Evert Ray Laughlin; Farmer, Pentecostal Minister

Evert Ray Laughlin of Santa Paula, a former Pentecostal minister and farmer, died Wednesday at a local hospital following a lengthy illness. He was 85.

Laughlin was born April 27, 1912, in Ada, Okla., and had lived in Ventura County for 40 years. He came to California in the early 1930s to work on a farm in Wasco, west of Bakersfield, said his daughter, Neva Nickerson, 56.

“There were seven children, and they came to California because they couldn’t get jobs in Oklahoma,” Nickerson said. “It was back in the hard times.”

Laughlin’s brother, Bill, got him a farm job. Laughlin packed the family’s belongings into the car, strapped mattresses and what little furniture they owned on top, and they headed to California.

Laughlin took to farming immediately. “He really took pride in driving a tractor,” said his daughter, who also lives in Santa Paula.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Laughlin ministered in the Pentecostal church, while also working the land. In 1957, he and his wife, Hazel, moved to Foster Park, north of Ventura, where he remained in farming.

In the early 1970s, Laughlin was involved in a traffic accident that forever changed his life, Nickerson said.

“He was hauling farm equipment on a truck and went off a 50-foot cliff in Somis,” Nickerson said. A passerby helped get Laughlin, who had suffered a concussion and other injuries, to the hospital.

“My brother and I went to look and see where Daddy went off, and we almost fainted when we saw it,” Nickerson said. “That truck was squashed. We don’t know how he ever got out of there.

“Daddy never worked after that,” she said.

Hazel Laughlin died in 1989, and in 1993, Laughlin went to live with his daughter.

In addition to Nickerson, Laughlin is survived by sons Robert of Ardmore, Okla., and Walter of Willis, Okla.; daughter Mary Green of Ventura; 10 grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren; three brothers; and two sisters.

Also preceding him in death were a daughter, two grandsons, one granddaughter and two brothers.

Visitation will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Tuesday in the Chapel of the Islands, Conejo Mountain Memorial Park in Camarillo. Graveside service will follow at 11.

Arrangements are under the direction of Conejo Mountain Memorial Park and Funeral Home, Camarillo.