One of the more prolific writers in the history of the Blanco County News wasn’t an editor or reporter, but a person who moved between selling ads, writing history pieces and opining editorial pieces. Bernice West, who worked at the paper from February 1983 to 1993, wore many hats during her tenure at the paper.

While she served as the circulation, advertising and office manager for the paper, and wrote a periodic section called “Bernice’s Corner” filled with articles and photos of the history of Blanco County. It’s clear from pages and pages in the newspaper as well as accounts from family and friends that she served a much larger role in Blanco.

While reading her story of the Blanco River headwaters, recently republished in the Blanco County News, the same page included a strongly worded op-ed authored by Bernice supporting the 1988 bond issue to build a new high school.

The town was deeply divided on the issue as weeks of advertising and many letters to the editor argued for and against the bond.

Bernice put pen to paper to garner support for the initiative that ultimately passed at the spring election and led to the construction of what is current Blanco High School. In an editorial titled, “Children: Our Most Valuable Assets – Vote Yes!” she urged residents:

“We are down to the ‘wire’ on the School Bond election.

I just want to remind you that our children are the most valuable assets that we have. They are the leaders of tomorrow. Our town has been a good place to live because our ancestors saw that we had the best schools possible.

Now it is our turn to continue and update our school system. How about it, are we going to let them down?

I think not. We know how important this bond is for our young people. Better spend your tax dollars so that Blanco will continue to be a nice place to live.”

Later Bernice was instrumental in helping to pass another bond to restore the historic school building on the elementary campus. She campaigned table to table in the Bowling Alley, spoke at clubs, joined BISD campus improvement committee, and spent hours on the phone. After the bond passed and the new building renovated, the BISD Board dedicated a hallway in her honor called The West Wing.

Bernice was also a loyal Panther fan. She loved watching her kids and grandkids play sports. One thing was for sure according to her kids, “you could hear her yelling from the bleachers.” In her will she noted, “that if any of my grandkids are still playing football, I want the team to be my pallbearers.”

Most Blanco natives are familiar with Bernice’s work as co-author of the “Blanco County Heritage” with her son Bill, published in 1987. The project entailed soliciting family history, stories and photos for the 800-plus page book. Bernice conducted hours and hours of interviews with county residents to capture local history from the county’s formation nearly 150 years prior during the three years they worked on the book. People came into the paper as Bernice asked them questions and Bill took dictation.

A natural storyteller, Bernice left her children and their families a legacy of stories in Memoirs she self-published. Each of her nine living children received a two-inch thick bound book of copies of her handwritten stories. She wrote a special section for each child with information about their birth, why their names were chosen and a section about their father’s love for them.

She filled the volume with stories about her grandparents, parents and other relatives, recounting life events as well as everyday events. One thing all of her children remember is taking long drives down country roads sharing history of landmarks, buildings, families and memories of her childhood.

Bernice had deep historical ties to the area and traced her roots back to early America. She enjoyed researching her family lines and completed an extensive application with genealogical documentation of descendants who arrived at the eastern shores of colonial America and settled in the Maryland/Delaware area before 1680. This qualified her to become a member of The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a descendent of Light Townsend (1708-1768), who fought for American independence in the Revolutionary known as “the Swamp Fox” by the British Army for his guerrilla-style warfare and elusive stealth avoiding the British troops in South Carolina.

She traced her lineage further back from John Light (Lyte) who came to America from England in the mid-1760s, and whose granddaughter Lucille Light, was the mother of Light Townsend, which qualified her to inducted into The National Society of Colonial Dames XVII Century.

Light Townsend’s grandson Bethel Townsend was the first in West’s family to settle in Texas, in LaVaca County in the early 1800s.

Bernice was also recognized as a Texas First Family by the Texas State Genealogical Society in 1996 as a descendent of Moses Townsend (1765-1828), who resided in Texas when the Republic official became a U.S. state in 1846 and qualified as a Daughter of the Republic of Texas. Moses was one of seven brothers of Texas who came to the state. Their family Bible is recorded at the San Marcos State Library.

His grandson, George Townsend (1845-1880), who died in Blanco County had a daughter Nealie Lillian Townsend (1898-1986) who married Bennie (Ben) Valentine Smith (1897-1972).

Her paternal grandparents were Annie and Val Smith, who was a great grandson of James Trainer, a descendant of William N. Trainer, one of the first three men to settle in the Blanco area in 1853. Her great-grandfather Smith came to Blanco County in 1871 in a covered wagon with his wife and nine children as part of a wagon train from Ashley, Washington County, Illinois that took a few months. They settled in the McKinney community.

Valentine, her “grandpapa,” married Anna Marie Trainer and had 11 children in Blanco County, including her father, Bennie Valentine Smith who was born in a cabin on Cottonwood Creek.

In August 1921 Nealie and Ben welcomed Lillian Bernice to their family. She was born at home, about three and a half miles west of Blanco.

“It was hot summertime and daddy was picking cotton,” Bernice wrote in the detailed personal history she left her children. “He said he picked cotton all day and rocked me all night.”

When Bernice was one, the family mover further up the river to Tom and Dora Byrom’s place.

“It was located where Crabapple Creek entered the river,” she wrote. “There were two houses sitting on the side of the hill above the river. There was a high fence garden between the houses that Mama and Maw (Dora) both used. I now had three sets of grandparents. I was taught by the Byroms to call them Tom and Maw. I visited them every day and sometimes more than once. After we moved from there Mama and Daddy had to take me back to see them at least once a week.

She described herself as a tomboy wearing overalls and a straw hat and riding her horse Betty, following her father around picking cotton in a video interview for the Blanco County South Library District’s oral history project.

According to Bernice’s writings, Tom Byrom and Ben Palmer had the first dealership to see Model T cars, located to the side of the Bowling Alley, which they sold for $500.

She saw many changes to the world and to Blanco over the course of her life.

“When I was a very small child there were no cars,” she wrote, and noted that her family did not have electricity until 1939. “We had to get our corn ready to take to the mill on Saturdays. We had to shuck white corn for our meal and the colored corn for corn meal mush for the hounds.”

She recounted a story of staying with her Aunt Ruth on weekends, who always made ice cream on Saturday nights.

“Uncle Bill did not eat any so she, Billy and I had to eat all of it before daylight,” she wrote. “Remember, there was no electricity. We ate all we could before we went to bed and Aunt Ruth set the alarm and she woke us up about four o’clock and we ate the rest of it.”

She first attended the Live Oak School and then the McKinney School before graduating from Blanco High School in 1939, with 16 others in her class. She noted that her class was the first to take typing as a subject. She and Percy Liesmann were crowned the Halloween carnival queen and king their senior year. And she worked for her uncle at the Rock Garage and at the theater ticket counter in town.

She knew her future husband, Weldon West, from the time she was young when he visited her grandmama’s to play with her uncles.

“He grew up west of Blanco in the McKinney community and attended school at McKinney, where he acquired his nickname of Turtle (because of his speed),” Bernice wrote. “After the seventh grade, he rode a horse to Blanco High School where he graduated in 1931.”

Weldon was the second man in Blanco County to be drafted into service January 1941 and sent to Camp Bowie in Brownwood. On a short leave Bernice and Weldon eloped. “We married on July 5, 1941 on a Saturday just before he was shipped overseas,” Bernice said. “He told his Army buddies he had to wait for me to grow up.” He served in Europe for four years during World War II as a member of the Texas 36th Division of the Army.”

Years later, she wrote her children that she loved their daddy, “…even the ground he walked on. I can still cry bushels of tears just thinking about him. If I had not loved him so much maybe I wouldn’t have had all of you.” Weldon was an only child and wanted a house full of kids.

After Weldon’s death in 1970 Bernice went from a homemaker into the workforce. She cooked at the nursing home, kept books for small businesses, waitressed at the bowling alley, had a paper route and later worked at the Blanco County News to provide for her family.

In 2002, Bernice noted that her place on the river was the only place she had lived with her family. “We have lived on this property for 60 years,” she wrote. “I guess I would not know how to live anywhere else. I wish I could live here until they pack me out feet first.”

Bernice was one of the first members to organize and form the Preservation Society to keep the Old Blanco County Courthouse from leaving the Blanco Square.

“In 1998 I was a member of a committee who located over 600 of the 700 plus babies in the courthouse used as a hospital from 1936 to 1965,” she wrote.

The history of the Square was a favorite topic of Bernice’s history lessons. She was part of group who gave “fireside chats” in the Byers Building to anyone who wanted to come and learn about the history of the town.

“You could get everything you needed on the square in Blanco,” Bernice said in the video interview with Bobbie Abbott in 2008. “At one time there were three general stories on the west side. Now you can’t even buy a spool of thread.”

“I just can’t get over coming to town and not finding a place to park,” she said. “I never thought it would be this way. Sometimes I don’t see not one soul I know. And we used to know everybody and their dogs.”

Bernice saw growth coming to Blanco.

“They need to do something to the town,” she said, “and spread it out.”

According to her family, Bernice felt very strong about voting in any election. It didn’t matter if it was local, state or a federal, she would call every family member on election day to make sure they had gone to vote. She believed, “if you don’t vote you can’t gripe.”

Judy Dorsett remembers that Bernice was very involved in the community.

“She was involved in it all, and I mean all the city stuff,” Dorsett said. “Every week, Bernice and Pearl and Ruby Byars would come into the beauty shop to get their hair done, and sometimes just to visit. Between those three, they know everything, and I mean everything going on in town.”

“Bernice was known for her cooking and as a philanthropist, I guess you’d call her,” Dorsett said. “She was very outspoken. You knew what she was thinking. She was a newswoman in person.”

“She was crazy about her kids,” Dorsett said. “She was a momma through and through, and so proud of them. She was a family person and a good friend. She would round up people to help you if needed it.”

Church was a big part of Bernice’s life, she noted. “She was a member of the Church of Christ, but she was a person who would also be at all the church events and fundraisers in town.”

Bernice left much to Blanco and counted among her treasures her 11 children, 27 grandchildren and 43 great-grandchildren and two great great-grandchildren.

Thank you, Bernice, for all you gave Blanco and your work to preserve its past.