Leber, 80, owned big Kent farm

In the days before there was a Southcenter, before there was a Boeing plant, the Kent Valley was farms.

The largest, at 1,500 acres, was Leber Farms, later called Ralph's Ranch, and run for decades by Ralph Leber.

"We had the biggest farm that ever was in the Kent Valley," said June Leber, Ralph's wife.

Mr. Leber, 80, died of a heart-related ailment Sunday in Everett, about 3:45 a.m. — about the same time, says his wife, that he would get up to work the farm.

Mr. Leber was a generous man, say family and friends, and that generosity often came back full circle to him.

Here is one of those stories:

In the 1950s, the farm employed about 80 people at the peak of picking season.

Because farmworkers often were in short supply, Mr. Leber would drive his truck to Skid Road in Seattle, where he would recruit workers and drive them back to the farm.

One worker asked Mr. Leber for an extra $20 because he was down on his luck. Mr. Leber gave him the money but also advised him to buy some decent clothing, look for a job and straighten out his life.

Some two decades later, Mr. Leber and one his sons stopped at a small service station in the Warm Beach area of Snohomish County. When the station operator saw Mr. Leber's name on his credit card, the man asked if he knew Ralph Leber.

"That's me," Mr. Leber replied. The man then explained that he was the one who received that "extra $20" years earlier. He had taken Mr. Leber's advice, bought some nice clothes, got a job and now owned the gas station where Mr. Leber stopped for gas.

"I owned this gas station because you helped me when I was down and out," the man told Mr. Leber.

"That was Dad," said Nancy Balmert, one of Mr. Leber's four children, and a resident of Seabrook, Texas.

"If you could make up who your father would be, that would he him," Balmert said. "He never said a mean thing about anyone, he loved everybody and he didn't smoke, drink or curse."

Bob Nanstad, who knew Mr. Leber for 60 years, said he truly was generous in helping others. But even more, Mr. Leber was someone who would listen to you. "He was interested in what you were doing even if it didn't involve farming," Nanstad said.

In the mid-1960s, local canneries began to shut down, which signaled the end of farming's heydays in the Kent Valley.

Mr. Leber next moved to Oregon, where he farmed for a few years, and then to Indiana, where he worked for a power company. He eventually moved back to this area, managing the Diamond Farm for the Smith Brothers in Snohomish.

June Leber said her husband's life is a bit of the history of the Seattle and the Kent Valley.

"People don't know what went on (before the Southcenter era)," she said.

Besides his wife and daughter Nancy Balmert, Mr. Leber is survived by two sons, Ronald Leber of Lake Oswego, Ore., and Darrell Leber of Everett; another daughter, Kay Gustafson of Edmonds; and 11 grandchildren.

To honor Mr. Leber's life, a memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the White River Presbyterian Church, 526 12th S.E., Auburn — a church Mr. Leber helped build and where he was a deacon.