Celebrating the Life of Doris Roedell

Doris Roedell had a big heart.

She was gentle, generous, and kind. She welcomed and accepted everyone. Visitors were rewarded with a warm, happy smile. She was genuinely glad to see you—even if she had never met you before. She would always help you out, no questions asked. If you were sick, she was there to take care of you, or even your ailing pets.

Doris’ biggest wish in life was that she wanted everyone to be happy.

Yes, Doris was gentle and kind, but she also loved to laugh and had a secret mischievous streak. She enjoyed many adventures during her long life.

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Doris was born on October 9^th, 1926 on Seattle’s Beacon Hill. Sister Laura was six years older. Her parents – Viola Faye and Ephriam Scott – had two more children after Doris: Ann was born one-and-a-half years later; little brother Jim was six years younger.

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When Doris was about three, the family moved to her grandparents’ farm in the small town of Valley, north of Spokane. Doris fondly remembers milking the oldest cow, Bess. (“Old Bess would never hurt anyone,” said Doris about the gentle beast.) She squirted Bess’ milk for the kitty cats to lick. Sister Laura, on the other hand, grabbed the cows’ tails and tried to twirl them in the fields.

The family shuffled around the state as her parents looked for work during the Great Depression. By the time Jim arrived, the young family moved to Spokane for about four years. Doris’ strongest memory of that time came when the neighbor girl let her ride her bicycle. Doris was so proud of herself she ran inside to ask her parents to come out and watch. They did come out, only to see Doris ride that bike directly into a tree. “I started bawling my head off,” Doris always said when telling the story. Later on in life, she became quite the accomplished bicyclist when taking long rides around the Northwest with Clarence and some of her kids.

Doris spent her formative years from 5th to 10th grades in Colfax, a bustling wheat town in the scenic Palouse, just a hop, skip and a jump from WSU. She camped with the Campfire Girls, watched movies, went to dances and marched as a flag twirler at parades and school games. She spent as much time as possible with her two best friends, Opal and Carolyn. “We thought we were pretty big stuff,” said Doris. The three were known to dress alike and it was always a thrill when one of the mothers drove the trio into Spokane to pick out dresses for important events like the Junior Prom. 

Doris sometimes liked to rib her husband about a boy she knew in Colfax, Billy Hadlick. “Billy gave me a heart locket with a picture in it,” Doris was known to say. When Clarence heard that, he always loudly piped up: “I gave you a heart locket.” “Yes, you did,” Doris would reply good-naturedly.

[You can hear Doris tell this and other stories in an mp3 file on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_T3qaz8-A3qLQ2tbTkq_Kgff5vsZ022/view?ts=613ce1c2]

Life in Colfax was fun for Doris, despite the hardship of having a fulltime working mother and a father disabled from mustard gas during WWI. It was a shock when she learned that her pleasant life was about to be uprooted because they were moving to Seattle. Her mother would soon be working as a “Rosie the Riveter” at Boeing’s historic birthplace, the Old Red Barn.

The Scott’s moved to Capitol Hill by the old Coca Cola bottling plant, with the smell of fresh-baked bread wafting in from nearby Langendorf Bakery. Doris was 15, and about to start as a junior at Broadway High School.

But first, fate stepped in and introduced Doris to her lifelong best friend, Carol. Both were small-town kids thrown into big city life at Broadway High, confronted with cliques of girls who wore cashmere sweaters and saddle shoes. “We felt like almost nothing,” recalled the former flag-twirler Doris. “We came from small schools to this huge place,” she added. Doris and Carol bonded swiftly and never looked back.

Soon enough, Doris’ father was able to buy a new house on Capitol Hill and “the girl next door worked at Bartell’s in the photo section,” reported Doris. That neighbor got Doris a job there, then Doris got Carol a job—then other family members started working there too. “Carol and I were kind of the pets of the place,” recalled Doris. They often met old Mr. Bartell, who lived upstairs in “a kind of an apartment he had up there.” Mr. Bartell was known to shake hands with his employees at Christmastime, “but never slipped us any bonuses while he was shaking our hands,” Doris liked to comment dryly.

Doris and Carol had money to spend. High school life didn’t seem as important as buying a bag of donuts and skipping class each time a new Frank Sinatra picture hit town. It certainly wasn’t as important as the romance that was about to bloom for the not quite 16-year-old Doris.

Doris first met Carol when she went to visit her niece, Laura’s little girl Judy, at the babysitter’s place. That babysitter was Carol’s mother, Ethel Roedell. “I wanted to see Judy, and that’s when I met Carol,” said Doris. Pretty soon, she discovered that Carol had an older brother, Clarence – or June as his family called him. “THAT was pretty interesting,” she admitted.

Doris spent a lot of time at Carol’s. The Roedells lived in a brand-new apartment home at Yesler Terrace, which was built for the burgeoning wartime population (their very first place with a flush toilet). Sometimes Clarence saw her asleep on the couch when he came home after midnight from his job. “I thought she was cute,” says Clarence. “I thought he was pretty nice,” remembers Doris. He started calling her Dorie May; she called him June just like the rest of his family (short for Junior).

“Pretty soon I was seeing more of him than I was of Carol,” Doris remembered.

What was their courtship like? “We didn’t do much of anything at first,” said Doris. “We did a lot of necking,” revealed Clarence with a grin.

Doris’ and June’s relationship was growing strong until May of 1943 when Clarence went into the Army and was shipped out to New Orleans for basic training. “I was lonesome,” says Doris of the separation. Frequent letters kept the long-distance relationship alive. They still have those letters to this day.

Clarence was transferred to South Carolina where, at Christmastime, he received a one-week pass and decided to head home to see his girl. Trouble was home was a seven-day round-trip on the train. Once he arrived in Seattle, Clarence hoped to finagle extra days. Otherwise, he would have to get straight back on the train. When the train left South Carolina, Clarence fell asleep train “settin’ on a suitcase because there wasn’t room anywhere. The vestibules were full of sailors,” he said. That train was the Atlantic Coast Line that derailed in North Carolina on December 16, 1943. It is considered one of the worst train wrecks in U.S. history. Seventy-four people died in the crash. Clarence was among the 187 injured.

Back home in Seattle, a reporter tracked down Clarence’s father and informed him that his son was killed in the wreck. Luckily, the truth came out before Doris heard the news.

He was to spend the next six months in the hospital. That wreck and those long months of recovery probably saved Clarence’s life; His training as an amphibious pilot would have put him square in the Pacific theater of war, where statistics show that J-boat pilots couldn’t necessarily expect to survive. After rehab he went back to duty, this time in Florida, but his extensive injuries prevented him from shipping out.

As an aside, Clarence was Doris’ steady fella, although the couple didn’t have specific plans to marry. (Sometimes Doris, who had beautiful black hair with a noticeable widow’s peak, would say her future mother-in-law never wanted her son to marry anyone with a widow’s peak.) Nevertheless, she was already a part of the Roedell family. The Roedells were known for parlor games and a silly secret family initiation called “The Roedell Airline,” which Doris would soon experience first-hand. And despite not knowing when she herself might marry, Doris was no stranger to weddings or even honeymoons. Since high school didn’t mean much to the starry-eyed Doris who only had dreams of June, she ended up not graduating because part-way through her senior year she left school to go on Carol’s honeymoon with her. It’s not as strange as it sounds. Carol’s husband was in the service... Knowing he had to leave shortly after they started their honeymoon, Carol and Doris thought it was a good idea for her to come along to keep Carol company while her husband was away. They spent time together at the well-known honeymoon destination: the Angle Lake Motel on Highway 99.

By Christmastime 1944, Clarence was stationed in Florida. He received another pass and once again boarded a train for the three-and-a-half-day ride home. The young Doris, barely out of girlhood, began to fret about what to buy Clarence for a Christmas present. “I didn’t know what you were supposed to get for a serious boyfriend,” she says. A married friend suggested the same gift she got her husband: a lifetime subscription to Reader’s Digest. That $25 turned into a lifetime investment; after 77 years and counting the magazine still arrives faithfully each month.

When Clarence arrived for his Christmas leave, the prospect of time together—however fleeting—prompted Clarence and Doris to tie the knot. Legally, the 20-year-old G.I. needed his mother’s permission to marry; the barely 18-year-old Doris didn’t. On behalf of her son, Clarence's mother bought Doris a second-hand ring (she had forgiven her future daughter-in-law for having a widow’s peak). Doris loved that slim band, loved it so well it eventually wore out and broke. Years later, the couple replaced it with a one-of-a-kind custom-made ring designed by Michael Daley just for Doris.

Finally, their wedding day arrived. It was the eve of Christmas Eve, 1944, long, dark months before the end of WWII. The young G.I. and his even younger bride walked the aisle of the chapel at Central Lutheran Church on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Some believed the impromptu wedding to be a triumph, considering the obstacles along the way.

A two-night honeymoon was spent at a relative’s apartment, then it was back to Florida for Clarence and back to her mother’s for the newly minted Mrs. Roedell.

But within a couple of months, Doris was able to follow her husband to Florida, riding a crowded train across the country. Wartime housing was scarce, and the couple lived for nearly a year on the porch of a rooming house (the landlady took the very young-looking Doris under her wing). Then Doris found that she was pregnant and Clarence insisted she go back home, thinking she needed her family at a time like that.

But... “I was lonely without him,” says Doris. She wanted to return. “No,” declared Clarence. “And besides, I’m getting transferred to California.” Somehow that seemed like an invitation to Doris, and she made her way unannounced to her husband. After all, California is a lot closer than Florida.

Their small room at the Arlington California Hotel “had a window in it,” reported the couple, “but it was up in the ceiling. And the bathroom was down the hall.” Living conditions became a little uncomfortable for the very pregnant Doris, and she finally went back home.

“Then I was discharged from the Army in March of ‘46 and made it to Seattle a month before the baby was born,” said Clarence. The couple gratefully reunited and found a basement apartment on Capitol Hill to set up house with their first child, Barbara, shortly followed by Gail and Greg. Their landlady lived upstairs, and had loaned the couple a rocking chair. When they moved out, she told Doris how much she was going to miss hearing what seemed like the constant rocking of that chair.

Me and Queenie

Doris relayed her brother-in-law’s joke: “Between me and our dog Queenie, one of us was always pregnant.” It was true. Their apartment became far too small after Greg was born. The couple was able to buy a house for $6,700 in a rural area south of Seattle. Three more kids – Michael, Susan and Michelle – came next. The family was finally complete when the youngest brother, Danny, joined the flock—seven in all. His mother was Doris’ older sister, Laura. Laura and her husband both died, but not before entrusting their little one to the Roedells.

To make ends meet for his growing family, Clarence once held three jobs. His fulltime job was at King Street Station, but he also cleaned an office building at night and worked as a television and radio repairman. When his baby daughter Susan cried at him—he’d become a stranger to her— Doris insisted he give up at least one of his jobs. Clarence eventually found a career at Boeing researching lasers.

The Roedells’ small house was always filled to the brim with their own kids, with neighborhood kids, with visiting relatives and plenty of pets (including the usual dogs and cats, but also bunnies, a parakeet, pet chickens, a goat and raccoon). In addition, the Roedells were destined to host another “Ma Parker’s Hotel” – as June’s grandmothers’ house in Nooksack was known. After she moved to the Northwest, she invited her hordes of family members to “come on out, it’s the Garden of Eden.” Family and friends were welcomed by Doris and stayed sometimes for the weekend, sometimes for months or even a year. As Doris would say, “We can always find room, even if all we have to offer is the floor.”

Doris was a stay-at-home mom who packed school lunches and made hot cocoa every morning for her kids (and eventually her grandkids when they came to stay). She rose early to turn on the oven to warm the kitchen, since that humble home did not have central heat. Her kids all remember sitting by the open oven door while sipping their hot cocoa. Another special treat she prepared for her children was piping-hot pie crust lavishly sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar – yum. Doris always had a delicious made-from-scratch dinner prepared every evening, though her family later learned she didn’t enjoy cooking. She never got her drivers’ license but would take the long walk to school whenever she was needed, including the time she thought her daughter Susan had forgotten her underwear.

When the grandkids started arriving, Doris’ and June’s home became a second home to those kids, too. Grandma and Grandpa never missed a chance to watch their grandkids play sports, pick them up from school whenever needed or to be present for any important event. Taking the new generation on special adventures and hosting frequent, gigantic family get-togethers became the new routine. It was a home filled with laughter and love.

Doris was an active member of the Highland Park Congregation of Community of Christ since its founding over sixty years ago. Doris and her kids spent many summer weeks enjoying their time at church camp on Samish Island. Doris and Clarence continued visiting Samish every year during Family Reunion, including this past August.

In her late 40s. Doris went back to work to help pay for her youngest daughter’s college tuition. Her early experience at Bartell’s photo department came in handy, and she had a job for several years processing film at a professional photography lab. She rode across town into work every day with her son Michael and son-in-law – also Michael – who both worked at a nearby jewelry manufacturing company. Later on, she and Carol started a business of their own, the Sunbonnet Maids. Oh boy, did they have some stories to tell.

On top of everything else, when Doris’ mother moved into a nursing home, where she lived for seven years, Doris or her sister Ann visited their mother every single day. Doris got dropped off at the bus stop in Burien, rode into downtown Seattle, then transferred on her way out to the north end – about an hour and a half each way. Rather than complain, Doris instead talked about getting to know the other passengers, how she enjoyed stopping downtown, and all the interesting sights and sounds she encountered at her 4^th & Pine bus stop.

Clarence retired in 1989 after 29 years at Boeing (plus a railroad pension from his time at King Street Station). With time and money no longer in short supply, the couple traveled to Europe, Africa, Hawaii, enjoyed a cruise to Alaska and took countless road trips across the country, frequently accompanied by Carol and her husband George.

After 50 years in their modest home, the site of so many memorable family gatherings (often featuring those same parlor games and secret initiations, which continue to this day), they sold the place and eventually moved to nearby Des Moines.

Doris enjoyed their million-dollar view overlooking the marina, Puget Sound and Olympic mountains. She vowed she would never move until she flew away to heaven. She got her wish, and she’s undoubtedly enjoying an even better view now, looking down and smiling at all of us from her perch amongst the angels.

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Doris was married for nearly 77 years to the love of her life, Clarence (June) Roedell. She was mother to Barbara, Gail, Greg, Michael, Susan, Michelle and Danny; grandmother to Andrea, Jacob, Autumn, Jeremy, Trevor, Tyler, Breanna, Katelyn, Dallas and Genevieve; great-grandmother to Noah, Sophie May, Nathan, Mason, Braeden, Makenna, Hayden and Kol.

Random memories to be added to and filled in by the family as time goes by…

Lake Chelan became a favorite vacation spot. Two or more times each year Mom and Dad drove to Chelan to meet Mom’s brother Jim and his wife Artye Lee; usually sister Ann (or Annie Ann as we called her) and her friend Jack joined in the fun. They took in their favorite spots on the same schedule each time: arrive in Chelan on Monday; Manson’s Blueberry Hills farm restaurant on Tuesday for lunch; Wednesday brought a visit to the Habitat for Humanity thrift shop and the variety store across from Campbells Resort (and sometimes the casino); on Thursday before heading out of town, they always had breakfast at B.C. McDonalds. Daughter Barbara and her husband Ken often hosted one of these annual mini-family reunions at their favorite vacation rental home right on Lake Chelan.

Mom and Dad visited Jim and Artye Lee when they lived in Ghana in West Africa. They had many adventures on that trip, including the time Jim and Artye sent Mom and Dad off on a river tour with their trusted guide. They were caught in a rain storm. Jim snapped a photo of Mom completely soaking wet. The first time Doris put on shorts, her brother Jim exclaimed, "Dorie May, you have the whitest legs of anyone I've ever seen!" Then there was the time Dad was charged by the police for taking a photo in the market of eggs stacked up in a pick-up truck. We will be adding many stories from their trip to Africa and Europe.

All of the kids remember how Christmas was such a magical time. Somehow, the family budget allowed so many gifts under the tree that the presents would spill out far into the living room. One Christmas, our parents learned that our wonderful neighbors, the Relethfords, weren’t going to have much of a Christmas because Mr. Relethford had been laid off from Boeing. Mom took it upon herself to bring fully wrapped presents to Mrs. Relethford so her children could enjoy Christmastime. Mrs. Relethford was so touched that she wrote about it in her memoirs.

To get an idea of the Roedell budget, every other week when Dad got his paycheck, the kids were given 10 cents each and a special trip to the dime store to spend it. Between paychecks, sometimes our toilet paper consisted of carefully torn strips of newspaper.

In addition to her job at Bartell's as a teen, her job at Pacific Color Lab to help pay for her youngest daughter's college, and her job as a Sunbonnet Maid with Carol, Mom and Carol found other ways to earn extra money. They picked beans (Barbara remembers Mom and Carol creating a nice lunch atmosphere on Carol's tailgate). They collated a book by walking around a table all day long picking up pages of the book to put in order. The next year they collated another book the same way. Later, Mom and Dad mailed subscriptions for Northwest Prime Time, working beside daughters Barbara and Gail, who mailed checks and papers to the writers.

Having so many children meant that Mom became close to the family pediatrician, Dr. Anderson. When she was pregnant with Michelle and Michael came down with nephritis, Dr. Anderson ordered Michael to be hospitalized for nearly six weeks, thinking that Doris could use the break. Instead, she visited Michael in the hospital almost every day, adding hours to her full schedule.

Our mother was very active in the Community of Christ church. It is easy to remember when she was baptized into the church because she was pregnant with Michelle at the time. (Sidenote: Michelle was baptized into the church when she turned eight, and so she likes to say she was baptized twice – we guess she needed the extra forgiveness).

As poor as the family was, somehow they found a way to pay for dance classes for Barbara and Gail at the House of Leon in Burien. Mom made beautiful dresses for the girls for their big recital.

We will leave out the part where Barbara still begrudges the fact that Mom wouldn’t let her go to the popular teen dance place, The Spanish Castle. One of the regular acts there was Merrilee Rush (of Just Call Me Angel of the Morning fame). Years later, when Michelle interviewed Merrilee for Northwest Prime Time and told her about Barbara’s disappointment, Merrilee said, “Bummer, man.” She closed the conversation with, “Rock on, sister.”

Barbara recalls the time she became very ill after her youngest son, Tyler, was born. Mom came out to care for her and to take care of the two boys. Barbara appreciated how each time she went to the bathroom, she came back to freshly smoothed out bedding and a fluffed-up pillow

Chris Mitchell remembers how sick he became after soft palate surgery for his sleep apnea. He reacted poorly to the anesthetic and was extremely sick for many long days. Mom was always there with his meals, his medicine, and to help him out in every way she could.

One time Dad spent days lovingly refinishing an antique table they bought at an auction. Mom was using a slide viewer on the table to sort through photos. After a while, Carol, Mom, Michelle and Jacob – who was just a little boy at the time – could smell something burning. It was a great, big hole in the newly refinished table. Mom was fond of telling the story and how we tried to get Jacob to understand we were going to surprise his Grandpa later, and that it was a secret, so don’t say anything. Mom found a tablecloth and many items to stack on the table. But the moment his grandfather drove into the driveway, Jacob could not take his eyes off him. He watched him get out of the car, walk across the side yard, walk across the back deck and into the back porch. Despite the fact that Jacob was reminded many times during that long walk about the secret, and let’s not tell Grandpa, the split-second Dad opened that door Jacob blurted out, “Grandma burned a hole in the table!” and then promptly slapped both hands over his mouth.

Mom liked to tell the story about when Trevor and Tyler had come out to stay with them while Barbara and Ken were out of town. When it was time to pick them up at the airport, the flight was very late. Trevor and Tyler were standing by the window, staring out waiting for that plane to arrive. After a while, they concluded that their parents had been killed in a plane crash and they started wondering where they were going to live. Tyler said he was going to sleep with his friend Jeff, who lived right across the street. “Where am I going to sleep,” Trevor wailed. “You can sleep with Jeff’s sister!” Tyler hissed back.

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