Goodrich Side

I have been unable to find a formal portrait of my mother’s family. The earliest photo I could locate is from 1901, prior to my mother’s birth and is shown above. The other picture is the girls all grown up.


Left to right is Edna, Lula, Grandfather Goodrich and on the horse (Jack) is Myrtle. To the far right are Grandmother Goodrich and Nora. There is a great age disparity between my mother and her four sisters. While growing up she felt like she had four additional mothers. She felt closest to Edna and used to think she was her mother.

As I have mentioned before, I regret not having quizzed my parents more about their upbringing. However over the years you do get bits and pieces that can be put together. How factual they are is anyone’s guess. From what I gather Mother’s father was a confectioner and owned his own popcorn stand. Besides not supporting his family too well he also had a bad temper. The older sisters persuaded their mother to leave the marriage when my mother was around ten. Edna the oldest went to work in a laundry to help support the family. My mother said Edna was close to her mother and had lots of patience and was very kind.


My mother met my father when she was 15 years old while visiting Edna and her husband Norman. They were married in 1924 when my mother was only 16. It was a simple ceremony by the Justice of the Peace. They had to borrow the $5.00 to pay the preacher.



Grandmother Goodrich died when my mother was 18. She is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in West Seattle. I visited their office and was given the attached map of the cemetery with grave locations. The stone markings the grave is very old and has deteriorated but I am pretty sure I located her grave based on the map.

Growing up we saw much of my Mother’s sisters and their families. Probably the most frequent visitor was Aunt Edna and Uncle Norman as they lived in Des Moines. Aunt Nora and her family lived in Bremerton and Lula and Myrtle lived down in Long Beach and Roseburg. Both Myrtle and Lula were teachers and eventually Lula was Supt of Schools. Their husbands Henry and Martin were in the logging industry. The area around Myrtle and Henry’s house was ideal for hunting and fishing. In later years my older sister Marilyn and her husband Don and their children would go down and visit, and bag a deer if they were lucky. The sturgeon caught in the Columbia would be an added bonus. We would also visit Lula and Martin at Long Beach and enjoy a feast of razor clams as they were easy digging in those days. Pickings are pretty lean now and days that are open for clam digging are highly regulated.


Three guess as to which sister was the wild one!

Aunt Nora and her husband Evan lived in Bremerton. I believe Nora was a stay at home mother and Evan was the Postmaster. As a widow late in life, Nora began a career as an artist and had a one-woman show in Bremerton where her work was highly praised. My sister Marilyn and my mother attended the show and I was lucky enough to acquire one of her paintings. On several occasions my sister Marilyn and I would drive Mother over to Bremerton so the sisters could “do brunch”