STOCKTON: Iris Huffman Naylor left an enduring footprint

By John Tredrea, Special Writer
   STOCKTON — The memory of Iris Huffman Naylor — a lifelong Stockton resident and community leader who died May 14 at the age of 85 — was honored by Stockton Borough Council on June 11.
   At its meeting that night, the council passed a formal resolution conveying, on behalf of the town, condolences to Mrs. Naylor’s family — her daughters, Patricia Naylor and Cynthia Naylor, her granddaughters Sara and Elizabeth and her nieces, April and Laurie, and her entire family.
   ”Iris Huffman Naylor shall be remembered first as a loving and devoted mother, grandmother, wife and friend who enriched the lives of those around her,” the resolution said.
   The resolution, which will be part of the official minutes of the June 11 meeting, also said that Mrs. Naylor’s “many years of service to the community were vast and varied — ranging from her work at Borough Hall to her work on the Stockton Bicentennial Committee, her leadership in the Stockton Fire Company Ladies Auxiliary and the Girl Scouts, to her generous dedication to the Stockton Presbyterian Church, where she served as deacon.”
   The measure went on to say that Ms. Naylor’s “commitment to the Stockton area truly extended beyond the municipal borders and into the hearts and minds of generations of Hunterdon County residents and followers, as demonstrated by her work as the Stockton town historian and columnist” for The Beacon (Lambertville) and the Princeton Packet, with her oft-quoted writings in her column, ‘Footprints in the Valley.’”
   WHAT ABOUT “Footprints”?
   Mrs. Naylor was trained as a scientist at Drew University, where she majored in chemistry and biology.
   In September 2002, when she was about to write her last column for The Beacon, she told then Beacon writer, Carl Reader, that she thought she would like those fields when she studied them, but then she discovered she didn’t. She worked for the Board of Pharmacy in Trenton and for Coopers Inc. in Lambertville, but it wasn’t until she became a typesetter at The Beacon in the early 1970s that her true vocation manifested itself to her.
   ”I was working as a typesetter at The Beacon,” Mrs. Naylor recalled. “I had down time once the paper was put to bed. I had Wednesday and Thursday when I didn’t have anything to do. Lew Okenica, the editor, insisted that I stay there, on the premises, in case I was needed. He didn’t care what I did, as long as I stayed there.
   ”Reading got tiresome after a while. I remember all those papers (old Beacons) down in the cellar. I asked Lew if I could go through them. He said fine, but I had to do it down in the cellar.
   ”I did. I worked down there. I froze in the wintertime and I almost passed out from the heat in the summertime.”
   The cellar in the old Beacon building (on Bridge Street in Lambertville) became the mine in which Mrs. Naylor extracted her gems from the past. She wrote her first column for Mr. Okenica in the 1970s.
   ”The cellar was adjacent to his (Mr. Okenica’s) office,” Mrs. Naylor told Mr. Reader. “When he left, he’d forget that I was there. He’d switch off the master switch at the top of the stairs, and there I’d be in total darkness in the cellar, so I learned to take a flashlight with me.”
   From those long hours of digging in The Beacon cellar “came the illuminations of our past,” Mr. Reader observed. When Joe Hazen took over as editor in 1984, Mrs. Naylor proposed a regular column and Mr. Hazen loved the idea. “Footprints in the Valley” appeared every week after that.
   ”Everybody who passes through the Valley leaves a footprint, as far as I’m concerned,” Mrs. Naylor said. “Some of those footprints are faint, some are small and some are very, very heavy footprints, but everybody leaves a footprint. That’s why I entitled my column ‘Footprints in the Valley.’
   ”I thoroughly enjoyed working with Lew Okenica and Joe Hazen,” Mrs. Naylor said. “They made it very enjoyable. I learned so much working at The Beacon.
   ”I have written ‘Footprints’ for 18 years,” Mrs. Naylor said in 2002. “I think it’s time. I have other projects I want to do and I think it’s time (to do them).”
   Born in Stockton on April 23,1927, Ms. Naylor was the daughter of the late Jehu and Meta Sharp Huffman. Her husband, Richard Naylor, died in 1992.
   Mrs. Naylor authored two books: “Stockton, NJ: Three Hundred Years of History” and the “Huffmans of Rosemont.”
    Ruth Luse, managing editor, contributed to this account.