Diane Ingle was a preemie baby, the daughter of farmers from Kendrick, Idaho - Jerry J. Ingle and Lucille Ingle. She was born August 1, 1957 and she was so small that her mom kept her in a box behind the wood stove that winter in order to keep her warm.
Quiet and unassuming, Diane gained the nickname "Spider" at Kendrick High School. I think it was because of her shyness that Diane had a lot of girl friends but not so many boyfriends back then. She had one boyfriend but he went into the Navy. It's hard for a shy and quiet person to date sometimes, even one as pretty as Diane.
After graduating from KHS in 1976, Diane moved to Boise to attend business school. Boise Idaho is a big Mormon town and it was there that she became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You see, in her younger years Diane was always anxious to do the right thing and a persuasive argument was all she needed to jump in with both feet. Her desire to do what was right was one of the things I loved about her.
In 1977 while living in Boise she decided to put her name in the pen pals section of The Ruralite, a publication provided free to members of public electric cooperatives. She met several people and one of them, Cliff Haight, she eventually married on September 3rd, 1977 in Long Beach Washington, where Cliff would end up later that year working for the sheriff's department. Those years, especially the Reagan years, were tough ones for working families and job quests took the two from Cliff's home in Bay City, Oregon to Clatskanie, Oregon, Longview Washington (Cliff worked at Trojan Nuclear Plant), Long Beach Washington (Cliff worked for the sheriff's department while Diane began her nursing career. Cliff junior was born while they lived here), Pendleton Oregon, Hermiston, Oregon, Lincoln City, Oregon (where they managed The Holiday Motel until it was sold), Manzanita Oregon, Nehalem, Oregon (Cliff worked at Manzanita Deli while Diane worked at Nehalem Valley Care Center), back to Tillamook (where Christa was born) and then to Oregon City, Oregon.
Clifford Louis Haight Junior was born in Longview Washington on September 13, 1978. It was a tough, 18 hour labor and finally ended with a forceps delivery. I mention that only because the difficulties meant a long space between children and also I believe that it might have had an adverse effect on Cliff junior's life. But you know how it is with new parents; they are naive and really don't know what they are doing.
The photograph above shows some happier times at the Columbia River near Umatilla, with son Cliff who was about five years old at the time. I'm sorry I don't have any better pictures of beautiful Diane - A fire in 1995 caused me to lose everything, including all those precious pictures. I wish I could do better.
Cliff and Diane were happy for most of the time they were together, although there were some major ups and downs. Cliff (senior) had to deal with depression, post traumatic stress disorder and gender identity disorder. Diane knew about all of these things before she married. Cliff didn't want to deceive her, he told her the truth about everything. She wanted to do it anyway. He tried hard to be good spouse and parent, but sometimes our best efforts prove less than adequate. Perhaps that was true in this case, or perhaps things were better than he thought. There were some very rocky times, some low times, and some deliriously happy times.
At any rate, the couple began to drift apart some time during the period Cliff got preoccupied with attending Bible College and the birth of their second child, Christa Diane Haight on May 23, 1986.
Diane began feeling that she hadn't really lived life, that she had married too young and she began to experiment with her life. Her former religious faith became a hated part of herself and everything that went with it began to be despised as well. You see, beginning in 1983, when her mother died, Diane began to question whether God existed and if so, how could He be called a loving God? She couldn't let go of that. She felt betrayed and her life showed it.
Cliff and Diane Haight divorced in September, 1988. By this time Diane's life had taken a down turn in many ways. She was seduced by the forces of darkness and was dealing with multiple relationships and substance issues. Remember, though, that she wanted this life. She had been a "good girl" for almost 30 years and with the death of her mother in 1983, she had come to believe that God did not exist, or perhaps that He didn't care about her. So she drifted into a hedonistic life. Cliff and Diane remained best friends, however, and visited with each other constantly, often spending long weekends and vacations together.
Diane's personal life drifted far from the person she had been in the past. She became pregnant out of wedlock by a guy she barely knew. They parted ways shortly thereafter. I believe this man's name - Brandon's biological father's name - is Jeff Daniels. Nevertheless, while she was pregnant she met another guy who took her in and claimed the child as his own, though he was not the father according to what Diane told me.. The child, Brandon, suffered as a result.
You see, the man she finally settled on after going through so many men, some of whom were very nice, turned out to be not nice at all.
Diane died of a stroke in 1997 at the age of 40. It turned out she had a previously undiagnosed genetic condition which caused her blood to randomly clot. Al, the new husband, eventually shot his next girlfriend in front of Brandon, effectively completing the descent to the dark side that had begun some fifteen years before.
Cut-off from her children and her best friends because of her choice in men, Diane turned out to have a very sad ending to her life. But I want to remember her for the good person she was, not for the sad and lost woman that the influence of evil made her. Before the dark side lured her in, she was a happy person who loved life and took her greatest pleasure from just being with her family.
I remember Diane as a happy girl who loved silly humor, cuddling, cooking and just being with her family. Diane had a delightful sense of humor, she loved contemporary music and going on car trips. In 1990, post-divorce, we took an RV trip through California, Arizona, New Mexico, then back through Arizona, Utah, Idaho and back to Oregon. We got to see a lot of desert and we spent some time at the Grand Canyon and Sedona's beautiful mountains where Cliff Jr. and I climbed Bell Rock while Diane spent some time with Christa looking at the cacti and desert plants.
She loved life. Most of all, Diane loved her family, though she sometimes had a hard time showing it. She was loved in return, and she is missed to this day.
A beautiful person can sometimes be led down the wrong path, and the part I had in this turn of events weighs heavily on my mind. I will carry the guilt to my grave, always feeling that I could have made things different, that I shouldn't have let her go like that. Yes, it was what she wanted, but I should have used my powers of persuasion to stop her downhill slide. To that extent, I blame myself for what happened to her. The guilt eats at me every day.
Yet still - sometimes at night - after all these years, I dream of her. They are dreams of ordinary things: We talk and laugh together and go on car trips. It's like happy times have come back. I'd like to believe this is a visitation from another dimension, but perhaps it is just a memory echoing times when things were right in the world.
Dear Diane, I hope you were wrong about heaven and God. I don't know -- I can only hope. I pray that the faith that you once had came back to you in the end. I hope it was enough to take you to a happier place. I want you to be happy, Diane.
And I hope to see you again.
Diane is buried at Wild Rose Cemetery, which is northeast of
Kendrick, Idaho. Take Hwy 3 for about 7 miles and turn west onto Wild Rose Rd.
She is listed there as Morgan, Diane Ingle. I knew the good Diane who put her
family first. I never really knew the one who was overwhelmed by the dark side
who called herself Diane Morgan.
FATHER: Jerry J Ingle, b. May 07, 1925, d. Jun 25, 1996
MOTHER: Lucille E. Nelson Ingle, b. Jul 20, 1927, d. Dec 15, 1983
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For web searchers: This page is a memorial and tribute about Diane Ingle / Diane Morgan or Diane S Ingle or Diane S. Ingle. Also Diane Haight or Diane Morgan or Diane Ingle Morgan or Diane Ingle Haight. Other variations for search: Diane Susan Morgan, Diane Susan Haight or even Dian Ingle. Related topics: Idaho and Kendrick, Bear Ridge, Idaho and the Ingle Family. Other family members include Chuck and Karen McGehee, Nancy & Teri Colwell and Keith Ingle. Children: Cliff Haight (Clifford Haight) and Christa Haight, and Brandon Morgan (Brandon James Morgan - see state attempts to save him from his non-father. This information is provided to aide search engines only, for indexing purposes.