Eulogy: Claudia Broughton
A Eulogy for Claudia Thom Taylor Broughton
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Claudia Broughton Room, Crook County Library, June 18, 2002
I am honored today to have been asked to remember Claudia Thom Taylor Broughton. She was a lady with a zest for life, who by her example convinced us all that work can indeed be pleasure, that there is satisfaction in service to others and that age need not be a barrier to participating fully in the world around us.
I think everyone knows by now that Claudia at 91 was the longest serving employee in the history of Crook County. As best anyone can tell, Claudia worked for the Crook County Library for 37 years. She began her career in 1957 when the library was in a small room in the courthouse basement that it had occupied since the library was started in 1931.
In 1962, she moved with the library to a new building: the current county finance office on Second Street, behind the post office. There she served at various times as both acting director and assistant director of the library. It was there that I first met Claudia when I began work at the library as a high school student in 1978.
Little did either one of us imagine then that I would be standing here today, remembering Claudia as a fine employee, a pillar of the library community and a trusted friend. In 1978, all we knew about each other was that every Wednesday night Claudia’s job was to get out a stack of overdue notices and my job was to make sure that things ran smoothly enough at the counter so that she wasn’t interrupted in her task.
As it turns out, this was a serious challenge for Claudia. For as much as Claudia loved the library, and as much as she enjoyed pursuing prominent members of the community who kept their books too long, it turns out she had one greater love in her life: her family.
As we worked side by side to help Claudia get out those overdue notices out each week, Claudia couldn’t help herself: she always had to share with me a story. . .or two. . .or ten about her daughters or her grandchildren. She couldn’t help herself. She was so very proud of all of them, that she just had to tell someone.
Thus, Claudia and I developed a routine: Claudia would tell me a story as I loaded up a book cart. At the end of the story, I would make my round and unload my cart while Claudia typed some overdue notices. By the time I returned, Claudia would have thought of another story, and we would begin the process all over again.
About 8:30--half hour before the library closed--Claudia would notice the time, and the stories would stop while she finished the last of the overdue notices. She always finished precisely at 8:55. Only a few times while I worked with her did Claudia ever take a vacation and leave the overdues for someone else—someone who told no stories and concentrated intently on their task all evening. Despite diligent efforts, no substitute could ever match Claudia however, and anyone who tried would invariably find themselves continuing the job the next morning.
Sometimes, during one of Claudia’s stories, I would have to take a break and wait on a patron. That didn’t bother Claudia. She was so proud of her family that she would just start her story over again and tell it to the patron and to me. Usually, her stories were about her grandchildren and their activities. She was their greatest fan. In her eyes, no Prineville kid, especially not her grandkids, ever was a fault for a lost game. It was always the official’s problem or equipment failure or something else.
Things at the old went on this way for Claudia for many years. Oh yes, there was a computer system to be learned, but she wasn’t afraid of technology, or anything else for that matter. From what her daughters tell me, she was never afraid of anything her whole life. After all, it was Claudia who, as a little girl terrorized her sisters and the neighborhood boys with snakes and frogs. She liked to recall that her Mother thought this wasn’t a proper way for a young ladyto behave, but since her father didn’t care, she kept on doing it anyway.
Claudia moved to her last library building in 1998 when this facility opened. She didn’t really like its location, she told people, because it was too far from her house, and she couldn’t walk to work anymore. She liked it even less, or so she said, when her fellow employees convinced the library trustees to honor Claudia’s long service by naming this very room the Claudia Broughton room. Claudia said it was much ado about nothing, and claimed to be embarrassed by all the fuss. That’s the kind of response one would expect from Claudia. But those who knew and cherished her, always thought she was secretly pleased.
Busy as Claudia was bragging about her kids and her grandkids and efficiently going about her work at the library every day except Thursday—the day she took off to have her hair done—it might come as a surprise to find out that she told friends and colleagues very little about the rest of her life. “Oh, I don’t know. We just lived like everyone else,” was her response when anyone asked her about her past.
But her modest response aside, Claudia’s background contains some noteworthy characters. Her ancestors included such venerable characters as the founders of William and Mary College in Virginia and Glasgow University in Scotland. Was it any wonder then that Claudia loved to read and insisted on reading aloud each night to her daughters and her grandchildren? But academics weren’t the only ones to fall out when one shook Claudia’s family tree. Claudia liked to tell the story of a cousin who applied for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and found herself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain that yes, she was descended from patriots but that she was also descended from General Benedict Arnold, the notorious turncoat who sold out American interests to the British.
Jumping forward, Claudia’s parents first came to eastern Oregon from Portland five years before she was born. They traveled via train to The Dalles and thence by mail stagecoach to Shaniko, where they spent the night. The next day they went on to Prineville. As they came over the hill into the Ochoco Valley, cowboys on horses came racing out to meet the stage, yelling and whooping. Claudia’s mother thought the stage was being ambushed by Indians and that they were all going to die. Fortunately, the cowboys only wanted to collect their mail, Mother Thom lived through the incident and the stage continued on to Silver Lake, where Claudia’s father took up his profession as a country doctor covering nearly all of Lake County. Claudia liked to recall him saying that his most important tools were his medical bag, his horse, his buffalo gloves his wire cutters. He used the latter to cut the fences as he rode cross country to reach sick people as fast as possible. Eventually, the wire cutters and the horse gave way to a car—the first one in Lake County—which the good doctor counted on to speed him to his patients even faster.
This was the world into which Claudia was born in 1911. A world of horses and buggies, a world of Indians and arrowheads, which sprung from the ground each time the wind blew and the sand shifted. Silver Lake itself was a town of just a few blocks. Claudia and her sister Hulda used to drive the length of it in a wagon pulled by their pet Great Dane.
Within a few years, Claudia and her family moved to Bend, where she attended Bend Senior High School. Another graduate of that institution was Claudia’s future husband, Dan Taylor, a prankster to be sure but a popular one. One day when Dan was a senior, he and two friends found themselves expelled from school after they installed a cow in the ladies room on the night before Halloween with disastrous results. Fortunately, his fellow classmates saw more humor in the situation than the administration and staged a sit-in until Dan, who was class president, was allowed to return to class.
After high school, Claudia attended teacher’s college, then known as Normal School, in Ashland. After graduating, she returned to the Bend area to teach before marrying Dan and moving to Prineville, where the young couple raised their two daughters, Sally and Danna. She returned to teaching in the 1950s and started at the library at the end of the decade. Five years after Dan’s death, she met and married Bill Broughton, a fish and wildlife employee. She retired and traveled around the country. After Bill’s death, she once again returned to the library, bringing me back to where I started with this narrative and to the end of the story of the full, rich, wonderful life that was Claudia Taylor Broughton’s.
All of us are here today to mourn Claudia’s passing. Just as Sally and Dana have lost a part of their family, we have lost a part of ours. Just as Claudia was a constant in the lives of her family, so she was in ours. In days ahead, we will all miss Claudia’s sheer zest for life, her optimism that things eventually turn out for the best, and that cheerful smile that always played across her face the moment she saw a person she knew. Above all, we will miss her insightful, inquiring mind—a mind informed by the past, engaged in the present and anxious to see what the future would bring.
For over a half a century, Crook County residents, especially the library community and her friends from the Order of the Eastern Star, have been privileged to enjoy Claudia’s friendship. She has enriched our lives, brought us happiness and laughter and inspired us by her example. In living her life on her own times, Claudia made our lives better. Whatever material possessions Claudia left behind, it is her life that is her true legacy: a legacy of character, of service and love of family, of friends and of knowledge and truth.
Claudia’s was a fine life. It was privilege and an honor to have known her, and I know that while each one of us in this room will miss her, we will forever remember her with high regard and fondest thoughts.
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Claudia Broughton Room, Crook County Library, June 18, 2002
I am honored today to have been asked to remember Claudia Thom Taylor Broughton. She was a lady with a zest for life, who by her example convinced us all that work can indeed be pleasure, that there is satisfaction in service to others and that age need not be a barrier to participating fully in the world around us.
I think everyone knows by now that Claudia at 91 was the longest serving employee in the history of Crook County. As best anyone can tell, Claudia worked for the Crook County Library for 37 years. She began her career in 1957 when the library was in a small room in the courthouse basement that it had occupied since the library was started in 1931.
In 1962, she moved with the library to a new building: the current county finance office on Second Street, behind the post office. There she served at various times as both acting director and assistant director of the library. It was there that I first met Claudia when I began work at the library as a high school student in 1978.
Little did either one of us imagine then that I would be standing here today, remembering Claudia as a fine employee, a pillar of the library community and a trusted friend. In 1978, all we knew about each other was that every Wednesday night Claudia’s job was to get out a stack of overdue notices and my job was to make sure that things ran smoothly enough at the counter so that she wasn’t interrupted in her task.
As it turns out, this was a serious challenge for Claudia. For as much as Claudia loved the library, and as much as she enjoyed pursuing prominent members of the community who kept their books too long, it turns out she had one greater love in her life: her family.
As we worked side by side to help Claudia get out those overdue notices out each week, Claudia couldn’t help herself: she always had to share with me a story. . .or two. . .or ten about her daughters or her grandchildren. She couldn’t help herself. She was so very proud of all of them, that she just had to tell someone.
Thus, Claudia and I developed a routine: Claudia would tell me a story as I loaded up a book cart. At the end of the story, I would make my round and unload my cart while Claudia typed some overdue notices. By the time I returned, Claudia would have thought of another story, and we would begin the process all over again.
About 8:30--half hour before the library closed--Claudia would notice the time, and the stories would stop while she finished the last of the overdue notices. She always finished precisely at 8:55. Only a few times while I worked with her did Claudia ever take a vacation and leave the overdues for someone else—someone who told no stories and concentrated intently on their task all evening. Despite diligent efforts, no substitute could ever match Claudia however, and anyone who tried would invariably find themselves continuing the job the next morning.
Sometimes, during one of Claudia’s stories, I would have to take a break and wait on a patron. That didn’t bother Claudia. She was so proud of her family that she would just start her story over again and tell it to the patron and to me. Usually, her stories were about her grandchildren and their activities. She was their greatest fan. In her eyes, no Prineville kid, especially not her grandkids, ever was a fault for a lost game. It was always the official’s problem or equipment failure or something else.
Things at the old went on this way for Claudia for many years. Oh yes, there was a computer system to be learned, but she wasn’t afraid of technology, or anything else for that matter. From what her daughters tell me, she was never afraid of anything her whole life. After all, it was Claudia who, as a little girl terrorized her sisters and the neighborhood boys with snakes and frogs. She liked to recall that her Mother thought this wasn’t a proper way for a young ladyto behave, but since her father didn’t care, she kept on doing it anyway.
Claudia moved to her last library building in 1998 when this facility opened. She didn’t really like its location, she told people, because it was too far from her house, and she couldn’t walk to work anymore. She liked it even less, or so she said, when her fellow employees convinced the library trustees to honor Claudia’s long service by naming this very room the Claudia Broughton room. Claudia said it was much ado about nothing, and claimed to be embarrassed by all the fuss. That’s the kind of response one would expect from Claudia. But those who knew and cherished her, always thought she was secretly pleased.
Busy as Claudia was bragging about her kids and her grandkids and efficiently going about her work at the library every day except Thursday—the day she took off to have her hair done—it might come as a surprise to find out that she told friends and colleagues very little about the rest of her life. “Oh, I don’t know. We just lived like everyone else,” was her response when anyone asked her about her past.
But her modest response aside, Claudia’s background contains some noteworthy characters. Her ancestors included such venerable characters as the founders of William and Mary College in Virginia and Glasgow University in Scotland. Was it any wonder then that Claudia loved to read and insisted on reading aloud each night to her daughters and her grandchildren? But academics weren’t the only ones to fall out when one shook Claudia’s family tree. Claudia liked to tell the story of a cousin who applied for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and found herself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain that yes, she was descended from patriots but that she was also descended from General Benedict Arnold, the notorious turncoat who sold out American interests to the British.
Jumping forward, Claudia’s parents first came to eastern Oregon from Portland five years before she was born. They traveled via train to The Dalles and thence by mail stagecoach to Shaniko, where they spent the night. The next day they went on to Prineville. As they came over the hill into the Ochoco Valley, cowboys on horses came racing out to meet the stage, yelling and whooping. Claudia’s mother thought the stage was being ambushed by Indians and that they were all going to die. Fortunately, the cowboys only wanted to collect their mail, Mother Thom lived through the incident and the stage continued on to Silver Lake, where Claudia’s father took up his profession as a country doctor covering nearly all of Lake County. Claudia liked to recall him saying that his most important tools were his medical bag, his horse, his buffalo gloves his wire cutters. He used the latter to cut the fences as he rode cross country to reach sick people as fast as possible. Eventually, the wire cutters and the horse gave way to a car—the first one in Lake County—which the good doctor counted on to speed him to his patients even faster.
This was the world into which Claudia was born in 1911. A world of horses and buggies, a world of Indians and arrowheads, which sprung from the ground each time the wind blew and the sand shifted. Silver Lake itself was a town of just a few blocks. Claudia and her sister Hulda used to drive the length of it in a wagon pulled by their pet Great Dane.
Within a few years, Claudia and her family moved to Bend, where she attended Bend Senior High School. Another graduate of that institution was Claudia’s future husband, Dan Taylor, a prankster to be sure but a popular one. One day when Dan was a senior, he and two friends found themselves expelled from school after they installed a cow in the ladies room on the night before Halloween with disastrous results. Fortunately, his fellow classmates saw more humor in the situation than the administration and staged a sit-in until Dan, who was class president, was allowed to return to class.
After high school, Claudia attended teacher’s college, then known as Normal School, in Ashland. After graduating, she returned to the Bend area to teach before marrying Dan and moving to Prineville, where the young couple raised their two daughters, Sally and Danna. She returned to teaching in the 1950s and started at the library at the end of the decade. Five years after Dan’s death, she met and married Bill Broughton, a fish and wildlife employee. She retired and traveled around the country. After Bill’s death, she once again returned to the library, bringing me back to where I started with this narrative and to the end of the story of the full, rich, wonderful life that was Claudia Taylor Broughton’s.
All of us are here today to mourn Claudia’s passing. Just as Sally and Dana have lost a part of their family, we have lost a part of ours. Just as Claudia was a constant in the lives of her family, so she was in ours. In days ahead, we will all miss Claudia’s sheer zest for life, her optimism that things eventually turn out for the best, and that cheerful smile that always played across her face the moment she saw a person she knew. Above all, we will miss her insightful, inquiring mind—a mind informed by the past, engaged in the present and anxious to see what the future would bring.
For over a half a century, Crook County residents, especially the library community and her friends from the Order of the Eastern Star, have been privileged to enjoy Claudia’s friendship. She has enriched our lives, brought us happiness and laughter and inspired us by her example. In living her life on her own times, Claudia made our lives better. Whatever material possessions Claudia left behind, it is her life that is her true legacy: a legacy of character, of service and love of family, of friends and of knowledge and truth.
Claudia’s was a fine life. It was privilege and an honor to have known her, and I know that while each one of us in this room will miss her, we will forever remember her with high regard and fondest thoughts.
posted by Scott Cooper | 4:26 PM
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