Showing 87 results

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Larry Norman

  • CAC2010
  • Person

Larry Norman grew up in Hilltop on South Ainsworth Avenue. After graduating high school, he joined the Air Force. He returned to Tacoma in 1989 where he encountered an increase in drugs, gun violence, and incarceration. From 1993 to 2003, Norman said he attended 23 funerals for people he knew from the neighborhood who died due to the violence. Their ages ranged from between 11 and 24. While working as a Seattle firefighter, he started Happenings on Hilltop (originally titled Tidbits from Ten), a community newsletter devoted to documenting the neighborhood and sharing information with the community. Norman led the effort to construct an "All Lives Are Precious" memorial in 1993 which was dedicated to victims of violence in Hilltop. He relocated to Colorado in 2003 and returned to Tacoma in 2015.

Wanda Thompson

  • CAC1006
  • Person

Wanda Thompson was born in a small rural town in Florida. Her father served in the military and her mother was a teacher. Early in her life Thompson moved around due to her father’s job, and has lived in places like Germany, France, California, and Georgia, before moving to the Hilltop area of Tacoma. She attended the all-girls Catholic academy, Aquinas Academy, which in 1974 combined with an all-boys Catholic academy to form Bellarmine Preparatory School. She won Ms. Hilltop in 1969 and ran for Ms. Downtown Tacoma in 1980.

After high school Thompson attended Evergreen State College and studied cultural anthropology and journalism. While at Evergreen she also studied abroad in France. Out of college her first job was at the Tacoma Public Library in the genealogy department. From there she went on to work at the Puget Sound National Bank, Civic Arts Commission, Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the Washington State Department of Corrections, and the Rehabilitation Council of Washington to name a few. Thompson has been involved in the Tacoma community through her involvement with organizations like the Tacoma Urban League, the Tacoma Downtown Association, and the Afro-Pageant and Show. She is also a published author.

Sulja Warnick

  • CAC1004
  • Person
  • June 6, 1942-

Sulja Warnick is a Tacoma resident who was a public school teacher in the Tacoma Public School dstrict. Early in her teaching career, she was called upon to help translate for Korean women married to service men on the military bases. This started her work with the Korean Women’s Association (KWA). KWA started as a small social club for Korean women and has expanded to a non-profit organization that provides education, affordable housing, in-home care for seniors, and social services, including domestic violence counseling for all groups of people. KWA now has offices in 14 Western Washington counties, serving up to 150,000 people of 40 nationalities and 35 language groups. The organization is now 51 years old.

Charles Carson

  • CAC1002
  • Person
  • 1970-

Charles Carson, MA, was born on October 25, 1970 in the Eastside of Tacoma. He and his siblings were raised by a single mother in an environment of alcoholism and violence. At age 12, Carson was arrested for theft and sent to Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center. Before the age of 17, he was detained at the detention center a total of 18 times.

As his mother’s alcoholism worsened, Charles would frequently be kicked out of his home and spend the night in abandoned buildings. He began selling crack/rock cocaine and became addicted. During his teen years, he was a frequent witness to deaths, gun violence, and overdoses. In February of 1988, Charles was beaten and shot during a drug-related incident.

After being released from the hospital, he moved in with his best friend's family. His friend's mother, Ramona Bennett, a Puyallup tribal leader, activist, and mentor, became a surrogate mother to Charles, encouraging him to quit drugs and return to school. With her support, he enrolled in an alternative high school and completed four years of coursework in just 18 months. Over the next year, Charles was awarded the Boys and Girls Club’s Youth of the Year Award and selected to attend the Washington Leadership Institute.

In 1989, he was recruited by the Safe Streets Campaign to support at risk youth impacted by drugs and violence in Tacoma. On March 15, 1991, he founded the Late Nite program in collaboration with the Tacoma Center YMCA. The program has since expanded across Pierce County and has been implemented in other cities across the United States. He has received dozens of national awards and recognitions for public service, including being honored by Vice President Al Gore for his work with Late Nite.

Charles went on to earn an Associate’s Degree from Tacoma Community College, a Bachelor’s Degree from Evergreen State College, and a Master’s degree from the University of Washington. He has spoken extensively at colleges, detention centers, and churches. He now works as a musician and author and operates Beautiful Birds Family Services, a foster/adoption agency that helps find homes for children.

Paul Jackson

  • CAC1001
  • Person
  • 1968-

Paul Jackson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 20, 1968. His mother, Vickie Cunningham-Jackson-Davis was born in Choopee, South Carolina. She was a twin and the oldest of ten children. She graduated from South Carolina State University and served as a civilian in the Army. His father fought in the Vietnam War. As a child, Jackson moved to Willingboro, New Jersey, a suburb 15 miles northeast of Philadelphia. The family purchased a home in the Levitt and Sons residential development, which had been successfully sued in the late 1950s for refusing to sell to Black families. While in grade school, Jackson lived in Fairfax, Virginia, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Cambridge, his mother attended MIT. It was there that Jackson saw his first computer when he was in the 6th grade. He played violin in the Cambridge Youth Orchestra and began playing guitar.

He attended Prairie View A&M University in Texas where he played bass in an award winning funk band. He received a National Science Foundation scholarship to obtain his PhD in computer engineering. His research focused on augmented and virtual reality within the aerospace industry. He completed three summer internships with Boeing and, after graduation, was hired full time and relocated to Seattle.

He has presented nationally and internationally on a range of topics including deep space exploration and digital media authoring. Jackson is the co-chair of the Swedish MS support group. He is a Chronic Disease Self-Care Manager and is certified in Adult Mental Health First Aid through the African American Reach and Teach Health Ministries. He and his wife, artist and educator Jasmine Brown, now reside in Tacoma.

Metcalf, Ralph

  • 6.3.4
  • Person
  • 1861-1939

Ralph Metcalf was born in Providence, R. I., November 2, 1861; son of Alfred and Rosa C. (Meloy) Metcalf. After his preliminary education he attended Brown University and the University of Michigan, graduating in 1883. He began newspaper work and was identified with the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn. for several years, afterwards purchasing and editing the Winona (Minn.) Daily Herald. He moved to Tacoma in February 1890, and became proprietor and editor of the Tacoma Morning Globe, which was absorbed by The Ledger in 1893 (1). While editor of the Globe he was also briefly a clerk of the Board of Public Works but resigned in April of 1891 having found the two positions incompatible (2). In 1902 he established the Metcalf Shingle Company which became the largest manufacturer of shingles in the state (3) . He was elected Washington State Senator from Tacoma in November of 1906 (4). He served in the Senate until his death in April of 1939. His background in the newspaper business and his passion for travel inspired his many columns in the Tacoma News Tribune (5) which ran from November 3rd 1927 to February 10 of 1939.

Marjorie Jane Windus

  • 6.3.2
  • Person
  • 3/29/1920-12/29/2013

Marjorie Jane Windus was born in 1920 to Louise and Harold Windus. Harold was a movie theatre organist in Seattle during the silent film era. Marjorie attended the University of Washington and after graduating moved to Chicago Illinois where she worked as a hostess/cashier at the Blue Note Jazz Club while pursuing a singing carrier. She returned to Washington where she received her master's degree in social work from the University of Washington. After graduating she became a social worker for the Pierce County Community Worker Unit. She developed the first community-wide resource directory in Pierce County. She also played a role in helping the Puyallup Tribe get possession of the building which would later become their community center (the former Cascadia Juvenile Diagnostic Center). She retired from the Department of Social and Health Services in 1983 and moved to San Francisco until early 2009 when she returned to Tacoma. Until her passing, she attended the Monterey Jazz Festival. She died in Tacoma after a brief illness.

George O. Swasey

  • 6.3
  • Person
  • 1868-1958

George O. Swasey was born in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1868. He was a graduate of Exeter Academy and Harvard University. He arrived in Tacoma around 1907 to begin a law practice and was active in the Tacoma Elks Lodge, the Tacoma Bar Association, Sons of the American Revolution, and the Unitarian Church. At the time of his death in 1958, he resided at 4622 North 28th Street. Swasey bequeathed $110,000 to the Tacoma Public Library to establish the George O. Swasey library branch.

Ronald Magden

  • 6.1.8
  • Person
  • 1926-2018

Ronald Magden was born in Mountain Home, Idaho, in 1926. (1) He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Washington in 1965 while teaching at Renton Junior-Senior High School. (2) After receiving his Ph.D., Magden started teaching at Tacoma Community College until his retirement in 1983. (2) Magden helped to edit ILWU Local 23’s grant proposal to the Washington Commission for the Humanities in 1977. However, after the hired writers struggled to write Local 23’s history, Magden was asked to take on the project in 1979. This was the beginning of a thirty-year study in Longshore history and the Pacific Coast. (1) He was known as a local historian, researcher, and educator. Magden’s first book, The Working Waterfront, was published in 1982. (2) He wrote eight more books: Pioneer School, Furusato (Going Home), History of Seattle Waterfront Workers, The Working Longshore Men, and Mukashi Mukashi (Long Long Ago). (2) Magden married Joan Lorraine Mulroney on August 9th, 1949, and they had three children together. Magden passed away on December 31st, 2018. (2)

Erna Spannagel Tilley

  • 6.1.6
  • Person
  • 1887-1982

Erna Spannagel Tilley (1887-1982) was a supporter of the arts in Tacoma. She was born in South Dakota to a German immigrant father and Wisconsin-born mother. She and her four siblings moved with their parents to Spokane, Washington where she attended high school. After graduating from the University of Washington, she married Homer H Tilley (1884-1953) in 1911. He was employed by Metropolitan Insurance Company and transferred to Tacoma by 1917.

Their social circle included artists, writers, poets, and dramatists throughout Puget Sound. In later life, Erna Tilley profiled several of these artists in her books, ”A Gateway to Friendship” (1970) and “Remembrances of Five Notables” (1971). She helped organize the Tacoma branch of the Drama League of America in 1918, and was involved throughout its existence and transformation into the Tacoma Little Theatre. An active board member for 28 years, she chronicled it in “The History of the Tacoma Little Theatre” (1965).

In 1929 she was named Tacoma’s official hostess, authorized by the city council to run the Welcome Wagon, a job she held for at least ten years. She helped orient new residents to city resources and distributed sample goods from local businesses. In 1935, she served on the first board of the Tacoma Art Association which developed into the Tacoma Art Museum. She documented its beginnings in “Resume: Early History of Tacoma Art Association”. Later she was also a founding member of Allied Arts of Tacoma, receiving its Allied Arts Civic Award in 1969.

She worked as a real estate salesperson and was concerned about the course of Tacoma’s urban development. She was a board member of the Tacoma Municipal League and received their Distinguished Citizen Award in 1977. She died July 6, 1982 at the age of 94.

The Tilleys had two daughters; the first, Julia, was born in 1913. She lived with her parents until sometime after 1960 when she was institutionalized. She died in a nursing home in 1980.

Margaret Tilley was their second child, born in 1916. A 1933 graduate of Stadium High School, she attended the College of Puget Sound for two years, then transferred and graduated from the University of Washington in 1937. Her weekly letters to her mother began when she was employed at the Custodial School in Medical Lake, Washington for a year. She returned to Tacoma and served as an editor of the Tacoma News Tribune’s society page for two years. In 1941 she moved to San Francisco and resumed writing letters. By 1944 her job with the American Red Cross entailed service on troop transport trains, assisting wounded servicemen from the Pacific theater on their return to points east. She was attached to Army groups in China and Japan in WWII. She was on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of China when it was evacuated to Japan in 1949. She joined the Foreign Service in 1950 and served in Vienna, Damascus, London, Montevideo, Pretoria, Milan, and Bangkok. She maintained a correspondence with her mother during her years abroad. She retired in November 1972 and died in Tacoma on January 3, 1974, age 57.

Thor Tollefson

  • 6.1.5
  • Person
  • 1901-1982

Thor Tollefson was born in Perley, Minnesota on May 2, 1901. He was the oldest of seven children. His family moved to Tacoma when he was ten years old, and when his father died, he dropped out of school to go to work and support his mother and siblings at the age of fourteen. After seven years of working in the lumber mills he went back to school and graduated from Lincoln High in 1924. He then went on to the University of Washington and graduated from law school in 1930. He married Eva Tollefson in 1934 and they had three daughters.

After opening a private law practice, Tollefson was elected Pierce County Prosecutor in 1938 and served in that office until 1946, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican for the 6th congressional district. He served nine terms in Congress, until he was defeated for re-election in 1964. As a congressman he served as chairman of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries and was twice appointed U.S. delegate to the Interparliamentary Union. After leaving Congress he was appointed Director of the Fisheries Department for Washington state by Governor Dan Evans in 1965. He retired from the department in 1975 and passed away on December 30, 1982 at the age of 81 years old.

Della Gould Emmons

  • 6.1.4
  • Person
  • 1890-1983

Della Gould Emmons (1890-1983) was a writer of historical fiction based in the Northwest. Her first novel, Sacajawea of the Shoshones (1943), was written from Sacajawea’s point of view and told the story of her life and participation in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Emmons invested ten years of research, travel, and correspondence with historians before its publication, and she included brief references at relevant chapter ends. She assisted with an adaptation of the book for Hollywood in 1953, as The Far Horizons, which starred Charlton Heston, Fred McMurray and Donna Reed. Nothing in Life is Free (1953) focused on the pioneer experience and the Puget Sound settlers who crossed the Cascade Mountains at Naches Pass. She next wrote the story of Leschi of the Nisquallies (1965), an account of his involvement in the Medicine Creek Treaty and ensuing Puget Sound War, his two trials for murder, and subsequent death by hanging. Her fourth book was a compilation of 12 plays, Northwest History in Action (1960). Lastly she wrote a biography of her oldest brother, titled Jay Gould’s Million Dollar Gems (1974), which served additionally as a memoir as she related their early upbringing together.

She was born in Glencoe, Minnesota August 12, 1890, where she spent her early life. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1912 and the following year she taught high school in Sisseton, South Dakota. Her tenure there culminated in the production of a musical and theatrical presentation at the local opera house as well as the nearby Sioux agency [1, 2, 3]. Her marriage to Allan Burdette Emmons (1887-1958), a train dispatcher, in 1913, led to their subsequent travel west along the railroad line as his job required. They lived in Seattle for nineteen years, and when her daughter’s fourth grade class at Green Lake School studied history, Emmons was motivated to write pageants for the students’ participation. The pageants were popular and restaged multiple times and Emmons was encouraged to submit radio plays to local stations where they were aired in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1936 her husband had been transferred to Tacoma and she was involved in civic life there for her remaining 47 years. She served on the Board of the Washington State Historical Society, was appointed Historian for the Fort Nisqually Restoration Council, and was adopted by the Lummi Nation in 1955. She gave talks and presentations at events and on the air, and received numerous awards. A plaque was placed in Point Defiance Park dedicating the rose arbor to her in 1981. She died in Tacoma at the age of 93, November 6, 1983, and was buried in Glencoe, Minnesota [5,6,7].

J. W. Roberts

  • 6.1.3
  • Person
  • 1836-1912

J. W. Roberts, born July 17, 1836 in Hollingworth, England, was a farmer and early pioneer in Spanaway, Washington. He was born to Elizabeth Wilson and Samuel Roberts and had four siblings: Matilda, Jane, William and George. In 1843 the Roberts family emigrated from England to the United States. Census records show that the Roberts family lived in Wisconsin (1850) and Illinois (1860), but in 1860 J. W. Roberts was no longer living with his family and had presumably headed west. The year when J. W. Roberts arrived in Washington is unknown, though his papers indicate he was living in Pierce County as early as 1866. Other family members, including his parents, brother, and niece eventually moved to Pierce County and purchased land near J. W. Roberts' claim at the southwest side of Spanaway Lake. Through inheritance and investment, J. W. Roberts continued to obtain and lease land in Spanaway and parts of South Tacoma. At the time of his death in 1912, J. W. Roberts was a wealthy land owner, landlord and farmer who had lived in Pierce County for over 40 years. Between 1868 and 1912, J. W. Roberts recorded his daily work on notebooks, loose papers, account books and pieces of cardboard. The journal entries average only a line or two a day and give accounts of details such as the weather and his daily work: tending to livestock, planting, clearing land, and various household tasks. He describes trips to Tacoma and other nearby areas to purchase or sell goods, and visit family. J. W. Roberts’ journals and correspondence also illustrate his family’s movements in Pierce County. His parents settled in Steilacoom in 1870, and his brother George Roberts lived in South Tacoma and ran Roberts Granite & Marble Works at 5304 South Alder St. In the last month of his life, J. W. Roberts’ journal entries made mention of “akes & pains,” swollen ankles, and being “verry sick.” According to his obituary, J. W. Roberts died May 12, 1912 at his brother George Roberts’ home in Tacoma. On May 14 his funeral was held in the Merrow & Storlies Chapel in South Tacoma. He is buried at Oakwood Cemetery. J. W. Roberts died a wealthy man without a wife, children or a will. After his death there were several claims on his sizable estate, estimated at the time to be worth between $70,000 and $90,000. Claimants included his great-grandnephew Charles Larson who petitioned on behalf of himself and his siblings, and a woman named Marguerite Clark Mulroy Snyder of Rockford, Illinois who declared herself a long-lost granddaughter. Both petitions were eventually rejected by the courts, and the claim by Mrs. Snyder declared grossly fraudulent. Included in these papers is a full record of this court case which made front page news and attracted considerable attention in both Tacoma and Rockford, Illinois. In the end, half of J. W. Roberts’ estate was awarded to his only surviving brother George Roberts, and the other half was split between two nieces, Elizabeth Beck and Catherine Rossiter.

Virginia Shackelford

  • 6.1.21
  • Person
  • 05/21/1915-02/15/1933

Virginia Shackelford was born on May 21, 1915. She was a prominent figure in Tacoma’s local politics and worked to restore the Pantages Theater and Union Station. (1) She was also a member of the John Birch Society, a right-wing political advocacy group. However, she left the society after a dispute with national headquarters concerning the distribution of anti-Semitic literature by several members of the society. (2) In the 1950s, Shackelford started lecturing at meetings and on her local radio show about anti-communism. She was particularly invested in the case of a school counselor fired in 1955 after refusing to answer questions about her alleged communist activities at a congressional hearing in Seattle. In her later years, Shackelford redirected her focus to restoring the Pantages Theater, where she performed as a girl with her father. (3) She died of pneumonia on February 15, 1993 at the age of 77. (1)

Royal Gove

  • 6.1.2
  • Person
  • 1856-1920

Royal Amenzo Gove (1856-1920) was an early Tacoma physician, city council member, and public health officer. He was born in Vermont and raised in Minnesota. After studying medicine and surgery in Chicago, Louisville, and Iowa, Dr. Gove practiced medicine in Minnesota before moving to Tacoma in 1890 to start a new practice. In April 1892 and again in 1894, he was elected to the Tacoma City Council. Dr. Gove also served on the Washington State Board of Examiners. An active Mason, Dr. Gove was Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of Washington in 1908 and 1909. He was a member of the Evergreen Lodge, Tacoma chapter; Royal Arch Masons; Scottish Rite; the Grotto and Eastern Star; and the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He was variously President and Treasurer of the Pierce County Medical Society, which he helped to found, and was also a member of the State Medical Society, the American Medical Society, and the Tacoma Commercial Club. He died in Tacoma on January 21, 1920 after a three month illness.

Carrie Woodard

  • 6.1.19
  • Person
  • 1869-1941

Carrie Woodard (1869-1941) was born in Boscobel, Wisconsin in 1869, the seventh child of Edman and Catherine Welch (1). In 1888, she married Albert E. Woodard, and by 1900 they had moved to Williams, North Dakota and had had five children (2). Three more were born by 1910, at which time they were in Minter, Washington (3). After thirty years of marriage, Albert began divorce proceedings in early 1918, citing the "ungovernable temper" of Carrie. Custody of the three minor children, including the two-year-old ninth-born, was awarded to her (4). She was 49 years old. Nineteen years later, she was granted a judgement against Albert, and he was to pay $300 toward child support (5). Her occupation at age 70 in the 1940 census was live-in housekeeper for a lawyer and his family (6). She died a year later at her place of work at age 71 (7,8).

Clarence Stave

  • 6.1.18
  • Person
  • 1897-1973

Clarence Stave was a popular baseball umpire in Tacoma’s City League, officiating for almost 30 years. His father Ole was a Norwegian immigrant, his mother Ida came from Sweden, and he was born in Tacoma in 1897. He left school after the eighth grade and was 15 when he began employment at the Northern Pacific Railway Company as a messenger (1, 2). He was promoted to clerk and then shop timekeeper before leaving in 1918 to seek employment with the F.S.Harmon Manufacturing Co. (2, 3). There he worked his way up from stockman to clerk to furniture salesman, eventually moving to Sears, Roebuck and Co. where he remained selling furniture and appliances until his retirement in the early 1960s (3).

His life outside work included performing; he appeared at the Liberty Theater on amateur night, and with his wife was featured in a benefit for shopmen called “The Moonshiner’s Daughter” (4,5). He began as an umpire for City League baseball in 1924, and he was considered the first and favorite choice to officiate the City League games and others (6). He was usually the only official present and would announce the games as well as call them, adding in humorous quips and minor skits to enliven the action. Audiences came in order to see him as well as the game (7).

He had two sons, Clifford L. and James R. with his first wife. He married his second wife Lillian Shonberg in 1942 and she and his sons survived him when he died in 1973 (8).

Elizabeth Loring

  • 6.1.17
  • Person
  • 1909-1976

Elizabeth Loring (1909-1976) was an author and playwright active in the Mormon community in Pierce County. Born in Kansas, she moved with her family to Washington State by 1920 where she graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1927 (1, 2). By 1930, she was employed as a public school teacher, and in 1933 she married George Loring, a dentist (3, 4). Their two children, Elizabeth Ann and Thomas Lovell were born in 1940 and 1949 (5). She and her family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints around 1953 (6).

Since childhood, she had acted in and directed plays, as well as singing and composing songs, and in the late 1950s she became involved with Lakewood’s On Stage Summer Theatre. She held many roles in this company, which was organized and directed by fellow Mormon, Thor Neilsen (7,8). Her son was killed in a tragic automobile accident and she memorialized his life in a small book of reminiscences and genealogy, Thomas Lovell Loring, 1949-1966 (6, 9).

She spent seven years developing her play, You’re No Stranger, based on the diary of Amos Fuller, an early associate of the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. It was produced locally in 1971 and 1973 (7, 10). She died in 1976 at the age of 66 (11).

Lorraine Hildebrand

  • 6.1.16
  • Person
  • 1926-2012

Lorraine Hildebrand was born in Tacoma to Ethel and Ernest Barker in 1926. She attended Lincoln High School where she met her husband James A. Hildebrand. They had five children. Lorraine was a Reference Librarian Specialist at Tacoma Community College. There, she created numerous bibliographies and reference works focused on BIPOC communities. These included "Chinook Indians: A Bibliography," "A Bibliography of Black Authors in the US," and "Sinophobia: The Expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma and Seattle, Washington Territory, 1885-1886. She also wrote "Straw Hats, Sandals, and Steel: The Chinese in Washington State." [1] Hildebrand served as a member of the Chinese Reconciliation Project Committee in 1992, and provided the historical context for what would become Chinese Reconciliation park. [2]

Elsa Nessenson

  • 6.1.15
  • Person
  • 1878-1969

Elsa Nessenson (1878-1969) was a playwright, actress, and director active in the Pacific Northwest. Born in Illinois in 1878 of German immigrant parents, her father died when she was a young child (1, 2). Her mother brought her and her older brother to Tacoma in 1896 when she accepted the position of Language Department head at the College of Puget Sound (2). Elsa graduated from Vassar in 1899 and taught English and German at Miss Round’s School in Brooklyn, New York. She gave dramatic readings and became a protégé of Heinrich Conried, then manager of the Metropolitan Opera House (3). She returned to Tacoma in 1914 and taught French at Stadium High School, where she was granted sabbatical time to travel in Europe and study at the Sorbonne. The Tacoma Drama League branch was formed in 1918 and she was a founding member. One of her plays, In the Secret Places, won an award and was reprinted in the November 1926 issue of Drama Magazine. She continued writing and performing up to and after her retirement from Stadium in 1946. She moved to Wesley Gardens, a retirement community in Des Moines, Washington, where she died in 1969 (2).

Jim Tweedie

  • 6.1.14
  • Person
  • 1927-2021

Jim Tweedie was born in Longview, Washington in 1927. Both his father and grandfather were employed at Long Bell Lumber Company. Starting in high school, Jim began working weekends at Long Bell West Mill and Weyerhaeuser's pulp mill, beginning a lifetime interest in the plywood and lumber industry. He graduated from Kelso High School and served in the military during WWII, stationed in Japan. Upon returning, he resumed his career in lumber, working at Long Bell once again. From there, Tweedie worked at Weyerhaeuser Company for 30 years, working both domestically at mills in the U.S South and traveling abroad serving as Weyerhauser’s manager of international sales. Following his retirement from Weyerhauser in 1984, Tweedie worked for 9 more years as an international broker for plywood, operating under his company name Pacific Gulf International. He officially retired in 1993, but remained involved in the timber industry through his work with the Plywood Pioneers of America and the Cowlitz County Historical Society and Museum. Additionally, he volunteered at the Mt. St. Helens Forest Learning Center, and published his book "The Long-Bell Story" in 2014, detailing the history of the company that first sparked his career in lumber. Jim Tweedie passed away in September 2021 in University Place, Washington.

Michael K. Honey

  • 6.1.13
  • Person
  • 1947-

Michael K. Honey was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1947. His father, a WWII veteran, worked as an urban planner and professor. His mother was from a working class Detroit family. He lived in Williamston, Pontiac, and Grand Rapids, Michigan as well as Toledo, Ohio. From 1965-1969, Honey attended Oakland University in southeast Michigan. After graduation, his status as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War was approved. He then spent time in Kentucky and in Memphis, Tennessee, where he served as the Southern Director of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation. He received an MA from Howard University and a PhD from Northern Illinois University. His research focused on labor history and civil rights. His books include "Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers," "Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign," and "To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice." In 1990, he became a founding faculty member of the University of Washington Tacoma. He held the Fred and Dorothy Haley endowed professorship and served as the Harry Bridges Chair of Labor Studies. He taught African American and Labor History and also began a Community History curriculum which engaged students in interview projects and other public history initiatives focused on Tacoma. In addition to his scholarly work, Honey is also a film maker, musician, oral historian, and activist.

Henry Foss

  • 6.1.12
  • Person
  • 1892-1986

Henry Foss was one of four children born to Andrew and Thea Foss who founded the Foss Launch and Tug Company in Tacoma. Henry attended Stadium High School and went on to attend Stanford University. After graduating, he returned to Tacoma to work in the family business. In 1930, he was elected as the State Senator for the 26th District. During World War II, he served in the US Navy where he was part of naval intelligence. He retired as a Rear Admiral and was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Navy Marine Life Saving Medal. Over the course of his career, he served as Pierce County Republican Chairman, Port of Tacoma Commissioner, and Director of the Pacific National Bank of Washington. In 1973, Henry Foss High School was named in his honor. He died in 1986.

Nels Bjarke

  • 6.1.11
  • Person
  • 1875-1950

Nels (Nils) Bjarke was born in 1875 in Denmark. He immigrated to the United States in 1915 and lived in Nebraska before moving and settling in Tacoma at the end of the first World War. He worked as a laborer in shipyards before becoming an engineer for the Fern Hill School. He moved to Fern Hill in 1927 with his family. Bjarke wrote about the history of the Fern Hill area including Byrd Mill Road and Naches Pass. He also compiled a history of Chief Leschi. Bjarke spearheaded the community effort to build the Fern Hill branch of the Tacoma Public Library by petitioning the library board and collecting signatures highlighting the desire for a local library. Bjarke died in 1950 at the age of 74.

George Kupka

  • 6.1.10
  • Person
  • 1912-1989

George W. Kupka was born on July 3, 1912 in South Prairie, Washington. He held the title of Sheriff’s Deputy for Pierce County from 1934 to 1941. After this, he enlisted in the Navy during World War II. Before becoming a state legislator, Kupka was also a jeweler and worked in private construction. He was also a founder of the Bank of Tacoma. Kupka was elected to the House of Representatives in 1948 as a Democrat for Tacoma’s 27th District. He held this position until 1956 where he was elected to the Senate until 1968. During his time as an elected representative, he was chairman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Licenses Committee, and the Interim Committee on Public Institutions and Youth Development. He was also a member of the Committee of Banks, Financial Institutions and Insurance; Cities, Towns and Counties; Labor and Social Security; Liquor Control; State Government and Veterans Affairs, and Ways and Means; and Military Affairs, Civil Defense and Public Utilities. George Kupka died on December 30, 1989, at the age of 77.

Murray Morgan

  • 6.1.1
  • Person
  • 1916-2000

Murray Morgan was born in Tacoma in 1916 to Henry Victor and Ada Camille Morgan. His father, a Unitarian Universalist Minister, was the publisher of a monthly religious periodical while his mother wrote children's plays and poetry. As a student, he wrote for both his junior high and high school newspapers. Before his 1933 graduation from Stadium High School, Morgan's article "How to Second a Boxer," was published nationally in Scholastic Magazine. He enrolled at the University of Washington where he studied journalism and edited the UW Daily. He graduated cum laude in 1937 and then moved to Hoquiam to report on sports and local news for the Grays Harbor Washingtonian. He briefly returned to Seattle to edit the Seattle Municipal News. While there, he reunited with Rosa Northcutt, who had also attended UW and worked on the UW Daily. On March 5, 1939, Murray and Rosa were married in Tacoma. The couple went to Europe for their honeymoon where they embarked on a kayaking trip through Germany and Austria. Murray's reports on the trip were published in the Tacoma News Tribune. He then wrote for the Spokane Daily Chronicle before returning to the Grays Harbor Washingtonian as the City Editor. In 1941, he moved to New York City to pursue a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, media outlets expanded their operations and Murray began working on assignments for CBS, Time, and the New York Herald Tribune. Rosa attended his classes and took notes for him while he wrote. With her help, he completed the Master's program and was awarded a Pulitzer Fellowship. He and Rosa moved to Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico where Murray intended to study and write about the Mexican press. Just a few months after their arrival in Mexico, Murray was drafted into the army. His first book, a mystery called Day of the Dead, was published under the pen name Cromwell Murray in 1946. While stationed in the Aleutian Islands, Rosa encouraged Murray to write about the history of the island. She conducted research and sent the information to Murray. This resulted in his first history book, Bridge to Russia: Those Amazing Aleutians (1947). Murray was then transferred to the Pentagon to work as decoder. While in Washington, DC, he worked with Rosa to research the CSS Shenandoah which resulted in the book Dixie Raider (1948). The Morgans returned to Washington and lived on Maury Island where Murray wrote a second novel, The Viewless Winds. They then moved to Trout Lake where Murray would live for the rest of his life. He wrote for dozens of magazines and newspapers including Holiday, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, and the Saturday Evening Post. He also worked as the copyeditor for the Tacoma Times and taught courses and advised the student newspaper at the University of Puget Sound. He briefly worked the graveyard shift as the bridgetender for the 11th Street Bridge which would later be renamed in his honor. In 1951, Murray's most successful book, Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle was published. In the early 1950s, Morgan added the role of broadcaster to his growing list of occupations. He and Jim Faber co-hosted a morning news program on KMO and then KTAC where they discussed Tacoma politics and became known for exposing and discussing corruption. In 1956, Morgan joined KTNT to host a morning program called "Our Town, Our World," which would continue for 15 years. In 1963, he started a regular review column for the Seattle periodical Argus. Between 1969 and 1981, he taught a course on Northwest history at Tacoma Community College. During this period, he also taught at Highline Community College, Pacific Lutheran University, and Fort Steilacoom Community College. Over the course of his career, he wrote or co-wrote 23 books. He died on June 22, 2000.

Honor L. Wilhelm

  • 5.5.2
  • Person
  • 1870-1957

Honor Wilhelm was born in Shiloh, Ohio in 1870. He graduated from Wittenberg College in 1894 and apprenticed in a law firm. He was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1897. Later that same year, he relocated to Seattle. He began writing for a weekly Presbyterian newspapers, The Daysman, and writing two serials, "Musing of Maffy Moore" and "Scenes in the Sunny South." Through local printer H.L. Pigott, Wilhelm became aware of the recently founded magazine "The Coast," which was struggling financially. Wilhelm purchased the magazine and credited its founders by saying that the two women who started it in 1900, "...deserve praise for the perseverance and pluck with which they met adverse and discouraging conditions." While editing "The Coast," Wilhelm traveled around the northwestern United States. He wrote articles, took photographs, edited manuscripts, and sold advertisements and subscriptions. He sold "The Coast" in 1911 and became an ordained minister. He served congregations in Black Diamond, Sedro Woolley, Auburn, and Seattle. He later led a church service broadcast. He died in 1957 at age 87.

Margaret Rawson Goheen

  • 4.3.8
  • Person
  • 1904-1955

Margaret Rawson Goheen Arneson (1904-1995) was a music educator who brought Tacoma’s Lincoln High School’s a cappella choir to national prominence. Born in Minnesota, her family had moved to Puyallup by the time she was a teenager (1). Her teaching career started in Sumner, then after her marriage to Melvin Goheen in 1928, her tenure at Lincoln High School began and continued through her retirement in 1955 (2).

At Lincoln, she focused on choral music and formed an elite a cappella choir. For alumni and adults in the community she founded the Tacoma Symphonic Choir in 1937. She accompanied the Lincoln a cappella choir to the Music Educators’ National Conference, making the trip by train in 1938. At stops along the way performances were held in person and on the radio. In Tacoma, the choir was in demand by civic organizations and churches. When Paul Robeson came to Tacoma in 1941, they were deemed of sufficient quality to accompany him (2). She was responsible for producing an annual spring operetta, and in 1941 a group of ambitious students wrote and produced an original musical, Of Men and Models (3).

She married Gus Arneson in 1955, the year of her retirement. They moved to the Philippines for his employment, and she continued her music work there. On their return in 1962, they settled in Seattle, where she died on May 10, 1995 (4).

Tyra Melvia Westling

  • 4.3.7
  • Person
  • 1897-1975

Tyra Melvia Westling was an educator of the Deaf who taught in the United States, the Philippines, and China. Born in Nebraska in 1897 to Swedish immigrant parents, her family moved to Tacoma in 1901 (1,4). In 1916 she graduated from Everett High School in the Normal (teacher training) course, after transferring from Tacoma’s Stadium High School the previous year (2). Her interest in Deaf education led her to visit numerous schools on the East Coast, where she sought employment (3). In 1924 she accepted her first teaching position overseas, in the Philippines (3). By 1948, while at the Chefoo School for the Deaf, she and her students were evacuated due to unrest associated with the Chinese Communist revolution, and she subsequently taught at the Ming Sum School for the Blind in Canton (3). Later, in the United States, she taught at the Tucker Maxon Oral School for the Deaf in Portland, OR, and Tacoma Public Schools. She died in Tacoma in 1975 at the age of 78 (4).

Winnifred Olsen

  • 4.3.5
  • Person
  • 1916-2011

Winnifred "Winnie" Olsen (nee Castle) was born on July 26, 1916 in Olympia, Washington. She attended and graduated from Washington State College (Washington State University) with a degree in sociology and journalism. She was involved in a number of organizations and causes including Red Cross, Girl Scouts, March of Dimes, United Good Neighbors, and many more. Winnie was also a writer and producer for a local Olympia Saturday morning radio show, “Mother Goose Radio Party”, from 1948 to 1957. Afterwards, she joined the Olympia High School PTA, City Council PTA, and the Citizens Advisory Council on Education.

She was also a member of the Olympia branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) for 60 years and was its president for two years. Along with this involvement, Winnie also helped to organize the Thurston County Juvenile Protection Committee and the Olympia Panhellenic Association. She wrote for the Olympia chapters of the YWCA, League of Women Voters, and Junior Programs.

Her career with Tacoma Public Schools began in 1967 and ended with her retirement in 1984. During this time, she focused on creating material that highlighted marginalized groups in the Pacific Northwest. She compiled over 100 years of information about the history of the Tacoma Public Schools for research for her book, For the Record: A History of the Tacoma Public Schools, 1869-1984.

After her retirement in 1984, Winnifred went on to volunteer around Olympia, serving at the Timberland Library, Friends of the Library, Thurston County Historic Commission, Washington State School Retirees Association, and others. In 1997, the Bush Family Interpretive Park was dedicated partially due to her extensive research on the history pioneer George Bush.

Winnifred died at the age of 94 in Lacey, Washington. She was awarded the YWCA Lifetime Achievement, WSU Alumni of the Year, Olympia High School Alumni Hall of Fame, Alpha Gamma Delta Distinguished Citizen, Olympia City Council Historic Preservation Award.

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