‘No Regrets’: Camas historian Virginia Warren celebrates 100th birthday

If anyone embodies the phrase “Age is just a number,” it’s Virginia Warren. Long known as Camas’ unofficial historian, Warren will celebrate her 100th birthday on April 16. “I don’t feel my age,” Warren said. “I feel much younger. Not 60 or even 70, but younger than 100.” Until she turned 91, Warren enjoyed marking her annual trip around the sun with a hike to the top of Beacon Rock in the Columbia River Gorge and a small glass of champagne. “I’d go now, but they won’t let me,” Warren said, laughing. Instead, Warren plans to spend her birthday celebrating with friends and family and, no doubt, regaling the crowd with interesting stories about Camas, the town Warren has called home for all but a handful of her nearly 100 years. “I love Camas,” Warren said. “This is my home.” Warren moved to Camas with her parents, Ben and Lelia Lathlean, when she was 2 years old. Her earliest memories are filled with happy times — swimming in the frigid Washougal River at the Sandy Swimming Hole with her older sister and brother, camping in the Gorge with her family, playing clarinet in her middle school band, becoming a Camas High School majorette, working at the Liberty Theatre after school and then walking more than a mile to her family’s home after her evening shifts. “Until I got a boyfriend who had a Model A,” Warren said, “and then I got a ride home.” Warren, a 1944 Camas High School graduate, eventually got her own Ford Model A — a car she still owns but now stores with relatives. During World War II, she moved to California to help the military effort by driving in a convoy with her sister, Margaret. In 2010, Warren talked about this chapter of her life for a Washington State University oral history project. “I went to California and took the civil service test and passed it,” Warren said. “It was no problem for me to drive these trucks because I already knew how to drive a stick shift. … I passed with flying colors and drove convoy down there for quite a while. “We were an all-girl convoy. All of us were women driving the vehicles because all the men were overseas or they were in the service,” Warren recalled. “It was a great experience for me. I did a lot of growing up and had a lot of fun.” Warren’s adventures in California were fleeting. She stayed a couple years but soon found herself drawn back to her hometown. “I never really wanted to leave Camas,” Warren said. Once back in Camas, Warren married a Navy sailor, Robert “Bob” Holland, and the couple had three sons, Bob, Pat and Tim. Warren trained as a hairdresser in downtown Portland and eventually opened her own beauty parlor in downtown Camas. She remembers attending her boys’ many sporting events and baking special cakes for all of the neighborhood children’s birthdays. She also was known for bringing city workers baked goods to help keep their spirits up while they took care of Camas’ maintenance needs. After her husband died in the early 2000s, Warren remarried Wendell “Wendy” Warren and is still close with his son, Greg Warren, of Vancouver. Today, Warren is the matriarch of a family that includes six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. The importance of remembering Over the past decade, Warren has become known as not only a champion for Camas but also as a valuable resource for people hoping to learn more about the town’s history. In 2019, Warren donated three volumes of her scrapbook collection to the Camas Public Library. Filled with news articles and photographs from the Camas Post-Record and other items detailing historical events in Camas, the collection is available to view inside the library or in its newly digitized form on the library’s website at cityofcamas.us/library/page/virginia-warren-collection. Warren said she started the scrapbooks because she knew the importance of remembering and wanted to share the town’s history with others. “I moved to town about nine years ago,” Camas Library Director Connie Urquhart said, “and the moment I moved here, I heard that Virginia is the source of Camas history. She’s revered in town as the authoritative historian and yet she’s so gracious about it. She’s a local celebrity, but she doesn’t put on airs. She welcomes everybody and does a great job passing on her knowledge.” Warren’s friend Cheryl Lamb of Washougal agreed. “Virginia doesn’t know what a gift she’s been to so many people, on so many levels,” Lamb said. “She just brings people so much joy. She loves people and they love her.” The town’s appreciation for Warren is apparent. Not only has she served as the queen of the annual Camas Days festival, she also led the Camas Days parade as grand marshal in 2019. In 2023, Warren joined Nan Henriksen, former Camas mayor, and Carrie Schulstad, the executive director of the Downtown Camas Association, in a “Women Who Shaped Camas” panel discussion to help celebrate the Camas library’s 100th anniversary. “It gave us a chance to experience Camas’ history through Virginia’s eyes,” Urquhart said. During that panel discussion, Warren shared how her mother, Lelia, a wonderful seamstress, had helped her pull together a last-minute majorette costume when Warren was asked to lead a parade during the summer before she went into seventh grade. “Mr. Moffitt, the band director, was asked to get some of the old band members together for a parade … and he asked me to be the majorette,” Warren recalled. “I was thrilled but didn’t have a baton, a uniform or boots. I didn’t have anything. So I went home that day and told my mother I needed a majorette outfit.” Lelia would craft a pleated skirt and long ruffled blouse for her daughter’s uniform. She went to a family living on the outskirts of Camas who raised rabbits and purchased some rabbit fur to help decorate Warren’s majorette boots. And Warren’s dad cut a broom handle and painted it white, then painted two balls red and screwed them to either end of the makeshift baton. “We were poor, but I never felt poor,” Warren said of her Depression-era childhood. Asked if she has advice for young people trying to navigate the modern world, Warren says she would tell them just one thing: “Always be kind to one another.” It’s a value Warren has lived by for nearly 100 years, and it seems to have had a positive impact for, when she looks back on her life, Warren can only smile. “I have no regrets,” she said. “I wouldn’t change a thing.” Kelly Moyer: 360-735-4674; kelly.moyer@columbian.com

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