Vershire
A concerned group of relatives, friends and townspeople had intervened when it was clear that she could no longer live safely in the mobile home that seemed on the verge of collapse, and which for a number of years had lacked running water and a septic system.
But Ervin wanted to, and she insisted on living independently, regardless of her age. So, her nephew Harold Ward found an old mobile home in excellent condition in Canaan that its owner was willing to donate to Ervin.
A far-flung network of businesses and individuals from Vershire, Bradford, Chelsea, Thetford, White River Junction, West Lebanon, Lebanon and Canaan then donated the labor, goods, services, clothes and furnishings that made it possible for Ervin to move into a second mobile home not far from the first one.
Her sole companion was a big gray cat that Ervin called Kitty. Ervin decorated her door with a small decal of an American flag, and put up a notice saying “Please don’t let the cat out.”
Ervin asked her nephew and his wife not to mow the grass around her because she liked to sit on the deck and see the wildflowers grow, the birds pass through and the deer come through the fields behind her.
Ervin died on April 19, aged 96, in the Blue Spruce Home in Bradford, Vt. She wanted to live to be 100, said Wynona Ward, the wife of Harold Ward and the founder of Have Justice—Will Travel, the organization that offers legal and social services to victims of domestic violence.
But a life that was rarely easy or soft had taken its toll: Verna’s husband, Daniel F. Ervin, died in 1958 as the result of injuries sustained in a lumberyard accident; and her son, Jimmy Ervin, a combat medic who was awarded a Purple Heart during the Vietnam War, succumbed to complications from emphysema in 2005.
“It was rough the way she was living, but I think she’d gotten so used to it. She had it fairly tough all her life, and nothing quite worked out the way she planned,” said her close friend Rita French, who chauffeured Ervin on errands after she lost her driver’s license because she was hard of hearing and had poor vision.
She was born Verna Alice Eastman on Oct. 20, 1920, on the family farm in Vershire belonging to her parents, Leon and Maude Eastman.
One of five children, she attended school until eighth grade but did not continue on to high school because her father didn’t think it was important for girls to further their education. He expected her to come back to work on the farm, which she did.
“She was a very intelligent person. I think she would have liked to go on to school but she never got the chance,” French said, noting that Ervin was a terrific reader.
The need to work, and the ethic to work hard, drove Ervin throughout her long life. In June 1944 she went over to Ely to enlist in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, French said. Ervin trained at Fort Benning, Ga., as a cook and then served at the Letterman General Hospital in the Presidio of San Francisco, which treated wounded soldiers returning from the Pacific theater.
The soldiers often couldn’t or didn’t want to eat because of severe injuries, and some of them had to be fed by tube, Ward recalled Ervin telling her. The mush they were fed wasn’t particularly palatable, so Ervin put a little vanilla in the concoction and they were able to get it down.
For her contributions, she was awarded at the end of the war the Good Conduct Medal, the American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
It was at Letterman Hospital that Ervin met her future husband, Daniel “Buck” Ervin, who worked there as part of the Army’s 1971st Service Command Unit, which helped oversee such non-combat operations as processing draftees, issuing uniforms and equipment, operating stateside hospitals, and troops transportation, said Lawrence Ervin, “Buck” Ervin’s nephew, in a phone interview from his home in Maryland.
Verna and Buck were married in 1946 and together came back to Vershire to try to farm, buying the 123-acre property across the road from the home from where she’d grown up.
After a harsh winter and the loss of their cattle, the couple scrapped the idea of dairy farming and moved back across the country to Ervin’s hometown, Klamath Falls, Ore.
Once there, Buck went to work as a driver for the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Lawrence Ervin said. Their first and only child, Daniel James “Jimmy” Ervin, was born in Klamath Falls in 1948.
In 1956, Buck Ervin was severely injured when the cables on a logging truck snapped, and the logs fell on him and broke his back. After several operations and a long convalescence, he died in 1958, at 34, from hepatitis contracted as a result of a tainted blood transfusion during one of the operations, Lawrence Ervin said.
The loss of her husband sent Verna back east again, with her son. This time, for good.
For the next 30-plus years she worked as a cook and chambermaid at the West Fairlee School, the Norwich Inn and the Chieftain Motel, retiring in the early 1990s after she turned 70, Ward said.
“She was strong but she was tiny,” the smallest one in the family, perhaps not more than 5 feet tall, French said. “By the time she was 90 she was really tiny and bent over.”
“She was very proud. She would not ask for help at all. She was an older person who wanted to be on her own and not have to bother anybody and be with her cat. … When you grow up like she did in Vermont, you don’t ask for help, you don’t complain,” Ward said.
As the years passed, the conditions for Ervin became more fraught. She was devastated by the death of her son, who had lived with her in the trailer for many years, French said. Her sisters and brothers predeceased her. And her home fell into disrepair.
Ervin’s water supply was inadvertently cut off, and she didn’t want to tell her neighbors, Ward said.
The septic system failed because of the lack of running water. The roof leaked and the sides of the trailer began to buckle.
At night, rather than sleep in a bed, Ervin sat in a rocking chair in front of the door, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear any intruders.
After the mobile home reached the point of no return, Ervin’s friends and neighbors in town banded together to situate her in the second trailer. Ervin wasn’t sure about moving, but then Ward showed her photos of the mobile home and told her that she would have a small kitchen.
“Could I bake a cake?” Ervin asked Ward. Yes, you could, Ward told her. That persuaded Ervin.
For the next two years, Ervin’s friends helped her with such tasks as paying bills and taking her on the errands she needed done, to the bank and post office. VerShare brought her meals once a month, and her friends also pitched in food.
But Ervin didn’t have a primary care doctor and for many years refused to see one. She told Ward that she didn’t want to go to a physician because her father had warned her against it years earlier, telling her that any doctor would just find something wrong with her. After some minor illnesses, Ward finally insisted that Ervin seek medical attention.
By 2015, after a serious fall at home, it was clear that Ervin could no longer care for herself and that she would be better off in a place that offered 24-hour care. She knew it, too, Ward said.
“I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to get where there’s people. I can’t be alone anymore,” she told Ward.
At Blue Spruce Home in Bradford, she was welcomed as if she were a family member. She liked the food, the companionship and the joking around, Ward said.
But by this winter, Ervin had a bout of pneumonia and was hospitalized in Woodsville. She recovered enough to return to Blue Spruce. When she fell ill again this spring, however, she declined rapidly.
“Her body was plumb wore out,” Ward said.
Ervin left behind the 123 acres of property, the future of which is still undecided, and a $2,000 insurance policy, which paid for her cremation. Her ashes will be interred on Saturday with a graveside service in the Evergreen Cemetery in Thetford.
The American Legion will fire a salute, and as befits a veteran, play taps, fold the American flag and give it to her remaining family.
Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.