Althia O. Henreid

ALTHIA HENRIED

8/13/1916 – 7/25/2010

Althia Oena Brown was born August 13, 1916 to Josephine Jordan and Robert Brown in Grayson, Louisiana. We don’t know a lot about her early life as she was an intensely private person. One thing we do know is that she was only able to attend school up to the fifth grade. Then she had to go to work. Like most black women of her day. Althia cleaned the homes, cooked the food and raised the children of white families.

Althia’s mother, Josephine was called “Mother” by her daughter, Delores, who she raised while Althia worked and traveled. She was nicknamed “Little Mama: by her daughter, a name that would stick with her throughout her life.

Althia lived and worked in various cities throughout her lifetime, including various cities in California during WWII, Phoenix, AZ, Toledo, OH, St. Louis, MO, Detroit, MI, Seattle, WA and finally settling in Portland, OR. There may have been other cities but those are the ones she talked about. She was married several times, to Bill Bradley, Willie Jones and lastly to Ricardo Henreid.

Althia we married to Willie Jones when she went to St. Louis to visit her daughter, Delores and son-in-law, Lawrence “Red” Wells. The Joneses had recently relocated from Seattle to Portland and ended up taking Delores’s third child, her namesake, Althia Wells, back to Portland with them. In Oregon, they lived in Vernonia where they survived a flood.

They bought the house on 9th Ave, the first Blacks on the block back in the 1950’s. The Blanco’s lived on the next block but they were from the islands, so that didn’t count. My grandmother and Mrs. Blanco were lifelong friends. Her next door neighbor was a Russian lady married to a German. After Mr. Schultz died, Little Momma looker out for her. When Mrs. Schultz developed Alzheimer’s, wandering the streets at night, it was Little Mama’s house the police would bring her to.

My grandmother attended Vancouver Avenue Baptist Church, serving on the usher board for many years. She was a deeply religious woman. She spent her later years working in offices downtown and then at Bess Kaiser Hospital until she retired.

Althia loved cooking and gardening. She was extremely proud of her yard and would spend all day and half the night if we let her outdoors. She would be up before daybreak in the summer, watering her lawn and when I came home from work she would still be out in the yard. It was the prettiest on the block and made her proud and gave her a sense of accomplishment. Richard, her grandson would frequently help her out, doing the heavy work under her tutelage.

It took us a while to notice her dementia; we all thought she was just getting forgetful. Until she started cussing. None of us had ever heard her say a bad word, the harshest one I can remember her using “damn” when Daddy got out of hand one Thanksgiving. She started wandering and cussing but no one, especially her daughter, wanted her to go into a care facility. Even after she fell and had to have a hip replacement. Then Delores started showing the same symptoms and Red was diagnosed with lung cancer. We moved Delores to Little Mama’s and Dedra started taking care of them both. They seemed to recognize each other, even having their own language which none of us could understand.

She died peacefully in her sleep, exactly three months to the day her only child, Delores died.

Althia was preceded in death by her husband, Ricardo Henreid, daughter Delores and son-in-law Lawrence Wells. She is survived by her grandchildren, Dedra Gloster, Lawrence Wells, Jr., Althia Wells, Pamela Wells, Richard Wells, and Shannon Wells; great-grandchildren Dionne Preston, James Preston, Danielle Wells, Marcus Thomas, London Wilson-Wells, Kiara Wilson, Izaha Ashford, Chieffouna Shelby and Javonta Anthony; and great-great grandchildren, Anthony Preston, DeAngelo Preston and Malika Harris.

Arrangements under the direction of Caldwell's, Hennessey, Goetsch & McGee Funeral Home, Portland, OR.