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Artist donates paintings to 100 Mile House General Hospital Auxiliary

Fred Seher hasn’t painted in three years because his sight and hearing are mostly gone
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A painting by Fred Seher of Holden Meadows. Beth Audet photo.

A former local artist has donated two paintings to the 100 Mile District General Hospital Auxiliary.

Fred Seher always wanted to be a painter, said his wife Virginia Seher.

Instead, he has worked in farming, ranching, and heavy construction, and in his later years he was a massage therapist.

Once he finally picked up a brush, his wife said he always planned on donating a piece to the 100 Mile Hospital Auxiliary.

For 10 years up until about three years ago, Virginia said her husband painted day and night.

“All his art more or less is what he remembered, how he traveled in the past, but if he gets up and sees a beautiful sunrise or something — well it was on a canvas.”

Now the couple live in a retirement home in Kamloops. Fred is 92-years-old and his sight and hearing are mostly gone.

Virginia grew up in Kansas and Fred in California. The couple came to the 100 Mile House area after Fred was poisoned from chemicals he’d been selling and doctors told him to find “extreme opposite weather.”

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When asked why her husband so badly wanted to donate a painting to the 100 Mile Hospital Auxiliary, Virginia said they’d gone to many meetings to support a new hospital when they lived in 108 Mile Ranch.

She also told an incredible story of a doctor they met here.

“Our daughter got hit with a little rock in the forehead and I would have had to take her from the Buffalo Ranch clear to Williams Lake to get her stitched, but I happened to go to town.”

She said a doctor was visiting the drug store in 100 Mile House and he saw her bleeding and asked what happened.

She can’t recall the doctor’s name — it was around 1965, after all — but said he was in a wheelchair and hailed from Washington.

The doctor stitched her daughter up right there in the drug store.

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After they moved out of the area she heard that the doctor who stitched her daughter set up a practice in town.

Virginia called it “a blessing” to be able to fulfil her husband’s dream of sending his paintings back up to 100 Mile House.

The first painting is of reindeer he spotted on a ranch east of 100 Mile House. The second is of the Holden Meadows, where they used to farm and hay.

Marg Gammie, the president of the 100 Mile District General Hospital Auxiliary, said they were “pleased to accept the paintings.”

The board is currently in the process of meeting to decide where the paintings will be hung.


beth.audet@100milefreepress.net

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