Robert Baskett, Issaquah Soldier in Normandy
by John Boland, Historian, US Army Retired
“I don’t care what happens as long as it doesn’t happen to me”
—Robert Baskett’s senior quote in the Issaquah High School 1943 yearbook
Most people in America have heard of World War Two and D-Day; they have seen Tom Hanks storm Omaha Beach and of the herculean struggles of Dick Winters and the men of Easy Company 506th PIR. The untold story of one former Issaquah soldier is the intersection of these two tales and sheds light upon a struggle that is little remembered today. The young man was a senior at Issaquah High School, class of 1943; for some reason he had withdrawn during the second semester. Was it due to the outrage over the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, or just patriotism? He had not yet reached his 18th birthday. Fifteen months later Sergeant Robert C. Baskett, an Infantryman with E Company, 2nd Battalion of the 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division found himself on a French beach at 0630 on June 6th, 1944. He and his troops were among the first of the seaborne assault to set foot upon Utah Beach.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy. This one did not make it that far.
“The landing plan went wrong from the beginning. Strong currents beset the landing craft, and the area was obscured by smoke from the preceding shore bombardment. But the main problem was the loss of three of the four designated control craft to mines. The fourth control craft eventually rounded up the confused landing craft looking for directions and, using a bullhorn for communication, led them in. The force landed 1,800 metres (2,000 yards) east of the designated landing area, in the less-defended Victor sector and almost astride causeway number 2. The assistant division commander, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., quickly realized the error. Uttering his famous remark “We’ll start the war from here!” he ordered the division to advance. Three hours later exits 1, 2, and 3 had been secured, and by 1200 hours contact had been made with paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division around the town of Pouppeville. By the end of the day the 4th Division had pushed inland about 6 km (4 miles), and its westernmost units were within a mile of the 82nd Airborne’s perimeter near Sainte-Mère-Église. For an assault that had begun with such terrible confusion, the Utah Beach landings ended as a spectacular success beyond the most optimistic expectations. The 1,800-metre error had placed the landing force away from the heavily defended area of Les Dunes de Varreville and into a less-defended section of beach. Twenty thousand troops and 1,700 motorized vehicles had landed at Utah with surprisingly few casualties—fewer than 300 men.”[1]
Although the gods of war were merciful to the men of the Eighth Infantry Regiment on that first day, their leniency soon came to an end. That afternoon, pushing inland from Utah beach farther and farther away from the auto repair shop that his father Calvin had owned in Issaquah, Sergeant Baskett may have witnessed Sergeant Elbert E. Legg, a member of the 4th Platoon, 603rd GR Co carefully hammering wooden stakes fashioned from a rations box into the ground in a field near Blosville. They would meet again.
For the next three weeks Sgt Baskett led his men, on foot, northwest from Utah Beach through the harrowing bocage, villages and towns to the critical Allied objective: the port of Cherbourg. This action made possible bringing over General Patton’s Third Army with all of its armored forces. On June 8th SGT Baskett led his soldiers in a battle to seize the French town of Neuville-au-Plain, made notable in the scene from “Saving Private Ryan” in which the French family hands over the little girl to American soldiers.
To accompany the mud and rain was the ever present smell of death and decay. So strong was stench, that it overpowered the sweet smells of the fruit orchards and baguettes.
Although neither Robert nor his men fought in Cherbourg itself, they had the unenviable mission to attack and eliminate determined German concrete and reinforced positions in the towns, hills and hedgerows on the approach to the port. The fierce German defense, withdrawing from one hardened improved position to another, made progress through the hedgerows gut-wrenching.
“On the evening of D+2, the 8th Infantry Regiment and the 505th Parachute Regiment caught two battalions of German troops trying to relieve each other and demolished both battalions, killing approximately 500 men. After the attack, we tried to get some sleep. We had been attacking for almost 72 hours. D+3 found us attacking toward Cherbourg. The count of men at the end of D+3 was fifteen left of our original forty.”
—Harry Bailey, Columbia, S.C. Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, from War Stories, D-Day to the liberation of Paris, Deeds Publishing 2001, 2014, 2019 p.255
No terrain in the world was better made for defensive action with the weapons of World War 2 than the Norman bocage, or “box-country” in French. These hedgerows, mounds of earth to contain cattle and to mark borders of ownership, began in Roman times. Typically there was only one entry into the small field enclosed by the hedges, which were inconsistent in size and set at odd angles. On the sunken roads the brush often met overhead, giving Robert and his men a feeling of being trapped in a leafy tunnel. In every direction they witnessed only walls of vegetation.
“The sunken roads between the hedgerows in Normandy were another dread for drivers. Along with all the above mentioned hazards, hidden anti-tank guns, zeroed in enemy artillery, dead cows, destroyed and burning vehicles, and on many occasions, bodies of those who were victims of war. Some of the dead were American. Seeing enemy dead didn’t bother me. The sight of our own was a different story. I remember one GI I thought I could help. I stopped to see but he had been hit in the head by a shot from a sniper. He was propped against a tree. I cried when I saw a snapshot, presumed to be his wife and two little girls. They looked to be about one and three years old. The picture was fastened inside his steel helmet liner. The shot up helmet was alongside him. Those steel helmets didn’t stop sniper bullets. Something like that is hard to get out of your mind.”
—Former T/5 John K. Lester
Undertaking an attack in the hedgerows was risky, costly, time-consuming, and fraught with frustration—really more like fighting in a labyrinth. Robert’s squad found themselves completely lost a few minutes after launching an attack, at times becoming separated. The small fields limited deployment possibilities; seldom during the first week of battle did a unit as large as a company go into an attack as a complete unit, being forced to attack the hedgerows in smaller units.
Where SGT Baskett and his men got lost, the tenacious Germans were at home. The German 6th Fallschirmjäger (Parachute Infantry) Regiment (the concures of Crete, and warriors of north africa) had been in Normandy for months, training for this clash. Further, the Germans had formulated mechanisms of defense at capitalizing upon the redoubt potentiality of the hedgerows over the past four years. In the early days of the battle, some of Sgt Baskett’s infantrymen may have been killed or wounded because they dashed through the opening into a field, just the kind of aggressive tactics they had been taught, only to be felled by pre-sighted machine-gun fire, artillery, mines, flame throwers, or mortars.
In deciphering Robert’s journey I have set eyes and ears on hundreds of oral histories from the soldiers of the Ivy Division concerning the fighting upon the bocage of the Cotentin Peninsula. One common thread emerges: no one ever told them about the hedgerows.
As though the Germans trying their damndest to shoot, stab, blow up, or drop artillery on his head, hiding from tanks, and avoiding the plethora of land mines all while keeping a group of weary soldiers alert and moving forward through a maze of death were not enough to ask of a nineteen year old sergeant, they had to contend with the rain—the most severe experienced in the area for 50 years. Rivers escaped their banks, transforming into lakes and swamps; streams became swift moving rivers, hampering any plans of a rapid advance. The Germans knew where Robert and his troops would come from, and they were waiting.
Following the liberation of Cherbourg, Robert and his squad spent the 28th and 29th of June patrolling the streets, keeping law and order and dealing with sporadic German holdouts. I wonder if, upon passing the Théâtre de Cherbourg, Robert would regale his teammates with tales of his brief acting career: the Issaquah High all school play “Apron-string Revolt” during his sophomore year. On the next day they headed south, having been relieved by 101st Airborne units.
They loaded trucks and headed south toward Gourbesville to refit, train replacements, and issue replacement gear that had been destroyed or worn out. Their mail may even have caught up with them. I know for a fact that Robert received and sent mail while in Normandy. After 24 days in the maelstrom, they ate hot chow! They may have been temporarily removed from the fire, but life in the frying pan is still hot. They had to maintain security patrols while in the assembly area as the Germans were still in the game.
On the fifth of July, Robert’s unit headed further south to the vicinity of Appeville for one more day out of the hell that was hedgerow combat. Mailing letters, checking their new replacement soldiers, pre-combat checks, going over the plan, rehearsals, last hot meal for a while, and maybe even a warm beer or two.
I don’t know if Robert received letters from a girl waiting for him at home, but I do know that he kept in touch with his mother and father. Cal and Mazie Baskett lived at 210 Williams Street in Renton; Cal had sold his auto service shop in Issaquah and they moved, enabling Cal to be closer to his job as a plant superintendent at the ice plant. The move corresponds with Bob’s withdrawal from Issaquah High.
After moving into their attack position on the 6th of July, the 12th, 22nd, and 331st Infantry Regiments had been attacking along the Periers-Carentan Road, advancing slowly with horrendous losses; one life lost for every yard gained. To break the stalemate the 8th Regiment and SGT Baskett would conduct a night attack, in the rain, across the chest-deep marsh. The men of the 1st Battalion, attacking alongside the second, were subject to a hail of gunfire midway through the bog. They were decimated and had to return to their start point. Robert and his men, on the other hand, found a path through the rancid swamp only to discover in the growing light of dawn that they would also need to withdraw.
The almost constant rain, combined with the flooding of fields by the Germans, kept the GIs wet.
‘The enemy defended organized log and sandbag emplacements with rifle and automatic weapons, utilizing good fields of fire and covering the narrow corridor through which the leading elements had to pass.”
—4th ID AAR (After Actions Report)
For the past 31 days Robert had led his men from the beach, through the hell that is hedgerow fighting. The rain and flooding had created a muddy morass that not only kept their feet sopping but, more alarmingly, it severely limited the effectiveness of the armor and air force. The hedgerows themselves stifled the use of observed artillery fires. This was a medieval infantry fight, and SGT Baskett and the men of the Eight were the infantry. The follows is an extract from the Eighth Infantry Regiment’s 1946 yearbook describing the battle of the hedgerows:
“The hedgerow campaign, where some of the grimmest battles fought by the Eighth Infantry were unfolded, were recorded for American newspaper readers by a grey and gentle reporter, known to hundreds of ‘doughs’ as ‘Ernie’, the late Ernie Pyle. Hedgerows are earthen fences around fields and orchards. Roughly four to eight feet high and three to six feet thick, covered with tangled bushes, they form an obstacle surmountable only with the greatest of courage and the stoutest of heart. Once burrowed under these hedgerows, hidden like rats in the earth, not even a direct hit with a large artillery shell would convince the fanatic Nazi defenders that their positions should be abandoned. Only a grenade in the foxhole or a bayonet in the belly furnished the proof. Each field required an individually planned and coordinated attack. Every Nazi’s foxhole was a miniature fort, to be reduced by grenade and bayonet. A scant hundred yards separated the opposing forces during the infamous hedgerow fighting. From Utah Beach to Cherbourg, from Periers to the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, it was yard by yard, field by field; fire as fast as you could and run like hell to the next hedgerow. Get the supplies and repeat, repeat the grinding sequence, hour by hour, day by day, week by week.”
—Eighth Infantry Regiment 1946 Yearbook
“15 July 1944 – D+39
The 17th SS Panzer Division withdrew under the covering of the 6th Parachute Regiment.
Considerable shelling of the rear areas and increasing numbers of mines found which had been
hastily laid by the retreating enemy. The 8th Infantry launched an attack at 1015 in conjunction
with the 12th Infantry. Upon reaching the objective at 1800, the regiment organized positions for
defense. The 12th Infantry did the same at 2100. The 22nd Infantry remained in assembly area
as a division reserve.”
—4th ID AAR
During this attack, after enduring 39 days in combat, Sergeant Robert Calvin Baskett was felled by German airburst artillery shell fragments, somewhere northeast of the small French village of Raids along the Carenten-Periers road. His body arrived back at Blosville Temporary Cemetery (pictured below), the location he had fought through on route to his initial objective on June 6th. He was laid to rest in a grave, dug by German prisoners, in the cemetery laid out on D-Day by Sergeant Elbert E. Legg. His parents were notified by telegram on August 4th, 1944.
He would lay in rest in the French field until the repatriation of his remains in 1948. He now rests in Issaquah’s Hillside Cemetery beside his father, who had passed away less than six months after receiving the news.
Cal and Mazie Baskett were not alone; 82 other men from E Company, 8th Infantry Regiment, would pay the ultimate price. No man gives his life for his country, he has it violently torn away from him.
Ernie Pyle summed it up in a most fitting manner:
“Some of the men carried grenades already fixed in the ends of their rifles. All of them had hand grenades. Some had big Browning automatic rifles. One carried a bazooka. Interspersed in the thin line of men every now and then was a medic, with his bags of bandages and a Red Cross arm band on the left arm. The men didn’t talk any. They just went.
They weren’t heroic figures as they moved forward one at a time, a few seconds apart. You think of attackers as being savage and bold. These men were hesitant and cautious. They were really the hunters, but they looked like the hunted. There was a confused excitement and a grim anxiety on their faces.
They seemed terribly pathetic to me. They weren’t warriors. They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands sneaking up a death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain. They were afraid, but it was beyond their power to quit. They had no choice.
They were good boys. I talked with them all afternoon as we sneaked slowly forward along the mysterious and rubbled street, and I know they were good boys.
And even though they aren’t warriors born to the kill, they win their battles. That’s the point.”
—Ernie Pyle
***For an interactive map which details Robert Baskett’s journey from Issaquah to Normandy and back again, click here.
Many thanks to the following historians:
- Bob Babcock CEO of Deeds Publishing LLC; Past President/Historian, 4ID Assn
- Michael Belis, DMOR 22nd Infantry Regiment, 22nd Infantry Regiment Society Historian
- Jérémy Andersen Bö, Reenactor in Paris, France
- Gerry W. Howard, Past President, National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association
- Wesley Johnston, Historian, 7th Armored Division Association
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Issaquah Valley Trolley to Cease Operations
IHM to cease Trolley operations due to an increase in program expenses.
June Brides
By Julie Hunter & Erica Maniez
June has traditionally been known as “Bride’s Month.” In today’s era, September and October are popular for weddings, with June coming in third. In past decades, however, many brides traditionally selected June for their wedding month. The month of June derives its name from Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. If you married in June, it was thought that one would be blessed with prosperity and happiness.
We have a variety of wedding portraits from all eras in our collection. Today we’re looking at three different June wedding photographs from our collection.
First is a 1910 bridal portrait of Grace Eastlick in honor of her marriage to Mahlon Settem. The portrait was taken in a studio, and Grace stands in front of a backdrop. Grace is wearing a gown typical of the Edwardian era. It’s a two-piece blouse and skirt set with a bloused bodice. Most brides of this time period – unless well-off – would have used their wedding dress for special occasions for some time afterward. We’re looking at a black and white image, so the dress looks white in the photo, but it probably was not.
Next we have a portrait from June of 1941, just before the start of World War II. Violet Aune and Willam Vaughan probably posed immediately following their wedding ceremony for this picture. Violet is wearing a simple, country wedding dress. The gown is floor length, and is accompanied by a chapel-length veil. Her generous bouquet makes it hard to see what’s happening with her sleeves.
In our final wedding portrait, Rachel Guetzlaff and Robert Nova pose in front of an altar at their outdoor garden wedding in 1971. Rachel’s dress is made of “crepe backed satin,” which is a synthetic fabric. It has a yoked lace bodice, puffed upper sleeves, and a floor-length skirt – demonstrating an excellent example of the “granny dress” style that was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to the wedding announcement, Rachel’s aunt made the dress “in the style” of the bride’s mother’s dress from 1934.
Were you married in Issaquah, either in June or any other season? Email us at info@issaquahhistory if you’d like to contribute a wedding picture to our collection of community artifacts.
Henry Smith & the Ill-fated Gilman Hotel
By Doug Bristol, Volunteer & Mine Hike Leader
In hindsight, some people should have chosen different careers. But, of course, they don’t know it at the time. This can certainly be said of the career of Henry Smith of Issaquah. Henry came to Issaquah in 1895, and built a “residence” hotel to cater to the coal miners of this pioneer community. There were many such hotels in the Issaquah of that era.
The first problem that Henry ran into was that about the time that he finished his hotel, the coal miners of Issaquah went on strike. Many of them left town. Henry had a great hotel, but a severe lack of guests to fill its rooms. Henry put his hotel up for lease, and it was eventually let to a Mrs. John Foster. Mrs. Foster is a bit of a mystery. But she obviously had a plan to make money using Mr. Smith’s hotel. She was still leasing the hotel from Henry in early 1898, so her plan, whatever it was, must have been working.
But on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1898, both Mrs. Foster’s lease and Henry Smith’s luck abruptly ran out. In the late morning hours of that fateful day, the Gilman hotel caught fire. Guests had to flee in their underclothes. The fire was so intense that for a time many buildings, including the train depot (known that year as the O&I – Oregon and International), were threatened with destruction. There was a real fear that the entire town would be swept away by the conflagration.
Just down the street from this hotel was Coopers Roost, a hotel and drinking establishment where out of work coal miners could buy booze and drink it at an outdoor patio on the corner of what is now Front St. and Sunset Blvd. There were plenty of men drinking there that day, but they were either too drunk or too disinterested to help fight the fire that could easily have burnt down their town.
Thanks to the efforts of Miss Helen Simpson, a bucket brigade of town women was organized, and through their efforts they kept the fire from spreading to other nearby buildings. The men of the town just sat around and watched (and drank). The Gilman Hotel burned to the ground, but was fully insured. Mr. Smith presumably collected his insurance money, but he never rebuilt his hotel, and left town several years later.
The destruction of his hotel, and the lackluster support of the men of Issaquah, should perhaps have been omens for Mr. Smith that he might be in the wrong profession. Maybe being a hotelier wasn’t what he should be doing. But hindsight is 20/20, and Mr. Smith moved to Portland, Oregon. He built a new hotel in that city, and probably in homage to his original beloved hotel up north, and wanting to carry on the name, named it the Gilman Hotel. The 4-story hotel opened in 1909.
But once again, fate took a hand in Henry Smith’s life. In the early morning hours of Monday, February 26, 1912, his second Gilman Hotel burned to the ground. One person died of a heart attack. One person jumped to his demise from a fourth floor window, and late in the day it was determined that 3 others were missing. His second Gilman Hotel was not insured, and this put Henry out of the hotel ownership business permanently. He went to work in a clothing factory. Thankfully, as far as I can tell, the clothing factory did not burn down. It seems only hotels held bad luck for poor Henry Smith. After the burning of his second hotel, Mr. Smith disappeared from history.
The Tale of Ole Bergen
By Doug Bristol, Volunteer & Mine Hike Leader
Ole Bergen (also written as Berger and Bergan) caught my attention because of his long history of coal mining in Issaquah, and the fact that he left home when he was 14, as did I. He was a fun loving guy from all accounts, and wasn’t opposed to “bending” (not to the breaking point) the law when it suited his purposes. He once told a judge that he wasn’t breaking the law, he was just “liberally interpreting” it. In Ole’s opinion, laws were more a set of “guiding principles” rather than strict dictums.
Ole was born in Norway in 1873. Leaving home at age 14, he worked in several coal mines in the Spitsbergen mountains. Although coal mining would continue there for the next 120 years, it would do so without Ole. He didn’t like the cold arctic temperatures, the terrible working conditions, or the low pay in the mines of Norway. He felt that he could have a better (and warmer) life in the United States. At the age of 17, travelling alone, he boarded the good ship C.V. Island in 1890, and sailed for America.
The ship dumped Ole off in New York, and he got a job working in a railroad yard. He had very little money, and didn’t much like working in the cold New York winter weather any more than he liked Norway. Being a coal miner, he no doubt considered where he could work where the weather was more pleasant, and came up with the Pacific Northwest. But how to get there……
Ole couldn’t help noticing that he worked in a railroad yard. He saw all these trains leaving New York for various places, some of which were places he wanted to go. I’m sure that in Ole’s opinion, since the train was going to Seattle whether he paid to get on board or not, he might as well hop into a freight car and go for a ride courtesy of the railroad. Hiding in freight cars, eating what he could find aboard, he managed to get to Illinois. He worked in a coal pit mine there for a year, and then, we hope, bought a ticket to Seattle and arrived in style in 1893.
Issaquah and Newcastle were where the coal mines were operating, and for reasons unknown to us Ole chose Issaquah. He began work at the Issaquah mine, located across the creek from town. He was to work there, off and on, for the next 11 years.
The bridge over Issaquah Creek to the park, where Ole Bergen worked as a guard.
When Ole started working at the mine, no miners were needed, but he got a job as Bridge Guard. He was posted at the bridge across Issaquah Creek to keep unauthorized people out of the mining property. The city had a park on the east side of the creek, and the mining company had a much nicer park on the west side of the creek. Although there were strict rules allowing only miner’s families to use the mining company park, Ole saw those rules as guiding principles only, and had a tendency to let anyone he liked cross the bridge and use the company park. When the company discovered this, Ole lost his job as Bridge Guard. He went to work for the Cedar Mountain Mine in Maple Valley.
In 1896, there was a fire at the Cedar Mountain Mine, and Ole was credited with dragging several unconscious miners to safety, thus saving their skins. The local Cedar Mountain paper praised Ole as a hero, and, indeed, he was a hero. We don’t know this for sure, but perhaps his new reputation for bravery in the face of danger impressed the operators of the Issaquah Mine, because a year later Ole was working at Issaquah as a coal miner.
Ole never married, and was a boarder in many of the local hotels in Issaquah. When one mine would go on strike, he would get a job in another mine. In his career he worked in coal mines from Bellingham to Roslyn to Renton to Issaquah, wherever he could find a job. But mostly he worked in the mines around Issaquah.
Ole must have tired of living in hotels, because eventually he bought himself an acre of land near where Issaquah’s water storage tanks were situated. At the time, this was below the ridge where Lake Tradition sits just east of town. Ole needed drinking water, and there were these two big tanks full of drinking water, and Ole sat down and pondered exactly how he could resolve this dilemma, and eventually devised a plan, which will be revealed later in our story.
Ole loved to hunt, and what he loved to hunt most was deer. Ole knew that there were strict rules about hunting season, but he obviously felt these were more guiding principles rather than strictly enforced laws, and hunted deer under his more liberal interpretation of these rules. To avoid trouble with the law, and since deer were always wandering around town back in those days, a mysterious “someone” would shoot the deer from a well concealed hiding place. The deer would drop in its tracks along Front St or Mill St., and pretty quickly, Ole, who lived nearby, would magically appear with a skinning knife, and make short work of the deer. This became somewhat of a running joke in Issaquah, but it was not funny to the local game warden, namely one John Reif.
Now John Reif was nobody’s fool, and hadn’t just fallen off the vegetable wagon as it hit town. He knew exactly what was going on, and exactly who was doing it. His only problem was catching Ole in the act. Ole was very cagey, and very careful, and it was surely very frustrating for Reif. So, in November 1914, he hatched a little plan.
The plan involved corralling a deer in the woods, and waiting for Ole to take his prized bloodhounds out for their daily run. Ole always took his rifle with him, just in case something or someone wanted to attack him. The dogs’ normal practice was to run down to the shore of Lake Sammamish, and then run back to Ole waiting by Issaquah Creek. But on this day when Ole released his hounds, John released his deer, and the chase was on. It was simply too much for old Ole to resist. He undoubtedly surveyed the area, saw no one, and went after the deer. His dogs chased it into the shallows of Lake Sammamish, Ole let go with his trusty rifle, and then went into the water and dragged the hapless deer back to shore. He was greeted upon his return to land by none other than Warden Rief. John had been lurking about in the trees out of sight, waiting for Ole to wade back to shore. Ole was caught red handed, and Reif slapped on the cuffs. (It is unclear what happened to the deer). The headline in the Seattle Times screamed:
Ole’s argument at trial was that he had been entrapped by the law. He claimed that the town was overrun with deer, that the deer in question had charged him, and that thanks to his trusty rifle, his life was saved and the town was rid of a dangerous animal. The Judge didn’t buy it, and fined Bergen $25.00 plus court costs.
So, Ole was finally brought to justice, of a sort. His claim that he had been entrapped by the law was certainly true, but it was impossible to prove. Ole went to the court clerk and paid the fine.
Ole continued to mine coal, and from what we can find (or couldn’t find) in old records, stayed out of trouble, or at least was never caught doing anything wrong……but, oh yes, the drinking water mentioned above. Here is the rest of that story.
Ole Bergen’s shack, circa 1941
Ole died on January 14, 1938. On July 7th, 1941, his property was sold to Mr. T.F. Keefe. When Mr. Keefe was in the process of tearing down the old cabin so he could build a new home, he found, of all things in this old shack, a water faucet. This, in Mr. Keefe’s mind, meant that there was a heretofore unknown well on the property from which Ole got his water. WRONG! When the pipe was traced, Mr. Keefe found that sometime in the distant past Ole had installed a well disguised tap in one of the city’s water tanks, and had been getting free water from the city for at least 20 years. Ole apparently saw no harm in taking a little water from the city. They had so much and he had so little, and he was probably still bitter about the whole deer entrapment incident. Ole is buried in an unmarked grave in Hillside Cemetery in Issaquah Washington.
David Edmonds
By Doug Bristol, Volunteer & Mine Hike Leader
Events large and small were transpiring around the world on May 13th, 1900. Police in Bombay fired on a mob, killing 11 and wounding 16 others. Russia shipped 100,000 workers from China to Manchuria to construct the rail line to Port Arthur. In Paris, a bomb placed under the carriage of the country’s finance minister exploded, but neither he nor his wife were hurt… and in Issaquah Washington, the Superintendent of the Issaquah Coal Mine had disappeared.
Superintendent David Edmonds was born in Wales. He came to America when he was only 7 years of age. Abandoned by his family, he suffered a hard life being raised in various orphanages. But he overcame these trials, and in 1882 was accomplished enough to be appointed State Mining Inspector for Washington. He held this position for 8 years.
Bridge over Issaquah Creek, circa 1889. (IHM 72-21-14-180)
In 1888 he was appointed Superintendent of the Issaquah Coal Mine. Production was just ramping up with the arrival of the Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern railroad. David arranged for a road to be built to the mining camp from town, and supervised the first bridge across Issaquah Creek as part of that road.
But the position of Superintendent was a stressful one at this time. The United Mine Workers Union was saber-rattling about a possible strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Miners were threatening to burn down the mine buildings. Guards hired by the company patrolled the mine property armed to the teeth. Resolving these issues, and keeping production moving, fell directly on David Edmond’s shoulders.
David had contracted Typhoid Fever in 1887, and barely survived the illness. It left him a permanently weak invalid. Still, he struggled on and did the best job he could, calming down both miners and union organizers and keeping coal production going.
But David’s friends and family were worried about him. In several conversations he spoke of the responsibility and duty of a person who was unable to take care of himself to die and not be a burden to his family. He made several references at different times about “winding up ones affairs” and “wrapping things up.” Still, he seemed happy at family functions and carried on his job, so people thought things were okay.
But they weren’t okay. His increasing pain made it necessary for him to resign his position as mine superintendent. His declining health made it impossible for him to get another job. He knew that if he died within one year of leaving the mines, the company would pay his salary to his widow for a period of one year.
David Edmonds, circa 1898.
On May 5, 1900, David Edmonds disappeared. A massive search turned up nothing. Then there was a report that he had been seen in Yakima Washington. But on May 7th his body was found in woods near Seattle. He had taken his own life.
David had done his part getting the coal mines of Issaquah up and running. He hired the miners. He built the roads. He ordered the mining equipment. He kept the lid on the proverbial kettle, mediating between the miners and the mining company. But he did it at the cost of his health, his family, and his future. It’s a sad end to a small piece of Issaquah mining history and the building of the town. Had Edmonds lived today, help would have been more available to him, as we better understand the impacts of chronic pain and depression on mental wellness.
David Edmond’s funeral was held on May 15th, 1900. It was attended by over 150 people, including the current governor, John Rankin Rogers. Edmonds was laid to rest in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle.
Bob Gray and the Church Without a Church
By Jean Cerar, IHM Volunteer
The recent death of Bob Gray was a reminder that Issaquah was once home to an unconventional church. The Pine Lake Presbyterian Church, where Gray was pastor, never owned a building and turned its efforts toward serving the community. In an oral history he completed for the Issaquah History Museums in 2006 Gray recalled his days with the church.
“I came here [in 1966]. It was unusual that I not only organized the church but then I was called to be minister on a full-time basis. And I stayed for 25 years, which is unusual.” Soon after arriving Gray started to communicate to the congregation “that I had a different concept of the church. The primary one was the church was people and not buildings.” The church met on Sundays at Providence Heights (later the Lutheran Bible College). All other meetings were held in people’s homes.
“We began to look around at what we thought might be needed in the community. …I thought that we needed to find ways to bring people together. … The first thing we did involved the Issaquah Theater. … We’d bring films to the theater that had some substance that would provide for the opportunity for discussion. We called it ‘Forum Theater.’”
“We eventually took over the theater when the owner decided to retire. However, … before we did that, we started a bookstore across the street. … We called it the Forum Bookstore. We wanted it to be a kind of drop-in center, where people could sit and have a cup of coffee and talk. … We turned the place into a coffeehouse on Friday nights. … We’d have book readings and speakers.”
“In 1970 Boeing hit a low spot and laid off 35.000 people. … An organization formed in the Seattle area called ‘Neighbors in Need.’ I was asked to come to a meeting, and I ended up forming the food bank in Issaquah.” It was run by volunteers from Pine Lake Presbyterian, and then volunteers from other churches joined in. A clothing bank followed.
“We started an emergency financial aid program. … Money came from about five churches. I had the checkbook.” At first there were referrals, then people simply started showing up at Gray’s office. Eventually, “the whole organization got together – the emergency aid program, the food bank, the clothing bank – and that became Issaquah Valley Community Services.”
The church’s most unusual project involved setting up a lab in 1976 for member Ruth Shearer, who had a Ph.D. in molecular genetics. Twelve people in the church became the board of directors. It is now the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Seattle.
“I saw a lot of things happening here that I had hoped would happen, in regard to people getting together and developing things like Salmon Days. And I didn’t really have a part in that. But the church did.” It had a booth that raised funds for the Eastside Sexual Assault Center for Children, which Gray helped start.
“I’ve talked about my doing things, but it was always with other people in the church.” All the group’s projects were staffed by volunteers. Considering that the congregation never grew beyond 121 members, Pine Lake Presbyterian’s impact on the community was far beyond its size.
Bob Gray was elected to the Issaquah Hall of Fame in 1989. He retired in 1991. At the request of the few remaining members, the church was dissolved in 2000.
Issaquah’s “Lady Mayors”
While Issaquah’s first woman mayor was referred to disparagingly as a “lady mayor,” she set a precedent for other women who would run for — and attain — the office of mayor.
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