‘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.

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.

“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.”