Grace Vandevert McNellis loved Vandevert Ranch, and Central Oregon, her entire life, though she spent much of her adult life away.  She raised five children, all boys, in Gig Harbor, Washington, but the family visited the ranch almost every summer.  Grace also attended many reunions of her class at Bend High School.

Grace assiduously collected documents and photographs relating to the ranch   She wrote a book about her family and the ranch, with an audio recording, titled Home on the Vandevert Ranch.  Later she co-authored the more extensive Vandevert, The Hundred Year History of a Central Oregon Ranch.

Even after the last Vandevert, Grace’s stepmother, left the ranch and the ranch became a community, Grace visited the ranch almost every year and attended the homeowners’ annual meetings and barbecue.  Grace was popular giving history talks at the ranch, at the Deschutes County Historical Society, and for the Sunriver Women’s Club, held at Sunriver Books and Music.

    
Grace was born on July 4, 1929 and grew up in the log cabin Homestead on the ranch without running water or electricity.  In the photo at left of Grace at age three the photographer had given her something (a lollipop?) and had just snatched away before he took the picture. Grace had loving parents and two siblings—Claude Jr. who was older, and Mary Jean who was younger (photo at right).   Grace celebrated her birthday (and another holiday) every year with a picnic across the river from the Homestead.  She attended the one-room schoolhouse on the ranch and was particularly fond of her second-grade teacher, Mr. Hunnel.

Grace suffered a great loss at age thirteen when her mother died carrying Grace’s youngest sibling, David, who survived.  As Grace contemplated her own death many years later, she imagined returning to the Homestead and being greeted at the door by her mother and father. 

After high school Gracie worked in a real estate office in Bend.  She later became a real estate agent in Gig Harbor.  Also, shortly after high school, she met and married a handsome man from the east coast named Tom McNellis.  The couple moved to Philadelphia for work and, after several years, returned to Oregon.  After a long drive across the country Gracie said her heart leapt up to see Pilot Butte again.  After a short stay at the ranch Tom was recruited to a job in Gig Harbor where Gracie spent most of her adult life and raised her children.

Grace was perpetually friendly, energetic, and interested in the people around her.  She welcomed the new residents of the ranch, continued to visit every year, and wrote two books on the history of her family and the ranch. She brought a lot of joy into the world.   In March 2022, the ranch lost a dear friend. Her ashes are buried on the ranch.  Lively, generous, and much beloved, Gracie is sorely missed.

Grace and her brother, Claude Jr., outside the schoolhouse. On the porch of the schoolhouse, Grace and Andrea Hunnel Dupree, daughter of Grace's second grade teacher.

Gracie at the Homestead front door with Steve and Jill Ziegman (Jill is Jack Vandevert's daughter). Grace at the Vandevert Ranch barbecue in 2014.

Grace brought her five sons back to visit her father and the ranch many times. Tom McNellis, her eldest son, wrote:

"This old photo (taken by cousin Roger Vandevert in 1976) brought back some great memories of the dusty cinder stone road leading from Highway 97 into the Ranch.  As young boys, all of us would get so excited once we hit this road on our long trips down there.  We just couldn't wait to run up to the old rock pile and hunt for arrow heads or go fishing down the Little Deschutes or explore the old house.   There were millions of things to do there and we just couldn't wait to get started. Sometimes, Grandpa would sit with us in his old lawn chair in front of the big picture window of the little house and tell us stories about when the Indians would come to visit them many years before.  Just being there was like taking a step back into a much more wonderful time in America."