Green Bluff Angels

Even on a cloudy day, the drive up to Green Bluff is beautiful.

Despite the looming Mt. Spokane High School below, a bustling U.S. Highway 2 to the west and housing developments moving ever closer to the bluff, this farm community 10 miles north of the Division Y still feels like a little slice of heaven descended from the clouds.

And if that were true, Dick and Helen Laws would be angels.

The Lawses are the type of folks who were giving to others when the words community service had negative connotations.

The couple is well known on Green Bluff. They’ve always put out more than they’ve taken in.

“Helen and Dick are really wonderful to be around,” said Suzanne Ostersmith. “They’re the kind of people who you get energy from. They just make you want to do as much as you can for others.”

The Lawses have been up here for four decades and have done everything imaginable in the community. Donating time and energy has always been at the top of their list.

“It just makes me feel good,” Helen Laws said.

“I was just never smart enough to say no,” Dick Laws said with hearty laugh.

Even when serious, Laws still deflects praise.

“I don’t know, I guess we just come from a time where everybody helped everybody,” he said. “There was a time when everybody pitched in.”

Dick, 72, and Helen, 68, are constantly moving. They flow to others, arms outstretched bearing gifts.

This, despite the fact that Helen is currently performing in a community play as the innkeeper who turns away the Virgin Mary and Joseph.

The play is the Green Bluff Orchard Theater’s production of “Bethlehem.” Dick is the play’s stage manager.

It began running at the Green Bluff Grange last week. It wraps up this weekend with performances Friday night at 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.

As two of the oldest members of a cast of 20, the Lawses have been keeping up with the bunch since September.

And this play is about more than just providing entertainment. Proceeds go to $200 scholarships for high school and college students whose families are members of the Green Bluff Grange, the local farm organization.

Helen Laws came up with the idea years ago after she realized just how expensive college had become. One of her and Dick’s grandchildren was struggling to pay for college costs.

“This is a good way to raise money,” she said. “It’s a worthwhile cause.”

The couple knows about educating children and hanging tough. Between them, they have eight children and a grand total of 26 grandchildren. The couple has been married for 22 years and not even a stroke two years ago could keep Helen from her numerous charities.

Chances are they’ve been on the go so long that they probably couldn’t slow down even if they wanted to.

“Dick used to get up at 4 a.m. when he was working,” Helen said. “But now he takes it easy a little and sleeps in until 6 a.m.”

Through the years, the grange has been the vehicle for the Lawses’ good deeds. They both became members in the late ‘50s.

Dick Laws was born in Kelowna, B.C., and lived in Sherburn, Minn., before moving to Spokane as a boy. Small-town living is a way of life.

Helen grew up in Tarkio, Mo., before moving to Spokane after World War II.

“I still had my southern accent back then,” she said. “I would tell people where I was from, and they thought I was saying Tokyo. For those first few years here I would get some funny looks from people.”

But those funny looks soon evaporated.

Dick and Helen used to run the Dick Laws Fruit Farm on Green Bluff before recently selling the company, which still holds his name.

They live in a home on the bluff which was built in the early 1900s. Dick Laws is still the master of the grange.

Helen has been very active through the years with the grange herself.

“It’s always been a wonderful outlet for me,” she said. “Women my age (in the 1960s) had very few (social) options outside the grange.”

The 110-year-old Washington State Grange is the largest grange state in the union with 52,000 members. Locally, the Green Bluff Grange has 259 members.

They estimate less than 10 percent of their members are actual farmers.

“We’re part of a bigger community up here,” she said. “It’s grown so dramatically up here, but the farming hasn’t.”

Still, the Lawses are dedicated to trying to preserve the integrity and quality of life on the bluff. Even if it means removing themselves from certain positions within the grange.

They used to be officers on the staff of the Green Bluff Harvest Carnival before stepping down. They said they believed a lot of the activities were becoming too commercial and weren’t an accurate reflection of life on the bluff.

Despite the changing perspectives in the community, the Lawses still feel strongly about their community.

“We’ll try to respond to any need here,” she said. “The great strength we have is in our togetherness and in our numbers.”