As I immersed myself in preparing excerpts from my early journals for serialization at the Red Barn this year, I found myself delving online for tidbits relating to what-happened-to-so-so in the years since. In many cases I was stymied because I didn’t know or hadn’t recorded their surnames, and finding anything from the early ‘70s could be elusive. Remember, that was well before the Worldwide Web appeared in 1995. Yes, that recently. As you’ll find, there are gaps in the online archives covering that period.
Yakima was a little less problematic, in part because I lived there longer and noted a bit more, but also because more of the figures lived long enough to receive online obituaries. I’m still surprised, and also shocked, by how many have fallen into that category. Well, this is a half-century later.
One character who has been rattling around in my brain was the “society editor” when I came onboard. Daphne, as I’ll call her here, was among the established old-timers who were less-than-enthusiastic about the more competitive, more contemporary direction the new managing editor envisioned. I, on the other hand, was a key in his thorough reorganization and refocusing of the newspaper. The situation came to a head with the creation of a photo editor position and the arrival of a whiz-boy of excellence in charge of the visual appearance of our daily editions. Despite her grumbling, or maybe because of it, her department soon lost its independence within the newsroom and its staff of three or four was reassigned to the copy desk, where I was moving up, or to the reporting staff under the city editor. Quite simply, Daphne soon found herself responsible to me on the organizational chart, and those pages, especially the Sunday section now known as Femme, were shifting from “women’s news” to more inclusive lifestyles topics, things like Taste, Style, Health, Relationships, Personal Finance.
I never knew quite how to take her. I assumed she had been brought up in the Happy Valley, since she had that locals-versus-outsiders attitude, but was surprised to see in her obit that she was born in Los Angeles and had arrived only a few years before I did. She was always fashionably dressed with a breezy flair, and rather flitted about the room, often with “Oh, sigh!” as her signature retort. (Can you handle these stories, please? “Oh, sigh!”)
She did trigger me to explode in the newsroom one time, something I wish to apologize for. I would hate to see the replay. But somehow after that, we got into a working groove. Don’t cross me, OK?
Like many workplace relationships, there was much I didn’t know about her. It turns out that she wasn’t simply older than me, she was 22 years older – making her senior to the managing editor and the city editor, too.
She had a kind of style that suggested a comfortable upbringing, which I found confirmed in her undergrad degree from the University of Southern California and membership in Chi Omega sorority (or women’s fraternity, as it’s now called). From there, here background story is one you wouldn’t believe as fiction or, for that, reality.
While working as a stewardess, back when they were known as such, on a regional airline, she was filling in on an extra shift when she was charmed by a male passenger from Colorado. Evidently, sparks flew. They married a month later and settled in the Seattle area. Apparently, it wasn’t a frivolous flash; they were married 60 years, till the death-do-us-part part kicked in. He had served as an Army-Air Force pilot in World War II and would eventually retire from the Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. After their marriage, returned to college to become a civil engineer. To round out the picture, he was a deep fan of Wagnerian opera and eventually sailed a small craft from New Zealand to Hawaii. He also was flexible enough to relocate inland after she was hired in Yakima. Upon her retirement, the resettled on a houseboat back in Seattle.
What I didn’t expect to find was her identification as antiwar, feminist, Episcopalian, Democratic precinct captain – all pluses in my book, although journalists generally stay clear of political party activity. Nor did I have a clue about her own passion for theater and music, including opera.
As one of her longtime friends summed it up, “She had a theatrical flair for costume and loved to dress up. She was among the first women who dared to wear pantsuits – albeit very elegant ones – to one of Seattle’s big formal events. We called her Brenda Starr after the then-popular fashionista/reporter of the comic strip.” Yes, I know about the comic strip, which could be rather racy – I later represented it for the Chicago Tribune’s syndicate.
Some big holes in her story do intrigue me, though. Her parents are not named in the obituary or related stories. Was there some scandal or big breakup? What emotions did she carry from that? How did it lead to the cavalier or chirpy mask she so often wore?
Nor do I quite see her as a mother, despite the one son.
Oh, sigh.
