Lawrence S. “Larry” Jensen (1929 - 2025)

A beloved member of his family and community, Lawrence Schmella Jensen peacefully passed away in Toppenish, Washington on December 24, 2025. He was 96 years of age.

Born to Pat and Cleo Jensen on April 13, 1929, Larry grew up on the family homestead on Jensen Road south of Toppenish. And later, he and his wife Nadine made their home on nearby Yost Road where they lived and ranched together, raised a family, and were members of the rural community for over seventy years.

For Larry, learning to farm and ranch began in his boyhood: At age nine, he drove a team of horses during summer months to harvest wild hay in pastures along Toppenish Creek; and as his childhood unfolded during Depression-era times, he assisted his mother raising chickens and turkeys to provide food for the family, for market, and to trade. As sugar beet farming was introduced in the valley, Larry helped his father and brother plant, irrigate, and hoe a crop of sugar beets on the home acreage. As well, he tended cattle and helped herd them to summer range.

Cattle drives to the Simcoe Mountains often fell on or near Larry’s mid-April birthday. For his tenth birthday, his mother Cleo made and frosted a double-decker angel food cake requiring two dozen eggs. She transported the towering cake in a large dishpan balancing it over rocks and washouts to a site known as the Elbow. Larry often recounted the details of that day: how he eagerly watched for the automobile indicating the cake’s imminent arrival - how he marveled at the statuesque height of the confectionary masterpiece and how it precariously leaned off its center.

Boyhood week-long horse camping trips to the mountains with his older brother, Patty and Jensen family cousins were some of Larry’s favorite memories. On one of these trips, he rescued an orphan bear cub and named her Sissy. Larry delighted in relating how the cub quickly bonded with him as he scrambled eggs and fried pancakes topped with syrup, using up all of the camping provisions to keep the little animal content. He packed Sissy with him everywhere, her arms draped around his neck. Unfortunately, the bear was not very positively received at home. Larry spent a lot of time assembling meals, climbing trees to retrieve her, and making peace in the wake of bear-in-the-house calamities.

Larry loved reading books and comics, listening to radio serials, and going to town to the movies. The magic and intrigue of stories, especially those on the big screen captivated his imagination. He liked to reminisce about riding his horse into Toppenish on a Sunday afternoon, tying up at the livery stable where Seattle First National Bank used to be. On Saturdays, he hot-walked ponies at the Toppenish Polo Field earning a dime for several hours work, this enough to buy an afternoon of pictures and popcorn. Larry was enamored with western films, particularly those featuring silent film actor Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse. When his aunt Eliza Jensen bought him a wild horse colt for a quarter, Larry named his horse Tony, too.

As rural farm children, Lawrence and his brother attended McKinley Elementary School west of Toppenish. They hitched a ride on a flatbed truck with benches at the corner of Robbins and Jensen Roads; Larry fondly remembered how one of their teachers, Virginia Yost (who would later become his aunt), got aboard the truck at the corner of Yost and Robbins riding to school along with the kids. Lawrence graduated from Toppenish High School in 1947. He was a member of FFA, played football for THS, and made friendships that would stretch across his lifetime. 

Larry received a scholarship to play football at University of Idaho, but a broken leg in a fall practice and a back injury in the spring left him unable to continue.

Upon returning home, Larry decided to go into the cattle business. His father, Pat and uncles Pete, John, Les, Fred, and Carl grew sheep and cattle on the Yakama Reservation - the older Jensen brothers shipped and accompanied their market lambs from the Toppenish Railhead to Chicago’s Union Stockyards in early decades of the twentieth century. As open grazing decreased and the sheep market fell following World War II, Larry joined his father and younger Jensen uncles in growing cattle. He adopted a version of the Jensen family PN brand, started by his great-grandfather Peter Nelson in Klickitat County in the 1860s; he bought a home acreage with stock water running through it and began to develop his own herd.

In 1953, Larry married Nadine Filer at the Methodist Church in Toppenish and together they began a love story and ranching partnership that spanned seven decades. They started their lives together in a small, three-room house with a partial dirt floor surrounded by a sagebrush-covered acreage. As years passed, Larry broke the land out of sagebrush, leveling a section and planting it to alfalfa; and as they could afford, they built onto their home, added outbuildings, and planted fruit trees. They often nostalgically recalled their beginnings (from their late-in-life recliners) as perfect - a cozy home just right for them. Theirs was a life of hard work, shared laughter, and devotion.

Larry and Nadine gave their children, Kristi and Doug, a warm and loving home - one rich in extended family and neighbors, gentle horses, steers grown for area livestock shows, ditches and creeks to swim and fish, and an evolving crew of much-loved, scrappy ranch dogs. Family was blended and bound by the rituals of school, raising crops, and cattle work: catching the early-morning school bus, evening homework and chores; harvesting alfalfa in summer and feeding cattle during winter months; weaning and branding cattle in fall and spring. Summer weeks spent at Cow Camp were especially treasured moments.

Across their married lives, Larry and Nadine could be seen together on winter mornings feeding cattle on snow-blanketed valley pastures. The family looked forward to spring and fall rituals of the cattle business: herding cows and calves up the Toppenish foothills to their summer range as the sun broke morning. Then, gathering and sorting those cattle at the Hollywood Corral at the base of the Toppenish foothills as the sun set on crisp afternoons of mid-October.

Deeply connected to place, Larry knew the rural landscape from Yost to Pumphouse Roads and west to the Eight Mile; as well, he knew the roads, landmarks, and creeks of the Simcoe Mountains south to Goldendale; and west to the Klickitat River, Potato Hill, and the Huckleberry Patch. He also liked to visit the Horse Thief Butte area to share his ancestral story about Nelson-Jensen family beginnings along the Columbia River near Spearfish: about the life of his Wishram-Yakama great-grandmother, his Danish grandfather who operated the Rockland-to-Dalles ferry from 1874-1898; and the Jensen family’s turn-of-the-century migration from the Celilo area to the Yakama Valley to ranch and farm allotment properties.

Like the Jensen men who preceded him, Larry possessed a natural affinity for raising and tending livestock, riding out across wind-swept open range, and growing crops. Rain or shine, he derived meaning and happiness from ranching chores in valley pastures as well as on trips to the reservation mountains. Whether distributing salt blocks or scouting the high country for cattle, Larry enjoyed seeing and breathing-in some of his favorite places: Toppenish Ridge Road, the expanse of sage and sky that is the Rye Patch, the lush grass of early summer Tannawasha Pasture; Vessey Springs, and the verdant meadows of Cedar Valley. Larry knew and remembered each as an old and storied friend.

Across decades, books chronicling regional history and stories about the West were ongoing interests and companions. Larry was also keen to follow current events, and he believed in the importance of participation in our democracy by voting. He prided himself in being a lifelong Democrat. To acquaintances new and old, Larry was warm and welcoming; he was a man of quiet strength and deep goodness - a person who liked to be of help. Larry readily savored visits from family, neighbors, and old friends; and he delighted in spending time with his grandchildren, sharing in the magical moments of their childhood.

In his later years, Larry enjoyed sipping coffee in the quiet moments of morning, sharing time at home with Nadine, and observing the natural world: the changing seasons, resident and migratory birds, and weather patterns contributing to the nourishment of the land. He especially liked to see Mount Adams - to chronicle her blanket of snowy abundance as well as the incremental, late season dwindling of her coat of white. Larry loved dogs, both loyal cow dogs and skittish, uncertain strays; he had an insatiable sweet tooth, and he never missed an episode of Gunsmoke.

Larry Jensen was an Army Veteran of the Korean War and a proud member of Yakama Nation. He was a member of the Logy Creek Cattleman’s Association, a Toppenish Creek Livestock 4-H Club Leader, a Toppenish Library Board Member; and he served for many years as Beef Superintendent at the Central Washington Junior Livestock Show. Larry also served on the board for Bleyhl’s Farm Co-Op.

He will be remembered as a devoted and loving son, husband, father, uncle, and grandfather and as an honorable and generous member of his extended family and rural community. His warmth, kindness, and largeness of heart will be dearly missed by those who knew and loved him.

Larry is survived by his wife, Nadine and daughter, Kristi (Richard) Dills. Grandsons Cody, Tyler, and Grayson Jensen. And step-grandchildren Kristin (Jeremy) Laidir, Patrick Dills and Aspen (Hector) Ruiz. Sister-in-law Frances Filer, nephews and nieces Lance Hoyt, Mary Hall, Tim Filer, Jeanne Lunde, Don Jensen, Teresa High, Will Jensen, and numerous Schmella and Jensen cousins. Larry was preceded in death by his parents, Pat and Cleo, his brother Patty, and his son, Douglas.

The family would like to thank the staff at Linden Post Acute in Toppenish, particularly Nurse Margie and her assistants for Lawrence’s good and kind care. Also the staff at Indian Health Services for their helpfulness across decades, especially Dr. Rex Quaempts and PA Martin Flores. As well, cardiologist Karan Bhatti at Prosser Memorial Health.

There will be no services at this time. The family suggests remembrances be made to the Central Washington Junior Livestock Show, to Heritage University in Toppenish, or to any cause important and close to your heart.

In days ahead, remember Larry as you enjoy a cup of early-morning coffee or catch a glimpse of snow-covered Mt. Adams in the distance.