OROVILLE – Born in 1914, Wilbur “Web” Hallauer has seen nearly a century of changes come to the United States of America. As a boy, he lived on a nearly self-sufficient farm in upstate New York. In his pre-teens, his family relocated to Washington State and after high school graduation in Yakima Hallauer went on to graduate from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Hallauer traveled around the world prior to settling down as a manager of his family’s fruit drying company in Oroville, where he was a major employer for the local people for many years.
Hallauer’s successful foray into politics in 1948 became a life-long career, with 20 years spent in the state legislature, where he was the Chairman of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, as well as the Chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He also served as the Chairman of the Interim Committee on Water Resources and under Governor Dixy Lee Ray he served as the director of the Department of Ecology.
Along the way, Hallauer became an experimental crop farmer, as well as a mineral prospector and successful mine owner and a land-and-timber speculator. His widely diverse background has made him into a unique person with many fascinating stories to tell, featured in his books “Chads from a Diverse Life – Volumes I and II.”
Some of Hallauer’s interesting and historical stories about the Okanogan have now been published in two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume is scheduled for a late winter publication). They can be found by the public at the 31 local North Central Washington Libraries and at the Senate Library in Olympia. They are offered to the public for sale at the Oroville Borderlands Museum and at the Okanogan County Historical Societies Museum in Okanogan.
The public can also purchase copies of “Chads from a Diverse Life – Volume I” for $19 and “Chads from a Diverse Life – Volume II” for $25 from Christy Lindberg, a new local publisher, who can be reached at: Creative Realities Publishing, P. O. Box 961, Tonasket, WA 98844; (509) 476-2486 or at (509) 486-0833. Lindberg can also be contacted by e-mail at christineprincess@yahoo.com for manuscript consultations and help in getting unknown authors published locally in print and in e-book form.
