Young At Heart
Hammers prove life just beginning
By SHARON KERR Staff writer

Red-headed Versie Truett Hammer left a job at Lakes Area Hospice to run the roads at Rayburn in her fourwheeler.

Irresponsible teenager? Not quite. This petite lady in the Harley Davidson shirt and jeans will turn 85 next month.

She's best known at the hospice as "the one who hands out all the hugs," according to Paula Moore, LAH code compliance officer. "I don't know how we'll replace her."

Versie Truett (Hammer added two years ago) started at the Hospice in 2002. Her husband had died in 2000, and, "I was scared to death they wouldn't like me and I wouldn't know what to do," she said.

She had been hired under a STEP grant, the Senior Training Employment Program. It matches senior citizens with non-profit or government agencies.

The non-profits get an employee that doesn't cut into their budget, as long as they provide training and teach job skills. But the maxim u m STEP can pay a senior is two years.

"When the STEP program was over, Jeanette Coffield hired me," Versie said.

Moore said Versie ran the bereavement program, but Versie modestly says, "Well, I kept it going, stuffed letters, you know. I had never really worked outside the home. I don't think I'll miss the work part, but I do miss the people."

Home is Rayburn, since before it

was Rayburn

Versie and new husband Odis Hammer live in a rustic garage apartment with a deck that has a 180 degree view of Lake Rayburn. It's in the Plum Ridge community near FM 255 and Hwy. 63.

"I've lived out here since 1970," Versie Hammer said. "First, we had a trailer before everything built up. But I was born only a quarter of a mile from here, way before there was the lake."

She moved to Peachtree Community at age 13 and went to Jasper schools. Her two sons, Joe and Jack Truett, graduated from JHS about the same time as the U.S. first sent men into space.

Just nine years later, she was telling her grandson, "Do you know a man will go to the moon today?"

He was three, both curious and practical, and asked, "Can I go, too?"

Joe Truett lives in New Mexico and has written two books, The Land of Bears and Honey and Chronicle of a Texas River Valley, that speak of growing up in East Texas as it used to be, and sometimes still is. Some of the old photos are of sites long submerged by Rayburn, but others, like Hog Creek Falls, are the same today, according to Versie.

Jack Truett lives near Peachtree, the community where his father ran a cabinet shop.

Olive Drab Hammer

That was Odis Hammer's knickname when he served in World War II, but it doesn't really fit the colorful character that stole Versie Truett's heart. Hammer, like Versie, lost his spouse several years ago. He noticed the red-headed pianist when he was lead singer in church.

"She caught me," he said simply. "Of course, I didn't run all that hard, either."

At the time they met, Odis Hammer was working for the Forest Service - SCSEP program, similar in many ways to STEP. It stands for Senior Community Service Employment program, and allows the forest service to hire people who are age 55+ to assist with things like campground maintenance or as visitor information hosts.

The catch to the program, though, is that a senior's family income can be no more than 25 percent over the poverty level. When he married Versie, they exceeded the limit.

"I joked with them that they were encouraging us to just shack up," Odis Hammer said, "But I guess I wasn't really all that upset."

When he went to the county clerk's office to get a marriage license, he was surprised they wanted $42.

"I told them I only paid $3.50 for my first wife. Between us, Versie and I had only about $20 cash, and they wouldn't take a check or a credit card, so we had to go to an ATM," Odis Hammer said.

"Then I told them I wanted a receipt, and when they asked why, I told them if this marriage doesn't work out, I want a receipt so I can get a return," Odis said.

Merging households Like most newlyweds, there is an adjustment period. Odis Hammer survived the day he told his new wife to "get a knife and cut me off a slice of gravy."

"He still thinks my gravy is too thick," Versie pouted.

In a crowded house, they are constantly sorting through two households and many decades worth of "collections." Odis Hammer brought with him his family memorabilia, and he claims Versie "never threw anything away in her life."

"I got into researching my own family tree, and then I found out it was fun and I could help people with theirs," Versie Hammer said.

She volunteered at the Old Jail in Jasper, where she learned to use microfilm and later, to turn a computer on. She wound up with enough information to put together some books on her research. She published a softcover book of 100 years of marriage records, 1849- 1949, in Jasper County, and worked on census records in Jasper, Tyler and Newton counties.

They are still sorting through belongings- his, hers, their combined kids, furniture and household items... The couple says they are constantly taking donations to the LAH thrift shop on Water Street, but they can only do so much on a rainy day, because when the sun is out, so are the Arctic Cats.

Free wheeling

Versie Hammer is proud of her Arctic Cat 400. Odis Hammer says his 500 is bigger and has four-wheel drive, but is harder to handle.

"It's hard for me to keep up with her in the woods," Odis Hammer said. "She rides like the Lord is with her and the devil behind her."

Versie has been running through the woods in the area one way or another since she would walk, and Odis, who lived all over as a child, learned these woods well while working for the Forest Service.

Even so, they once got lost when they were fourwheeling.

"I was worried," Versie said. "He's a diabetic and a branch smacked him in the face and gave him a terrible nosebleed..."

"Well, you know there's roads all around you," Odis interrupted. "So you ride until you hit a road, and you can figure out where you are when the Forest Service gives you a ticket (for being on the road)."

They've also taken their four-wheelers up to Oklahoma for the Big Foot Festival.

"It's a big deal with TV stations and everything," Odis said. One of his brothers (he's one of 10 children) dresses up as Big Foot and another woman dresses as Miss Big Foot.

Odis Hammer said when Weyerhauser sold the land up there, the new owners put restrictions on it and made it difficult to enjoy four-wheeling.

Locally, he said the Forest Service is working on a new trail, "but you know they'll charge $5 a day to ride."

That doesn't bother Versie, who knows the backroads and doesn't mind going it alone.

"I was riding by myself a mile from the lake and saw a three- to four-foot alligator in the trail," she said. "I stopped, and he stopped, and we looked at each other, and he finally went along, and I did too."

When someone suggested to her, "That'll keep you out of the woods," she told him no, it didn't bother her at all.

Paula Moore said when Versie Hammer turned in her notice at the hospice, she knew what that was all about.

"She told me she wanted to retire," Moore said, "but I knew it was because she had a man at home who was having more fun than she was, and she just couldn't stand missing out."