. The planet never knew a more beloved partner, mother and grandmother. Her heart and smile were as large as the adventuresome and loving life she led.

At Cal-Riverside, modest Jackie was elected the first homecoming queen of the new campus, a title that embarrassed her in later years when I would share her collegiate celebrity with friends. For several early-1950s summers, she worked at a juice stand in the original Lake Arrowhead Village in the San Bernardino Mountains and became an accomplished water skier on then-public and pristine Lake Arrowhead. In the summer of 1956, her senior college year, with an unconventional pixie haircut, wearing sandals and no makeup, Jackie Pelton of Whittier met yours truly of Long Beach on the Berkeley campus. She smiled that incredible smile and that was it! When I phoned after having been introduced that afternoon Jackie didn’t remember who I was, or seem to care. After I said I was the guy with the small British roadster and the huge German shepherd in the jump seat, she consented to accompany me, top down, to San Francisco the following Saturday night to hear the Kingston Trio.

Upon graduation, Mumsie returned to Lake Arrowhead to teach kindergarten. We wed a year later on Block Island, R.I., off the Connecticut coast. Our first home was a cozy walkup brownstone studio apartment in bohemian Greenwich Village, N.Y. Rent was $105 a month, which we considered expensive. 

Jackie commuted to New Jersey to teach school via the celebrated “Take The A Train” of Duke Ellington big band fame; from underground Greenwich Village north to the George Washington Bridge, by bus over the Hudson River, then a hike to school. She later taught at a prep school in Indianapolis. 

During many years living first in New York and then in leafy commuting suburbs of the city, we became enthusiastic fans of Broadway musicals. The 1950s were Broadway’s golden age and we saw many fabled performances with original casts. 

Between corporate and personal moves, Mumsie reared her three absolutely perfect kids in Indianapolis, Ind.; Pines Lake, Glen Rock and Ridgewood, N.J.; Lloyd Harbor, N.Y., Palos Verdes, Calif.; and twice in the farming community of Geneseo, Ill. Mumsie and I moved to Sandpoint, our 14th home, in 2005 from Logan, Utah.

A dedicated environmentalist, Jacquelynn in the early 1970s helped launch a recycling program in Illinois. A devoted gardener and naturalist, on none of the properties we owned did she apply herbicides, insecticides or pesticides. 

She had the greenest of thumbs and adored bees, birds and butterflies. With tissues she rescued house spiders and ladybugs, gently escorting them outside. A dressage rider for years before dementia claimed her, Jackie kept backyard horses and free-range chickens coast to coast. 

She gave names to her hens and this caused family trauma when hawks and owls intervened, as they were disposed to do. Cats and dogs also were always much loved regular family members.

Mumsie was a modern Luddite and something of a contrarian. She preferred an open window and ceiling fans to air conditioning and dismissed computers, cellphones and social media as retrograde gadgetry. AI, whatever that is, wouldn’t have had a chance with Mumsie. 

For years she played club tennis and sailed on the Mississippi River, Long Island Sound, on Western mountain lakes and with family in the West Indies. Racing against fellow sailors across the Mississippi in a stiff wind, the skipper (me) would shout, “Ready about!” as we headed briskly for a threatening rocky embankment. Mumsie, at the helm, was known to reject such urgent commands if she considered them premature. We were lucky to come out alive.

In the 1980s, having returned to Illinois after 1986 retirement from AT&T in New York, we owned a small farm near our in-town home. Mumsie operated a business there with friends called Corn Crib Crafts & Collectibles, in a corn crib. It failed to gain Fortune’s list of largest conglomerates. She also helped start an informal group of lady hikers that continues with local granddaughters to this day.

Jacquelynn was a sporadically active member of the Friends, Congregational and Presbyterian churches and of PEO. She was a constant reader and musically a Willie Nelson and John Prine devotee. She tended a green dining room jungle and championed society’s underdogs. She volunteered at CASA and later at a Sandpoint thrift store to assist handicapped children. 

During winters spent in Moab, Utah, she volunteered as an animal shelter dog walker. She contributed to Sierra Club, Habitat For Humanity, Planned Parenthood, the Humane Society and a Native American school. She preferred PBS television and NPR radio to commercial networks. 

Living in Utah In 1996, Jacquelynn was among church members and Utah State U. faculty friends who started and operated the Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon, a thriving organization today.

Mumsie was preceded in death by her parents, John and Roberta Pelton of Whittier, Calif., and by two young brothers, Dean and Dale Pelton, who perished at sea aboard a sailboat in the Bermuda Triangle with their father in 1963 when they were 9 and 11. 

She is survived by children Tim B. Henney (Mary Christa) of Waikoloa, Hawaii; Heidi Gatch (Peter) of Park City, Utah; and Justin Henney (Angela) of Sandpoint and by grandchildren Theodosia Henney of Oakland, Calif.; Scott Henney (Revan) of New York and Adeline and Violet Henney of Sandpoint. Also by brothers John Pelton (Carol) of Pomona, Calif., and Leimana Pelton (Jenette) of Hawaii.

“Mumsie wumsie, puddin’ and pie, kissed the horses and made them sigh. When the hens came out to play, she gave them names and they would lay.” Over the decades, Mumsie’s family constantly ribbed her with such clever poetry.

No service is planned. Memorials may be made to Better Together Animal Alliance, 870 Kootenai Cutoff Road, Ponderay, Idaho, 83852.

Goodbye, dearest Mumsie. Our deepest gratitude and love to you forever and ever and ever. Nighty night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

                                                                   — Submitted by Tim Henney and family