The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - It seems there's no shortage of talent - or civic mindedness, for that matter - in the family of Doris Huffman (Ruff), of Waitsburg. Huffman recent­ly used her artistic talents to create a painting for Waits­burg's Town Hall. Daughter Deanna Tipton - an accom­plished singer and actress who was recently an extra on the remake of Dallas - performed at the Plaza The­ater in 2012. Her stand-up comedy/music routine raised $1,600 for Town Hall main­tenance. And most recently, Huffman's nephew, retired Air Force Band trumpeter Jon Ruff, played on the al­bum that won the Best Latin Tropical Album Grammy at the 2014 awards in January.

Huffman and her brother Ralph Ruff both graduated from Wa-Hi before attend­ing college at Eastern Wash­ington College in Cheney, Wash. Ruff later moved to the Bay area, where he started his family.

Ralph Ruff's son, Jon, graduated high school in Ca­lif. and joined the Air Force after graduation. Ruff played trumpet with The United States Air Force Band of the Golden West in the San Francisco Bay area at Travis Air Force Base, California. The band of about 60 musi­cians performs at civilian events throughout Califor­nia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They support the Air Force in over 250 perfor­mances a year, playing for 1.5 million listeners.

According to Huffman, Ruff toured the country and traveled overseas with the band. He has had the honor of playing for eight differ­ent presidents. "When the band would go on tour, John would always encourage them to come to Walla Walla so we could see them," said Huffman, who recalls at­tending their concerts at both Cordiner Hall and Walla Walla Community College. "The only bad thing was that I don't like people making a big fuss over me and he'd always make us stand up and introduce us."

Below: A poster featuring band members of the Pacific Mambo Orchestra. Ruff is fourth in from the right.

After retirement from the Air Force, Ruff connected with Christian Tumalan and Steffen Kuehn, co-founders of a new San Francisco based Latin band called Pa­cific Mambo Orchestra. The 19-piece big band started playing gigs in the Bay area just three years ago. Unlike other artists that are backed by big labels, Keuhn and Tumalan used the crowd- funding website Kickstarter to raise the money to record their first album. Their self- titled album was produced last year and went on to win the Best Tropical Latin Al­bum; beating out Marc An­thony's "3.0" salsa album as well as albums by other well- known Latin musicians.

"His mother was a music teacher in Calif. and her bands always won competi­tions. She was a real task­master at making him prac­tice," said Huffman. "It sure paid off. He's really good."