Hides become heirloom gloves
Each year when she was a child in Billings, Florence Young’s father, Oliver Forester, went deer hunting. The family of seven depended on the venison for meat.
In November 1954 Forester shot two deer and shipped the hides off to a tanning company in Wisconsin. The hides, carefully wrapped and packed in a shoebox-size package, were returned five months later in April 1955.
The box, which moved with the family to Arizona in 1957 and then to Spokane in 1967, wasn’t opened for nearly 50 years.
After Forester’s death in 2001 and the death of his wife, Ernestine, in 2003, Florence Young and her sister were cleaning out their parents’ home, and they discovered the box.
The soft, buttery, hides were in excellent condition.
“We didn’t know anything about them,” Young says. “We had the dates that the hides were sent away, and when they were mailed back, but that was all.”
Young and her sister speculated that family finances may have played into the fact that the hides were never used.
“We didn’t have a lot of money,” Young says. “And you know how it is. You hate to cut something you can’t replace until you know exactly what you’ll do with it.”
Young had an idea to make keepsakes for all five siblings out of the hides. Curious, she picked up the phone book and began looking for glove makers or leather crafters in the area. She eventually was referred to Penny Boehmer, a local leather craftswoman.
“Penny looked at the skins and said they were in perfect condition,” Young says. “They’d been in the box, not in plastic, for all those years, and the leather had been able to breathe.”
Boehmer told Young that she could get at least five pairs of gloves out of the hides, possibly six. After having her brothers and sisters trace their hands and mail the patterns to her, Young gave the drawings to Boehmer.
The result? Six, soft, custom-made pairs of gloves for just over $125. Young mailed the gloves to her siblings just in time for cold weather.
“They are all just beautifully made,” Young says. “This winter, memories of Dad will warm our hearts and our hands.”