Tag Archives: oregon

Girls in Blue

We’re continuing our series looking back at the life of Eileen Horner Blakely, who died December 30th at the age of 96.

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“In today’s Navy … I certainly recommend women to do it because they’ve got all the opportunities in the world.” – Eileen Blakely

Eileen Blakely, is pictured below (bottom row, third from left) with Margaret Thorngate (bottom row, fifth from left) in school at Cedar Falls, then the Iowa State Teachers College.  They were not acquainted at the time, but are now both Oregon residents, only three hours apart, and members of the statewide WAVES group.

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“We met some people from all over. I had three people, WAVES roommates, that we stayed together or kept in touch ‘til they died.” – Margaret Thorngate

Working Girl

After Merrily Kurtz graduated from high school, she began working at a local department store.

Well, every girl in town almost worked in Meyer and Franks.  My first job was J.C. Penney’s. I went to a business college for awhile and got some training that way and  improved my typing.

Eventually, Kurtz was hired by Meyer and Franks, but by that time the country was at war.

Just outside of the building in the next block they (the military) had their stand where the people came up for the bond drives and you know encouraged people to sign up and they had famous people come and I remember seeing the three sisters… the Andrews Sisters I guess it was, you know, and you would go out and see that stuff and hear that “Rah rah.”

The photo comes from the collection of Merrily Kurtz Hewett.

Family Ties

The Depression put stresses on many families. For Merrily Kurtz, whose mother had died when she was just five years old, the Depression first meant her father working at a series of jobs trying to keep his family together. When he realized that the work was too much, he asked his wife’s parents to help raise his young children. They first lived in a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood, but then later moved to a farm in the country.

 

I don’t think I was aware the Depression was going on. I enjoyed life as it was. I had a good time. I had my meals, I never had to go hungry. Of course I didn’t have some of the niceties, but this is out in the country. There were a lot of blackberry vines.  I got to wear shoes that came up over your ankle and I had the largest size at that time and the next time, when my feet grew they couldn’t fit me. That hurt (laughing).

This photograph shows Merrily and her brother with her grandmother. It comes from the collection of Merrily Kurtz Hewett.

Moving Around

Merrily Kurtz was born in Portland and lived in the Laurelhurst District as a young child, but because of the depression her family moved around the metro area a lot when she was growing up.

We moved out to the logging camp (east of Portland). My father worked there with my grandfather, his father-in-law, and then we came back into Portland and then they bought the house in Multnomah and we lived out there several years. My mother died out there from diphtheria. After she died, Dad tried to keep the home going, but it didn’t work. And so he asked my grandmother if they would like to take my brother and I, and they said they would. So we lived in Grand High district for a year or two, and then we moved out to the country. I went to school in a one-room school for awhile and then graduated from grade school and went into high school at Sandy, Oregon, and graduated from there.

This photograph shows Kurtz’s mother and grandmother. It comes from the collection of Merrily Kurtz Hewett.

“We Had a System”

As World War II was winding down in late 1945, people in the military started thinking about life after the war. Jane Fisher was in the Coast Guard boot camp to serve in the SPARs (from the Coast Guard Motto Semper Paratas, Always Ready) when the word came down that the war had ended. She ended up relieving other women who had been enlisted longer.

Jane was sent to Seattle and assigned to work in the Post Office. For her, military service was about patriotism – and flirting.

I worked in the post office.  Oh that was good deal.  I had a friend who worked in personnel.  If we saw a cute guy, (laughs) just to show you how women worked in that day and age, if we saw a cute guy, she looked up his personnel records.  If it didn’t show that he was married, then I’d check the letters to see if he got a letter from the same person all the time.  (laughs).  Oh, we had a system.

Jane met her husband-to-be while she was heading back to work after leave to visit her family in Nebraska. She noticed him when he got on the train in Idado.

 I remember peeking out.  His voice. It just sounded good.  But I was playing it pretty cool as we were going up the river.  And we had had a wreck in the middle of the night which made our train late.  And we got to the Dalles (in Oregon) and everybody was getting off the train, you know, to go to the ladies who were serving cookies and stuff.  I thought, “Well, I’m not going to get off and have him give me a bad time.”  Because he kept walking back and forth and I knew he was getting up nerve enough. So I waited and I got off.  He had got off to check uniforms.  He waited and he jumped off the train behind me.  And he informed me that SP stood for “SPAR Patrol.”  Or “SPAR Protector.”  And then he sat on down beside me and he asked me if I knew anything about fish ladders.  Now that was the craziest line I had ever heard in my life.  And I didn’t know what a fish ladder one. I had never heard of one.  He said, “Well we’re coming to this Bonneville Dam and they have a fish ladder and I’m going to point it out to you.  Because someday, I’m going to design and build fish ladders.”  He was the only guy I ever met who really knew what he wanted to do with his life.  It really impressed me.

By the time the train reached Portland, Oregon, Jane was smitten. But she was supposed to transfer to a nearby train head back up to base in Seattle.

 He said to me, “If you purposely miss that train I’ll sign your papers that we had a wreck.”  So I did.  And we spent the whole day in Portland. I went on the train that night that he was on Shore Patrol to Seattle. And he took a cab and took me to where we were staying and got it all squared away that I really wasn’t late.  Signed the all papers and stuff. And we were married three months later.

It was a whirlwind courtship – spurred along by an over-anxious mother:

We were going to get married, but we were going to get discharged and go home.  But my mother kept planning my wedding.  And one night we were in a movie and I was so upset with her and I said, “Gee you know for two cents I’d just get married right here in Seattle.”  And he reached over and gave me two pennies.  So we got married in Seattle.  We were married 28 years.

The photograph comes from the Betty Jane Fisher Collection.

Edna Jean Clark

Meet Edna Jean Clark, who goes by Jean. Jean was born and grew up in Stayton, Oregon, which she called “a family town.”

My great-great grandfather came there in the early 1800s and founded the town.  The town is named for him. Stayton, Oregon.  My family all grew up there.  My brother and I and my cousins.

Jean’s mother was a Murphy and her father a Richardson. related to that original Stayton who founded the town. They got married 1911.

Stayton was a logging community, and Jean’s family all worked in the industry. That meant the family often moved around the area as her father got new jobs.

He was always a logger or a farmer depending on which was the best. We did a lot of moving from one log camp to another. I grew up, my first grade class was in a logging camp where there were just eight children in the first grade and only one in the second grade and then several along scattered through. It was a one-room school. Pot bellied stove on the floor.  We played on the the sawed off logs as a playground.

The certificate of marriage comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Girls in Blue

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“In today’s Navy … I certainly recommend women to do it because they’ve got all the opportunities in the world.”

Eileen Blakely, is pictured below (bottom row, third from left) with Margaret (bottom row, fifth from left) in school at Cedar Falls, then the Iowa State Teachers College.  They were not acquainted at the time, but are now both Oregon residents, only three hours apart, and members of the statewide WAVES group.

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“We met some people from all over. I had three people, WAVES roommates, that we stayed together or kept in touch ‘til they died.” – Margaret Thornagate