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Tony and Lulu’s Story

Tony Kombol and Lulu Shircliff, sometime before their 1914 wedding.

Their stories began in 1885.  That January, a baby boy was born in Fuzine, Croatia.  His name was Anton Kombol, the same as his father. When baby Anton was born, Croatia was a provincial kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Fuzine is a village in the Primorje-Gorski-Kotar region about six miles from the coast, but 2,400 feet above sea level, and 30 miles from the largest regional city of Rijeka.

Little is known of Anton’s early life in Fuzine.  Though he was Croatian by birth, the Kombol family surname derived from French immigrants who first settled in the region during the Napoleonic era.  The earliest recorded birth of a Kombol in Croatia was Ivan born to Martin and Ana Kombol about 1810 in the village of Bribir, around 20 miles southeast of Fuzine and near the coast.  Ivan married Matejka Grenko, while his son, Anton married Franciska Mihaljevic, baby Anton’s mother.

A 1968 postcard photo of Fuzine, Croatia.

Through actions at the 1815 Congress of Vienna after the fall of Napoleon, this area of Croatia was absorbed into the Austrian Empire and later the combined empire jointly administered with Hungary. The primary local industries were woodworking and furniture-making.  As Anton grew towards adulthood that would be his likely future if the Austrian army didn’t call first.

Over 5,000 miles west, baby Lulu’s prospects seemed bright.  The Brown family was well respected and her mother, Jennie Brown at age 17, was noted as “one of our most attractive young ladies.”  Walla Walla, with a population of 3,500 was the largest city in Washington Territory.  Lulu’s father, William Shircliff had recently returned from expeditionary explorations in Alaska, then secured the respected paymaster position at the nearby Army fort.

The couple married on a Thursday evening in early June at the home of Jennie’s parents, Horace and Sarah Brown.  The wedding announcement in the Walla Walla Journal noted that “the groom is clerk to Major D. R. Larned, paymaster, U.S.A., and is one of the finest and most promising young men in existence.”  Mr. and Mrs. Shircliff began housekeeping two days later in a house at the corner of Birch and Seventh Streets.  Shocking for the time, just 10 weeks later a baby girl was born and christened Lulu Mildred Shircliff.

Jennie Brown and William Shircliff, well before their wedding day when she was nearly seven months pregnant.

William Shircliff left Walla Walla the following March, seven months after his daughter’s birth.  He traveled to San Francisco where he was stationed at the army garrison, with promises to soon send for his wife and baby girl – a pledge he never kept.  Jennie pleaded with her husband for money so she and Lulu could move south and join him.  Shircliff ignored her entreaties, so she filed divorce proceedings upon which he was ordered to pay child support.  There’s no record of whether Shircliff paid or not, but within two years he moved to Washington D.C.  As far as we know, Lulu never again saw her father.

Lulu Shircliff as a baby in Walla Walla, 1886.

Three years later Lulu’s mother, Jennie remarried and moved onto Ransom Holcomb’s farm on the Cowlitz River south of Toledo, Washington.  Lulu remained in Walla Walla with her grandmother until age 11, when she joined her new family and two baby brothers, Ransom and Wyman, 10 and 13 years her junior.  Far from the active world of the small town she’d known in Walla Walla, on the farm Lulu experienced an old-fashioned life in a remote but exciting place – a farm filled with cows, pigs, ducks, goats, and chickens.  The farm produced eggs, cream, cheese, milk, and hay, all of which were used to sustain the family and farmhands with excess sold to Portland merchants downstream.

Farm life was busy with Lulu assisting her mother in making hearty breakfasts for her stepfather, uncle, and hired men.  After breakfast, animals were fed and chores began.  Milk was skimmed and the thick cream churned to butter.  Crocks and milk pails were meticulously washed in hot soapy water and then placed on slotted shelves to dry.  The remaining hours were spent baking bread, making cheese, and doing typical chores like ironing, sewing, and cleaning.

The farm was self-sufficient except for staples such as green-bean coffee which they hand roasted.  Most foodstuffs were grown on the farm: potatoes, carrots, turnips, pumpkins, oats, and wheat.  The family’s orchards supplied fresh produce in season, with the majority canned to provide fruit for the rest of the year.  Bee hives pollinated spring blossoms and provided honey for the family. Evening hours were short and illuminated by oil lamps.  Early to bed was only occasionally delayed by card games, reading books, or singing as her mother played guitar.

During the school year, Lulu walked about a mile each way.  There in a one-room schoolhouse, 15 or so students of all ages were taught.  Later when attending Chehalis High School, Lulu moved away from the farm because the commuting distance was too far.  She boarded with different families the first year, then rented an apartment with another farm girl her junior and senior years.  The Chehalis Superintendent, Mr. Thompson encouraged her to pursue a teaching career and allowed Lulu to miss classes anytime a substitute was needed.

Lulu Shirclifff sporting a large white bow, 2nd row, 2nd from right with her 1904 graduating class.

After graduation, Lulu’s future brightened.  A vacancy in grade school landed her a series of full-time jobs, albeit with limited credentials.  In 1906, her stepfather traveled to Alaska where he suddenly died.  Ransom Holcomb was always interested in Lulu’s education and had left her money for that purpose.  The following September, Lulu enrolled at the Teacher’s College in Bellingham where she earned a teacher’s certificate.

Meanwhile, back in Croatia, Anton was anxious about life.  The following year he’d turn 18 and risked being drafted into the Austrian army.  Two older brothers, John and Matt had emigrated to Roslyn and found work in coal mines with good wages.  So Anton decided to leave his family and village behind to join his brothers in America.

Anton traveled to the port city of Rijeka embarking on a steamer to Le Havre, France.  He crossed the English Channel to Southampton where he boarded the St. Louis on a nine-day voyage across the Atlantic that landed him on New York’s Ellis Island.  The next day, this 17-year-old boy who spoke no English, boarded a train for a five-day trip across the country.  On Christmas Day 1902, Anton rode that train carrying a loaf of bread and a promise of what his future might hold.  Within a month, he turned 18 and was working in a coal mine.

Matt, John, and Anton Kombol in the early 1900s, likely in Rosyln.
Both Tony and Lulu move to Ravensdale

Their worlds grew closer in 1908 – a pivotal year for both.  After laboring six years in Roslyn’s coal mines Tony, as he came to be known moved to greener pastures in Ravensdale.  There he worked for the same company as in Roslyn, the Northwest Improvement Company (NWI).  It was owned by the Northern Pacific Railway whose locomotives burned millions of tons of black diamonds every year.  That year, Tony also submitted his declaration to become a U.S. citizen.

Deciding a teacher’s pay in Centralia was not sufficient to her tastes, Lulu chose a job in Ravensdale where the best wages were paid.  This was probably because it was an unruly mining town, lacking middle-class families and culture, so coal companies needed to pay top wages to attract the young women who increasingly filled the ranks.  There she boarded at reduced rates with families who valued the literacy a teacher brought into their homes.  Convenient rail access also provided Lulu with opportunities to attend top plays and musicals in Tacoma or Seattle, where she traveled on weekend excursions and stayed with friends.

Lulu Shircliff, with her class of Ravensdale school children, 1913.
Tony Kombol, upper right with the Northwest Improvement Company bunker crew, 1913.

How Tony and Lulu met is lost to time.  But it wouldn’t be difficult in a town of 725, according to 1913 census figures.  In June 1914, Tony purchased a plot of land just north of Kent-Kangley Road and built a home for his soon-to-be bride.  They exchanged wedding vows on August 4th.  The newlyweds were 29 years of age, gainfully employed, and seemingly settled into a good life.

Tony Kombol in front of the home he built, 1914. The home still stands at 27521 S.E. 271st St., Ravensdale, WA 98051.

A few days before their nuptials, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.  Then France and Germany declared war against each other setting in motion the start of World War I.  Had Tony still lived in Croatia, he would have been drafted as Austria mobilized.  By the war’s end, 20 million lay dead with another 21 million wounded.  The 1919 Treaty of Versailles created a new country called Yugoslavia, meaning South Slavs, formed from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Fifteen months later, on November 16, 1915, their happy home was shattered by a mine explosion that claimed 31 miners’ lives.  The Ravendale tragedy was the third worst coal mine disaster in Washington state history. The mine was utterly destroyed by the deadly blast, and the company had little interest in reopening.  Tony might have been lost as well if a blown fuse hadn’t crippled the hoisting machinery that brought coal to the surface, sending 100 miners home that morning.

Ravensdale mine explosion that killed 37 miners, Nov. 16, 1915.

Miners left Ravensdale in droves.  With the abrupt termination of over 230 mining jobs, there was little value in the new home Tony had built for his bride.  By 1920, Ravensdale’s population fell 75% to 187 residents.  Most left town in search of new jobs.

To Arizona and Montana, then back to Washington

Tony left for Arizona the next month and Lulu followed a few months later, probably at the end of the school year, though enrollment had no doubt fallen precipitously.  In Ray Arizona, Tony found work in the copper mines.  The couple also saw the birth of their first child in June 1916, a baby boy they named Bernell.  A year later Montana beckoned with yet another copper mining job and yet another baby this time a girl named Dana born in March 1918.

Looking for new opportunities Tony left for Alaska but stopped in Washington to see William Reese, the Northwest Improvement mine superintendent with whom he was friendly.  NWI was the company Tony had worked for since coming to America.  It was opening a new mine to be called Hiawatha, located about five miles east of Ravensdale.  Tony agreed to join the effort.  Since NWI had not yet moved homes to Hiawatha to house their employees, Tony took up residency in Durham.  Lulu soon arrived and the following year so did their third child, Nola born in Aug. 1919.

As miners dug the tunnels and built the surface facilities to mine coal, NWI moved or built about 20 company houses in Hiawatha.  Tony and Lulu’s fourth and fifth children, Jack and Nadine were born at home in July 1921 and August 1923.  One of those Hiawatha dwellings became the family’s home for the next 50 years.

In a strange twist of fate, the Morris Brothers Coal Mining Company incorporated in Dec. 1921 and shortly thereafter purchased the entire town of Durham – the mines, bunkers, houses, and hotels.  All of the large and extended Morris family who had lived and mined coal in the Pierce County town of Wilkeson since 1894 moved to Durham.  With Durham less than a mile south of Hiawatha, it was inevitable that Morris and Kombol children would attend the same Selleck and Enumclaw schools and romp through the same neighborhoods.

A map of Durham with each Morris family home and the homes of miners identified.  Some of the miners followed the Morris family from Wilkeson.

The Kombol family glided along smoothly on Tony’s wages from mining coal while Lulu, who had quit teaching after the Ravensdale disaster tended to five small children.  But, 1925 threw the Kombol family a nasty curve ball.  An errant dynamite shot exploded in Tony’s face blinding him completely and speckling his skin with tiny bits of coal.  Though an operation partially restored his sight, he could no longer work in the coal mines but only perform chores around home.  Tony became Mr. Mom to five children under the age of 10, while Lulu went back to work as a school teacher.

Times were tough but the Kombols soldiered on

Their Hiawatha home was small and located on land owned by Northern Pacific Railroad under a 99-year lease.  The main floor measured just over 1,000 square feet with two bedrooms and a sleeping porch upstairs accessed through the back bedroom.  There was a basement underneath with a barn in a field out back.

The seven family members shared rooms as the children grew to adulthood.  They even welcomed relatives, like Rose Kombol who left Roundup, Montana, a small mining community where Tony’s brothers, John and Matt had relocated.  Rose moved west at age 16 and worked at the nearby Durham Hotel, managed by Jonas and Maggie Morris, whose only son, George was a year older than Bernell Kombol.  Rose later married Woodrow Gauthier, a logger and sawmill operator, whose partnership with his brother, Joe Gauthier employed Jack Kombol on numerous occasions during the 1940s and early 1950s.

Jack Kombol and Rose Kombol, planting a tree, 1939.

Times were tough as both the local coal mines and sawmills were subject to economic downturns when commodity prices fell.  The 1929 stock market crash precipitated a Great Depression that persisted through most of the 1930s.  Then in 1939, the Pacific States Lumber Company which owned the town of Selleck was unable to meet its financial obligations and saw all of its land, buildings, lumber, and railroad lines seized by the IRS for nonpayment of taxes.

The following year, former mill employees, Lloyd Qually Sr. and Gust Coukas bought the company out of bankruptcy for just $3,000, when no other bids were submitted.  Qually and Coukas dismantled the mill buildings and salvaged the equipment.  Later Lloyd Qually and his wife, Lucille, who taught school with Lulu, fixed up Selleck’s old company homes and rented them out.  One of those Selleck dwellings became Jack and Pauline’s first home soon after their son, Barry was born.

Four of the five Kombol children graduated from high school, except Jack who quit during his junior year.  In chronological order, Nola married Chester Fontana, Bernell married Helmie Sandberg, Dana married Frank Zapitul, Nadine married Joe Silversti, and Jack married Pauline Morris.

From which 11 grandchildren were born, all of whom were present when Tony and Lulu celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in early August 1964.  Lulu, who went back to teaching after Tony’s mine accident, taught school for 44 years and didn’t retire until 1965, the year she turned 80.  Tony passed away on Sept. 21, 1967, the end of a 53-year marriage.  Collectively, the six Kombol couples logged 290 years of marriage.

Their 50th wedding anniversary. Seated: Dana, Tony, Lulu. Standing: Jack, Bernell. Kneeling: Nola, Nadine. Sunday, Aug. 2, 1964.

Less than a year after Tony’s death, Jack and Pauline Kombol with Barry, Bill, Jeanmarie, and Danica in tow, traveled to Europe for six weeks, including a six-day stop in Yugoslavia.  The Kombols visited Jack’s relatives in Rijeka, Fuzine, and Pula, Croatia.  A few weeks later, they traveled to see Pauline’s relatives in Chepstow, Abertillary, and Nant-y-moel, Wales.

Jack Kombol with his cousin, Stefica Roksandic in Pula, June 10, 1968.

Lulu survived Tony by nearly a decade.  She moved out of the family home in early 1974, living her remaining years with daughter, Nola whose husband Chester Fontana died in April 1971.  Barry and Cathy Kombol moved into that Hiawatha home in May 1975 with their recently born daughter, Meaghan.

To My Family

After moving to the Lake City home where Nola had lived since 1940, Lulu began writing her autobiography.  “To My Family” was published on Aug. 27, 1974, her 89th birthday.  Lulu passed away on January 19, 1977, at the age of 91.

Thirty-four years later in 2011, her grandson, Bill Kombol obtained the original transcript of the memoir from Nadine.  On passages written about her father, Lulu scribbled out everything she’d written after receiving an official government document that William Shircliff completed where he failed to list her as his child.

Bill’s extended version was nearly twice as long as the original.  It also included 61 detailed footnotes and 26 photos of Lulu.  A nearly identical version (without photos) of Lulu Kombol’s “To My Family – Extended Version” appears on the Washington state history site, HistoryLink.org.

The Kombol family assemble in Renton for Bill & Jennifer’s wedding reception. Front row kneeling, L-R: Angie Beck, Brendan Kombol, Nolan Kombol, Cara Kombol.  2nd row seated: Eric Brough holding Kyle Brough, Jeanene Brough, Pauline Kombol holding Miranda Lewis, Nadine Silvestri, Dan Silvestri, Corre Kombol, Joe Silvestri holding Lindsey Brough.  3rd row standing: Nola Fontana, Meaghan Kombol, Bernell Kombol, Helmie Kombol, Todd Kombol, Karrin Kombol, Bill Kombol, Jennifer Kombol, Darlene Fontana, Jeff Kombol, David Lewis, Danica Kombol in front of Gerry Beck, Cheryl Beck, July 28, 1990.

Tony & Lulu’s Story was adapted from the eulogy I read at Aunt Nadine’s funeral in October 2019. – Bill Kombol, Sept 21, 2023

 

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Uncategorized

July 5, 1953

The first known photo of Billy, with his brother, Barry outside their Selleck Home, July 1953

July 5, 1953 – Baby Billy’s Birth

Seventy years ago today, Pauline Kombol bore her second son.  Twelve months earlier, she buried her first daughter.  Paula Jean lived for but two days.  Paula’s father, Jack was sad.  Pauline was devastated.

Paula Jean’s gravestone is in the Enumclaw cemetery about 50 feet from her parents.

Just over a year later, the Kombol family gathered at Lake Retreat for their annual Fourth of July picnic.  By late afternoon, Pauline’s father-in-law, Papa Tony Kombol had indigestion that he blamed on the baked beans. The next day after hearing Pauline had her baby, Tony, in his distinct Croatian accent said, “It must have been the beans.”

The boy was delivered on a Sunday at 5:04 pm at Seattle’s Doctor’s Hospital by Dr. Albert Lee with nurse, Anne Green in attendance.  A year and one day later, on July 6, 1954, Pauline welcomed his baby sister, Jeanmarie into the world.  For Billy and Jeanie Kombol, born on the 5th and 6th of July, Independence Day would always be the kickoff to their birthday celebrations.

As Pauline rested comfortably, her dad, John H. Morris stopped by to ask what she planned to name her son.  Pauline had spent so much of her pregnancy praying for a healthy baby, that she’d given little thought to a name, either boy or girl.  The boy’s grandfather, John H. Morris provided the answer – his first name would be William, in honor of his own brother, Bill, and the middle name John, after him.  In 1982, that baby boy, William John Kombol assumed the same position as head of the family company, that his grandfather held for 30 years following Palmer Coking Coal’s founding in 1933.

As Pauline held her 7-pound, 12-ounce baby, she saw his eyes were blue and his hair was brown.  The ‘Kombol, Boy’ record completed by Nurse Green listed his length at 20.5 inches with a head circumference of 13.5 inches.  Billy, as he came to be known spent the first week of his life at Doctor’s Hospital, whose original façade and entrance at 9th and University is now a part of the Virginia Mason Medical Center on  First Hill.  The bill for the delivery, anesthesia, nursery, pharmacy, and lab work, plus a six-day hospital stay came to $193.40.

The hospital invoice shows details of Pauline and Billy’s six-day stay in the hospital.

Letters of congratulations poured in from Aunt Nancy & Uncle Bill Morris (his namesake); Lloyd & Lucile Qually; Palma Weflen, Yvonne & Keith Grennan; Rose & Woodrow Gauthier; Wilfred & Wilma St. Clair; Marian Dahl, and Aunt Ruth Forest.  Pauline’s mother, Marie mailed her a letter every day.  Pauline kept all of them.

That week’s visitors to the hospital included his Grandma Marie & Grandpa John Morris; Aunt Nancy Morris, Aunt Nola Fontana, Aunt Alice & Uncle Jack Morris; Palma Weflen, Lucile Qually, Grandma Lulu Kombol & Aunt Dana Zaputil; plus Billy Guerrini with his Daddy, Jack.  Bill Guerrini was a close childhood friend of Jack back in their Kangley days.  Guerrini often told the story that Jack’s son was named after him.

The baby record completed by the hospital nurse with Baby Billy’s footprints. The booklet had several pages.

On July 11, Pauline and baby Billy left the hospital and traveled several miles north to Aunt Nola’s home in Lake City.  That Saturday night, Jack picked Pauline and Billy up driving them to the family’s rental home in Selleck.  By Monday morning, Jack was back at work as a truck driver for Palmer Coking Coal.

Pauline poured all her love into the baby boy at that small Selleck home.  It was built in 1912 to house workers of the long-since-closed sawmill. There she nurtured and cuddled Billy to ward off a repeat tragedy and heal the loss of Paula Jean.  So, all the love she hadn’t buried with Paula was invested in Billy.

And that’s how William John Kombol grew up, surrounded by love and affection.  As that grown boy writes another chapter in his story of scenes from a charmed life.

Pauline with Billy in the living room of their Selleck home, his milk bottle on the lamp-stand, Sept. 1953.

Who’s who among those named:

Pauline Lucile Morris (1927-2011) – Pauline was born the 4th of four children to John H. Morris and Nina Marie Morris.  Both of her parents were children of Welsh coal miners named Morris who immigrated to America.  She grew up in Durham, the coal mining town where so many of her Morris uncles and aunts lived, as did dozens of miners and their families.  Pauline moved to Enumclaw at age six, graduated from EHS in 1945, and married Jack Kombol in late 1950.

Laverne Shercliffe “Jack” Kombol (1921-1979) – Jack was born the 4th of five children to Tony Kombol and Lulu Shircliff.  He was struck with polio at age six so didn’t attend school for two years.  Jack dropped out of high school at age 19 and moved to Seattle where he lived with his sister, Nola, and drove trucks for the garbage companies.  He bounced around at a number of jobs but mostly worked in the woods driving logging trucks and running equipment.  Jack joined Palmer Coking Coal Co. in June 1952, the same month Paula Jean died.  He died of pancreatic cancer at age 57.

Paula Jean Kombol (1952-1952) – Paula died two days after birth and is buried in the Enumclaw cemetery about 50 feet from her parent’s grave.

Tony Kombol (1884-1967) – Jack’s father, Tony emigrated from Croatia at age 17 and made his way to Roslyn where he joined two brothers as coal miners. Tony worked at the Ravensdale mine, avoiding the 1915 explosion that claimed 31 lives.  The family moved to Arizona and Montana where he worked the copper mines before returning to Washington.  A 1925 explosion nearly blinded him and he could no longer work.  For the next 42 years, he kept track of their small farm and worked around the home.

Lulu (Shircliff) Kombol (1885-1976) – Jack’s mother, Lulu was born in Walla Walla to Jennie Brown, age 17 who was seven months pregnant.  Jennie married William Shircliff, an Army paymaster clerk, who abandoned his wife and daughter after eight months of marriage.  Lulu’s mother remarried and she grew up on a Cowlitz River farm.  Lulu attended Bellingham Normal School attaining her teacher’s certificate and eventually moved to Ravensdale where teachers were paid more.  After bearing five children, she went back to teaching, primarily in Cumberland and Selleck schools after Tony’s mine accident  In total, Lulu taught for more than 50 years before retiring at age 80.

John Henry Morris (1894-1973) – Pauline’s father was born in Wilkeson into a large family of coal miners.  John’s mother and father emigrated from Wales shortly after their marriage.  His father and brothers all worked in the coal mines, eventually rising through the ranks and starting their own coal mining company, then a second named Morris Brothers. John with three brothers and one investor started Palmer Coking Coal Co. in August 1933, during the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Nina Marie (Morris) Morris (1890-1967) – Pauline’s mother was born in the coal mining town of Franklin.  Her father, Joshua was a coal miner who in 1880 was on the prospecting party that discovered coal seams in the Green River Gorge that led to the establishment of Black Diamond and Franklin.  Shortly after Marie’s birth, the family moved to Osceola where Joshua farmed in the summer and mined coal in the winter.  Marie and her two sisters, Lena and Ruth graduated from Buckley H.S. and all three become school teachers. She met John while teaching in Wilkeson where he was working in the coal mines.

Uncle Bill Morris (1897-1979) – William “Bill” Morris was the closest brother to John H. Morris, thus a great uncle to his namesake, Bill Kombol.  Bill Morris was a jack-of-all-trades around the coal mines, working primarily on the surface in the preparation plants.

Aunt Nancy (Boots) Morris (1899-1969) – Nancy and her husband Bill lost two children, each of whom died shortly after childbirth.  Great Aunt Nancy often babysat the Kombol children in their Four Corners home.

Lloyd & Lucile Qually – Lloyd was the head mechanic for Pacific States Lumber, the company that owned the town of Selleck.  He held that job until the mill closed in 1939.  Lucile was a school teacher with Lulu Kombol at the old Selleck School that burned down in 1929.  Eventually, they lived in the town’s biggest home, once occupied by Frank Selleck.  The Quallys were good friends of Jack and Pauline.

Palma Weflen – Census records show she was a 55-year-old widow and nurse living with a family in Seattle. Most likely she was a kind of a midwife to Pauline.

Yvonne (Cross) & Keith Grennan – Yvonne was one of Pauline’s best friends from high school.  Her husband Keith was a brother to Dolly (Grennan) Fugate another of Pauline’s good friends.

Rose (Kombol) Gauthier (1920-2001) was Jack’s first cousin who moved from Roundup Montana when she was 16 to live with the Kombol family in Kangley.  She went to work at the Durham Hotel, which was managed by Jonas and Maggie Morris, John H., and Bill Morris’ older brother.  Rose married Woodrow Gauthier (1913-2001) (pronounced goat-chee), a logger and later a sawmill owner.  Jack worked for Gauthier Brothers Lumber & Logging Co. on and off for 10 years.

Wilfred & Wilma St. Clair were next-door neighbors to the home of Tony & Lulu Kombol, and friends with Jack & Pauline.  Two of their sons, Bill and Dick St. Clair often played with the Kombol boys.

Marian Dahl (1912-2005) was Pauline’s cousin, though almost a generation older.

Ruth (Morris) Forest (1892-1968) was Pauline’s aunt and Nina Marie Morris’ sister, hence Bill’s great-aunt.  She was born on the Fourth of July.

Jack Morris (1918-2007) was Pauline’s brother and Alice (Hanson) Morris (1920-2016) was his wife, hence Bill’s uncle and aunt.

Dana (Kombol) Zaputil (1918-2012) was Jack’s oldest sister, married to Frank Zaputil (1914-1984), hence Bill’s aunt and uncle.

Nola (Kombol) Fontana (1919-2017) was Jack’s older sister, married to Chester Fontana (1916-1971), hence Bill’s aunt and uncle.  Chester’s Fontana relatives, who during Prohibition were involved in bootlegging gifted Chester & Nola their Lake City home in 1940.  When Jack moved to Seattle to drive garbage trucks during the war years, he stayed at Chester and Nola’s Lake City home paying for his room and board.  Twenty-five years later, when Bill took a bank job in Seattle he stayed with his Aunt Nola and paid her for room and board.  Nola lived in that home for 77 years before dying there in 2017.

Billy Guerrini, at age 97 is still alive and lives in the family home in Kangley.  Jack was best friends with his brother Martin “Fats” Guerrini, but after Fats died during WW-II, Jack and Billy became close friends.  When Jack drove to the hospital to see his new baby boy name Billy, Billy Guerrini came in with him.

Categories
Musings

Two Little Miners in Elk Coal

A child listens while pages turn.  He studies pictures as literacy begins on his mother’s knee.  He was three or four years old.  It wasn’t the first book read to him, for that happened well before memory.  And it wouldn’t be the last.  For little did he know that as he grew older, books would grow with him.

As for children’s books, I wasn’t fond of Br’er Rabbit stories, they didn’t make sense.  “Hansel and Gretel” rather frightened me—children left in a forest only to fall prey to the hands of a wretched old woman.  And really, Hansel, didn’t it occur that breadcrumbs trailed behind might get eaten? “Three Little Pigs” seemed too obvious on successive readings, but we read on.  I admired Goldilocks’ insistence on getting things just right.  She did after all get her fill of porridge, took a nap, and escaped unharmed.  “Old Mother Hubbard,” “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk” were all fun stories to hear. 

But the book I loved best was Two Little Miners.  It spoke to me—most likely since both grandfathers were coal miners, as were a bunch of uncles. And so was Dad.  He operated mobile equipment, like bulldozers, shovels, and loaders outside the mines.  On special occasions, Mom packed an extra lunch bucket when I went to work with him.  If the day was nice, I played in freshly bulldozed dirt.  If it rained, I stayed in his pickup watching droplets become streams that wiggled down the windshield. 

We lived in the remnant of a forgotten town called Elk Coal.  Most pronounced it El-ko.  Elk Coal, you ask?  It’s located halfway between Kanaskat and Kangley, pressed against the foothills of the Cascades.  The coal mine for which the town was named closed in 1953, the year I was born.  The shabby village fell further from grace when miners left.  Our family moved there from Selleck, one week before my first birthday.  The next day my sister, Jeanmarie, was born.  They called us Irish twins.

My earliest childhood memories belong to Elk Coal.  Further north was Hiawatha, where Dad was born in the same house where his parents still lived.  Sometimes my grandfather, Tony Kombol, babysat me.  An errant dynamite coal mine blast 30 years prior left him nearly blind with a face freckled purple from embedded coal dust.  Grandma Lulu taught school in nearby Selleck.  She was Barry’s first-grade teacher and beloved by every school kid she taught. 

Our home was a stone’s throw from Durham, where Mom was raised. It was once a company town.  Many of its residents were her uncles who worked in the coal mines, and aunts who performed the many mundane chores that make a small town livable.

Her Uncle Jonas and Aunt Maggie managed the large brick building called the Durham hotel. It was really a boarding house for single miners. Twenty or more homes, built in rows along the hillside, housed most of Durham’s 70 to 80 residents. Some even worked at the Elk Coal mines across the street.

Durham was fully deserted by the 1950s, but Elk Coal, situated on a county road, survived.  Durham’s impressive coal slag piles still dominated the landscape.  Its crumbling company houses were a source of lumber salvaged by Dad.  After he disassembled boards in the driveway, we scoured the gravel with horseshoe magnets picking up rusty nails. 

Our Elk Coal home still stands at 28603 Kanaskat-Kangley Road (April 1940 King County Assessor photo).

We lived in a four-room home my folks bought from Benj Whitehouse in late June 1954.  He’d been a coal miner in nearby Durham.  He built the house in 1930.  Its two bedrooms, one bath, and two porches spanned 952 square feet, and cost my folks $3,000.  Our yard bordered scrub woodlands on one side and a rundown farm on the other.  That’s where Anne Pearson, our babysitter, lived.

Rare was the day when kids our age visited, as none lived in Elk Coal.  Sometimes cousins would drop by, or maybe the Kahne boys—for their mother, Pat Hunt, had grown up nearby.  Two older kids, Billy and Dickie St. Clair, occasionally came by.  They lived next door to my Kombol grandparents half a mile up the road.  When Barry started school, Jeanmarie and I, a year and a day apart, became fast friends. 

Two hundred feet south of our home lay the Elk Coal gas station and grocery.  It was a tiny clue this village was once something more than a name.  Aileen (Pearson) Gregovich ran the store which served ice cream cones, had a penny candy counter, and carried basic canned and dry grocery goods.  Behind the cash register, one caught glimpse of a bedroom filled with musical instruments. A decade later, I learned the young man who studied music in that room was Aileen’s son, Bob Estby, Enumclaw’s choir director.  He too was a product of Selleck and Elk Coal.

The Elk Coal store and gas station. Our home was 200 yards beyond.

In my sophomore year at Enumclaw High, a chess team was established with Mr. Estby as coach.  Curiously, he didn’t play chess.  Practice was hosted in his classroom each day after school.  Every few weeks, he drove our five-boy team to matches played throughout the region.  For three years Bob was my mentor and coach.  Amazingly, he kept our chess team’s trophies for 40 years after we left school.  When Mr. Estby passed away, his daughter gave me those trophies.

The secluded nature of Elk Coal made for limited social lives.  The store was the brightest star on the horizon and a two-minute walk from home.  With pennies found atop the dryer, Jeanmarie and I walked there for candy.  We envied older kids who bought soda pop with nickels.  In that innocent time, Mom didn’t mind her three and four-year-olds, pennies in hand, wandering about unattended.  We napped together in separate cribs, those of a wooden-slat, jail-bar-style of the 1950s. When one awoke, we’d call across the tiny room to the other.  Soon we were chattering about.  Best of friends we were, for Barry was at school and Dana not yet born.

By May 1958,Jeanmarie (left) and I were too big for the old crib, as by now it belonged to Dana (right).

In the era before preschool, Jeanmarie and I played on our backyard swing set, hoping for visitors.  We sometimes saw an aunt or grandmother.  Desperate for excitement one day I hid on the back seat floorboard of Aunt Nola’s sedan after she visited with Mom.  I figured she was headed to Grandma’s and therein lay my escape.  Instead, she drove the opposite direction to Mariani’s Goat Ranch.  Nola parked and went to buy eggs and visit.  I emerged from her car surprised we weren’t at Grandma’s, so drifted down the road with a vague idea of waking home.  I was picked by an adult who recognized me and promptly delivered me the mile and a half back to Mom.  It was that kind of place.

A typical King County bookmobile, or mobile library during the 1950s. Patrons entered on the side and exited the rear.

Each month a novel source of entertainment arrived.  That’s when the King County mobile library made its round to our secluded hamlet. The Bookmobile parked on the gravel strip across from our house where the road was widest.  Stepping anxiously through the side door, one entered a bus filled with books, any of which you could pick up and take home.  With Mom or Grandma in tow, we examined colorful covers then checked out volumes at the rear exit.  Upon its returned, we exchanged our previous cache for new selections. Once checked out, Two Little Miners through purchase or gift became part of our family’s library. 

The Little Golden Book had a thin hard binding.  Its child-sized pages were treasured art to these young eyes.  The story by Margaret Wise Brown with pictures by Richard Scarry was published in 1949.  Earlier books like, Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny had a rhythm and style.  Nearly 70 years after Brown’s tragic death at age 42, they still sold by the thousands. 

The copy I bought online more than five decades after it was first read to me.

Two Little Miners was Richard Scarry’s first illustration.  In subsequent years he wrote or drew more than 300 stories.  His sales eventually soared to several hundred million copies worldwide.  Typical of Scarry’s drawings was their emphasis on action with precise detail in depicting everyday life.  Two Little Miners tells the tale of coal miners and their hard work underground.  The story’s happy ending was reason enough to have it read again and again.  Memories of the book are warmly juxtaposed with Sunday evenings watching the Wonderful World of Disney in our cozy living room. 

We moved to Enumclaw in December 1958.  Kindergarten wasn’t available in Elk Coal, so I joined Mrs. Todnam’s class in January, halfway through the school year.  Many of the classmates I met that first day of school graduated with me twelve years later. 

Mrs. Todnam’s kindergarten class photo on a spring day, 1959.

Enumclaw was The Land of Oz compared to Elk Coal.   My eyes were opened and the world brightened. We’d left the dreary sticks and arrived in a real town.  Our neighborhood had stately churches with steeples that reached towards the sky.  Paved streets, grass medians, and concrete sidewalks outlined blocks of well-kept homes.  Front yards boasted rhododendrons with flowers that bloomed in spring.   A thriving downtown with stores, cafes, and a movie theater was but a five-minute walk from home. 

Kids were everywhere—at school, in back yards, and throughout the neighborhood.  Our isolated existence in Elk Coal faded in memory. Enumclaw became my town and playing with kids my passion.

While Mom still read books to us at bedtime, my interests stretched well beyond fairy tales on printed pages.  There was football to be played and baseballs to be thrown; skates to be rolled and bicycles to ride.  There were streets to walk and alleys to explore.  But mostly there were boys everywhere. 

Jeanmarie was crushed when I dumped her for their companionship.  Oh, we still bathed together on Saturday night and stayed inside on rainy days playing board games or listening to records.  But once I stepped outside the backdoor my focus changed.  No longer was Jeannie my best friend and faithful companion with whom we would one day live together like two little miners.  My world was now all about messing around with other boys.  In some ways, I’m not entirely convinced she ever fully forgave me.

My walk to the clean brick school building was five blocks away.  At Byron Kibler Elementary we were taught to read under the “see Dick run – look, Jane, look” method.  It’s called sight-reading and its efficacy I’ll leave to others.  For me it was agonizingly slow, but apparently did the trick for learn to read I did. 

Billy and Barry walk to Kibler school, May 1960.

There was even a modern library four blocks from our Franklin Street home.  Alas, it was largely ignored as sporting fields beckoned.  Though I had a library card and could search index cards to find books, my dreams of being shortstop for the Detroit Tigers fixed reading firmly on the back burner.  However, reading the newspaper’s sports section and baseball box scores advanced my skills substantially.  Comic books, particularly the Archie and the Superman series became my primary sources of literature outside of school.

It wasn’t until junior high—when paperbacks like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Mysterious Island captured my imagination—that I was first drawn to printed pages without pictures or batting averages.  I also became an avid reader of magazines starting with Boys Life, migrating through MAD to Sports Illustrated, before graduating to Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.  Mom’s purchase of a complete, multi-volume, Collier’s Encyclopedia provided free reign for our inquisitive spirits.  It also made school reports much easier to complete, with fewer trips to the library. 

More advanced volumes like All Quiet on the Western Front and Hiroshima followed.  High school introduced captivating novels like A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, plus Lord of the Flies, 1984, and several others.

I’ll be forever thankful to our senior English teacher, Bill Hawk.  That spring semester, he recited the entirety of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet out loud to our class.  It was almost like being back on Mom’s knee.  College years were consumed with textbooks and assigned readings, so pleasure reading faded.  After graduation, the works of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Maugham, and Austen beckoned.  Eventually, my reading tastes evolved towards nonfiction particularly history, biography, politics, and culture. 

Mr. Bill Hawk (left) – his casual style and collegial manner inspired a love for literature, EHS spring 1971.

Decades passed, I married, and we raised three boys of our own.  Stories at bedtime became an evening ritual.  New children’s books were bought. Some of the old folk and fairy tale books were recycled from Mom to me.

One day I found our old, crayon-riddled, torn copy of Two Little Miners.  Foggy memories sifted back.  The old copy was beyond redemption, but the rise of online book-buying made finding a replacement a cinch.  The used copy arrived.  Fingering its worn pages released unexpected emotions.  The story endured: two little miners black as coal, scrubbed clean in wooden bathtubs, sit down to dinner.  Arising the next morning their lives of mining coal are told in exquisite detail, concluding with baths and supper on the table.  Though most pages were black and white, the ones in color are striking. 

It’s funny how childhood memories seize the mind of a fully grown man.  My thoughts turned to Elk Coal.  I toured the world’s vast web seeking evidence to confirm youthful recollections.  ‘Elk Coal’ was typed in the Google search box and up popped … nothing!  I tried Elko and Elco—still zilch.  I scoured all manner of keywords generating little better than Elk Plains, Elk River, or Big Elk. There were no links that even mentioned Elk Coal, Washington.  It seemed like an important part of my childhood didn’t exist outside of memories. 

“If it isn’t digital it didn’t happen,” is a fashionable view of today’s world. Following the French Revolution, a dramatist attributed to Napoleon the slogan, “If you want something done, do it yourself.”  I felt the same way. 

How could the curious people of Planet Earth enjoy full and fruitful lives knowing nothing of Elk Coal’s heritage?  Being an amateur historian, the answer was easy—I’d write its history.  Like any coal miner, I dug deep underground, excavated newspaper stories, and unearthed ancient mine reports.  I was in the fortunate position of having access to source documents allowing the narrative to be told. I submitted “Elk Coal: Forgotten Coal Mining Town,” to HistoryLink.org where it was published in May 2010.  Today, if you query Google regarding Elk Coal, several references now populate the list.  

The link below tells the story of that faded outpost where four of my first five years were lived.  For me it’s the place where literacy began … in Elk Coal with Two Little Miners.  

https://www.historylink.org/File/9419

Billy, the three-year-old future author, gazes intently at the camera, while Jeanmarie climbs and Barry swings, as Sugarloaf Mountain looms in the distance, July 1956.

 

Categories
Musings

A Tribute to My Mother: Pauline Lucile Kombol

“Our being in this world is not accidental.  We all have a mission to do some special work, and it is work that will honor Him and bless those around us.  If we do not find that work and do it, our life is a failure; the true end of living is not realized.   We may not learn in a moment; but step-by-step, day by day, as we go on things will be made clearer.  Those who do the smallest things well because they are God’s plan, are to be honored far above those who do great things for the world’s praise.”  – Nancy Matilda Hembree (1837-1922)

Nancy Matilda (Hembree) Snow (1837-1922)

Thus spoke Pauline’s great-grandmother, Nancy Matilda (Hembree) Snow decades before my Mother was conceived.  Pauline Lucile Morris was born to John Henry and Nina Marie, both had the last name Morris.  She was as Welsh as one could be.  Her father was a coal miner and her mother a school teacher.  Both her grandfathers and great-grandfathers worked in the coal industry.  Her great-grandmother, Nancy was a pioneer of the 1843 Oregon Trail. 

Pauline grew up in the coal mining town of Durham surrounded by an extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins most of whom worked in or around the mines.  Her family moved to Enumclaw when she was six, first to a hop farm in Osceola and later a home above Newaukum Creek.  At school she made life-long friends many of whom are here today.  She edited the school newspaper and annual, graduating from Enumclaw in 1945, just as World War II ended.  Her obituary claims she briefly attended the University of Washington.  The truth . . . for about 15 minutes. 

Pauline Morris, left with Shirley Stergion in front of Enumclaw High School, circa 1944.

After a short stint in Seattle, she landed back home working at the Palmer Coking Coal mine office at Four Corners.  There she pumped gas and helped with bookkeeping.  In 1950, she and Jack Kombol eloped to California and married.  Eventually the couple made their way back to Selleck, where Barry, Jeannie and I first lived, and then to Elk Coal where Dana was born, just a quarter mile from the Durham of Mom’s childhood.

Mom had six life-changing experiences: Barry, Billy, Jeannie and Dana; but two others I’d like to tell you about.  Her second baby, a daughter Paula Jean died two days after birth.  Mom used to say that after the loss of that baby, she loved the rest of us so very much, so that she would never lose another child.  One day years later, Jeannie and I rambunctiously raced around the living room, and Mother’s prized china cup collection crashed to the floor shattering every piece.  Despite her initial sadness, Mom decided then and there that she would never value any possession more than the people in her life.

Pauline holding her second son, who 58 years later read this eulogy at her funeral, Sept. 1953.

Our family moved to Enumclaw in 1958.  There Pauline joined civic life as a den mother, Camp Fire leader, election-day poll worker, raising money for the March of Dimes, helping elderly aunts, and later caring for her own mother.  There she ran the home – baking cookies, canning homemade jam, making pies – always from scratch and never with a recipe or measured ingredients.  Menus were traditional and set: Friday – fish or tuna noodle casserole; Saturday – hamburgers; Sunday – fried chicken or pot roast; Monday – meat loaf, and so on.  We never had soda pop or potato chips, but did enjoy Kool-aid and homemade frozen popsicles.  Each summer we took vacations with the Cerne’s to Grayland and Hoods Canal – I later learned that we stayed at the same Beacon Point cabins where her family vacationed when she was young.

One of the big events of our lives was the family trip to Europe in 1968.  Mom researched and found our Welsh and Croatian relatives and planned our journey through ten countries in six weeks.  Using her dog-eared copy of Europe on $10 a Day, Mom found cheap pensions and small family-run hotels to fit her tight budget.  Jack drove us across Europe in a small station-wagon jammed with six people and 13 suitcases.  We played Hearts in the backseat and listened to Radio Luxemburg with Danica stuffed back amongst the luggage.

The Kombol family portrait, 1967.

In later years we spent our summers at Lake Sawyer where Dad built a cabin.  During one particularly inebriated summer party, Mom earned the nickname ‘Carrie Nation’ when she raced around the cabin pouring out booze and opening the tap of the keg refrigerator watching cold beer spill to the ground. 

In early 1979 Jack was diagnosed with cancer and passed away within 3 weeks.  A night before he died, he called me to his bedside and said, “I want you to take care of your mother.”  Since the girls were away and Barry was married with a growing family, the primary duty of caring for Mom fell to me.  So, I frequented her home where she cooked me delicious dinners.  And, made sure I brought my laundry so she could wash it.  And, she hemmed my pants and sewed buttons on my shirts; and, always sent me home with casseroles, lentil soup, and blackberry pies.  It seemed the more I tried taking care of Mom, the more she took care of me.  And who could ever forget the summer Keith Timm Jr. moved in with Mom and me.  Then there were two of us . . . “to take care” of Mom.

Pauline and her three siblings, Evan Morris, Betty Falk, and Jack Morris, June 18, 1977.

During the early years after Dad’s death, she kept herself busy on the Enumclaw School Board and as a Director of Cascade Security Bank.  But like a caterpillar, she spun her cocoon waiting to find the wings of the butterfly she became.  And that she did.  I can’t claim credit for pushing her out of the nest – I was too busy “taking care of her.”  But off she flew – first to Seattle where she bought a condo and found friends through extension classes and her beloved movie group.  More grandchildren were born and off she went to care for them.  She enjoyed traveling and over the years took trips to Russia, China, Hungary, Italy and elsewhere.  She loved her time in Lincoln City, and eventually spent her winters, first in Palm Springs and later Scottsdale. 

Coal Miners’ Daughters: with Loretta Lynn at Sesame Street studios, circa 1983.

Around the turn of the century, a wonderful gentleman entered into Mom’s life.  His name was Cal Bashaw.  He was a widower born the same year as my Dad.  Mom and Cal had known each other from their days as bank directors.  Well, I have to admit that Cal and I have radically different styles.  When he started to “take care of” Mom; he did things like always helping her with her coat; opening doors; helping with her chair, fixing things around the house, running errands, taking her out to dinner, and always being there to care for her needs.  It seemed the more we were around Cal, the more my own lovely wife began pointing out all of Cal’s far-too-many good traits.  I started hearing things like, “Why can’t you be more like Cal?”  Basically, Cal’s caring manner made my previous efforts to “take care of” Mom look fairly absurd.

Cal Bashaw, Pauline, and grandson Henry, Christmas 2004.

But truly, Mom and Cal had a wonderful ten years together.  And if only more people were like Cal, and like Mom, the world would be a far better place. 

So, I come to the end, but also the beginning: the beginning of our lives without Pauline, without her sunshine.

Still, her light still shines – a small, bright star to guide me – to guide me through the darkness and back to life.  So until that day when my light joins hers, I will rest easily, knowing that Pauline led a good life; a life worth living; a life which blessed those around her; a life of small things done well – done not for the world’s praise; but done through an honored existence, dedicated to her friends and to her family, and lived according to God’s plan.

Pauline Morris, graduation photo – Enumclaw Class of 1945.

And, if she were here today  . . . I’ll let you complete the thought.