Alice Leora (Glass) Huffman

This seems like such a small space to describe the life of my grandmother;

Leora Huffman age 96, died Monday, Feb. 9, 2015 in Portland, Oregon at Cedar Hills Elder Care Home from lung cancer complicated by pneumonia.


Alice Leora Glass, was born at her parents home on May 9, 1918 in Burbank, South Dakota. The 11th of 13 children born to George Leo Glass & Elizabeth Alice (Aiken) Glass. Her brother's and sisters knew her as "Lot" (a knickname given her by her brother Francis). Her favorite memories from growing up at home were making mud pies as a little girl, dancing and playing music with her family, going to her brother's football games on Friday nights and eating her mother's mince meat pie. Leora loved to dance and it was at one of these community dances that she met Vernon Andrus Huffman who she married on Aug. 20, 1938 at the Cathedral Of The Epiphany, in Sioux City, Iowa. Their wedding was a small affair with Leora wearing a sensible brown dress adorned with violet colored flowers. Vernon's brother David Wesley Huffman and Leora's sister Nora Rose Glass were in attendance. The four would always remain lifelong close friends. To this union three children were born:
Wesley Joseph, Violet Maria and Vicki Maureen. Vernon proceeded her in death on June 2, 1986.

Leora was raised in a close knit Irish Catholic home filled with music and strong family values. She loved to dance and at the age of 18 performed tango exhibitions with a famous latin dancer on the stage at the Orpheum theatre in Sioux City, Iowa. She continued to dance all her life; even up into her 90's!
Her musical abilities weren't limited to her dancing. She played the piano and many different stringed instruments. She loved to sing and sang many times in school, and for friends and family.

Leora's talents weren't only musical... she was an exceptional cook and baker. Her pies were known well by her friends and family and will be greatly missed! She was the most amazing seamstress, being able to take apart things like men's suits and remake them into the most beautiful skirts and jackets! She loved poetry and wrote many poems. Her flower gardens provided the most beautiful blooms for friends and family. In her 60's and 70's Leora could be found playing baseball at many family 4th of July celebrations! In the 1990's she enjoyed golfing with both the womens and seniors golfing clubs winning many awards!

Leora grew up in South Dakota, moving to Sioux City, Iowa as a young woman where she worked at H.A. Baker Company sewing men's overalls, work pants and shirts. She loved to share about sewing just as fast as she could for .25 cents an hour producing the heavy flannel shirts in the heat of the summer! She left H.A. Baker after marrying and moving to Oakland, California. Finding no work in Oakland she and her husband moved to Denver, Colorado for a short while and then returned to Sioux City, Iowa where their first child was born. Leora moved again to Pierre, South Dakota where she continued as a homemaker and cooked for ranch hands. She and her husband were blessed with two more additional children while in Pierre.

In 1957 the family moved to Pleasant Hill, California where Leora continued to raise her children to adulthood. In 1974 her husband, Vernon, retired from work as a carpenter and the couple moved to Beavercreek, Oregon to be near their youngest daughter and her family.

Leora was a member of St.John the Apostle Catholic Church. In her memoirs that she wrote for her granddaughter she shared that the thing she was the most grateful to her parents for was her belief in God and her love of family.

Leora's survivors include: a sister, C. Darlene Lund, a son, Wesley & wife Mary Jane Huffman, a daughter, Violet & husband Rhodney Duncan, a daughter, Vicki & husband Robert Hargrove as well as 7 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
She was proceeded in death by her husband, both parents, 11 brothers and sisters, and one grandson.

Leora was the type of person who loved her family above all else. She was the type of grandmother who would teach a little girl to hand stitch a little blanket for her stuffed animals. She would bring a little girl into her own bed when the little one had nightmares. She would drop everything to go pick up a sick child from school and lovingly care for her all day. She not only helped her children with their homework, she sometimes did it for them! She attended choir performances, plays, and sporting events not just for her children but for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her house was always immaculate; she even waxed the garage floor! She was the most amazing cook and baker, always knowing what each person liked and loving to surprise them with a favorite pie or meal. She never followed a recipe and was known for using just a spoon of this or a handful of that. Her recipes were never the same, when cooking if she didn't have something then something else was used instead and everything always turned out wonderful! She loved each and every member of her family and had the most amazing memory. She could recall every person and every extended family member, she knew the story of each one. She loved her parents dearly and was thankful for her father teaching her to garden and her mother teaching her to cook. She cared about what happened to each and every one of us. She bragged about her little boy who would sit so quite and good with just a comic book through a whole evening's worth of dance. She was so proud when her eldest daughter won a scholarship to nursing school or when her youngest sang so beautifully. She was the type of person who cared enough to rejoice with you and be excited but also to pray for you and to worry. She never missed a Sunday at church and taught all of us children to pray and believe in the Lord. She was so full of music and love. She danced in her living room and hummed in her kitchen! She was always impeccably dressed; going to town in jeans or sweat pants just wasn't done. She was the type of person who would remember a teenage girl in her grief and send her a little card from across the country just to let her know that she cared. She saved everything... she surrounded herself with her family never letting go of not even one little part. She loved helping to assist putting together the family tree and making sure that each person's story was told, supplying birth announcements, graduation announcements, marriage invitations and so much more. She spent countless hours sharing and telling the stories of long ago. Thanks to her never failing love for her family we will all have many memories to pass down for years to come.

I love you grandma and am so forever grateful to have had you as a part of my life!