Aunt Vi

On August 14, 2013, a beautiful, beloved soul departed this earthly realm in the  most peaceful way you can imagine... in her sleep. Viola Esther Clark. This is Aunt Vi circa 1944 with her beloved Ralph who was Grandma Icel's brother. She is standing next to her best friend Icel Perkins. The other gentleman is a family friend. 

 Here she is at the celebration of her in-law's 50th wedding anniversary in 1961. Left to right: Babe Brown, Icel & William Clark and Rose Allard and Viola Clark.

 I love how young and cute she is here. She is 2nd from the right. To her left is Icel. The little girl is my mother-in-law Barbara

 She's 2nd from the left here. She was ALWAYS smiling. Grandma Icel is on the far right.

Here she is with her son Terry and her little angel Linda who passed from this life at the age of 2 from Scarlet Fever. 

We visited her once when my son Lloyd was a toddler. He got into some sinus medicine in my purse. I was absolutely panicked. She calmly called the Poison Control Center. Then, per their instructions, she calmly drove me to a drug store where she bought syrup of Ipecac. We administered it then he threw up as he was supposed to. She said we needed to keep him awake for the next hour so we walked around her neighborhood. She talked about her loss of Linda but not in a sad and mournful way. It was part of life and she knew she would see her again.

  Ralph and Vi stood proudly with their oldest son Terry and their two younger children,  Michael and Jacque

It seems it was inevitable that Terry would be in the military some day...

They are such a beautiful couple

Grandma Icel and Aunt Vi were the best of friends for 81 years. Grandma is mourning the loss of her best friend in the entire world.

 Here they are sharing memories with us all at Grandma Icel's 95th birthday party in 2012

Their children saw to it that they would be together 2 to 3 times a year 

They enjoyed so many adventures together

The made a couple of trips to Hawaii

On this trip they got matching outfits

I think this is the Oregon Coast...it doesn't say anything on the back

 boarding the Creole Queen in New Orleans 

In Anchorage on a chartered fishing trip

Aunt Vi was such a character - always smiling - always laughing 

...and the best story teller in the world. I could sit and listen to her talk all day long. I am so very thankful Ray and Esther and I visited her in July when we were on vacation. She made a chicken casserole and brownies for our dinner. We looked and her thimble collection and she talked about people who had given them to her and we laughed and shared a wonderful time. Here she is with my Esther:

...and she always kissed you... Usually right on the lips!!

I am going to miss receiving a homemade, handwritten (in beautiful calligraphy) Christmas card every year.

This is one she sent to Grandma Icel:

 I will cherish this card she sent after we returned from our vacation

I still have a tiny little hand knitted, red and white stocking that was tucked inside her card one Christmas.

....and an adorable 4 piece outfit she made for my son's 1st birthday. A crocheted hat, shorts and two shirts. The shirts have buttons on the bottom and they button to the shorts. One shirt has a clown with balloons stitched on it. It is still in perfect condition. Lloyd just turned 36 and the outfit will soon fit his son

And the sweet little sweater set she crocheted when my Cora was born. It is still perfect too.

This is Aunt Vi with my 4 children in 1994

I am touched by how lovingly she always looked at and touched Uncle Ralph

even after 50 years...

Happy trails to you Aunt Vi... 

I know you are hugging and kissing Uncle Ralph and Linda....right on the lips



Family Photo

This is the Clark family. Harold was soon to be sent overseas and so they wanted to have a portrait done.
Seated are Babe, Icel, William, and Rose.
The back row is the interesting thing..... Grandma said that Ralph and Vi were in California at the time so they left an empty spot for Ralph in the portrait and superimposed in him later. I said I didn't know they could do that back then. Crazy huh?
The back row is Bud, Ralph, Icel and Harold. 



Bambi

Let's go back in time a bit to when Icel took Barbara and Betty to Springdale to help her parents-in-law. A fawn wandered into the yard one day. It just wandered around exploring as all babies will tend to do. It didn't appear to be afraid of people yet. Of course after they had pet it and oohed and aahed over it a bit (and gotten their human scents all over it) its mother did not want it back. It lived on the farm with them for a year or so. 

See, here it is with Barbara:

and with Betty, and quite interested in the camera:

It was obviously quite tame: 

Grandma Icel says this photo was entered in a contest for some magazine and earned an honorable mention. I think it should have won 1st prize! 

(Don't you just love Betty's outfit!)

William and Icel Clark even got to meet the fawn on a visit to the farm. They are on the left and Myrtle with Clyde Perkins on the right.

This story has a bit of a sad ending. When I asked what ever happened to the deer Barbara told me her dad was hunting one fall after the deer and grown and returned to the woods. They had marked the deer somehow or other and so he had no doubt who it was when he went to claim his prey. The circle of life I suppose. Poor Bambi. I hated that movie. I never let my kids watch it because it made me too sad.

Edwin Clark

I showed Grandma Icel and Mom Gaines a photo in which I recognized about half of the people. I was just hoping for an approximate date but instead I got an entire People Magazine worthy story. William Edwin Clark, Grandma's dad, was married to someone else before he married Icel Weekley. And they had a child together! Of course when Grandma found out about a half-brother she had to find him. I mean family is family after all!! So she went on a hunt and found him in Seaside Oregon. It was the year 1953. She told her dad what she had done and asked if he would like to go meet him with her. So she loaded up the car with her girls, and husband and her dad and they headed to Seaside. They pulled up in front of the house where she had learned her brother lived and she marched right up to the door and boldly knocked. When a woman opened the door Grandma announced that she thought her half brother lived here and asked if would he like to meet her and and her family and his dad? No sooner had the words left her mouth then she heard two feet heavily hit the ground and a very tall man came charging to the door. He was very eager to meet them all. He told her that he had spent many a time as a boy sitting on a hill overlooking the city dump in Portland and watching his daddy working. I asked Grandma why her dad had not had a relationship with his son during those years. She said the mother would not allow it. 

Well  they spent a wonderful day together getting to know each other. His name was Edwin Clark. He and his wife, Wilma, had 3 children. 

They memorialized the day with this photo:

Back row left to right: Ronnnie Clark, Barbara Perkins  holding Beverly Perkins, Betty Perkins, Margie Clark, Icel Perkins, William Clark.

Front row: Edwin Clark, Ray Perkins holding Monte Clark. I imagine Wilma snapped the photo. Ronnie was their oldest son and Margie and Monte were twins.

This is Edwin and his dad taken August 5, 1953

When it was time to part wasy the Portland address of William and Icel was given to the newly found family and they were encouraged to come for a visit. Grandma thought that her mother would also like to meet them and later when she took her dad home and talked to her mom about it she said she would indeed like to meet them all.

A visit did take place in Portland:

William, Icel, Wilma with Margie, Edwin, Ronnie & Monte

There is no date on this photo but judging by the size of the children it looks to be 5 or so years later.

Mom Gaines also shared that when William met Icel back in his circus days he wasn't sure whether or not he was divorced from his first wife and so he married Icel under the assumed name William Edwin rather than William Clark. It seems to me that would mean her name was Icel Edwin in the beginning of the marriage. I don't know how that ever was worked out but it would certainly be an interesting story!

The Family Moves to Spokane

The work of keeping up the apartment building and caring for a baby was a bit much for Icel so they sold the place and moved to Spokane in 1951. They bought a house on Martin street on the good side of Crestline. To the east was an area known as dog town and Icel found it an unfavorable place to raise children. 

Icel really loved her new home. There was a play house in the back yard which the 2 younger girls spent many happy hours playing in when Beverly got older.

A friend, Carl Brown, needed a helping hand so he came to stay with them for a time. He stayed in one bedroom upstairs while Barbara and Betty shared the other upstairs room. Beverly slept in a crib in her parent's room. 

Here is Beverly near the back porch of the house.

  Betty attended Bemiss Elementary. Barbara was a sophomore at John R. Rogers High School and her dad dropped her off at the corner of Wellesley and Crestline on his way out to Kaiser each morning. She walked home, but never alone, there were always groups of people walking the same direction.

The workers at Kaiser went on strike now and again but Ray was never without work. He picked up fill in jobs wherever he could. He drove a taxi, drove delivery trucks. Anything he could get.

Icel's friend, Evelyn, was working at a cookie store and said they needed help so Icel took a job there. She wanted to be able to buy clothes and things for the girls. Later she worked at some kind of potato plant where she fed potatoes into a machine that peeled and sliced them for french fries. Every day she took baby Beverly to her mother-in-law's house over by North Central High School.

Icel remembers a time when Betty got in with a bad crowd. I, the interviewer, said, "she was 8 or 9 years old. How bad of a crowd can there be at that age?" Apparently there was a girl in dog town whose mother also worked (in fact it sounds as if everyone worked)  but this mother would allow boys, not just girls, to come over to the house while she was gone!! Icel would have none of that and said the girl could no longer come to their house, on their side of Crestline ever again, nor could Betty go to her house!! So there!!

Barbara made some lifelong friends during this time, in this neighborhood. They all went to Roger's together - Ken Bradley, Marv Schwartzenberger, and Jim State. Hmmm, all boys... anyway they had a friend, Lloyd Gaines who went to school at North Central. The boys all worked at the Indians' ball park together. Lloyd quit school the summer of 1952, because he didn't think he would pass, and joined the Marines. When he came home from boot camp in San Diego, he asked his ball park buddies if they knew any girls they could set him up with. They told him they had a beautiful redhead friend and they set up a blind date. In the fall of 1952 Barbara and Lloyd met. Lloyd went for infantry training in Pendleton, Oregon and then on to Quantico, Virginia for ordnance training (which he said is where he was taught how to blow things up). From there he was sent back to Pendleton then two months later, to Korea. 

But I digress, Icel has such fond memories of  her home with all the beautiful wood trim and the hardwood floors. There was always a gang at their house, as usual. There was food and laughter and music and dancing, as long as everyone removed their shoes so they wouldn't scuff the highly polished floors. Friends and family played games and cards and danced and whooped it up until the wee hours of the morning.

In this photo Icel and Ray are in the upper left of the group. Ray's sister Vera is in front of him. The other lady in the black dress on the floor is another sister, Mabel with her husband Roy. And a third sister, Gertie, is sitting on her husband Mel's lap.

Ray and Icel in the center with Icel's mother to the right. The man seated is Mel Hubert with his wife Gertie standing behind. The lady on his lap is a family friend Janette Sloskowski. Behind her is Vera's husband Bill. The man on the far right is Ted Sloskowski.

 The guy that's standing looks to me like that guy who was in Indiana Jones and burned his hand with the medallion that had been in the fire and they were looking in the wrong place for the Ark because they didn't know there were intructions on the other side of the medallion. But it's probably not him.... in fact I found out he is Sollie (Solomon) Stromberger. His wife is Nita, another of Ray's sisters. She is the one with the scarf.

Icel was always baking and many times there would be a pie cooling on the window sill that would simply disappear. Of course the empty, but clean, pie dish would reappear a day or two later.

Ray and Icel bought and moved into a 4 unit building in Mead. They rented out the other units and during this wonderful time of their lives they became life-long friends with 3 families. Howard and Mary Skaife and Paul and Evelyn Taylor all who lived in two of the apartment units and Hershel and Joyce Kerns. Hershel's dad owned a garage and Hershel worked with him. Ray was often at the garage and the two men became friends. Hershel had met Joyce in England during the war and he had returned there, married her and brought her home to Mead. He soon asked Ray if they could introduce their wives to each other. Joyce was was eager to find friends being that she was so far from home and anything or anyone familiar. The girls became fast and dear friends. All of these friends stopped in at Ray and Icel's for a cup of coffee and a chat every day. Icel was always very welcoming and hospitable and Ray gave in to it even though he would have much preferred to have her to himself all the time.

(This picture of Barbara is stamped Mead Jr. on the back.)

Barbara, who was 12 or 13 around this time remembers having to mop the floors of the apartment and putting the couch in front of the door so visitors could not continually stream in and mess up all her hard work. Her dad really liked that idea. It gave them some time to themselves.

Here is a photo from this time period - on the back it says "Taken January 6, 1951. Janette and Ted Bloskowski."

It looks like they were good friends too doesn't it?


I am told that she and her dad won a prize at a company picnic for having the most freckles. I can certainly believe it. Oh how I wish this picture were in color so I could see just how red her hair was!!

Ray went to work for Kaiser as did many men during those years.

(This picture is stamped "Mead" on the back)

 Here is a tidbit about the  Kaiser plant "Though often referred to as a smelter, this was actually a reduction plant. The process of converting aluminum oxide into aluminum is known as reduction. It's an electrolytic process requiring large amounts of electrical current to separate the oxygen atom from the aluminum allowing it to combine with the carbon of the anode to form carbon dioxide. This plant had 8 potlines that ran in the neighborhood of 70,000 amps at 650 to 700 volts DC each. Built in 1941 by the Defense Plant Corp. and operated by Alcoa. After WWII this plant was declared surplus and bought at a discount by Henry Kaiser in 1946. Alcoa was not allowed to bid to buy it because of monopoly issues". As mentioned in an earlier post Ray had learned the craft of welding with his brother-in-law Ralph so they could work on ships during the war before they joined up themselves. He was hired at Kaiser as a welder. He later went to IR (a term Grandma Icel and Lloyd and Barbara threw out as if I should just know what it meant). Turns out it is Industrial Relations which I had to look up of course. (I love the Internet!) - Industrial Relations has three faces: science building, problem solving, and ethical  - and is associated with the Union. Management really liked him and if he had had a college degree he would have achieved an even higher position. He would have been sent to Oakland which Icel did not want to do so it seems she was somewhat thankful that he did not have a degree. Icel had been to Oakland and remembers it as a filthy place.

One night the citizens of Mead helplessly stood by and watched a home burn to the ground. The nearest fire station was in Hillyard. Ray and his friend Herschel found a used fire truck and rounded up some volunteers and Ray became the 1st fire chief of Mead, Washington. I tried to find this info online but Mead is sorely lacking in any kind of history whatsoever.

Icel, who has never been idle one day in her life, became an Avon representative. She was pregnant with her third child and would drive all over the countryside to the neighboring farms and up into the mountains to take orders and make deliveries. To her customers and neighbors her baby became known as the "Avon baby".
Beverly Ann Perkins was born on June 13, 1950 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.

 

 Avon afforded Icel the ability to give wonderful Christmas gifts to her family and friends using the free samples Avon gave her. Who else remembers those tiny white lipstick tubes?

She used her earnings to pay her baby doctor bills. After Beverly was born Icel just took her along and the people just loved her. Icel's dear mother came to Mead to help Icel with her new baby.