Wally Hunt

1910-1981

Wally Hunt called off a long, stubborn and sometimes angry battle with cancer on Thursday, January 28.  He was 70.

Mr. Hunt died at home on his farm in Barton.

Warwick E. Hunt was born in Orleans on July 11, 1910, the son of George and Lilla (Maxfield) Hunt.  He lived in this part of Orleans County all his life, except for an expedition to Florida with his family in the 1920s.  That trip was the subject of Mr. Huntís most recent series of articles for the Chronicle.

He is survived by his wife Gertrude, his daughter Patricia Harvan, her husband Charles and their children Deborah, Andrea and Mark, his son Dalton Hunt, his wife Mary Kay and their children Alan, Michael, Cynthia and Shawn.

A memorial service will be held this summer.  In lieu of flowers, friends might send a donation in Mr. Hunt’s name to Orleans & Northern Essex Home Health Agency, Inc.

The Hunt Family

The Hunt family was important in the early development of Willoughby Lake.  Wally traced two distinct branches of the family -- ìas different as night and dayî -- back to his great-grandfather Amos Hunt.  His sons were Wallyís grandfather Frank Hunt and Seymore Hunt, whom Wally described as ìa politician of sorts.î

Seymoreís son Franz Hunt was a partner in the publishing firm of Gilpin, Hunt, which owned the weekly Orleans County Monitor in Barton and founded the Newport Daily Express.

Wallyís side of the family was made up of what he described as ìkind of roughnecks.î  Wallyís grandfather Frank Hunt married May Evans, whose father Joseph Evans gave his name to Evansville.  Their son George Hunt was running a livery stable in Orleans when Wally was born in 1910.

ìMy dad did everything under Godís heaven to make money,î Wally said of his father.  The family lived in Orleans until Wally finished first grade. They then moved to Evansville, where George Hunt took over the general store which was the subject of many of Wallyís published reminiscences.

Wally finished elementary school in Evansville, attended Orleans High School, and then went to normal school in Lyndonville for teacher training.

Then he became a teacher.  ìI stayed at it — I don’t know if I taught or not — for 12 long winters.î

He taught for eight years at a one-room school that has since been replaced by the  Bait Barn on Route 5A in Barton.  Then he was called in to straighten things out at the Brownington Center School, where the last teacher had lost control.

ìIt was a rough school,î he recalled, ìand I could write some stories about it.  But I donít dare to.  Some of the people are stilling living.î

The kids climbed.  Climbed in and out the windows, and up and down the columns that held the building up.

ìBut I was pretty rugged then,î Wally said. ìI wasnít afraid of two or three kids.î   Wally spend three years there.

Final Year of Teaching

His final year of teaching was at the school on the May Pond Road, during the Second World War, when help was scarce.  ìI said Iíll stay until the spring work comes, and then Iíll quit.  And I did.î

ìI liked it for the first two years I taught,î he recalled.  ìI had some smart kids in Brownington Center.  But I got bored with it,  and when it got that way I quit.î

Was education better in those one-room schools?  After some hesitation, Wally said, ìI wonít answer that question, because I canít.  I wouldnít want my grandchildren to go to the school I taught in.î

Working for $18 a week in the winters, Wally necessarily put in busy summers.  In his first summer after normal school, he helped rebuild the Evansville bridge that the great flood of 1927 had taken out.

He spent the next summer in the whetstone quarry near Evansville, and set out to spend his third working in the woods.  But a new career had suggested itself — one that was to last for 40 years.

He and Dave Gallup went into the business of hiring out horses to pleasure riders.  Wally had learned to handle a horse when he started high school in Orleans, which is several miles from Evansville.  ìMy old man said  ëYou canít board there, and you canít walk.í  So he put me on a Morganís back and slapped it on the behind.î

Strictly Practical

But this was not the realization of a life-long dream.  Wallyís reasons were strictly practical.  ìWhen youíre pulling a crosscut saw for 20 cents an hour, and somebody offers you $1 an hour to ride a horse, itís pretty tempting.î

Did he like horses?

ìNo.  I like people and I like money.  I took care of the horses.î

But taking care of the horses put Wally in touch with a remarkable array of summer people -- businessmen, scholars, artists and heirs who rode Wallyís horses around the shores of Willoughby, and sent their heirs up to work with him.

ìThe stable brought a lot of people to our door.  Iíve seen a lot of people.  Some I liked, some I respected, and a few I detested,î Wally said.

The friendships he formed through the stable have been durable.    ìI get letters from people whose grandparents rode with me -- people wanting to know how I am.

ìI have a stack of letters a mile high from people who rode with me 20 or 30 years ago.  They found out Iím dying, and they want to write.  Iíve got to answer them.  I should take a whole day and answer them.î

Wally and Dave Gallup built a stable and a small camp on the east side of Willoughby.  Dave and his wife lived in the camp,  So when Wally married Gertrude Boutin in 1936, the new bride was brought to a summer residence in a tent.

But it was a substantial tent, Wally insisted, built with his fatherís help.  It had a wood floor, 12 feet by 14, electric lights, a three- burner oil stove, and an ice box on the porch.  Each Labor Day, after the two summers they lived in the tent, Wally and Gertrude would move back to a house in Evansville.

Then Wally bought his partner out, and the couple took over what Wally called ìthe shack,î and Gertrude prefers to recall as ìthe cottage.î  (The place still stands, and a visit to the small barn and tiny camp, perched over a rushing trout stream, confirms that Gertrude won that argument.)

Meanwhile, while teaching school winters and running the stable summers, Wally had invested in a farm.  It was bare of any buildings, after a fire, and priced at $1,050 for 122 acres.

Just Drifting

Wally was still single when he bought the place, and had no plans to farm.  ìI had no intentions,î he said.  ìI was just drifting, but I figured land was a good investment.î

Having bought the farm, he had to pay for it.  He sold the standing hay that year for $300 and rented the pastures for $100.  He hired a man to cut wood off the place for $1 a running cord (it was the Depression), drew it out himself the following winter and sold it for $7 a cord.  (There are three running cords in a full cord.)

Within the year, he had the farm paid for.

He found a house he liked in Barton.  It was one of the oldest in the village, and it was in the way of a parking lot Melvin Willis needed for Barton Motors.  Wally bought it for $100.

Wally and Gertrude had just been engaged (this was in 1935), so he took her to Barton to show her the house.  Then he began to tear it down, move it to the farm, and put it back together.  It took a while.

ìI moved here exactly 40 years ago next week, on Thanksgiving Day, on sleds,î Gertrude recalled in an interview last November.  ìWe had two kids (one of them a six-month-old baby) and a hired man, and there wasnít even a nail to hang a coat on.  I went into the bedroom, shut the door, and bawled like a baby.î

For his barns, Wally bought an old hotel on Willoughby and any other sound buildings he could find.  ìI donít know how many barns we bought,î he said.  ìBut there is very little new lumber in these buildings.î

Then he became a dairy farmer.  ìI started milking the first winter I quit teaching.  I was not a cow man, but I almost had to if I was going to pay the taxes on the land.î

With the help of son Dalton Hunt, who now operates the farm, Wally built up a handsome herd of Jersey cows. 

Does he like cows?

ìNo,î Wally said.  ìI donít like cows, though itís quite a satisfaction to raise a nice herd of cows.  I like the land.  I like to work horses on the land, to plow, to harrow.  I cleared pasture and built straight fence.  It was pick and shovel work, done with a pair of horses, a stone boat, a strong back and an iron bar.î

Wally Huntís final vocation was as a writer for this newspaper.  His background as a teacher, his deep roots in this territory, his wide and varied circle of acquaintances made through the stable, his open mind and vast appetite for serious books made him a perfect candidate for the job.

His clear, sharp prose arrived irregularly in one of the most awkward and impenetrable handwritings the editor has had to decipher.

Some years before, he confessed, he had offered a column to Franz Hunt and the Express.  He sent it back and said ìYouíll have to type that.  I canít read it.î

ìI never wrote for him again.  I donít own a typewriter.î

Wally never took any money for his writing, and never submitted a piece without apologizing for its shortcomings.  But he must have known that it was exactly the sort of writing the Chronicle wanted -- and needed if it was to survive here.

It would be hard to invent a man who better reflects the strengths and difficulties of this territory than Wally Hunt.  He did what he had to do, and yet seemed always to do what he wanted to do.

He never seemed comfortable to be doing any one thing.  But no amount of success could have taken him away from the place he loved, and the things he loved to do here. 

He balanced his own blunt, puritanical Yankee temperament in his choice of a bride -- a choice that in 1936 required great quantities of courage and independence of both partners.  Gertrude (Boutin) Hunt was -- and remains -- a French Canadian Catholic who laughs when Wally scowls and enjoys what Wally deplores.  It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely match -- impossible to point to a better one.

And that marriage offers a final example of Wallyís clear-eyed honesty, when he confesses to one regret in his life.  ìI did not want my kids to learn French -- and that was a mistake.î

Wally fought against death, he said, because he wanted to keep fire for his wife this winter.  His favorite occupation was neither to read nor to write but to put up wood.  He worked in the woods with a double-bitted axe and a crosscut saw, and stayed always a year ahead of his firesí demands. 

So this quotation from Henry David Thoreau would make a pretty good epitaph, if Wally had permitted his mourners a gravestone:

Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another.  The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest.  The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould.

So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of our future growth.  As I live now so shall I reap.  If I grow pines and birches, my virgin mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance, weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth.

Wally asked that his ashes be spread on his farm.  And if any bramble dares grow where they land, that will be quite a bramble, indeed.