HUMPHERYS FAMILY REUNION

Ron Hadfield
Aug 13, 2017
4 min read

"Families are like fudge ------ mostly sweet, with a few nuts."

~Unknown

The 2017 Ray Rich Humpherys Family Reunion was held at the Clinton Vets Park in Clinton, Utah on August 12th and was hosted by the Hyrum & Billye Humpherys Family. Pat Humpherys Larken was the primary family contact and made arrangements for the reunion activities. The primary activities (in addition to visiting, which may be the most important) were SPOTLIGHT: a presentation of each Ray Rich child by a family member; PICTURES: everyone brought photos of their Humpherys mother or father (and spouse); RAFFLE: the recommendation by Pat was to "clean out the closets, the barn, the shed, antiques, family pictures, children items, etc." and bring to be raffled - organized by Lori & Lacye; GAMES: Keith's family organized various games for the kids to play.

Family members began gathering at the Park around 10:00 am. There were approximately 40 family members attending, and someone was present from each of the five families except for Rich & Evaline's family. The thirty Humpherys cousins are listed by their family in one of the photos shown below. Seven of the cousins have passed away - of the remaining twenty-three, eight were present at the reunion; Nadean, Ray, Stanley, Pat, Kent, Keith, Lori, and Clair (me).

The Humpherys reunions have not been held as regularly over the years as the Hadfield reunions and they have been held at various locations, typically close to where the host family lived. In recent years they have been held every other year and have always been hosted by one of the five families. I haven't attended all of them, but have made most of them in recent years.

The SPOTLIGHT presentations were given by Nadean for the Dean & Neva famiy, Stanley for the Adell & Stewart family, Keith for the Hyrum & Billye family, and Clair for the June & Ron family. Photos of these presenters are shown below in that sequence.

Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo

Below are the photos of my parents that I presented at the reunion. My mom, and everyone else, always loved the one of her in the yellow dress, taken at their 50th wedding anniversary.

Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo

Below are a few photos from the reunion. First is the list I prepared of the 30 cousins, the next two are of all the stuff given in the raffe, and the final photo is of all attendees (except some grandkids that were impossible to round up). I purchased $20 of raffle tickets and won seven times. Since I was riding my Harley, I passed out the winning tickets to my seven cousins that were in attendance, who then gave them to their grandkids.

Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo

Some of my favorite memories from childhood are from the times I spent in Star Valley Wyoming on the farms of Dean & Neva and Adell & Stewart. At that time, the cousins I spent the most fun times with were Nadean, Sharon, and Kenny in Dean's family, and Stewart H. and Stanley in Adell's family. It's primarily because of these memories that I really enjoy going to the Humphery's Family Reunions. As the reunion was ending, Pat pointed out that the June Humpherys Hadfield Family would be the next host of the Reunion. I said to the group, "We'll see you all in California in 2019."

A Little History: My Grandpa Ray Humpherys was born in Paris, Idaho and spent his youth working on the family farm in that area. He attended Utah State University, went on a mission for the L.D.S. Church, and when he was about 24 years old he obtained a 160-acre homestead in Star Valley Wyoming. Grandma Janet was born in Cottonwood, Utah, but her family moved to Star Valley where she attended school. They were married in Salt Lake City, but moved into a log cabin on the homestead and had their family of five children there. My mother was the fifth child in the family, and when she was less than 3 years old, Grandma Janet became deathly ill with a ruptured appendix and passed away. The three youngest children lived with relatives for a little less than a year, and then Grandpa married Grandma Eliza (the only Humpherys grandma I knew), and the full family was brought together again. Soon after this marriage, Grandpa and Grandma moved the family to Logan, Utah. That is where mother met and married my dad.

The photos below, from the left - 1st row: Grandpa Ray and Grandma Janet, Grandma Eliza, the log cabin on the Star Valley homestead where mother was born, mother playing the violin (which she played in college).

2nd row: Mother on top of her big sister Adell, mother with dad's sister, my Aunt Myrl - As an aside, mother and Myrl worked together at the Bell Telephone Company and Myrl introduced mother to dad, Grandma Eliza and Grandpa Ray with the five siblings - June (my mother), Rich, Hyrum, Dean, and Adell; then Grandpa Ray (with his back to the camera) and Uncle Stewart, Ron (my dad), Uncle Hyrum, Uncle Dean and Uncle Rich.