Felix Albert Pelletier was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1915, and moved with his family to McMinnville, Oregon, in 1923. In the 1930s he worked for the Flora Logging Company in Carlton, Oregon. He later worked as a laborer in the construction of the Bonneville Dam. In 1941, he found employment as a millwright with the Malarkey and Malarkey Plywood Company (later M & M Timber Company, and then Simpson Timber) in Albany, Oregon. He continued to work as a millwright until the 1970s, when a heart attack forced him to change his job to a saw filer. He retired in 1977 and died in 1981.

Bertha Hickman Pelletier was born in 1913 in Fairdale, Yamhill County, Oregon. Her father was frequently out of work, and during her childhood she lived with relatives in various places in Oregon, such as near the coastal town of Yachats and in Portland. Her father was physically and emotionally abusive, and she left home at the age of 18. In 1935, she married Felix Pelletier. The couple had four children: Raymond, Edmund, Bunny, and Dianna. After the death of her husband in 1981, Bertha Hickman Pelletier moved to Arizona. She died in 1993.