A Century of Service to Home and Family: An Oregon Veteran Shares Their Story
By Garrett Christensen on Friday, June 30th, 2023 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
PONDOSA, OR– The Greatest Generation earned the title for a reason. In the face of economic hardship and global conflict, millions of men and women rose to the challenge for the good of the nation and their families. In the modern age, very few witnesses to this extraordinary era are still with us and the number is only continuing to dwindle. However, in a quiet corner of Baker County, in the former mill town of Pondosa, a man who is without a doubt one of the greatest examples of the Greatest Generation is celebrating his one hundredth birthday.
Robert Bennett was born June 27, 1923, in Springfield Oregon. He grew up with two brothers and moved to Eugene in 1939. He graduated from high school in 1941 and married his wife, Jean, on December 21, 1942. They were married for over seventy years until she passed away in 2014. In early 1943, Robert was drafted into the United States Marine Corps and served in the Pacific theater as a radio operator. He was discharged from the service in 1945. In 1983, he moved to Pondosa to take over the property from his brother-in-law, who didn’t have children to pass it down to. Since then, he has continued to operate the Pondosa store and take other jobs in the meantime.
Every date and fact just mentioned didn’t come from a book or photo album, nor were they told by a relative or care giver. Robert, at the age of 100, explained everything about his life in clear, confident detail. While his daughter Lori (who was kind enough to reach out to ElkHorn Media Group initially) and son Larry helped confirm details or bring up new topics, Robert himself is still as sharp as they come and has a lifetime of stories to share. As he stated, and more than proved:
“One thing I give the Lord thanks for every day is that I still have my mentality and my ability to remember things. I can remember things back when I was just a youngster.”
When Robert completed boot camp in San Diego, he signed up for radio school and trained at College Station Texas, learning morse code and code theory. He was later assigned to the First Marine Air Wing’s Headquarters Squadron in the South Pacific. Though not directly engaged with Japanese forces during his time, he still served on the front lines, communicating with CoastWatchers, and coordinating airstrikes, describing his service:
“I was not engaged in any hand-to-hand combat over there. Our outfit was going to invade Rabaul, that’s on New Guinea, that was a Japanese stronghold, but they decided to bypass it. So, we ended up landing on a little island called Emirau just off of Rabaul in New Guinea. We savaged the airbase there. I was a radio operator and what I did was I was in contact with what they called Coast Watchers over there in New Guinea. What they did was they would determine Japanese movements along the coast highways and stuff and send me reports, this was all in morse code, through the CW radio the movements of the Japanese and we’d send airstrikes against them.”
Despite the intensity and danger of some parts of this service, Robert remembers his time in the Pacific somewhat lightheartedly. When serving on an island with no accommodations, he and his unit would sleep in jungle hammocks tied between palm trees and dig foxholes beneath. When Japanese airstrikes came, they simply rolled out of bed into the foxholes, with Robert casually recalling:
“It was not too combative duty, I was grateful for that, I wasn’t in any life-threatening situations so to speak, except for dodging bombs and stuff.”
In 1944, Robert returned to the continental United States and was assigned to Mojave Air Base in California. Though not on the front lines, new challenges emerged like trying to find a permanent home for his family. While on leave, Robert returned to Eugene, loaded up his wife, newborn daughter and whatever they could carry into a trailer and their 1924 Buick Coupe with wooden spokes, which he bought from a widow in Idaho while working for a survey crew, and set off for the Mojave countryside. At the time, service members could only live on base with their families for a month before needing permanent residence. Keeping with the can-do, ‘learn it as you go’ attitude, they traveled until finding a house next to an Edison Water Mill. As Robert explained it:
“We went and looked it over and I looked up the owner of the property and his name was Duntly, old man Duntly. He lived at a farm up the road. I went up to this guy and said ‘well, we’re looking desperately to find a place to live off base.’ I said, ‘how about that house down there?’ He said ‘well, it hasn’t been used for a long time, but if you want to fix it up to make it livable you go ahead.’ He let us move in there.”
The family settled in Mojave in an old mill house, with a few soap boxes for tables, a water spring, and the old Buick. When Robert left the service in 1945, they would eventually move back to Eugene, where, after a short stint in a rental home, Robert would go from buying old houses to building them himself. He first built a small 20ft by 20ft structure, which was supposed to have just been a garage, before tackling something bigger. By his own account, he figured almost all of this out by himself with some help here and there.
“I learned building at that time. I had never built anything before. But when I wanted to figure out how to put something together, what I’d do, I’d go out and look for a contractor that was building a house and go ‘ok, that’s how it’s done.’ That’s how I learned how to build. I ended up building that house and instead of adding on a residence alongside it, I started a family, and I needed bedroom space, so I just built on the back of it for bunk beds. Then, as time progressed, I bought a place up on the hill, lived there a while, and then pretty soon decided I needed to get out in the country and went and built myself a home. I did all the work myself except for contracting just foundation stuff, but I built a big three thousand square foot home out in Eugene.”
During this time, Robert worked at Georgia Pacific Plywood plant in Springfield. Starting out by “chasing conveyors and working the green chain,” he moved up to loading box cars with a forklift. Eventually, he took over as the shipping and finishing supervisor after the previous one had retired. “He started at the bottom and worked his way to the top,” as his son Larry put it.
In 1983, Jean’s brother, Les, passed away. Prior, Les had purchased and been living on the former Pondosa mill property. With no children for it to go to, it passed to Jean, Robert and their family. At the time, they had only been living in their new, three thousand square foot home for a little over a year. Though a hard decision, Robert decided he liked the Pondosa area better and moved over that year.
Though technically retired by that point, Robert and Jean kept busy. Jean ran the store while Robert dealt with property maintenance and various projects. One task Robert was particularly proud of was the “Hammer Hog” as he called it. On the upper part of the property, a massive pile of sawdust from the mill had sat untouched for years. Robert built a grinder (aka the Hammer Hog) and ground down the dust for years, hauling it across Baker and Union Counties until the pile was all gone.
There was also more change to Pondosa than just the sawdust pile too. The property initially started as 100 acres, though was split up and sold off over the years to make roughly ten new homesites. Some of the land was even donated to construct the Medical Springs Rural Fire Department. It should come as no surprise that Robert himself helped build the station and is even an honorary firefighter. Prior to the station being built, Robert actually put out several wildfires over the years himself with his own 1930s era fire truck that he had driven over from Eugene.
Today, Robert, his daughter Lori along with her husband, son, and grandson all call Pondosa home. The family operate the store, under Robert’s direct supervision of course, selling all manner of goodies and even offering camping areas and hook up spaces for RVs. Even in his later years, Robert has continued to keep busy. This isn’t the first time he’s shared his stories either. While staying in Nampa when Jean was seeing a cardiologist, Robert had volunteered for a hospice care group, visiting other veterans that could no longer leave their homes. The Warhawk Museum also got in touch with him, asking him and about twelve other veterans to guide grade schoolers through the Museum, explaining:
“It was a great experience. Since I was the radio operator, the station they gave me had a code key with a buzzer on it and I was able to demonstrate sending morse code to the kids on the key. That’s one thing I learned, it was back in the 40s, but I never forgot.”
Representatives from the Library of Congress even interviewed Robert while in Nampa, archiving recordings of his wartime service stories. As to how he stayed healthy and sharp enough to remember his service for the National Archives, Robert credits to two primary factors:
“There are two things I think a person can count on to make a longer, better life for themselves. One is to quit smoking. Another is keep busy, don’t just sit around. I’ve been busy all my life. Right now, at my age, I’m not as active as I used to be, but I’ve always been active all my life. I kept busy doing things. I built two or three houses. I had a woodworking shop. I built a lot of furniture. I just kept busy all the time.”
While by his own accounts, Robert is starting to slow down, at least physically, this old veteran seemingly has a lot of living left. Even at 96 he was working on ladders and building the shed that now covers the old wagon in front of the Pondosa Store according to Larry. From learning to drive a Model T at age 13, to raising five children, and still driving himself to Baker City twice a week, Robert has gotten everything out of life he put into it. As he put it best:
“I’ve got a lot of good memories. A lot of life. Very few bad memories.”
