Ross and Margie Meet

Ross Butler and Margie Werry met in Eden, Idaho in November 1933. They were both seventeen year old high school juniors.  Margie's family had been living in Eden since she was a ten year old fourth grader. But Ross' family had only recently moved to a rented farm three miles out of town.

Ross remembers, “at the age of seventeen we moved to Eden, Jerome County, Idaho onto an 80 acre farm owned by H. C. Gettert, three miles west of Eden. We moved the thirty-five miles by wagon, and I drove several wagon loads of furniture and machinery and the derrick* logs to Eden stopping overnight at farms along the way. I entered the Eden High School in November 1933 as a junior. There were fifteen in my class with about a hundred in high school. I immediately started to school and found they did not offer all the courses I'd been taking in Hollister, so had to make some changes. I went out for basketball but couldn't make the squad.”

The previous year, fall of 1932, Ross had to drop out of school at Hollister, Idaho.  His family needed him to go to work twenty-five miles away at Buhl, Idaho for E. J. Hunt & Sons to pay a debt that his father owed. The depression of October 1929 compounded by a severe drout and shortage of irrigation water had created hardship for his family. 

In Ross' words, “I quit after football season and worked all winter for $1 a day and my board (food and room) and was their best paid man for the other three employees got $1 a day and had to board themselves. The reason I was paid so well was that the $1 a day was applied to the debt (my father owed) and they had to feed me to keep me alive! This was farm work, feeding livestock: cattle, horses and sheep and breaking horses and mules to work as teams. I also took the Hunt children to and from school in a bobsled. That was a long cold winter and I became very miserable and cold for I did not have adequate clothes. I'll never forget how thankful I was for an old discarded army coat that was given to me.”

The year 1933 was the worst year of the great depression in America with 25% of people out of work. The American dream had become a nightmare. Tens of thousands of people traveled the roads and railways looking for work. The family garden was paramount to feeding families who had little or no money. A loaf of bread cost seven cents and a pound of hamburger meat cost eleven cents, but even that was too expensive when a person literally had no money.

John and Bertha Butler, Ross' parents, very much wanted their children to have educations so in September 1933 Ross went back to school.  Ross continues, “I had been president of my Freshman and Sophomore classes and before dropping out of school had been voted president of the Hollister Junior class.” When he returned to school in Hollister in the fall of 1933 he was with a new group of kids a year younger than himself but they still voted him as their class president.

However, circumstances forced the familys move to Eden in November of that year. In Eden, Ross joined with the junior class “although I should have been a senior” and continued his schooling. Always interested in scouting, Ross posted a notice on the bulletin board asking all boys interested in scouting to sign.  He remembers, "I think every boy in high school signed, about 45 boys. I then took the sheet to the Snake River Council in Twin Falls and asked them to provide us with a scout troop. They informed me that I must find a sponsor. Since the Hollister school had sponsored a troop, I went to the Eden School Board, but they refused me.”

Ross, Glenn and Don Butler in Eden, Idaho 1934

Ross and Margie were two of a class of fifteen juniors that fall at 1933 at Eden High School, nine girls and six boys. This group was a close-knit bunch. Ross says “they were a choice group of youth and I enjoyed school activities with them. We had something going all the time.”

Dot remembers the day Margie came home from school and announced that she had met the man she was going to marry.  It was Ross Butler, the new student in her junior class.

“At the age of 17, I was beginning to notice the girls.” Ross says it took “only a short time to set my sights on courting this talented girl (Margie).” On one occasion he “walked Margie home from school” less than a block to the north of the school “and visited with her under the shelter of the trees. It was raining, and Dot (Margie's mother) came out to ask if they didn't know any better than to come in out of the rain.” Years later in 1962 when Dot was living with them in Ontario, Oregon, Ross and Margie were outside when it started to rain. Dot went to the front door and hollered out, “Don't you know any better than to come in out of the rain?” Ross and Margie laughed remembering when that question was asked almost thirty years before in a similar situation.

Concerning Margie, Ross wrote, “Margie Werry attracted me as being the outstanding girl in Eden High School. She had a partial Mormon background and wasn't adverse to attending our Church. She was very attractive, always neat and clean, captain of the basketball team (senior year) and a champion sprinter. She played the piano for all school functions and had a beautiful alto voice. She could give outstanding readings, was an excellent swimmer and loved outdoor activities. In fact, she was an all around ideal girl.”

Margie Werry 1934

Underground Tragedy

A story about my grandfather, Harry Cobbledick Werry

Written by Margie Dawn Werry Butler, 1936



1917 - The Joseph and Elizabeth Werry Family

It was early fall in the year 1887.  Central City, Colorado, was a little mining town, just beginning to prosper from the vast amount of gold which it's mines were producing.  Some of the mines were so rich that when a rock containing the ore was broken apart, it would hang together by threads of gold, which was called "wire gold". 

Miners and their families were prospering, since gold was abundant and it sold for a fair price.  Men came from long distances, staked claims, built homes among the foothills and in the valleys, and settled their families in this remarkable section of the country. Thus the fame of Central City continued to travel, bringing men and women, young and old alike, to it's vast mountainous section, rich gold mines, gambling halls, smelly saloons, crowded dance halls and it's variety of humanity.  It was indeed a thriving little town which would someday develop into a city. 

Harry and Lillian had met, had loved, and had married in the town, and a happier couple couldn't not be found.  Their love was beautiful, the kind that develops and becomes more firm and abiding as the years pass.  They were devoted to each other, nothing could part them, ever.  The couple moved into their new home which was built among the foothills, a short distance from the town.  It looked just like any other little house in Central City, but there was something, an indefinable something, that made it dear to the two who owned it. 



1887 - Harry C Werry and Lillian Carr Wedding Photo

Harry and his Uncle Jack owned a mine called the "Emperor", which was only a mile from the young couple's new home.  Harry would leave early in the morning and walk to work, carrying the lunch which Lillian had prepared for him.  He would work far underground all day, digging shafts and tunnels farther into the earth and working on rich veins of gold in the walls of a drift.  Often in the evenings before he went home, he would drill innumerable holes, insert the dynamite, light the long fuse, and hurry home in the dusk.  A miner always waited until he was ready to go home in the evenings before he inserted the dynamite in the drills and lit the fuse.  In the morning the fatal fumes from the exploded dynamite would have disappeared, and the miner could resume his work in safety.  Harry would go home in the evenings, tired but happy, for didn't he have the sweetest wife in the world waiting for his return?  Oh, it was good to be alive!  It seemed impossible that anyone could be as happy as he was. 

Days came and went, and the couple were blissfully happy for five short weeks, when the inevitable happened.  The morning had begun in the usual manner.  Breakfast was over and Harry had brought in an extra supply of wood and coal for his wife.  Lillian put up her husband's lunch, kissed him goodbye, and watched him until he turned to wave to her before disappearing from view.  Had they thought of it, they would have laughed at the idea of impending disaster.  Nothing could impair such a passionate devotion they felt for each other.  it would have seemed incredible to them had they known Harry would never see his wife again.  It was too unreal.  Fate couldn't be so cruel to them.  Harry was joined by his Uncle Jack at the latter's house, and shouldering their pickaxes, the rest of their tools were at the mine, they walked along the path leading to the mountain.  The younger man was extremely happy.  Life was good to him, he had everything a man could wish for.  There was nothing he lacked.  Wouldn't Uncle Jack come over and help them make candy tonight?  Yes, Uncle Jack would be glad for an excuse to get away from his lonely house.  His wife had been dead a good many years, and he enjoyed the frequent visits with his niece and nephew. 

They laughed and joked and were in high spirits when the mine was reached, then they went seriously to work.  Harry descended into the excavation to resume the digging of a drift in which he had drilled dynamite the night before. A considerable amount of the bedrock had been blown into small particles, and every drill had exploded except one.  It was a common occurrence for a drill not to explode, although when the miner "spooned" the dirt out and inserted dynamite again, he had to be very careful.  It was so easy for the explosive to go off by the slight pressure or friction of removing the dirt which covered it.  Harry decided he would drill again before he went home that evening, so he preceded to another task.  The day passed in much the same manner as a day passes in the life of a miner.  In a short while, it was time to drill and go home.  Harry was kneeling on the floor of the shaft scraping the dirt from the drill which had not exploded. 

No one will ever know how it happened, it was all over in such a short time. When the dynamite exploded, the force was so great, it threw Harry down, but he was not knocked unconscious.  Stunned and bleeding, he crawled on his hands and knees back along the shaft.  But the darkness!  And the excruciating pain! It must have been terrible.  He will never know how he could tell where he was going, nor how he could crawl, maimed as he was.  And the dangerous, stifling fumes from the explosion added to the torture.  His lungs felt as if they must burst, and he lost so much blood that he would never have lived if Uncle Jack and two other miners had not heard the report of the explosion and found him in the shaft.  They carried him home, three of them, for he was a large man. 

He was unrecognizable with his face blown half away, the empty, staring sockets where his eyes should have been, and one-half of his hand and arm dangling by a fragment of skin.  Such a broken, bloody piece of humanity to take back to a woman married but five weeks!  No one will ever know the torture, the agony, the intense suffering, both physically and mentally, the two people felt during the long months Harry lay in bed, close to death.  He wanted to die, prayed that he would, but his wife's prayers were answered.  She couldn't lose him; he meant so much to her.  In his pain, discouragement and sorrow, her love had seemed to grow, not with pity, but a tender, protective affection as a mother for her child.  She did everything she could to make his days of agony and suffering less painful.  Her hours with him were a torture to her; a mental and physical anguish, yet she bore her pain in silence. 

At last, after a year, he had improved enough to get up and feel his way ever so slowly around his once perfect home.  After another six months, he was taken to Chicago to one of the best eye specialists in America.  Nothing could be done.  Harry's eyes had been blown completely away; only emptiness remained.  His features were those of a stranger.  Inside his cheeks and around his jaw and cheekbones, were particles of rocks which had become imbedded and the skin had grown over them.  He carried horrible scars on his face all his life.  Three maimed fingers remained on his right hand, the other half of his hand and arm were gone.  Yet he could thank God he had been spared.  Yes, he thanked God he was almost whole.  More than anything, he thanked Him for his wife.  She had remained faithful to him during every hour of his need.  She loved him devotedly, a love which grew more beautiful through the years. 

Two healthy children, a girl and an boy, were born to the couple, who dearly loved their son and daughter.  Soon after, the family moved to Idaho, where they made their home.  A few years later, the couple were blessed with a second son, who lived only twelve years. 

1903 - Harry, Mabel, Ezra Joe and Lillian Werry

Harry was brave.  He endured his affliction in silence, never aggrieving others and above all always cheerful.  He was hurt intensely whenever he thought of his wife's having to support the family, and he did everything he could to help make the journey through life easier for her.  The things he could do were marvelous, and yet one would sigh in thankfulness for one's physical perfection.  Harry lived for forty-four years, inspiring others with his cheerfulness and courage.

1927 - Harry C. Werry cutting wood