Justine Peake Weatherford

Justine Ross Peake was born January 2, 1914, in Detroit, not long after the arrival of the Model T Ford. Her father worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company as a traveling salesman, and her mother had been a middle school teacher before her marriage. Justine and her brother Don grew up in Portland on the edge of the Rose City Golf Course. Their father, Charles Ross Peake, was a respected businessman on Sandy Boulevard, known as “Peake, the Shade Man” (later Peake Industries). Their church, Rose City Presbyterian, was within walking distance of their home. Justine's father had taught her to drive so she could drive her mother, Louise Kleinsorge Peake, around town. Justine enjoyed noting that her mother’s mother was Justine Hamm, daughter and niece of the founders of Hamm's Beer Company. “Ross” in her and her father’s name came from her father’s maternal grandmother Charlotte Ross, a pioneer settler with her husband in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, in the 1840’s.

Justine Peake graduated from Grant High School in 1932. After high school she worked in downtown Portland at a Ford dealership and went to St. Helen’s Hall part-time. She loved artwork, reading, dancing, and playing cards with friends. When she moved to Corvallis, transferring to Oregon State College (named Oregon State University in 1961), she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma and lived in the sorority house. On campus in 1934, she became acquainted with three of her future husbands.

Frank Haberlach was a classmate. Both he and Justine dropped out of college. They were married at the home of Justine's parents on May 16, 1937. They moved to Clackamas and Justine became a farmer’s wife. The family business supplied barrels of pickles, sauerkraut and relish to butcher shops and the military during the war. Justine told of working summers in the fields and in the canning shed where the large vegetable bins effectively served as playpens for their young children -- Frank Ross Haberlach born in 1941, William Peake Haberlach born in 1943, and Ann Louise Haberlach born in 1947. The Haberlach and Peake families often socialized together around holidays, birthdays, and other celebrations.

Unfortunately, the relationship did not thrive. When Frank and Justine divorced in 1949, the boys remained on the farm with their father and Justine returned to Portland with daughter Ann to live with Justine’s mother, who had been widowed in 1945 with the death of Justine’s father. Justine received professional help dealing with depression. She wanted to move on with her life and to become a teacher. The next move for Justine and Ann was to Monmouth so that Justine could attend Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon University). Justine came through these early years believing that women were as capable as men of earning a living and that women should never rely on men to support them. She saved the money she made at her jobs, and any purchase that she made was carefully calculated ahead of time in terms of both monetary and emotional value.

In the process of rekindling her love of debate, Justine was reacquainted with Speech-Debate Professor Paul X. Knoll. Later she wrote “Paul had been one of my favorite professors. He was a fine scholar and teacher. I was luckily assigned to his one section of freshman speech about 1934." On June 24, 1950, about a year after Paul was widowed, he and Justine were married at the Rose City Presbyterian Church and Justine gained two stepsons, Bob and Bill Knoll. Bob was married by then to Eleanor Ann, and later their growing family of four boys lived just down the street. Bill was 14 and committed to joining the Navy as soon as he was out of high school. This was when Justine was encouraged by Paul to finish her degree in Education at Oregon State College (B.S., 1956) and to get her Master’s Degree in Education (M.Ed., 1958). The house that Paul had built by hand at 124 North 30th was filled with woodworking projects, barbershop quartet practice, Justine’s schoolwork, and Ann’s Harding School friends. Their McKenzie River cabin was the great “getaway” and a place to practice fly fishing. Each summer Justine and her three children would take a trip together, often to the mountains or the beach, because she was adamant that her children would not be strangers to each other even though they did not all live in the same house.

Paul died in 1957, and Justine and Ann moved to a house on the edge of town, the first home Justine had ever owned without a husband. She was proud of her independence and worked at many odd jobs until she was able to get a job at Philomath High School, teaching English, Speech, Language Arts, typing, and journalism. She invited into her home and mentored a student from Thailand who became “her dear daughter Moo” (Sirinapha Kumphai). Justine traveled by herself, visiting Bill Knoll in Japan and Moo’s family in Bangkok. Later she taught at Central Linn High School and Linn-Benton Community College. Justine was always very active in clubs, her church, and community projects. She was active in American Association of University Women, Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae, College Folk Club, Toastmistress Club, and 4-H Club leadership.

During the summer Justine often worked as a house mother at OSU. While doing this one summer for 4-H Summer School, she met a young girl from eastern Oregon who knew Bill Weatherford. Justine later wrote: “Bill was one of my good friends at Oregon State College. We met again in 1965 after not having seen or heard from one another in 30 years.” His wife had died in 1963 and Bill was running what he described as a “one rope with a knot in it” cattle ranch outside of Heppner. His son, WW (Bill) III, was attending college and his 12-year-old daughter, Karla, was rapidly losing interest in ranch work. Through many long-distance telephone calls, letters and visits back and forth, their relationship developed. They were married at the United Methodist Church in Corvallis on May 28, 1966, with their five children as attendants. Justine immediately named her new home ”The Knotted Rope Ranch” and the mailbox soon carried the moniker “Home of the Double Ewes” showing the humor that she and Bill shared.

After moving to Heppner and getting settled, Justine took on a “summer job” of selling World Book Encyclopedia sets so that she could become familiar with the area and meet people. She was hired by the Morrow County School District to teach English and Journalism at Heppner High and, as such, she was the advisor for the annual high school yearbook and school newspaper. Justine eventually transferred to Heppner Junior High School where she taught 8th grade English until her retirement. Following retirement from the school district, she traveled to the Boardman-Irrigon area regularly to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) to adults. She also taught adult classes (GED) for Blue Mountain College at Pendleton.

The ranch was sold in 1970 and Justine and Bill moved to Heppner. After a couple of years in Lexington, they returned “to town” in 1973 and Justine became the Heppner City Librarian, continuing until June 1978. She was active in the United Methodist Church, Soroptimist, AAUW, Garden Club, Bookworms Book Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and Eastern Star. She also enjoyed being a regular contributing author to the Heppner Gazette-Times and copy editor of Bill’s memoirs. After Bill’s death in 1977, Justine took over running his “project” (the Heppner Laundromat), helped sponsor a family from Laos, mentored high school students and became active in city business. She even ran for the office of mayor of Heppner. Justine was honored as Heppner Woman of the Year in 1987. During all this time she maintained a large garden, made regular trips to family events, and traveled internationally with other Heppner women. One “long-dreamed-of” trip was to Europe in 1979, including a visit with her mother’s Kleinsorge kin in Germany. Turning 70 in 1984, she honored the occasion with a trip to Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia.

After much deliberation, at the age of 74, Justine decided to leave her friends in Heppner and move to Yakima, Washington, with similar topography and climate plus a Greyhound bus station so she could continue to travel if and when she gave up driving. She soon brought her column “Justine Weatherford – Around About” to the Yakima Herald-Republic (1988-1993) and worked as a reading volunteer at a local elementary school. She was active in the Wesley United Methodist Church where she was on the Board of Directors of the Shepherd Center. To the chagrin of the senior complex where she lived, she commandeered a corner of the outside fire escape for her personal reading garden and grew a variety of plants around her rocking lawn chair. She spent several hours a day there enjoying the city view.

While living in Yakima she met Garland Benintendi, a widower for about five years who had moved to the same complex in June 1989. He was a retired missionary of the Assemby of God church with seven grown children, six sons and one daughter. The relationship grew and they were married at Sun Tower in Yakima on April 21, 1990. Justine joked that she finally had stepchildren she didn’t have to raise. Prior to Garland’s death in 2002, they enjoyed many pleasant travels to visit family and friends in many locations. During a 1990 trip to Southeast Asia, they visited a mission that Garland had established in Taiwan, saw Garland’s son Steve in Malaysia, and saw Justine’s “Moo” (then “Moo” Nakaprawing) and her husband in Thailand.

In recent years, Justine lived in the Panorama City retirement and care community in Lacey, Washington, near her daughter, Ann. This location was easily reached by friends and family and enabled her to enjoy the greenery she so loved from living her early years in the Willamette Valley. The annual family Christmas gathering that Justine established in Heppner and continued during her years in Yakima was perpetuated in Lacey. Sometimes the group was small and sometimes large, but she made sure that people understood the importance of gathering regularly and reconnecting, however brief the available time.

Justine (Peake) Weatherford died February 7, 2011, in Lacey, Washington. She was preceded in death by her brother, Don Peake; son, Frank R. Haberlach; her four husbands; and stepson, Robert Knoll. She was buried near her parents in Lincoln Memorial Park in Portland, Oregon, on February 12, 2011. Justine’s survivors include her sister-in-law, Marie Peake; children William Peake Haberlach of Medford, Oregon, and Ann Louise (Haberlach) Chenhall of Olympia, Washington; step-children Bill Knoll of Texas, WW (Bill) Weatherford III of San Diego, California, Karla (Weatherford) Gray of Yakima, Washington, 3 nieces and 1 nephew, 13 grandsons, 7 granddaughters, and many great grandchildren.

Members of Justine’s family would like to express their appreciation to the staff of Panorama City for the personalized care that Justine received as her health and independence declined. Those who knew and were touched by Justine are invited to join together to celebrate her life on April 9th at 11 a.m. at Lincoln Memorial Park. If friends and family wish to remember Justine in a tangible way, it is suggested that, in lieu of flowers, a donation be made to the Spirit of Education Hall Fund at the Oregon State University Foundation in the name of Justine Peake Weatherford.