Vess L. Brelsford passed away Friday, Oct. 16, 2020, in his home. He was 92.
He is survived by his brother, Lloyd E. Brelsford; his daughters, Jeanine Scarborough, Barbara (Guy) Schmidtlein and H. Ann Brelsford; as well as seven grandchildren, Marcheta (Keta) Rapp, Joshua Hodges, Mathew Scarborough, Charley Schmidtlein, Jason Schmidtlein, Sara Bannon and Kendrick Griffin; and eight great-grandchildren. Preceding him in death was his wife of 59 years, Helen M. Brelsford, his brother, Duane A. Brelsford, and his son, Vess L. Brelsford Jr. (aka Skip).
Vess was born June 18, 1928, as Vess L. Grover on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation. Vess lived with his grandparents, Alexis F. and Lilly Bell Bailly, and his mom, Grace, in Peever, S.D., while his mom cared for his grandparents until their passing in the early ‘30s. His father, Thomas J. Grover, was no longer in the picture.
In 1934, Vess went to live with his mom’s sister, Abby McDowell, and her family in Sisseton, S.D., while his mom left to look for work in the city of Watertown, S.D. There his mom met and married Art Brelsford. Grace and Art Brelsford retrieved Vess in 1936 when he was 7 and headed west to Pullman, where Art went to work with Grace’s brother, Alex Bailly, in the construction industry. Art was a plasterer. Vess attended school in Pullman as Vess L. Brelsford from first grade through his freshman year in high school.
In 1944, Vess and his family moved to Vancouver, Wash., where his mom went to work in the shipyards as part of the war effort during World War II, and his dad worked again for Alex, who had previously moved to Vancouver to participate in the housing boom. Vess attended Vancouver High from his sophomore year until he graduated in 1946. In early 1945, when Vess turned 17, he wanted to enlist in the service for WWII, but needed the signatures of his parents to do so. Therefore, in 1945, adoption proceedings were begun for Art Brelsford to formally adopt Vess. However, before adoption was completed, WWII came to an end. Vess formally became Vess L. Brelsford on Nov. 7, 1945.
After Vess graduated high school, he and his family moved back to Pullman where he briefly attended Washington State University from fall 1946 through spring 1947. He then went to work for his dad, who had started a company called Art Brelsford and Sons. While working for his dad, Vess became a journeyman plasterer. Then the Korean War broke out and Vess soon found himself drafted into the U.S. Army. He did his basic training at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, before shipping out to Korea. He spent one year in Korea, returning home on Christmas Eve in 1952.
After the war, when he returned to work for his father, he was dismayed to find the construction industry had turned to drywall (sheetrock) as the way to cover interior walls in homes and buildings. He was told he would have to start over as a novice in the sheetrock trade and work his way up to journeyman, all over again. Disappointed, Vess applied for and obtained work at the Pullman Post Office. Vess worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 11 years from 1953 to 1964, when he left and went to work for C&S Construction.
On June 14, 1968, while Vess was working on a suspended scaffold, applying stucco to the outside of the new top story of Heald Hall on the Washington State University campus, something went wrong with the pully on one side of the lift and it quit moving, while the other side continued moving up and basically dumped him out of the bucket. He fell five stories from the top of Heald Hall and had he not fallen on some duct work that was piled at the base of the building and bounced, the fall would have killed him. He was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, where X-rays showed he had broken or cracked all the ribs on his left side and chipped four vertebrae in his back. He jokes that he learned to walk again on his 40th birthday while in the hospital.
Afterward, during the next five years as he physically recovered from the fall, he worked part time for his brother, Duane Brelsford, building houses in Pullman. He also took odd jobs doing plaster repairs, delivering bundles of Spokesman-Review newspapers to carriers for their routes and running a rural delivery route himself, and picking up Goodwill from people’s houses around the Palouse and delivering it to a storage unit in Pullman for later pickup and delivery to Spokane. In 1973, Vess went to work for the department of physical plant at Washington State University, first as a night custodian, then as a utilities maintenance worker, and worked there until his retirement in 1992.
In 1953, when Vess was working for the Post Office, he met Helen Hewitt and they married Dec. 6, 1953. They raised four children. Vess and Helen were avid bowlers in Pullman on several teams and loved to travel to bowling tournaments all over the West. Vess continued to bowl on a team into his 80s until, as he joked, he and the ball began to weigh the same and he had to give it up. In 2015, Vess was awarded the Sportsmanship Bowling Award from the Palouse Regional U.S. Bowling Congress for promoting bowling through his bowling career. In 2018, Vess and Helen (posthumously) were inducted into the Palouse Regional U.S. Bowling Congress Hall of Fame and their picture can be found on the Bowling Hall of Fame Wall at Zeppoz Bowling Alley in Pullman.
There is no funeral planned for Vess. He preferred not to be fussed over. The family is planning a small memorial gathering for both Vess and Skip around Memorial Day weekend in May. Kimball Funeral Home of Pullman has been entrusted with arrangements. Online condolences may be sent to www.kimballfh.com.
