Sponsored by the Franklin County Historical Society, Helen Heavirland, author of Surviving the Sand will be the featured presenter at the next Community Lecture Series of the Tri-Cities. The event will be held on March 21, at 7:00 p.m., at 305 N. 4th Ave., Pasco, WA.

Helen Lingscheit Heavirland spent her early years in western Oregon’s beautiful woods, where her father Wayne Lingscheit’s work as a logger provided a comfortable home. But Wayne dreamed of farming, and Columbia Basin Project irrigation opened a new opportunity. In 1954 he and his wife Gladys moved their family—seven-year-old Helen, baby Hazel, thirteen-year-old Frank, and sixteen-year-old Emma—to raw land in Pasco, Washington, that was mostly bunchgrass and sagebrush. The only structures were a roofless outhouse, an eight-foot by sixteen-foot wooden shack, and a pen for sheep and goats.

In Surviving the Sand, Helen shares her family’s hardscrabble yet heartwarming story, chronicling common hardships many faced in the Columbia Basin Project’s early settlement days. She describes breaking sod, plants destroyed by wind-whipped sand, and a harrowing first winter sleeping outside after a storm shredded their tent, but also simple joys like fresh apricots, Crokinole games, and letters from loved ones.

The Community Lecture Series of the Tri-Cities is sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Division at Columbia Basin College, Battelle, Friends of the Richland Public Library, the East Benton County Historical Museum, the Franklin County Historical Museum, and the Mid-Columbia Libraries.  Presenters are Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau Program participants, local experts, and scientific scholars through PNNL.