MY MOM VIRGINIA’S LIFE

     My Mom was born and raised in Anacortes, Washington in 1910. She was the Valedictorian of her high school class and went on to begin her college studies at the University of Washington in Seattle where she studied briefly until she had to drop out in 1931 to go to work at the beginning of the Great Depression. She worked as a waitress for a while and married my father Walter Gauthier in 1932.

After her divorce my Mom moved in with her Aunt Clara on her farm in Lynden Washington where I was born on February 7, 1933. We lived there with Aunt Clara for about two years until my Mom found a childless couple named Larson who were farming on the edge of Bellingham Washington. I stayed with the Larsons for two years while my Mom made and sold sandwiches to beer parlors and poolhalls. The Larsons were very nice to me and I have a few very positive memories of those years with them.

 At that time my Mom began to run a small sandwich shop in downtown Bellingham, and we lived in a one-room apartment directly above it. I went to First Grade from there, about a mile’s walk up the street. The sandwich shop did not do too well so we moved in with a family for cheaper rent and my Mom had to walk a couple of miles down to the sandwich shop. I did not do too well in school and had to go to summer school in order to catch up. I was a pretty unhappy and troublesome kid in those years.

In the meantime, my Mom married a fellow named Chuck, but after a couple of years they divorced. We moved a couple more times during those years. My Mom found a way for me to switch schools to the one run by the local college and I began to love school. My teachers were really good and nice and I stayed in that school all the way through junior high. During those years my Mom was increasingly successful with better small cafés and actually got a job as the manager of a hotel coffeeshop.

We moved into a large, one-room apartment in that hotel which gave me a whole new playground exploring every cranny of the hotel and arranging the banquet room chairs as airplanes. I also explored all the nearby alleys for large cardboard boxes out of which to build forts. My Mom was very busy and successful as the manager of the hotel coffeeshop and banquet schedule but did have time to have a couple of boyfriends and actually married an Army Sargent who was stationed back east. This was during the 2^nd World War.

After the war the three of us moved into a really nice home on the water, but my “Dad” did not like it. He and Mom fought over what to do and finally she left him. Fortunately, she was soon able to open up her own restaurant called “Virginia’s” and it became a roaring success. At last, my Mom was able to be proud of and happy with her life. In addition, after a year at the private Lakeside High School in Seattle, I started doing better in school and my Mom was very proud of me. I even graduated from college while her business continued to prosper. She had a boyfriend or two but never remarried. She was very much loved by her customers and by those who worked for her.

One word that would characterize my mom is generous. In 1943 she took the train from Seattle to New York City to fetch her younger brother who had spent about ten years with Father Divine seeking to be healed from encephalitis. He never was healed. The one-week train journey back to Seattle taking care of her brother who was very tall and nearly unable to walk must have been very difficult. They had no berth and no private baths. She felt strongly that her brother needed to come home. Emory lived for just a few more years. 

Around 1962 my Mom came down with a very aggressive kind of cancer. After struggling with her sickness for a couple of years, she finally died in the Fall of 1964. It was, of course, very sad to see her die after having worked so hard and long, mostly to somehow help and ensure that I might finally actually amount to something.  I know she was very proud of my success as a student and as a college professor. I wink at my photo of my Mom every day and whisper “Thank you.”