At the time of the earthquake, my mother was 22 years old. During the week, she lived in a Seattle apartment and worked as a secretary and hat-check “girl” at the Washington State Press Club in downtown Seattle. On weekends, she returned to Tacoma, where her mother and younger sister lived. She spent the weekend with her two children, Daryl Lee (“DL”) and Alene (“Nene”), who were living on a Tacoma-area farm with Helen, a trusted family friend who cared for them while my father was away. He was in Illinois, training to become an Air Force flight engineer.

My mother’s letter offers a firsthand account of what it was like to experience one of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant earthquakes. Reading her words today provides a vivid reminder that behind every historic event are ordinary people whose lives were changed in extraordinary ways.

They met on a Saturday night in August 1944 at a USO dance held at the Blue Jackets Haven, a recreation center for Navy personnel run by the Oakland Navy Mothers Club in Oakland, California. One week later, swept up in wartime urgency and young love, they were married. My brother arrived the following year on September 2, 1945—just nine days before my mother turned nineteen. She was thrilled to be a mother, though she had no experience with babies. Thankfully, her younger sister, Melva, and my father’s sister, Lucille, stepped in to help.

Despite their deep affection for each other, those early years were marked by hardship. My father left the service in April 1946, and the family moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he opened his own auto repair garage. But stability was short-lived.

In November 1946, when my brother was only fourteen months old, he suddenly became gravely ill and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors determined he had been bitten by an infected tsetse fly—an insect native to Africa, likely carried to the States on a ship. The parasite had entered his bloodstream, causing “sleeping sickness.” He remained hospitalized for a month. My mother, pregnant with me at the time, faced the ordeal with worry and exhaustion.

By the time my brother recovered, and I arrived four months later, the family was struggling financially. In September 1947, pressed by necessity, my father reenlisted—this time in the Army, on September 7. Survival, not stability, guided their decisions.

Four remarkable women played a significant role in my upbringing. My mother was a single mom who worked tirelessly to provide a good life for her two children—my brother, who has special needs, and me. Since she worked two jobs, she enlisted the help of her mother, Lorraine, and a lifelong friend, Mable Loe, who stepped in as my foster mother. These three women supported me throughout the first half of my life, up until I turned 39. As my mother neared the end of her life, she asked her closest friend, Evangeline “Van” Anderson, to take care of me. For the past 34 years, Van has been by my side every step of the way. These four women embody the spirit of Mother’s Day, and I honor and love them all.

I would like to acknowledge and thank a magnificent woman who went beyond her job description and responsibilities to protect our 90-year-old dad. I call her his guardian angel because she saw he needed one and took him under her wing. Alecia deserves a hero’s metal for the care she gave our dad those two days he was under her wing.

Alecia Turner, based in Los Angeles, works as an attendant on the Amtrak sleeper car out of San Antonio. She was working the trip that left Fort Worth, Texas on Wednesday September 10, 2014; the trip dad was taking to come and see me in Portland, Oregon.

In San Antonio, the Texas Eagle unhooks the sleeper cars in preparation for the Sunset Limited to pick up for the trip to Los Angeles. This all happens in the middle of the night. In the process of hooking up there is a lot of noise and jarring of the train. This activity woke up dad who became confused not knowing where he was or what was happening. His first thought was to get off the train but the train was moving.

Alecia was able to keep him from getting the doors open and got him back to his room. From that time forward, she became his friend and guardian. She called me that night to alert me there was a problem and gave her opinion that a man that age should not be traveling alone. Everyone agreed except dad, as far as he was concerned, no one was going to tell him what he could or could not do. Before the trip I told him I would fly to Fort Worth and ride the train with him but he wanted to do it by himself and told me no.

When Alecia and I finally talked, she asked if someone could meet him in Los Angeles because she did not feel he would be safe or watched over on the next leg of his trip. She said if it were her dad, she would be there.

I immediately scheduled a flight and got to Union Station in LA at midnight. She tried to get me a room at the station to sleep in, however it was 9/11, and it was difficult to get special favors. I waited in the waiting room but did not sleep because Alecia and I were in constant contact all night long. She could not get him to sleep more than 10 minutes at a time. One time he called me to say the train was stranded due to a storm. He did not know when they would get there. Alecia sent me a text saying there was no storm.

During the day, she had the privilege of hearing every one of his many stories and they fascinated her. He had a lot of them as a veteran of three wars; World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He started his career just weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He showed her the decorations on his bomber jacket and explained each one. With little sleep over the next thirty hours, she managed to get away for a quick shower and change of uniform. Jane & Gary Creecy and Lois & Ron Borst, two couples in the same sleeper car, became his friends and helped to keep him away from the doors on the moving train. After I connected with dad in Los Angeles on Friday, I had the privilege of meeting them in the VIP lounge while waiting for our connection north to Portland. They were wonderful people and very concerned about dad.

The story has a sad ending though. It became obvious to me rather quickly after The Coast Starlight left LA that dad’s dementia had become more serious since I last saw him in April at his 90th birthday party. As the train proceeded up the California Coastline, he was confused and concerned and told me I was too close to the edge. He said we should be on that freeway across the way. He was convinced that we were going in circles and pointed out trees he had seen earlier. I kept reminding him we were on a train and pointed out the setting sun in the west to convince him we were traveling straight north.

The worse was yet to come. When we got into bed and I turned out the light, he started to complain about the train being in motion and pulled back the curtain to announce it was dark. He insisted the train should stop before it ran head on into another train and kill us all. Finally, he shouted in the hallway of the sleeping car there was a bomb on the train.

The train personnel called the emergency responders in San Jose and they took us off the train. Once off the train, it was as if someone had flipped a switch; he was back to himself and able to answer their questions. He knew the year and the president, his date of birth and social security number. He rattled them off without hesitation. In the emergency room, he kidded around with all his caregivers. After all the testing came back negative, they were unable to determine what was wrong with him. Then something flipped that switch and he became incapacitated once again. He was combative, even swearing some, but once calmed down, he slept all of the next day. It appeared he was getting better; the physical therapist had him sit on the side of the bed and even had him on his feet. He was still unable to talk but the nurse assistant and I each held his hand and talked to him. Dad died peacefully in his room Sunday night when he just stopped breathing.

Dad did not make it to Portland Oregon for a last visit but he died doing what he enjoyed most, traveling. It was because of Alecia I was with him when he died and I will be forever grateful to her.

I don’t remember too much about the visit except what happened Saturday night. I can’t even remember the name of the people we stayed with, but I do remember Saturday night.

At 17, I was a naive and innocent teenager, so when the girl told her parents we were going to a school dance, I thought we were. I remember her brother dropping us off in front of the school, and after he was out of sight, we got into a car with other teenagers and drove off into the woods. I was strictly an innocent bystander. The party in the woods was a kegger, and there were a lot of people there drinking beer. What I remember that Saturday night is meeting a boy named Larry Haas. I don’t remember what attracted me to him, but I remember sitting on a log while he quoted poetry to me.

The poetry was by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I was very impressed with his knowledge of this poet and his poetry; he could recite all of the poems from the book called “A Coney Island of the Mind.”

When the evening ended, Larry asked me if he could drive me back to the house. I explained to him that we had to return to the school, and I needed to be with the people who brought me. And I wouldn’t have gone with him anyway because he had been drinking.

The next morning, when we woke up, the parents of the girl we were staying with said she was sad to see that Larry Haas had died when he drove his car off a winding road.

That is all I remember of the trip; I don’t even remember going home on the bus or how I felt when I got home. I never told anyone about that night, but I’ve never forgotten it. I can’t remember why, but it recently came to mind.

Today, while browsing a charity shop in Toledo, Oregon, I found a little book on the shelf marked “free.”  The book was “A Coney Island of the Mind” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

NEW YORK TIMES, FEB 23, 2021

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet, publisher, and political iconoclast who inspired and nurtured generations of San Francisco artists and writers from City Lights, his famed bookstore, died on Monday at his home in San Francisco. He was 101.