GOMER — It started in 1913 with a Sears and Roebuck house blueprint and lumber from the surrounding woods, but more than 100 years later, that same farmhouse northeast of Gomer hosted a family reunion of more than 100 Saturday, celebrating a century of keeping it in the family.
“My parents were Clarence and Bertha Sarber Clevenger,” according to Fay Stephens, who, along with her husband, Marvin, still live in the house built by her father. “He built the house and married my mom and they spent their first night in the house. Then they tore down some more trees and built the barn and the chicken coops.”
Clevenger picked the location on his father’s 160 acres after finding a high patch of ground during a flood. As the years passed, Clevenger and his wife had nine children, of whom only Fay Stephens, her twin brother Jay Clevenger, Leola Steman and Joyce Zimmerman remain. All of them still remember the hard work their father and the rest of the family put in to get by.
“He had five acres where he grew all kinds of vegetables — watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet corn — and everybody would work to harvest it and then he would take it all to area grocery stores and sell fresh produce,” Zimmerman said.
Marvin Stephens said the hard work the Clevengers put into their produce helped them pay off the farm during the lean years of the Great Depression.
“He knew that everybody had to eat,” he said.
Zimmerman said that, for all the family’s hard work, there were times they had to rely on faith, as well.
“One year, they had a lot of strawberries, and they were in blossom,” she said. “They predicted a freeze, and Mom and Dad knew they needed those strawberries for income. So they prayed that the Lord would not cause a freeze on those strawberries, and when they woke up the next morning, there was frost everywhere except for on those strawberries.”
That legacy of faith has been just as important for the Clevenger family as the house the elder Clevenger built.
“We all made sure the kids went to church and had the chance to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior,” Fay Stephens said.
Looking to the future, the foursome are hopeful that the farm will be able to stay in the family for even longer.
“We’ve had a nephew talk to us and say when the time comes, he’d like to buy the house to keep it in the family,” Fay Stephens said.
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