Valdie Burkholder has lived in same home for 52 years

Editor's Note: The following is another in a series of stories about long-time Boundary County residents. They were asked to compare life here today with life from the past. To submit a name, call The Herald at 267-5521.

Valdie Burkholder-Dean has lived in Boundary County since 1934.

“All my friends are here and my kids grew up here,” said Burkholder-Dean. “I like it here.”

Now a little more about the Bonners Ferry woman.

Family - Burkholder-Dean was born in Kellogg, Idaho, to Blaine and Josie White. She was the youngest of five children.

The Whites moved to a stump ranch in Moyie Springs when Burkholder-Dean was 10 years old because her father had black lung disease. Her dad was a mail carrier.

“I thought it was the end of the world,” Burkholder-Dean said about moving to Bonners Ferry.

Education - She first attended Buckhorn Elementary School in Moyie. It was 3 miles from home.

“I was too little to walk every day,” said Burkholder-Dean.

Instead she lived with her teacher, Clara Hewitt, for five years and only went home on weekends.

Burkholder-Dean then went to the old Bonners Ferry High School. There were no school busses so she stayed in town with different people and had to pay room and board.

Marriage - Burkholder-Dean quit school when she was 17 to marry Jim Burkholder, whom she met at Buckhorn School, where he took his sisters to school.

“I had no idea (that I'd marry him),” Burkholder-Dean said. “We all ran around together. His sisters and me and my brother and him.”

Jim Burkholder was in the military service, and she spent the next couple of years following him around the country.

Family - The Burkholders had their first son, Jimmy, in 1944 before Jim Burkholder left for the Pacific. It was two years before he saw his son.

Their second son, Rockey, was born in 1948 and a daughter, Teresa Becker, was born in 1955.

The couple moved numerous times, fixing up homes and then selling them.

“I finally told him that I was not moving any more,” said Burkholder-Dean.

They then found their house on Commanche Street, where Burkholder-Dean has been living for 52 years.

“When we first moved here it was a little village,” she said. “There was a Shell station, tire shop, saw shop, motel and a little store.”

All her children went to Northside School, which is now Northside Bed and Breakfast.

“Every day all the kids and I would go down and get a Twinkie at the Shell station for lunch,” said Burkholder-Dean. “The children also remember the butcher at the store giving them the ends off the bologna.”

Jim Burkholder passed away in 2002 from lung cancer. The couple has five grandchildren.

“My granddaughter Mikkel (Shannon) still calls here every day to read a Bible verse and say a prayer with me,” said Burkholder-Dean.

She married Dow Dean in 2004. He passed away last summer.

“I still have my dog and my bird,” she said. “I am very active.”

Burkholder-Dean was president of the Legion of Idaho from 1979 to 1980. She has worked with the legion for 50 years.

The 83-year-old attends the First Methodist Church, where she has been active for about 50 years.

“She does everything for everyone,” said Rockey Burkholder. “She is a really good mother.”

Making a living - Burkholder-Dean remembers first working in California at Kress Dime Store when Jim Burkholder was stationed there.

“I worked eight hours a day, six days a week and made $11 a week plus a sundae,” said Burkholder-Dean.

Her husband, Jim, was making $21 a month for being in the military in 1941.

“When we moved to Texas, we were living on watermelon and Dr. Pepper,” said Burkholder-Dean.

She worked for Vi Sims at South Hill Furniture for several years and her step-dad, Norm Heathers, at the Shell Station he owned in the village below her home.

Burkholder-Dean then worked for 17 years as a hot lunch provider at Northside School. It was condemned the year she retired.

She then traveled a lot and visited many countries.

Changes in the community - Burkholder-Dean saw many different changes in her time in Bonners Ferry with one of the main ones being the schools.

“Buckhorn, Southside Grade School and the old high school all closed,” she said.

When Northside Elementary School closed, Burkholder-Dean's son, Jim, and his wife, Ruth, bought it even though it was in very bad shape. They moved from Colorado Springs, Colo., to live there. Burkholder-Dean says she believes they only paid $39,000 for the school in 1991, which was renovated with a military museum in the basement.

“It was nice then to have them all so close,” she said.

Rockey Burkholder lives across the street from his mother.