Master Gardener Loved Pumpkins, Berries, People

Elmer Williams, who lived close to the land and loved the Valley, died this week.

Elmer and his wife, Angie, raised six children.

Their family drew in others, too - family in spirit - so that 20, 30 or more would gather for holidays.

Grace came before dinner. Holding hands, the circle of adults, adolescents and tots would snake around the room in the most enormous loops. Everyone fit.

Elmer, 80, always planted pumpkins. From his garden came hundreds of sunny, fat globes, more than enough for every child, grandchild and friend to carve for Halloween.

The pumpkin carving party moved to Deer Park, where Elmer and Angie lived these past four years. By dark, the carvers’ work would be finished, and a constellation of jack-o-lanterns twinkled on the outside stairs.

Elmer raised raspberries. On the downslope of the Williams’ former home in the Valley, across the Spokane River from the paper mill, Elmer knew that his rows of raspberries grew thirsty. He watered them with care, sold them with pride and ate them with cream.

His corn was a glory: The stalks reached taller than Elmer’s 6-foot-4, and in August when he picked, the ears overflowed his wheelbarrow again and again.

He worked with his hands, making things, fixing things and saving things - earning his shop the name of “the museum.”

Elmer helped other people, with their lives and their gardens. He helped Angie over the years with her work in Red Cross disaster relief. He was a master gardener and wrote a gardening column for the Valley Voice one year.

Here’s a bit from a column he wrote in December 1988.

“A couple of months ago I scurried around, bringing our geraniums into warmer quarters. Seemed a shame to throw away all that beautiful, healthy foliage. So nothing daunted, I salvaged some six dozen.”

“The bottom line (a few months later) to nearly a half-day’s labor: 65 nice healthy dark-green geraniums.”

That’s Elmer, all over. He did nothing small. When he grew plants, he grew them by the dozen. When he built a water wheel, he built it big.

And when he worked with the soil, he was an artist, drawing out the good of the earth.

At Sacred Heart Medical Center Tuesday after he died, Angie stayed with him, amid tears and children and visitors. Her hands sought out his shoulder, his arm, his temple, his hair. Feeling the last bit of warmth at his throat. Loving him one more time.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo