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Bates has no plans of slowing down after 80 years |
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Monday, 27 April 2009 |
 By EMILY HONE
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BLACKFOOT — A lot of people entering their eighth decade of life are looking for ways to take it easy, but Lois Bates is not among them. She has her future planned and it doesn't include slowing down.
Indications are she was destined from birth to be busy and hasn't found a stopping place in 80 years.
Depending on the weather, she'll be off on one of her regular trips to see a play or ballet in Salt Lake City, a hike in the desert or mountains with the Idaho Native Plant Society, heading to Idaho Sate University where she's taking continuing education classes two days a week, and continuing her work of collecting and cataloging photos and stories about early Bingham County and its residents for the Historical Society's Gallery in downtown Blackfoot.
Lois was born on a ranch at Wicks north of Rich Lane on April 23, 1929, a daughter of Charles and Luella Wright Prouse. She might have grown up to be a cowgirl had her father not died from injuries in a roping accident when she was 4 years old.
It was the height of the Great Depression and the beginning of even harder times for a young mother of two who lost her land, moved to town to find work, and took her children to live with their grandparents on a ranch at Riverton.
When her mother remarried, Lois and her brother Dale came home to their stepfather, G.A. Murdock's, house between Lincoln Street and the Mackay Shortline Railroad tracks on Blackfoot's west side, where a new brother, Robert, joined the family.
Where houses now stand, the family had a pasture and a Jersey cow named Snowflake, who gave milk of such abundancy and richness there was enough cream to sell as well as eat, and one of Lois' earliest chores was to carry the cream her mother skimmed from the milk to Smith's Creamery on West Bridge Street in a lard bucket
Lois was a junior in high school when she met her future husband, Joseph Bates, home on leave from the U.S. Navy Air Corps. The meeting left Lois with only a fleeting memory, but Joe must have been impressed because he looked her up when he was discharged in 1947.
Their first date ended somewhat disastrously, but what came after told Lois he was a keeper.
"We drove to Lava Hot Springs and on our way back we both fell asleep. He hit a telephone pole, and I got a broken arm," Lois said.
The remorseful young man persistently called at her parents' house to make sure she was healing. She found during those visits that he was caring and fun, and friendship blossomed into romance. "I was turning 18 in April and due to graduate in May," she said. "He gave me a diamond in June and we were married in July."
They had 42 years together before Joe's untimely death in 1989.
The couple had three children, Laurie, Bruce and Jaeme, and Laurie's desire to be a Brownie Scout set Lois on a new path.
Deciding she wanted to know more about the organization, she signed on as a leader, formed her own Brownie Troop, and developed a love for the organization that only grew stronger with time.
She was a leader for 41 years, and got her 50-year pin for service to the Silver Sage Girl Scout Council in 2007. Until last fall Lois was still submitting stories about the Girl Scouts to local newspapers so families would know there was an organization in Blackfoot.
"I found it was one of the most wonderful organizations going for girls," she said. "It teaches them a lot of things from outdoor skills to homemaking, moral values, and the value of friendship."
Lois saw her first group of girls, and many others after them,
all the way through the program from Brownie to Junior, Cadette and finally Senior Girl Scouts. Laurie and Jaeme had their own troops and their daughters were Scouts as well.
She has always loved the outdoors, and passing that love on to young girls was something that came naturally to her, Lois said.
During her years as an active leader, she established the first Primitive Day Camp at the Claude Johnson ranch on the Snake River bottoms north of Blackfoot, directed the Brownie Day Camp at the Eastern Idaho State Fairgrounds, and was a unit leader at Camp Tendoy southeast of Pocatello.
"I've camped with my troop at all of the established Girl Scout camps in Idaho," she said, "from Lake Cocolalla near Sandpoint to Swan Valley, the John Colter Wilderness area, and Gros Ventre and Jenny Lake in Wyoming."
During those trips she taught dozens of girls outdoor skills that included how to pitch a tent, build and cook on a campfire. They took part in nature studies, learning things like recognizing wild animal tracks, safety, what to do when lost, how to identify plants and recognize the difference between those that are beneficial and those that are poisonous.
"I've camped in the snow in Wyoming and on the grass in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and had many adventures along the way," Lois said. "I have a lot of good memories, and hope they have too."
History was another of Lois's interests, one she developed at an early age. "I asked my grandmother why she would come all the way from Sweden to America, and started a family history from the stories she told."
Her attention eventually turned to others among the county's pioneer families and she set out to learn and record as much about them as she could. Lois said she was particularly interested in the Stevens family, which operated a stage coach stop along the route from Ross Fork Creek to the end of West Bridge Street in Blackfoot.
In addition to writing about Bingham County history, Lois has served as president and historian of the Bingham County Historical Society. She wrote stories for the Pocatello Tribune, forerunner of the Idaho State Journal, and had a weekly recipe column in The Morning News for three years when it was still known as the Daily Bulletin.
Many of the photos in the Historical Society's gallery at 75 N. Broadway are due to Lois's efforts, and her goal now is to preserve the photos on disks, and create a file so when someone wants to know about a person or place, they can easily find the information.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 May 2009 )
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