Eldest Tribal Elder turns 100

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

In her century of life, Tribal member Lorene Smith has seen a lot, and for the most part, she’s enjoyed the experience.

However, Smith doesn’t quite understand why anyone else might be interested in hearing about it.

“I’ve had an interesting life,” Smith said. “For me it was good but it would bore somebody else.”

Her granddaughter Lorena Rivera, who was raised on Smith’s stories, disagreed.

After turning 100 years old Wednesday, March 19, Smith is now the eldest Tribal Elder, a descendent of Peter McCoy, Second Chief of the Umpqua Tribe, who signed a treaty with the Umpqua and Kalapuya in 1854, and with the Molalla in 1855.

Smith was born in 1925 in Grand Ronde, to Lawrence Smith and Gertrude McCoy, but had only a few years with her mother, who died when she was 4.

She said she can’t recall how old she was when she and her older sister Rosemary were sent to Cushman Indian Hospital & Sanatorium on the Puyallup Reservation in Tacoma, Washington, or exactly how long they stayed.

“They suspected my sister and I of having TB (tuberculosis), that was why we were there,” Smith said. They kept us there for quite a while. They used to make us stand out in the hall of the building we lived in and drink milk. I hated milk. That was a part of my life I didn’t like.”

She continued, “I was about six, but one morning – I guess it was morning, it was dark – I found myself sitting, leaning against a wall. They were punishing me. I don’t know what I did to get punished. I was a shy, quiet, backward kid. So, I was entertaining myself. There was a window above me. I could see the sky; I watched the clouds go by. I don’t know how long it went on.”

After being released from the sanitorium, Smith said, she often worked in the fields with her family, as her father and stepmother, Irene Cunningham, picked crops such as hops and berries, particularly around Independence, like many Grand Ronde families at the time.

 “That was a part of my life I liked, working out in the field,” she said.

She recalled that, “You’d get out there about 6 a.m., be there working and at 10 a.m. they’d send the ice cream truck around to the people, so we all looked forward to that as kids,” she said.

Her favorite flavor was strawberry, she said, before amending it to “actually, anything sweet.”

Tribal Elder Lorene Smith watches dancers during the 40th Restoration Powwow at Spirit Mountain Casino’s Event Center in November 2023. (Smoke Signals file photo)

And although the work was repetitive the kids kept themselves entertained.

“Picking strawberries, you’re down on the ground crawling around, rows and rows of berries, but we’d always sing,” Smith said. “Then we worked in hop fields, they had amateur hour there. They had a ring, like a string match place, and they’d put a microphone. My cousin Arnold Logsden would sing with us, so it kind of entertained people. …  In Independence, I think that was a real small town, and that’s where the grower had his field.”

World War II began in 1939. In 1941, Smith said, “When I was 16, my dad, him and my stepmother went to work in Portland, building airplanes. It was wartime.”

Smith and her sister Rose found jobs in a plant where they packaged eggs for the Army. They snatched eggs from a conveyor belt going by and cracked them into containers.

They soon tired of it, she said, and found jobs in a furniture manufacturing plant instead.

After the war, she said, they returned to field work. But in the 1950s, the United States government began terminating federally recognized Tribes and started a concerted effort to convince Indigenous people to move to cities.

“That government man kept coming out to the berry farm where we worked,” she said. “It took him three times to get me to move.”

The effort was to “get them off the reservations, move them, put them in the city where they can get jobs, live like a white man,” Smith said. “I thought we had a good life on our berry farm, out in the fresh air and the sunshine. Eat all the berries we wanted.”

She laughed, remembering that she once told her boss she needed more time to get to work.

“He said ‘Why, it’s just a walk, not too far away.’ I said, ‘I’ve gotta eat my way through the fields. Stop, eat all the berries.’ He said, ‘Go ahead.’”

But Smith had two children by then, and the government agent kept coming back, making promises. In 1956, she finally agreed to move – on condition that she could be a power machine operator, although she had no idea what that was.

“My dad come down with me,” she said. “He wanted to see me get settled. I was about 31.”

Things did not work out exactly as promised.

“They wanted me to live in San Francisco and I said no,” she recalled. “They asked me where I wanted; they said you can go anywhere you want … we’ll help you find work. And I said, ‘not San Francisco.’ I’d never been there, never heard about it. That’s where they put me. And they got me working someplace, making jeans. Levi Strauss. I don’t know how long I stayed there. … I might have worked there a year, but I didn’t like it,” she said. She did operate her power machine – an industrial sewing machine, with a knee pedal.

“It was a fast machine … you push your knee against it, then that machine took off, so you had to really know how to control it. But I enjoyed that,” she said.

Smith attended the school in Grand Ronde, which ended in the eighth grade.

“When I come down here, I wanted to get a job, but I was quite young and they wanted my schooling,” she said. “I told them I didn’t graduate high school. And the job I wanted, you had to be at least 10^th grade. They said, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. There’s an address you go to and we’ll test you. If you test at 10th grade, not having gone, you’re in.’ And I passed, and I said, ‘Look at that, I’m a 10th grader.’ I felt pretty proud, seeing as I didn’t go to that.”

After leaving her first job, she moved to Oakland, where she still lives now, having heard of another training opportunity manufacturing drapes.

“I don’t remember how long I stayed there, but it was a nice place to work,” she said.

Smith settled down and made friends, some lifelong, and raised her four children: Veda, John, Kelly and Gina. There were more jobs, including working in a salon after attending beauty school, but she disliked that one.

She moved on again, to McClure Convalescent Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, where she worked in housekeeping – and this time, she stayed for the next 30 years.

“I enjoyed working,” she said. “I enjoyed the nurses and the patients were happy to see me.”

Smith retired in 2005.

“I was 80 when I retired,” she said. “I told myself, ‘You worked enough. Saturday, you’re going to be 80. Quit.’”

She said when she announced her retirement, the hospital administrator said, ‘You’ve got 407 hours sick leave. How come you never took time off?’” She had never wanted to, she said.

Rivera said the family stayed close, living in the house Smith had found with separate apartments on two levels. She grew up in the upper apartment, living with her mother, siblings and grandmother, and later raised her own daughter there.

“She’s been an important part of my life,” Rivera said. “She would start work at 5 in the morning, then she’d go across town to pick us up, me and my sister. I remember her taking us out to eat and then taking us home. …I’ve been really privileged to grow up with her.”

Today, Rivera said, her mother and stepfather live in the upstairs apartment, while Smith and Rivera live downstairs. Rivera shares care of Smith with her mother and stepfather.