Archives West Finding Aid

Allen Van Hoecke was born in Belgium on February 22, 1892. After immigrating to the United States, he served in World War I and worked in logging camps in Washington and Oregon until the 1950s. For the last twenty years of his life, he worked nights at the Chehalis Packing Co. and as a wood carver out of his apartment in Chehalis, Washington. He had been taught the art of wood carving by his father, a cabinet maker, during his childhood in Belgium. As one of his projects, he carved four-foot-high wooden carvings for each of the libraries in Lewis County. He died at the Veteran’s Hospital in Vancouver on January 23, 1970. Van Hoecke is buried at the Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.