Dairyman dies, takes bit of history with him
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, January 15, 2005
Picture farmland in the Snohomish Valley as a home-stitched cotton quilt. Then picture the center square missing.
When Clarence O. Hjort, 92, died Nov. 29, the fabric of the farming community lost part of its historic soul.
Hjort (pronounced Yort), spent his retirement years driving from farm to farm in his red 1984 Ford Ranger pickup. Every family knew him. Neighbors appreciated seeing him on his route, wearing a red hunter’s hat.
They called him The Inspector. It was the perfect nickname.
Born in Marysville the youngest of eight children, Hjort was stricken with appendicitis at age 8. A doctor felt he would fare better recovering away from his Sunnyside neighborhood. Hjort was driven by horse and buggy to the farm of a childless couple in Snohomish, where he was raised.
A terrific hitter with a minor league team in Snohomish, he quit because he couldn’t afford baseball shoes. After a high school teacher argued with the sophomore about how to say his last name, Hjort kissed school goodbye.
He spent decades renting or owning farms from Woodinville to Snohomish. His first string of 20 cows grew to 350. Esther, his city-girl wife who died in 1997 after 59 years of marriage, asked her husband to settle down in Snohomish. She said he could commute to work, but she aimed to stay put when she found her dream home.
Friend Shirley Olson Wright, 75, said a group of young families would all picnic together at Silver Lake in south Everett.
“We’d have to go to a lake near his barn,” Wright said. “He would have to get back and milk.”
Hjort was honored by former Gov. Albert Rosellini as a state farmer of the year in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Friend George Stimac, 75, said Hjort retired twice.
“Work was his life,” Stimac said. “How he could start from nothing and do as well as he could, I’ll never understand.”
Hjort is survived by his sons and daughter-in-law, Tom and Linda Hjort, and Glyn Hjort, of Snohomish; daughter and son-in-law, Joanne Hjort and Dennis Raymond of Seattle; grandchildren, Colleen and Paul Hill, Jean “Shorty” Hjort, Brady and Betsy Hjort, and Jamie and Cathy Rowe; great-grandchildren, Jessica and Steven Hill; and members of the Stimac, Verduin and Wright families. He was preceded in death by son Richard.
Friends said Esther is remembered for embroidered blankets that are owned by almost every farm family in the valley.
As Hjort’s health failed, friend and former dairy farmer Chris Beglinger, 78, of Centralia drove to Snohomish twice a month to visit. Beglinger said farmers put in a rough day, but most love it. All Hjort knew was cows, he said.
“Owning a dairy farm is a different life,” Beglinger said. “You are in bed at 9, up at 4:30. Neighbors up and down the road are all in the same boat.”
