Amzie D. Browning was born in Kent, WA, and moved to Tacoma in 1901. (1) He lived in Tacoma for 70 years, during which he was the owner and operator of Sharpe Sign Co. and was an oil and watercolor painter. (2) Many of his paintings were exhibited in Northwest shows. He also worked as a telegraph operator for the Northern Pacific Railway in 1909. (2) He took photographs documenting life in South Tacoma. Browning was a member of the Signwriters Union 403, Northwest Amateur Movie Council, and Morse Telegraph Club, and for 50 years, he was a member of the Tacoma Elks Lodge.(2) He married Beulah C. Kirt on September 15 1946. (3) Browning passed away on December 13, 1972.(4)

Byron “By” I. Larson was a geologist, city planner, and civil engineer in the Puget Sound area. Born in Tacoma in 1921 he attended Stadium Highschool in Tacoma, and the University of Idaho where he studied geology and mining engineering. He later started his own civil engineering company in Seattle and remained in the Seattle-Tacoma area until his death in 2008.

Marguerite Neely Davy was born to Florence and Harry Neely in Spokane, Washington in 1895. She died in Tacoma in 1980 at age 85. After coming to Tacoma in 1919, she Married her husband, Alexander Davy in June of 1924 and started teaching 6th grade at the Tacoma Bryant School in 1925. She also taught in Washington’s Walla Walla County, Touchet, and Centralia school districts.

Throughout her life she was involved with music and theatre by directing student concerts. In 1939 she was made president of the local St. Cecelia musical group, an important sector of Tacoma’s cultural life at the time, who put on choir concerts and other musical events. Additionally, Marguerite was formally installed as director of Alpha Pi chapter, Beta Sigma Phi in 1946. Marguerite stayed involved with music and teaching later in life and was a member of the Retired Teachers Association and Tacoma Symphony Women.

Penelope H. Loucas was born in Roundup, Montana in 1940. She received her B.A. in English and French Literary Studies, as well as an M.A. and Fulbright Scholarship in Modern Greek Poetry and French Surrealism. She was appointed Curator of Exhibitions from 1988-1990 at the Tacoma Art Museum. She specialized in multi-cultural interdisciplinary studies and exhibitions including but not limited to: Modern and Contemporary Realism in the West, American, Asian and Canadian Contemporary ceramics, as well as Native American art. Much of her curatorial work looked at and promoted artists within the Northwest region of the United States.

From 1983-1985 she opened an art gallery in her own apartment, by the name of “The Upstairs Gallery” in Helena, Montana. She later took her curatorial experience to Tacoma where she owned and directed a similar “Penelope Loucas Gallery” apartment space from 1990-2007. Penelope was a part-time professor of Languages & Literature and Academic Writing for International Students at Pacific Lutheran University from 2003-2007. She also served as an adjunct professor at University of Washington from 2000-2003, as an Education Consultant at Clover Park Technical College in 1999 and lectured at the Evergreen State College in Summer 1991. At different points in her career she held many administrative positions, locally Director of the Tacoma Arts Commission, and a Grant Writer/Director of the Enumclaw Arts Commission.

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.

Robert Wayne Ramsey was born on October 9, 1920, in Byron, Washington to farm owners Prentice and Della Ridout Ramsey. He participated in the National Guard and was called into service with the 161st Infantry at Camp Murray. He met his wife, Georgia Kathryn Hayner, and they married on December 24, 1940 before settling in the Olympia area. Ramsey held many jobs over the course of his life. He worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), served in World War II and the Korean War, taught floriculture at Oregon State University, served as president of Landscapers Northwest, as senior partner at Chaffee-Zumwalt & Associates design firm, a partner of Mann, Milegan, Morse & Ramsey in Seattle, and the manager of the Snake Lake Nature Center. While at the Snake Lake Nature Center, he helped to start the Junior Naturalist program.

After Ramsey retired, he continued to hold membership in many different groups and societies. Ramsey led hikes for the Boy Scouts of America and a member of the the Puget Sound Mycological Society, where he served as a board member from 1969 to 1974 and president from 1970 to 1972. He was also a member of the Tahoma Audubon Society, being a charter member from 1969 onwards, board member from 1969 to 1976, and president from 1973 to 1975 and again in 1983. He chaired the Nisqually River Basin Study from 1973 to 1974.

Robert Ramsey also was also given the title of Pierce County’s Resource Conservationist of the Year in 1972. He was also appointed to a statewide committee for non-point water pollution abatement planning from 1976 to 1981 and being a chairman for it from 1980 to 1981. He was also a member of the Pacific Northwest Key Council for scientific study, identification, and keys for northwest mushrooms from 1977 to 1997. He also served as a chairman for the McNeil Island Committee for conservation matters during its change from federal prison to state prison from 1979 to 1983. Ramsey was also an author, writing works such as “Two Steps to Destruction”, “Onsite Surface Water Management”, “Pathway Planning”, as well as preparing a hypothesis for the origin of the Mima Mounds found in Thurston County, WA from 1988 to 1992.

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.

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].

Aubrey F. Andrews (1906-1950) was a World War II veteran, librarian, and director of the Tacoma Public Library from 1946 to 1950. A native of Escanaba, Michigan, Andrews received a Bachelor of Arts in Library Science from the University of Washington in 1935 (1). He interned at the Joint Reference Library in Chicago, and after graduation held various library positions around the United States. He worked in the order department of the Oregon State College Library, was a Reference Assistant at the Technical Library in Knoxville, and a Community Librarian in Norris, Tennessee. He was later appointed as Chief of the Chattanooga, Tennessee Branch Technical Library, and in 1941 became Administrative Assistant at the Buffalo, NY Public Library. During World War II Mr. Andrews served in the Navy aboard the USS Hickox in the Pacific and kept a diary recording his experiences. He was discharged from the Navy at the conclusion of the war and appointed director of the Tacoma Public Library in 1946. One of his immediate major responsibilities was advocating for and planning a new main library building. In 1949 Aubrey Andrews was elected to a two-year term as president of the Washington Library Association. Andrews was also a member of the Tacoma Rotary Club, the Washington State Historical Society and the Tacoma Lodge No. 174 of the Elks. Aubrey Andrews died in Tacoma on November 8, 1950.

Myron Kreidler was born in Tacoma in 1904. He attended Pacific Lutheran University and later became president of the Pacific Lutheran University Alumni Association from 1936-1937. He began his career as a 9th grade teacher at Mason Junior High. He later worked as a staff photographer at Pacific Lutheran University and owned Kreidler Photo Studio. He died in Tacoma in 1985 at the age of 81.

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.

Ralph William Thompson was born in Livingston, Montana, on October 26, 1889. (1) He graduated from the University of Washington in 1914 and attended the University of Minnesota. (2) Thompson lived in Washington state for 60 years and served as an attorney for 47 years. (2) Thompson was also a member of Sigma Chi, the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association, and the Tacoma Club. (2) Thompson married Grace M. Knowles, whose father, Samuel Crawford Knowles, was a lumberman. (3) Ralph W. Thompson died on December 16, 1961, in Tacoma.

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.

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.

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).

Reverend David T. Alger served as Executive Director of Associated Ministries for nearly thirty years from 1980 until 2009. (1) During his tenure, Reverend Alger expanded the Hilltop-based non-profit from an annual budget of $58,000 in 1980 into an organization with a budget of $3.7 million and a membership of over 200 congregations, religious groups, and interfaith partners. (2)

Reverend Alger played a vital role in the founding and growth of many agencies, including: the Pierce County AIDS Foundation, the Indochinese Culture and Service Center, the Shalom Center (focusing on Central American and Middle Eastern Peace), the South Sound Peace and Justice Center, the Pierce County Dispute Resolution Center, Faith Partners Against Family Violence, the Moments of Blessing program (services held to reclaim places where homicides have occurred), and the Hilltop Action Coalition. (1)

Reverend Alger graduated from the College of Wooster with a BA in Sociology/Religion. He then graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago with a Master’s in Social Work and received his Master’s in Divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary in 1971. Reverend Alger received the Tacoma Peace Prize in 2009 and the Community Service Award from the Rotary Clubs of Pierce County in 1989.

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 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.

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]

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).

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).