Sweet Lorane Community News, October 10, 2019

Fern Ridge Review
Creswell Chronicle
Sweet Lorane Community News
October 10, 2019
By Pat Edwards

Last Saturday, the communities of Lorane and Crow honored the life and memory of another of our lifetime residents who descended several generations of family who settled in the area. Shirley McDaniel (Vandecar) Doss passed away on August 25 of this year. I did not hear of her passing for several weeks and I had hoped to attend the recent Celebration of Life for her. Unfortunately, a major family event was held on the same day at the same time, so I wasn’t able to join Shirley’s family and friends after all.

I have known Shirley since the 1970s when we were livestock leaders of the 3-L’s 4-H Livestock Club. It was a community club which I had formed as the Lorane 4-H Coordinator. Shirley was one of our sheep leaders and then she also volunteered to lead a group of 4-H’ers in a vegetable gardening project.

Shirley was close to the land. I remember visiting her one time during the 1970s. She had bottle lambs in her kitchen in a box by the wood stove and she had just separated the milk and cream from the morning’s milking of the cows. She was quiet and unassuming, but a very strong and capable woman.

She used most of the ancestral property to raise sheep and wool. At her passing, she lived on the original ranch that her great-grandparents, Ludig Johannes and Louisa Rebstock Diess, had settled between Gillespie Corners and Hadleyville (Briggs Hill Road) in the late 1870s. I believe that Shirley’s grandfather, Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Diess, built the home west of Powell Road where he and his wife Dora Gates Diess raised their family and where their daughter, Clara Opal Diess (Shirley’s mother) and her husband, Robert McDaniel (her father), raised theirs. It’s where Shirley lived all of her life, and now, Shirley’s daughter, Rose Vandecar, is the 4th generation to live there.

There’s a lot of history surrounding Shirley, and now, Rose. The Diess, Gates and McDaniel families, all which they descended from, have left a huge mark on the Crow and Lorane history. The Gates are well-known in the Crow area, and have many descendants living there still. Opal’s brother, Lincoln Diess, and his wife May, were very active in the Lorane Grange and Lorane School Board for years. Their former home and property is located on the curves of Stony Point.

Many of the McDaniel family, especially, are buried in the McCulloch Cemetery on Briggs Hill Road. For years, Shirley was a board member for the cemetery, and I believe her ashes are there now. It sits on a hilltop surrounded by beautiful vineyards and was the “resting place” my mother chose to be buried.

Shirley and Rose embody a legacy that is disappearing in today’s world by living in and maintaining the home and property of their ancestors. Shirley will be missed by many and my condolences go out to Rose and her family.

Just a quick reminder that the Lorane Grange’s spaghetti family dinner and bingo night will resume Friday, October 18, beginning at 5:30 (dinner) and 6:30 p.m. (bingo).