Chapter 6 of Family Memories-tell me about your parents

Tell me about your parents.

Lorraine: My parents were very strict but very good parents. Dad was Percival Crowell (or Crowle) U’Ren. It’s an English name. They called him Percy.  My mother hated it. She called him Doc. He wanted to be a doctor but passed out at the sight of blood so became a well-known photographer in Seattle instead. He took pictures of a lot of the expensive weddings in Seattle, My mother, Sarah Winola Lindsey U'Renn, enjoyed doing oil paintings. She was kind and very nice looking. My mother was an artist and painter. She did oil paintings of the pictures that my dad did. She was a wonderful lady and so busy all the time that she didn’t have time to have any hobbies.  She was a Sunday school teacher for the church and always had a big class with overflow because everyone liked her so much.

John: Dad was easy going. Mother made us tow the line. She had a strap made out of an old horse rein and if we did something we weren’t supposed to, she’d use that strap on our backside. Liked horses, chickens, and cows. Took us to the Puyallup Fair, the Oregon State Fair in Salem. Got there in the old ’28 Chevrolet. I remember mom made good rolls and bread. Dad and her used to argue a lot. Nothing in particular. Dad was headstrong and was always going to do things his way.

Jim B: Dad used to make a pretty good corned beef and cabbage.

Lillian: My dad died when I was three weeks old and my mother married his best friend when I was five.  Clyde Barr. My mom’s name was Irene Luttrell. They lived in Ridgefield. My real dad was an only child and an undertaker. My step dad was a barber.  Knapps Mortuary is still running in Vancouver, WA. My mother was involved in church. Quite religious. She did bazaars and all that stuff.  She was crippled in a car accident when I was 13. I was in the accident too.  It happened in Ridgefield and she always walked with a crutch after that. I have two half-sisters. One died and one’s in LaConnor. Her name is Joyce Sitere. They were my dad’s girls by his first wife.   The other one was Katherine and she lived in Hazel Dell. Joyce’s husband was a meat market man in LaCenter, down by Vancouver, WA. Joyce  was quite a bit older than me.  My dad liked kids and he took them in.

Marcella: I loved my parents. My dad had to work weekends to support everybody. Insurance during the week and he played for dances on the weekend. My mother was the disciplinarian. My dad was Don Bell and he was a very gentle, loving man.  Wonderful father and for his restful time, he played the Hammond organ or piano. Every house we lived in had either a Hammond organ or a baby grand piano, and we had music all the time. My mom’s name was Effie Josephine and she was a very hard worker and liked to work in the garden. She spent most of her life in the kitchen making bread and cooking for seven people.

Arlie: They were hardworking and strict.

Denny: Dad didn’t talk much but mom did. Dad seemed to know an awful lot of useful stuff. House foundations, how to build them, how to remodel, how to re-wire, re-side, re-window, etc. Built the house out on Hastings Avenue that the Howlands bought (it later burned down). Also was a good mechanic. Cars, paper mills, machinery. He was super conservative. Not just a Republican but lived conservatively as well. Modest about housing, furnishings, cars, recreation, boats, clothes. I was surprised in grade school to watch him doing logarithms in the evenings to pass his A-1 millwright exams. We almost never got a vacation at the time he put in for. Seemed that the mill always broke down at the exact same time or something. Remember him going to work, then working through the next shift, then the next, then go right on to his regular shift again.

Seemed to happen a lot. Employers weren’t too compassionate back then. I remember when he had the ulcer and ended up in the hospital. He almost died. Had lost about 60% of his blood and a few years later, you could tell just when it happened by how he looked in the pictures just prior to the hospital. They operated and took most of his stomach. Mom was always home when we came home from school. It was always “mom, I’m home”… and we’d always get an answer. We wore lots of patches on clothes growing up. Ate lots of home canned food. We always sat down for meals. Always ate well. Even though mom only had an 8th grade education, she always expected us to speak correctly. Think that came from her dad. I remember the time mom was hit in the ’37 Chevrolet and rolled it. It shook me up because mom and dad were so shook up. Must have happened in the early 50’s. Probably why we got the Studebaker.

Dale: Being products of the 1930’s depression era, mom and dad were indelibly imprinted with a philosophy of conservatism. Both were hard workers and successfully imbued all four children with high values and work ethics.

Sue S: Dad was quiet, serious, and creative with his hands. He could make beautiful wood projects. He was strict when I was younger but eased up a lot when I got into high school. He loved to tease my black cat. The cat got even once when a ladder was put beside the house. The cat climbed up and jumped onto the bed where he was sleeping. It took a while for us to figure out why dad was ranting and raving. Needless to say, the ladder was moved and the cat would run when he saw dad coming. My mom was into many church activities: choir, flower arranging, church secretary for the Ladies Aid. She also sang in a community group, took piano lessons, and tended her garden. She loved to read everything that came into the house. She was very knowledgeable about the Latin names of plants.

Lill: This is a complicated answer for an adoptee who had 3 or 4 sets of parents before reaching 18. I had birth parents until age 8, foster parents from 8 to 11, and adoptive parents from 11 to 18.

Sue W: I don’t think my dad understood kids or maybe he was just a little afraid of them. He tried, though. Mom was our savior from him often.

Mary: My mother is my best friend and has a personality that won’t quit. She’s the type of person that people are drawn to. They automatically like her and she puts strangers at ease immediately. She laughs a lot. She’s someone I can depend on no matter what. She has a golden touch when it comes to baking. She makes the best pies in the world. She taught me how to sew, bake, and work a ten-key adding machine. My father is a hard-working individual who cares deeply about pleasing and obtaining the approval of others. He has an artistic side to him and can paint, draw, carve, build, etc.

Bill: My parents are Delbert O. Dubberly and Joan Ellen Arey Dubberly. Dad was born February 16, 1930 in Blackshear Georgia. He met mother while he was stationed at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA. He currently drives for Walmart and is 71 years old. Mom was born July 22, 1930 and died October 10, 1969.

Janie: Dad is a quiet man and patient. Mother loved me enough to send me back to a better life.

Marlee: Mom and dad got married when mom was 15-1/2 years old. Couldn’t even drive a car yet. She was a stay-at-home mother and daddy worked at the paper mill. Our whole life revolved around daddy’s rotating work shifts. He would get paid every other week; mom would go “big grocery shopping” then. She’d take Cindy and I and we’d shop at Lucky’s on 6th Avenue. Daddy built a homemade tent trailer for us to camp in. That camper weighed a ton. Bobby and I had to sit on the back so daddy could lift the tongue off the floor and put it on the trailer ball on the back of the car. We’d go to Belfair and Kopachuck State Parks mostly. Bobby and Cheryl would sleep in the bottom bunks, Cindy and I shared a top bunk and mom and daddy shared the other top bunk. Daddy built up a small cabin onto our big house on Pt. Richmond. There was some code that stated you couldn’t tear down a house at the beach property and rebuild—you had to build onto the existing structure. He’d work on it on all his days off, paying for supplies each time he got paid. He never finished the living room for years because he wanted the tax assessor to see we lived in an unfinished house and then he’d get to pay cheaper taxes.  Mom loved the old maple tree on the property. There was a treehouse in it and a tire swing hanging from one of the bigger branches. Mom was a fanatic about a clean house. Living on the beach with all the sand, she vacuumed every day. I remember mom baking a lot. We’d come home from school and get our afternoon snack of homemade cookies, pies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, etc. Yummy! I remember car trips with daddy. Cindy and mom in the front seat with daddy, me and Cheryl and Bobby in the back. Both mom and dad smoked. On cold days when we couldn’t roll the window down it was pretty smoky. We ate our meals at the kitchen table and we all had our regular seats. If daddy was off or depending on his shift work and he was home at dinner, he always sat at the head of the table.

Cindy: Dad worked at the St. Regis Mill. Mom was a stay-at-home mother. They both loved to fish, dig clams, and camp. They also loved music and had a large record collection. Dad’s days off were always busy. My folks did lots of things together. They seemed to be happy just going to the dump together. They enjoyed thrift stores and we spent a lot of time looking in them. On dad’s day off, we knew that mother was his. The rest of the time, mother was ours. She played games and watched every trick I ever asked her to watch. She was always there. She took good care of us.

Joyce: My father, John Alva Blankenship, was born January 3, 1923, in Galvin, WA. He was a twin to James Ira and they were surprise babies as their folks were 39 and 45 and already had three teenagers and a 9-year-old.  They moved to Port Townsend in 1928 and Dad was raised there, graduating from the local high school. He married a Chimacum girl (Alice Nisbet) in 1942 and joined the marines. He was shipped overseas and didn’t meet me until I was two or so. They divorced in 1952 and my mother moved to Pennsylvania with her new husband leaving us kids with dad. Dad was shy and quiet, worked at the paper mill until his retirement and married his second wife, Marcella Smith  two years after I married. He enjoyed going for car rides and on picnics with his siblings. His social life pretty much revolved around them. He liked crossword puzzles and playing solitaire. He taught us how to play poker but quit in disgust when he discovered we were cheating my sitting on the aces. I didn’t see my mother until 1977 when I traveled to Pennsylvania. In later years as I got interested in genealogy, I discovered her biological parents were Doris Stevens and Harry Coffman Haskell.