Beloved Oregon author Beverly Cleary still pulls her hometown together

She was just a little girl, barely old enough to go to school, when she left town.

Yet author Beverly Cleary spent most of the next 100 years proving that children — especially little girls — can make a big impact.

Her hometown of Yamhill was only 25 years old when Cleary was born in 1916, yet her six years there could well be one of the most significant periods in its history. That little girl from the early 20th century still brings the community together.

“When I moved to this town, I realized Beverly Cleary was the unifying force,” said Kara Weber, president of the Yamhill Downtown Association. “She’s bigger than all of us.”

Yamhill will hold its annual Beverly Cleary Literacy Celebration on Saturday, May 11. Events include a writing competition where contestants are prompted by a theme inspired by Cleary’s 1965 book “The Mouse and the Motorcycle.”

The prompt: What if something small made a big difference?

That could well be the story of a little girl who grew up to write more than 50 books before her death in 2021 — mostly celebrating the everyday adventures of childhood. Characters such as Ramona Quimby, her big sister Beezus and their friend Henry Huggins made their neighborhood along Portland’s Klickitat Street internationally famous.

However, Cleary’s own story began at the house at the end of West Third Street in Yamhill.

“Her stories really started when she was growing up here,” said local artist Kimberly Howell, who created a coloring and activity book for the annual festival. “I can imagine where she was walking.”

• Read more: 8 must-read Beverly Cleary books; A Beverly Cleary mystery unfolds at a Portland Middle School; Beverly Cleary reflects on her career before her 100th birthday

Amy LaMae Brewer moved to Yamhill 16 years ago but had forgotten about Cleary’s time here, even though she had written a senior project at Concordia University Portland about Beverly Cleary’s Rose City connection. “When I found out her house was here,” she said, “I was like, ‘Oh, yes! I remember! This is the perfect place for me!’”

Brewer, a teacher and writer, helped start the Beverly Cleary Literacy Celebration shortly after the formation of the Yamhill Downtown Association in 2019.

Members of the city council wanted to promote Yamhill’s downtown neighborhood, stretching along Oregon 47 between McMinnville and Forest Grove. They asked strategists at Rural Development Initiatives Inc. for help.

Mary Bosch, the economic development senior project manager at the time, recommended a series of public meetings where residents could share their ideas on how the community should progress over the next 10 to 15 years.

The Yamhill Downtown Association evolved from those meetings. Although Yamhill County is famous as the center of Oregon’s wine industry, Weber said association members listened to residents who saw other things to celebrate.

“They didn’t want to see another small town focused only on the wine industry,” she said. “They were very adamant about that. They wanted to see Yamhill celebrate its roots. We are friends of everything wine. We just didn’t want to have only tasting rooms in the downtown corridor.”

Bosch suggested rallying the community with a free local event. Beverly Cleary immediately leapt to many people’s minds.

“That’s how Beverly Cleary became like our matron,” Weber said. “It’s a nice way to draw attention to the downtown corridor, to get community involvement. We are all about the heart and soul of the downtown.”

The celebration was originally held on Cleary’s April 12 birthday, but it was moved to May in hopes of avoiding rainy weather.

In addition to the writing competition, the festival also includes a coloring contest as well as 10K and 5K runs. The longer race starts downtown at 8:30 a.m., and the shorter race starts at 10 a.m.

Plans also call for a walking tour of the community and a remote-controlled miniature car race at Jane Heinrich Park.

As a teacher, Brewer said she has a special fondness for the annual writing competition. “Sometimes we don’t get the opportunity to be creative storytellers in school,” she said. “There are too many other things being asked of our kids.”

Celebrating literacy in general is incredibly important, she added.

“I love seeing kids become independent readers and getting excited about reading and fun stories,” she said. “I love Beverly Cleary’s stories because they’re about fun kids in the neighborhood. They’re about goodness, kindness, quirkiness and silly things — just being a kid.”

Beverly Cleary is not just the focal point of an annual celebration. She is everywhere in her hometown now.

Nine informational displays are scattered about town, each including information about local history and Cleary’s own life while also featuring quotes from the author and spotlighting specific characters from her books.

A display at the corner of Oregon 47 and West Main Street tells how Cleary and her mother started a children’s library on the second floor of the Yamhill Bank Building.

Brewer and her own children marched in a local parade to promote a library named in honor of Beverly Cleary. “It was just too much of a huge endeavor to get a building,” she said.

Another display a block away on West First Street quotes Cleary as saying, “I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it. I’ve had some very moving letters from young men in the last year or so saying that Henry Huggins gave them hope that there were better neighborhoods to live in than wherever they lived.”

Steve Dumdi and his three sisters grew up in Cleary’s old house on Third Street after his parents Roger and Janet Dumdi bought it in 1951, when he was in second grade.

He doesn’t just remember Cleary as a famous author; he remembers her as a friend who frequently came back to visit her hometown and see her early childhood home.

“My grandmothers both boarded there before my folks bought the place and helped take care of Beverly,” Dumdi remembered. “When they put the sewer plant down here, Beverly came by and said, ‘Steve! I’ll fight ‘em in Portland for you!’ I told her we better leave that alone. She was a really sweet lady.”

The house is now privately owned by a former kindergarten teacher who doesn’t offer tours to the public.

Dumdi continues to live in Yamhill, but he said a lot has changed since his visits with Cleary. “I have a lot of memories here,” he said. “Nothing looks quite the same as it used to be.”

Cleary wrote about her first years in Yamhill in her 1988 memoir “A Girl From Yamhill.”

“That book was what put Yamhill on the map,” Weber said.

Cleary died in 2021 at the age of 104. Although the Beverly Cleary Literacy Celebration was going on its third year, Brewer said she doesn’t know whether the author knew about the festival.

“We tried to write her letters every year, but we never received any responses,” she said.

The festival has drawn 100-150 people each year, Brewer said. “Last year, our runners helped move us to a little more,” she said.

Honoring Beverly Cleary is a beautiful way to honor the entire Yamhill community, Weber said.

“I love that Beverly Cleary creates a small-town focus where kids can be kids and enjoy all these great things,” she added.

IF YOU GO

Yamhill hosts its annual Beverly Cleary Literacy Celebration on Saturday, May 11. The community of 1,147 people is 32 miles southwest of Portland along Oregon 47. A 5K run starts downtown at 8:30 a.m., and a 5K run starts at 10 a.m. The event also includes live music, beverages, remote-controlled car races and a selection of books by Beverly Cleary.

There are also writing and coloring contests. The writing contest, with a grand prize of a remote-controlled car, is open to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The coloring contest invites children from kindergarten to second grade to compete for prizes that include T-shirts, postcards and book certificates. The deadline for both contests is Sunday, May 12. Find details at amylamae.com/post/2024-kid-s-writing-coloring-contests and yamhilldowntown.com.

— Tom Henderson, for The Oregonian/OregonLive