A Harbor herstory lesson
Asked who Grays Harbor is named for, most area residents would be quick to answer, “Robert Gray.”
Harborites also have no problem remembering who founded Aberdeen – Samuel Benn. Some of the schools are named for men who pioneered here – A.J. West, Alexander Young, J.M. Weatherwax.
But were there no women in Harbor history? There most assuredly were, say family members of Emily Airhart, who are gathering this afternoon to celebrate the Aberdeen native and longtime resident’s 80th birthday. Besides feting the family historian, however, they’ll also be launching a women’s history project, which includes biographies of 14 Harbor women – not all of whom were their relatives.
Appropriately, the festivities will take place at the Aberdeen Museum of History, where Mrs. Airhart and her husband Leonard have volunteered from its beginning in the mid-1970s. As a special part of the event, the biographies, including the taped interviews, will be donated to the museum.
Emily Airhart, granddaughter of Polish immigrants Antoni and Anna Malinowski, began compiling her family tree for a reunion in 1973. Circulating family group sheets she developed, Mrs. Airhart has compiled a large binder of family photos and information – referred to by all as “the book.”
“There’s a page for everyone in the family,” says her granddaughter, Lori Carossino. “And she makes copies every time someone new enters the family.”
Mrs. Airhart also updates the book and gives the updates to each family member whenever new information comes along, Carossino says.
When a niece developed a health problem in the 1980s, Mrs. Airhart also researched the family to see if the ailment was hereditary.
A project begins
Last fall, family members were helping at a museum function, when they began discussing a column on women’s history that had appeared in The Daily World.
The conversation “quickly turned to all the amazing women in our own extended family,” Carossino e-mailed recently to the newspaper. “We also began to wonder how we could apply the topic of women’s history to our biggest family events of the upcoming year, our Malinowski family reunion and the 80th birthday of my grandmother, Emily Airhart.
“Thus began our own women’s history project.” Now, “we are launching the Women of Grays Harbor Collection, and we’re dedicating it to Emily Airhart.” Carossino is quick to add that it’s “not that the men never did anything. But it seems like it was the women who kept everyone together.”
Most Harborites would recognize the name of Mrs. Airhart’s uncle, Joe Malinowski, a master mechanic for the City of Aberdeen who gave the Wynooche River water rights to Aberdeen and for whom the Malinowski Dam in the Wishkah Valley is named. “But his wife was the one that was with him in that,” Carossino points out. Elizabeth Malinowski “was just as supportive of the city …”
One of the biographies is that of Elizabeth’s grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Achey, an 1800s artist and prolific painter who lived on the Harbor for several years. Interestingly, Elizabeth was also artistic and was the tinter for the Jones Photo Co. in Aberdeen for years.
‘Tough women’
The women of a century or so ago were much stronger than people today might realize, Carossino adds. Microwaves? Washing machines? Not hardly. It’s difficult enough cooking dinner in the microwave, she says. She can’t imagine living in the days when she would have first had to build the fire, or even chop the wood. “I would have died.” “They were just tough women,” she says. “You couldn’t just pop down to the corner store. “And they still had all the daily dramas and responsibilities that we have.” Moreover, the women “are the people I’ve heard all the stories of our family from,” Carossino says. And many other things.
Her grandmother, for example, was one of Aberdeen’s first teachers aides and worked at Robert Gray Elementary for a quarter-century. All the Airhart children, Kathryn, Nancy, Rebecca and Tony, and their children attended the school. “We all know our multiplication tables because of my grandmother,” says Carossino. She recalls sitting at her grandma’s kitchen table, “with her helping me when I was struggling with it, too.”
“Didn’t hurt ya, did it?,” chimes in Mrs. Airhart, as several members of the family sat chatting at the museum a few days ago.
“It did not,” shoots back Carossino, 32, who completed her student teaching at the same school earlier this year.
Mrs. Airhart’s daughter Nancy Cuyle has also contributed much to the history project, transcribing interviews her mother taped and writing up all but one of the biographies. She also sent preliminary copies to the subjects’ descendants for any additions, corrections or comments they might have.
Just the beginning
Among those subjects are Mrs. Airhart’s grandmother, Anna Malinowski, and Anna’s four daughters, five daughters-in-law and even the grandmother of one of the daughters-in-law. Another, though not related, was a good family friend – Louise Fairbairn, wife of legendary Aberdeen swim coach John “Bus” Fairbairn.
“We thought she was important to the community, so we just did her,” explains Cuyle.
Though homey, Mrs. Fairbairn’s history is moving. Living with her husband in an apartment above the Miller Natatorium, she was the one who “for 50 some years washed all the towels … for football, basketball, track, swimming,” says Cuyle. And she had no dryer.
“And helped Bus around the Natatorium,” Mrs. Airhart adds.
In fact, when her husband was away during World War II, “Louise maintained the football field, the gym, the whole deal while he was gone,” Cuyle says. “She was a one-man army.”
Countless other Harbor women have also contributed to and shaped the area in untold ways. Emily Airhart and her family think it’s time for those stories to be told and hope their project will spur others to do just that. They also suggest making the histories available to the museum – to the folks stopping by there to learn more about the area’s history. An added advantage is that the Grays Harbor Genealogical Society has a small research library there.
In any event, now is the time to start, they say. Every day that passes brings all that precious history one day closer to being lost, possibly forever.
Tommi Halvorsen Gatlin, a Daily World writer, can be reached at 532-4000, ext. 142, or by e-mail at tgatlin@thedailyworld.com
(Admin note: The Collection has grown over the years and numbers over 100. In addition several events with women reading materials written by these women or just telling their stories (in full period costume) have been held, another was ‘storming’ the city council for the ‘right to vote’. It has been a worthy project in the community.)