Born: February 27, 1920
Death: January 9, 2002
(The following was written in her own hand.)
I was born at 5:20am on February 27, 1920, in a frame house in the city of Seattle Washington, USA. We lived in a community called South Park and the street bordered the Duwamish River. My father was Claude Oliver Rawley and he was 36 years old and was a policeman on the police force for the City of Seattle. He was a motorcycle cop stationed at Georgetown - a community a couple of miles to the northeast. My mother - Mary Minerva Emaline Evans - was a housewife who was the mother of a ten year old daughter and was 31 years of age. My parents had been married for two years before I was born. They named me Anita Elizabeth Rawley.
The yard was fenced and in front of the house was a plank sidewalk that was of 2 2x12s laid side by side and a gravel road beyond that. Then the other shoulder of the road - some grassy embankment and wild roses. The road was a dead-end for 2 blocks - around the corner and into the next block. All of the people on the 2 bloc area were good friends and would often have what they called 'block parties'. The would take children to one or two houses and designate some one to care for them while they had a party at another house. I remember being at this house until I was close to 6 years old or maybe a little longer. There is a picture of me and the little boy next door holding up 2 fish that my father caught in front of our house on the river.
We moved from there to a house in the White Center district and my brother was born there and I started school when we lived there. That school was nearly built at that time and not until the year 2000 did they tear it down and build another.
While we lived in White Center, my half-sister Lucille contracted TB and my mother took care of her. I remember that eventually they enclosed the back porch and had her out there. While we lived there, I got the chicken pox, measles and mumps and the health department came and put a sign on our home. My brother was crawling about 6 months old and I remember that he crawled all over my bed and didn't catch any of those diseases. Later on when he was in a hospital, the other children all got scarlet fever and he didn't. He was immune to all those diseases but still got TB, as did I. My sister continued to get worse and she was eventually sent to Firlands Sanatorium that was at that time at Richmond Beach. It was north of Seattle near Puget Sound and was brought later and I believe now it is called Kings Veil (or Garden, or something like that). It is a church organization building.
Soon after Lucille's death at 17 years, my parents sold that house presumably for paying for her possible hospital bills but while we lived there and after Lucille was put onto the porch I was sent several blocks away to live with my aunt and uncle and I did not come (home) only when they went to visit. During this time that I lived with them I walked right past our house every morning and afternoon going and coming from school and my mother would come to the fence and talk to me but would not let me get close to her. It must not have been soon enough or maybe it was later, I didn't know, but eventually I did get TB, but not bad.
After moving from that house, we rented a house for a short time because I finished the first grade in this school. Then we moved to Marysville to a small 2 room cabin on Uncle Elmer's land. That was my fathers brother and he had a strawberry farm in Marysville and I went to the second grade about a mile away from our house. While I lived there I remember walking right past my house one time and going home with another girl. When it started to get dark her father took me home. Now of course I can imagine that my parents must have been frantic - wondering where I was. Needless to say I didn't do that again.
Also, while I lived there, I got spinal meningitis. They say that I had a fever of 107 degrees and was unconscience for 7 days. I remember that when I cam to I asked my mother, who was sitting by my bed, for a drink of water. She called my father and started to cry. It must have been heartbreaking for her to have just lost one daughter and here was another on the brink of death.
After school was out, we moved back to Seattle and rented a house in Ballard. My father had steady work and they got ahead some. Then my mother started coughing a lot - she had TB. We were all living together and as she got worse my dad took us to the health department and got my brother and I tested for TB. We both had it and 3 weeks before my mother died he took us out to Firlands to the children's section. There he and I were put in a room for three weeks in isolation and then they separated us. That same week my dad came and told me that Mama had died.
At Firlands we could only wear a garment that was like briefs with a tie on each side and made out of a heavy material like duck. With that we could wear shoes and stockings but only if they were to our ankles. Since it was the middle of July when we went there if posed no problem but as the weather changed and got colder we added no more clothes. They were of the opinion that acclimation and fresh air was the solution to curing TB.
From the building to the west was lawn and then a steep hill. All during the winter we played outside with only our shoes, socks and briefs and would sled down that hill in the snow. One day I got ahold of a cardigan sweater and put it on. It was so warm but a nurse saw me and made me take it off and for punishment I had to stay indoors for three days.
I saw my brother 3 times each day as we went to the dining room. He was on a different floor (the boys floor) than I was. At dinner we each had trays with our food on it and each person had their own place to eat. Always there was a glass of milk in an aluminum glass and a small container of mineral oil. I hated that oil. So I would eat all of my dinner then drink my milk and poured the mineral oil into the empty glass and put my napkin in on top. We had to take our trays to the kitchen so I got away with that but once a week we had to take cod liver oil and the nurse handed it to you and you had to drink it in front of them and I hated it.
I was there for nearly a year and had no schooling at anytime while there. There was a school room but no teacher. In the meantime when it was nearing the time for me to get out my father went looking for someone to take care of us - me in particular, since my brother was remaining.
*insert the Maple Valley story here*
I went to grade school in Maple Valley and also high school. Mostly I played in school because all I had to do was listen in class and I could get all passing grades on tests. I went with two fine boys especially while I was in high school, Jack Hendricks and Louis Saftich. I continued going with them until I graduated, but at church I met Clarence Dilley and started dating him. We attended a lot of church functions together and I had lots of friends both in and out of church.
I had been serious about these two boys in high school and could have married either one but I really didn't want to get married.
I went to Seattle looking for word and first worked for a family on the Montlake district but they were snobbish and expected so much from me; I felt that I was a servant - that it was really degrading. I was supposed to have every evening off but just before I got through washing dishes they would take off leaving me with their two children. So one night when they came home about 10pm I was packed waiting for them and told them I was quitting and to pay me - I was leaving. They paid me and I took a bus back downtown, transferred to a Ballard bus and went to my grandmother's house. The next day I went downtown and got a ride home with Jim Feely. Mom wanted me to stay and help her with some canning and I did. I saw Clarence on a regular basis then. But soon i went to town looking for work. I went home every night and since my folks didn't have a phone, I gave the phone numbers of the basement shoe department of Rhodes Department Store. I got a call from Swedish Hospital and went to work there. I had no uniforms and had to wait until my first payday as the only money I had gave me a room in one of the old mansions up on First Hill and I had the kitchen and pantry part. I worked a split shift for awhile and had the middle of the day off going back to work at 1pm and working until 8pm. So I couldn't go home until I had time off. But I did go down to Rhodes and talked to Jim and he could tell my parents he had seen me.
Finally, I got a small raise and I moved to a brownstone apartment house on Marion Street across from the hospital and I had a regular shift from 11am until 8pm. I had lived in the other place two or three months. I remember I didn't get home for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. One thing I could do though, I had a lot of time for exploring downtown and one day I ran into Louie. He took me home because I was going to work soon, but he asked me for a date the next night and he picked me up about 8:30pm. That gave me enough time to get cleaned up and change out of my uniform. We went to a movie and came back and sat outside my room and talked until about 3am and we agreed that we really didn't love each other and to get married as he suggested would not be right for each of us. I heard about him several times over the years but never saw him again.
While I was at the Swedish Hospital, Jack came in to see me and I went out with him one night but he was already in the National Guard and we both talked it over that night and agreed that we had had a lot of fun together as teenagers but it was over for us. We left as good friends and I never saw him again. A few years later I saw his brother and his parents and they said he lived in California. They never said whether he was married or not and I didn't ask. Maybe at one time I would have married either one of these young men as both had asked be but I didn't feel there was enough between us for marriage.
I went home one weekend and my folks told me that Clarence had been looking for me but I had moved to that brownstone and they didn't know I worked at the hospital or where I lived. I went to Issaquah but Clarence had been transferred to east of Tacoma and the day I was there his sister was not home and his parents were on vacation. Not for 49 years did I hear from him again and he lived in Alaska.
While I worked at the hospital I went out to see my grandmother in Ballard on a day off. Her adopted son (no relation to me as I couldn't stand him) was at home and he asked me if I knew Erv Jones, that he was a patient at Swedish on the same floor I work on but I worked in the dietary and not on the floor with patients, but I said I'd stop by and say hello and introduce myself.
Just as you left the dietary through swinging doors in the the hall he was a patient on the first door. I must have stopped four or five times and he was never there. I was about to give it up when I decided I'd go in there one last time. There were three other patients in that room and the one said to me "there he is now, just getting off the elevator". I went to the door, met him and told him my name and how I knew about him. We talked for less than five minutes - mainly about my grandmother as that was the only thing we had in common. When he went into the room, he told one of the other patients that he was going to marry me. They said that he had just been in the hospital too long.
In the meantime, I met a nice sailor and went out with him a few times but when he showed up at the hospital drunk looking for me that was the end of that. He was stationed on the Battleship Arizona - at that time at Bremerton but he told me that they were leaving for Pearl Harbor in a few days and he wanted to see me. This was just about October, 1940.
...to be continued...
