riememoir21.indd

Rie's Memoirs

RIE MUÑOZ

8/17/1921 - 4/6/2015

Rie’sMemoirs

BY RIE MUÑOZ

I was born in Van Nuys, California on August 17, 1921, of Holland

Dutch parents. My father, Pierre Jean Jacques Mounier, and my mother,

Maria Engelina Christina Reynders Mounier, were both born in Holland. My

dad worked for a Dutch magazine and traveled often to the U.S. for extended

periods of time. My mother told me that when I was six weeks old they

carried me to Holland in a wicker basket. She also mentioned that around

that time sanitary napkins had been invented in America. So, along with me,

she brought back several boxes of Kotex. When she went through customs in

Rotterdam, the oﬃcial asked her, “What are these?” She blushed so intensely

that he asked no further.

My very ﬁrst memory is of Holland—being pushed through the snow by my

mother in a perambulator with runners instead of wheels. e moon shone

through the trees. Another early memory, also in Holland, is of waking up

suddenly, my mother at my bed, frantically fussing with my bedding and

calling out to my father in the living room, “ere’s a mouse running over her

face!”

I have vague memories of falling out of a neighbor’s tree and of voyages

across the Atlantic on steamships. When we were little kids we were served

our dinner meal several hours before the adults. Presumably, we were put to

bed or maybe to a playroom, supervised of course.

Rie with brothers Piet and Frits

Rie’sMemoirs

My father was a good artist, even though he never pursued it. And I

inherited his talent. Beginning in my early childhood, I liked nothing

better than drawing. Often when other kids would be outside

playing, I would be on my parents’ bedroom ﬂoor on my knees with

a sheet of paper, drawing. I drew all sorts of things, but my favorite

subjects were horses and beautiful princesses with crowns on their

heads. I must have drawn hundreds and hundreds of them. My

princesses were easier to draw than the horses, by far.

When I started ﬁrst grade in Van Nuys Elementary School, we had

speciﬁc orders of subject matter to draw, and my horse and princess

period came to an end. But my drawing and painting continued. I

learned to paint with oil paints and began to give lots of my paintings

away, especially to family members, all of which would disappear

from their wall after a while or when I presented them with a new

one. It was perfectly OK with me. Frankly, I was surprised when they

hung them up in the ﬁrst place. My parents were very nice people

and always encouraged me to paint.

Like me, my brothers Piet and Frits were born at home, which most

of the kids were at that time. We lived on Kitrich in Van Nuys, a

street lined with lovely cork trees. Later, we moved to another house

on Kitrich Street, where my father planted a tiny evergreen tree in

the center of the front lawn. e last time I saw the tree it was at least

50 feet tall. Is it still standing? I think so. Also, at this same address, I

met my ﬁrst boyfriend. His name was Kenneth, and we spent many a

day on our tricycles going up and down the sidewalk. We also had a

ﬁg tree in the back yard. We climbed up and sat on the high branches

of the tree and ate yummy fresh ﬁgs when they were in season.

We were always pestered by thousands of ants, which my mother

thought she was keeping under control by pouring boiling water

down the ant holes.

Rie’sMemoirs

Some Early Memories

M y father had several dozen chickens that we kept for eggs.

Periodically, he would slaughter one by laying its head and neck on

the chopping block and axing oﬀ the head. en, miracle of miracles,

the chicken would crazily run around for 10 or 20 seconds headless.

Hence the saying!

Once a year, a man with a pony would go from house to house. For a

nickel or so, children could sit on the pony so that parents could take

photos of the fun.

Piet and friend, 1938

“Oomi” Anton and “Tante” Akke (Dutch for aunt and uncle, even

though they technically weren’t) would visit. According to our

parents, we would always run over to them for a good hug, excitedly

asking, “When are you leaving? When are you leaving?” It was our

awkward way of asking, “How long are you staying?”

My other clear memory of that period is of my best and only

girlfriend in the neighborhood. e only girl of my age, she was

rather skinny and had a bad hand from when she had caught it in

a clothes wringer sometime before I met her. It had been badly

damaged, but her parents didn’t believe in doctors. Several times I

went with my friend to her house and no one was ever there. I never

met her parents, or her siblings, if she had any. We would go to the

kitchen and each take a slice of bread and butter. (ese were the

days before margarine.) We would add a slice of raw onion and eat it.

I have very fond memories of those sandwiches.

Rie’sMemoirs

I am a great admirer of dogs and have had one with me most of my

life. Once when I was young, our dog went to his reward, and my dad

came home with a new puppy. “What shall we name him?” he asked

us three children. “Bozo!” one of us piped in. Since Bozo had been

the name of our dog who had just died, it seemed appropriate. So,

“Bozo” he became. We went on to have four or ﬁve dogs, all named

“ B oz o .”

Another very

important memory

is the Crystal

Swimming Pool,

to which a large

amount of chlorine

was added to keep

the water “pure.”

is eﬀort worked

very well; however

it did have an eﬀect

on frequent “toe-

headed” swimmers,

like my brothers and

me. “Toe-headed,”

along with “fair

haired” and “ﬂaxen-

haired,” used to be a

common way to refer to blonde-haired and light-skinned children.

By the time school started again in the fall, after a long hot summer

at the Crystal Pool, we toe heads had turned into light green heads,

thanks to the active qualities of chlorine. By Christmas, we had

morphed back into our old toe-headed selves.

My brother Frits tried to save my life one day at the Crystal Pool

when three “big” girls swam over to where I was ﬂoating on an inner

tube. ey asked if they could have the inner tube. I let them have it

and started to swim over to the edge of the pool. I didn’t quite make

it, and down I went several times. Frits grabbed me and, in my state

of panic, I pulled him under also. e life guard pulled us both out.

Rie with Bozo, 1939

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Sherman Oaks

L ater, we moved to Sherman Oaks, to a house on Willis Street,

which was about the length of three city blocks. At the dead end

there was a river that most of the year had about 18” of water in it

and ran all of the way to Ventura Boulevard—today, a busy main

highway from Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley.

When we lived on Willis Street, there were only three houses, and

we were in the middle. I seemed to recall that my Dad had the

three houses built and rented or sold the other two. Behind our

back yard was a small apricot orchard and, beyond that, a larger

walnut orchard. is far orchard butted up to Ventura Blvd. During

summers, my brothers would sometimes set up a fruit stand with an

umbrella for shade. ey would make a sign advertising their fruit

and nuts and tack it to a self-standing ladder. It was on Willis Street

that I learned how to ride a bike. My older brother, Frits, held the full

size bike as I nervously mounted. He gave me a huge push and yelled

after me, “Keep pedaling!” I did, until I approached the river, when I

simply fell oﬀ and walked the bike back home. Subsequently I learned

how to use the brakes.

While at school I learned I was a slow reader. During our reading

period, each child had to read a paragraph. I would count the

children in rows ahead of me, then I would count paragraphs and

ﬁgure out which one I would have to read. I would study it until my

turn came. Periodically, I would miscount and end up stumbling

through my turn.

One fascinating Sherman Oaks resident was known as the “King of

the Gypsies.” Annually on his birthday, gypsies would come from

far and near to honor him on the big day. My uncle, Tony Reynders

(my mother’s brother) lived in the general area and operated a gas

station. He told us the gypsy cars would be loaded with numerous

children of all ages, perhaps grandparents, and the family dog. When

it came time to pay for the gas, the driver and adult passengers would

dig through their respective pockets, handing over small coins.

ey were probably hoping Uncle Tony would grow impatient and

tell them to be on their way. But, no—Uncle Tony knew their game

and waited until the bill was properly settled. Alas, I never saw the

gypsies. Or Edgar Rice Burroughs, for that matter.

Rie’sMemoirs

On Sundays, we would all pile in the car and go for the customary

“Sunday drive.” Our favorite drive was to take the car over the ridge

route to Bakersﬁeld to see the poppies, which turned the usual

brown or green hills into bright orange. One time, only a mile or less

out of Bakersﬁeld, an old junker pulled over to the side of the road

ablaze! All of the gear, from pots and pans to boxes, mattresses and

other household items, was piled up safely several yards from the ﬁre.

Alongside the road, members of the unfortunate family were going

from car to car as they passed, asking for money. Most sympathetic

onlookers gave.

My father explained that this family was one of many from the Dust

Bowl area. ey had lost most everything and had packed up and

found a place to resettle at Bakersﬁeld. All they had after the ﬁre

was the belongings on the side of the road and the money they had

received from people passing by.

Both my brothers, Frits and Piet, had paper routes at this time. Frits

went by bike to deliver the Times or Examiner and Piet by foot.

I think it was the Examiner that would give their delivery boys

free round trip tickets to Catalina Island once per year if they got a

certain amount of new subscribers. My brothers always succeeded

and were rewarded round trips for the entire family. We would go by

passenger ship, the SS Catalina or the SS Avalon, and would always

see ﬂying ﬁsh en route. Catalina Island was owned by Mr.Wrigley of

Wrigley’s chewing gum.

I joined Piet on his paper routes periodically because I loved making

friends with the dogs. Sometimes Piet would have to wait while I

made the acquaintance of a surly dog.

e famous 1932 earthquake struck when we lived on Willis Street.

We all ran outside, as we were trained to do. Our neighbor to the

right had an Irish setter who, in his panic, crazily ran at great speed

around his house again and again. I decided to grab him and try to

soothe him as he raced by me. e frantic dog bit me on the wrist.

I still have the scars 77 years later. It was also in Sherman Oaks that

I started school in Van Nuys. I got a black eye the very ﬁrst day of

school when a door knob hit me as it was being opened from the

other side.

Rie’sMemoirs

The 1932 Depression

O ne day on Willis Avenue, our father gathered us and said, “ere

is a depression on. at means we have very little money. We must

all work together to use as little money as possible. at means no

more Sunday drives.” One of us said, “We can go for walks instead,”

at which point my dad said, “Shoe leather costs money, too.” We

knew this was serious. I have no memory if my dad lost our house

or possibly all three houses. Perhaps they were sold. In any event we

shortly were packing for our train trip across country to New York,

where we boarded a Holland America Line ship and went back to

Holland.

Travel

I n my young life, we

traveled to California

and Holland and back

again at least a dozen

times. e trips, of

course, were always by

steamship—most often

on the Holland America

Line, but at least once

on the English Line.

When we were all three

small, we would attend

the children’s dinner at

5:00p.m. with the other

youngsters and toddlers,

accompanied by a

parent. ereafter, the

children would be put

to bed in the stateroom,

and the adults would have

dinner at 7:00.

Frits, Rie and Piet with their parents,

getting ready to embark on a

freighter to the US)

Rie’sMemoirs

We three always loved crossing the Atlantic because the ships were

so lovely and everyone spoiled us rotten. ere were play rooms

that had slides and all sorts of toys and games. e “short” Atlantic

crossing was ﬁve days of sheer pleasure and yummy food. e

exception was when we got seasick on the rough seas. At that time,

the crew would string out lines all over the interior of the ship to

hold on to while walking down the halls.

e round dining room tables had wooden barriers in the shape of

an apple-pie cut in six serving slices to prevent dishes and everything

from sliding to one’s lap. e doors leading to the deck were kept

locked during those occasions. I was always the ﬁrst one of the three

to get seasick; Piet was next and Frits hardly ever did. Neither did our

father. My mother, yes. However, after a half day or so, the sea would

calm down a bit. We would get our sea legs back, and the fun and

joy would start all over again. e ropes would come down and the

barriers removed from the dining room tables until another storm

hit.

Greyhound Bus

W hen our ship arrived in New York, we would take a train across

country to California. In later years, we rode a Greyhound bus,

sometimes both ways to New York or the West Coast. To keep three

young children amused or at least somewhat content, we would be

taken to the “5 & 10” store to select anything we wished for our trip.

I remember one year we all three bought Jew’s harps and played

them on the three-day cross country trip. Another year I bought a

little counter bell to ring to call a salesperson. I would amuse myself

endlessly by ringing the bell every time I saw a Texan on horseback.

Or a blue car. Or a dog. In the desert or in areas where there was

nothing worthy of bell ringing, I would ring the bell for every

telephone pole. I was totally oblivious to the feelings of other bus

passengers. Evidently, so were my parents!

When in Holland, we kids all jumped for joy when our parents

announced “We’re going to America!” To me it meant saddle shoes

and soda crackers. In America, we all jumped for joy when our

parents announced “We’re going to Holland!” Holland was our real

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home, where we had grandparents and other relatives. It had gezellig

(gemutlich in German). ere is no such English word and is hard to

translate—it refers to a kind of ambiance or convivial atmosphere.

Bussem

F or a while we lived in Bussem, in a new development adjacent to

the ancient walled city of Naarden. Here, farmers who lived within

the walled city had their farmland and grazing land outside the walls.

e back of our house abutted farmland where tulips were raised

commercially for export. Beyond, stood an active windmill. In the

spring, this huge acreage burst into bloom with large rectangles

of every color of tulip imaginable. Soon, itinerant workers would

come and nip oﬀ all the ﬂowers to be tossed in very large piles. e

result, the ﬁelds themselves were green again, interspersed with what

looked like brightly colored haystacks. One would be a red stack,

next a white stack, blue stack, black, yellow, green, and so on. In the

background, the windmill would be spinning.

No Lady

W e had an aunt who lived nearby. One day my aunt told my

mother that once when she had returned home from doing a few

errands in town, her maid had told her someone had come by to

visit—and that the person was “no lady.” After learning who it was,

my aunt asked the maid why she had said the person was not a lady.

“Because,” the maid answered, “she was wearing brown shoes with a

black coat!”

Rie’sMemoirs

Boy Friends

K enneth was a little boy who road tricycles with me when we

were just out of toddler age, my ﬁrst special friend. He grew up,

married, and moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). I had another

friend whose name I can’t recall, but I remember he was very tall and

skinny, like me. He was our neighbor when we lived on the outskirts

of Den Haag, also known as the Scheven Hague. He was probably

about 14 and I about 13. We and a bunch of other neighbor kids all

hung out together on the quiet street where we lived. One day, there

was a knock on the door and it was HIM. I said “Hi” and invited

him in, yelling over to the kitchen to my mother that it was HIM.

She came in, greeted him and invited him to a seat. I sat down, too,

but didn’t really know why he was there. He was very bashful. My

mother bravely tried to keep the conversation going. After about ﬁve

minutes, I got up, walked to my room, and started on my homework.

About 10 minutes later, I practically jumped out of my chair when

my mother barked from below…RIE! COME HERE! e long and

the short of it was that he had come to see me! Dense me, sigh.

A few days later, he asked me to go to a masquerade party that his

dancing class was giving. At that time, many children went to dance

class. I, too, attended a dance class once a week where we learned

the fox trot, waltz, tango, rumba, and, I think, the Lambeth walk.

Anyhow, I accepted his invitation—my ﬁrst date, very exciting. I was

going as a “Scotch girl” or lassie. My mother made me a lovely wool

plaid kilt and, with it, I wore all the appropriate trappings. e whole

family, including myself, felt that I looked great. My date arrived as a

chimney sweeper—all in black, including a decrepit black top hat. He

had some soot on his hands and face. My father drove us to the Ball.

When we arrived, it turned out the masquerade was the following

week! Being young teenagers, we were terribly embarrassed. As we

turned to leave, everyone said, “No, stay! Dance and have fun!” We

did and had a lot of fun. at was the one and only “date” we had.

at was ok with me and, obviously, with him also.

Rie’sMemoirs

School

W e lived in Waasenaar but went to school in e Hague. We road

our bikes to school, which took us about 25 minutes. Most of the

route took us on a bike trail through the woods that separated the

two towns. Piet and Frits went to a boys’ school and I went to a girls’

school that wasn’t far from where my grandmother lived. e school,

located “downtown,” had no playground, only a cemented area in

front. Large buildings loomed on both sides of the cemented area,

and here we all walked during recess, two or three abreast in a large

oval. About halfway through recess time, the teacher would come

out and blow her whistle. At that point, we would all turn around

and walk in the other direction until recess was over. I remember

two teachers. Miss Cigar was our Home Economics teacher. I

remember her unusual name and that she had dirty ﬁngernails. e

other teacher, whose name I don’t recall, taught history. She would

act out all the famous people of history during her lectures. One

minute she would be Napoleon directing his generals in some battle,

then she’d jump over to the generals’ side, looking back at Napoleon

and acknowledging his direction. History was lots of fun and

certainly interesting.

The Queen

W hile still in Holland, I remember seeing Mother Beatrix, Queen

of Holland. We caught a glimpse of her numerous times, on special

days like her birthday. Annually, when “Congress” convened, she

and her entourage of a hundred or so soldiers dressed to the hilt on

horseback would ride through the streets. e queen, in a golden

carriage pulled by eight stunning horses, waved her forearm and

hand to her cheering subjects. I was in great awe of the whole

procession.

Rie’sMemoirs

A Drunk

A lso while in Holland, I saw my ﬁrst drunk. My brothers and

I were playing catch with a tennis ball on our very quiet street. I

missed catching the ball and chased after it down the street. Far in

the distance, I saw a man walking next to his bike, coming our way.

Several more times I missed the ball, and each time he was a little

closer. en I missed the ball again, and there he was staggering and

smelling something awful. We quit playing ball then and went inside.

He staggered on.

Scheveningen and Wassenaar

S cheveningen is a beach town near the Hague and also near

Wassenaar, where we lived. Now and again we went to the

Scheveningen beach. e beach was separated in large sections.

If you were a single female, you had to stay in that section. It was

separated in the middle for married couples with or without

children. e far section was for single men. As I recall, there were

no boundaries once in the water. One could rent wonderful rattan

beach chairs shaped somewhat like a peanut in a shell. Of course, we

always sat in the family section. Swimming was so-so. ere were no

real waves to bob up or down on. e water was just about always

cold and, worse yet, if the wind came in toward land, you had to look

out for the jelly ﬁsh that would sting badly if you came in contact

with the tentacles.

Still, we loved going to the Scheveningen. Once a year, they would

have a wonderful ﬁreworks display on the beach. My memory of

one of those exciting evenings stays with me. I still shudder to think

about it. Our family was together in a crowded area. My mother was

holding on to my hand; the other was getting cold, so I stuck it in

my coat pocket. ere was a strangers hand in there! A big one that

instantly withdrew. Period!

Rie’sMemoirs

Oma

O ma was my father’s mother. She lived in e Hague and had

an upstairs apartment. On the main ﬂoor lived two maiden

ladies, sisters probably in their mid-ﬁfties, who took care of my

grandmother. She had a bell that she would ring if she needed help.

ey would come upstairs immediately to do her bidding, so to

speak. We three kids liked the sisters very much, and they, us. We

visited Oma once a week and stayed for a couple of hours. She always

served us hot chocolate, teaching us ﬁrst two teaspoons of sugar,

then one teaspoon of cocoa, and mix very well. Add three teaspoons

of milk and mix til it all turns shiny. en she would poor in hot milk,

and we would enjoy the most wonderful hot chocolate, with dunking

biscuits made by the downstairs ladies.

Oma, we were told, was the ﬁrst person in Holland who volunteered

to study brail “typewriter”— a small gadget resembling a miniature

typewriter. is contraption could type up to four keys at a time,

HARD, and somehow punch holes in a thick piece of waxed poster

board. e opposite side of the material would be raised due to the

hole being punched, and that was the side the blind could read by

moving their ﬁngers over it lightly. My grandmother explained that

a book never lasted very long with so many blind people’s ﬁngers

sliding along, eventually ﬂattening the bumps.

We always asked her to type some brail when we visited, and she was

always pleased to do so. We also played board games with her. is

was a fun visit for us and Oma as well.

Schiermonnikoog

O ne year, we actually went on a “summer vacation” for a month

on Schiermonnikoog, a very small island in a chain oﬀ the northern

coast of Holland. e Oostveen family (Monk, Dien and their son,

Kuno, who was a close friend) joined us. We rented a small village

house where the adults and I slept. Frits, Piet and Kuno slept outside

in a tent my dad had set up on the small lawn in the backyard. I had

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the best and the most interesting bed, built into the kitchen wall.

Two large cupboard doors opened up to the single bed. One simply

climbed in and went to sleep. I could close the cupboard doors or

keep them open.

e island of Schiermonnikoog oﬀered little except a wonderful

beach, which we and all the other tourists walked daily. ere were

mostly farms on the island. On one, we noticed a small hand-printed

sign oﬀering horseback riding.

We pestered our parents until one day they gave in. We were each

loaded onto the bare back of an enormous plow horses and handed

the reins. We were oﬀ to the beach on the same road everyone else

walked down. e horses, all four, were more interested in stopping

frequently to graze along the side of the road. It took us longer to get

to the beach than by walking.

The War Intrudes on Our Happy Life

P iet and I would be sent back to America in the late 1930s, after

Hitler’s army invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria.

It was no secret that the low-lying countries like Holland would most

likely be next. My parents were eager to get the family back to the

USA before that came about. My older brother, Frits, then 18, had

just graduated from high school. As a graduation present, my parents

gave him a round trip ticket to the U.S. His best friend, Jan Kook, had

just gotten a similar gift from his parents, and the two had gone to

California. Both sets of parents wired their sons to tell them to stay

put and not return to Holland, though Jan’s parents later changed

their minds and had their son come home.

\Joy and Renee Feenstra were my closest and best friends in our

neighborhood, especially Joy. She and I were the same age, and Renee

was two years younger. After Piet and I left for the U.S., in September

of 1939, I never saw them again. We wrote each other several times,

but that eventually came to an end.

\Years later, when we were reunited with our parents, they told this

story:

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When the Germans invaded Holland, in 1940, some Dutch people

became traitors, welcoming the German troops, inviting them for

dinners, etc. e German soldiers reciprocated by giving the Dutch

traitors cigarettes, silk stockings, and other hard-to-get items. It was

quite proﬁtable to be nice to the enemy for this reason. Also, this was

war. ese Dutch people probably ﬁgured if the Germans won the

war it could make a large positive diﬀerence for them to have been

on the German side. However, needless to say, the Dutch had blood

in their eyes for these turncoats or “Quislings,” as they were called.

(Quisling, I was told, was a famous Scandinavian turncoat.) When

the war ended and the Germans were gone, the Dutch rounded up

all the traitors. e women had their heads shaved so all could see

what they really were. I don’t recall the punishment for the men.

Wassenaar

I have very fond memories of the several times in Wassenaar I

faked sudden early morning tummy aches. ese usually coincided

with my being unprepared for a test at school that day. In a very soft

voice, I would tell my mother what ailed me, and she would gently

pat me on the head and tuck me in to bed and say, “No school today.

Rest.” She would then lightly close the door. Around 10 a.m., she

would quietly reappear and ask me how I was doing. In a slightly

more normal voice, I would say I thought I was improving. My

mother would recommend that I get dressed and perhaps take a walk

with her through the dunes.

Our 45-minute walk would take us through the dunes to the beach

in Scheveningen where there was a very long pier with a beautiful

ornate building at the end that housed a ﬁne café. We would sit at an

outside table and sip delicious hot chocolate. After a while, we would

walk through the dunes and head home. Of course, my mother knew

from the start that I was faking it, but decided to make the best of it

both for her and for me. We loved it, both of us.

One morning in Wassenaar, I woke up with a real tummy ache and

got out of bed. I had the shock of my life: a blood puddle on my

sheets! I ran to my parents’ bedroom. “I’m dying, I’m dying!” I cried.

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My mother ran to my bedroom with me, and it was only then that I

learned of menstruation. I was very annoyed that my mom had not

prepared me for this. However, I didn’t show my annoyance; I was

highly relieved that I wasn’t dying after all.

Another memorable moment in Wassenaar was when I was in a

junior high Montessori School—the ﬁrst in Holland. It was there that

I met Maria Montessori. It turns out she was from Italy and had had

a child out of wedlock, a real taboo in those days, especially in Italy.

Holland had always been a very liberal country, so she had moved

there with her child.

In due time, it became obvious to me that my mother dreaded

informing me, her only daughter, about the “facts of life.” Admittedly,

I was also shy and embarrassed to ask her where babies came from,

although I had a fair idea from school mates. I didn’t quite believe

all their hair-raising tales, such as “the woman had her stomach cut

open to get the baby out,” though.

When my parents brought Piet and me to the SS Bloemendam, the

Dutch freighter that returned us to the U.S. in 1939, they boarded

with us, as was the custom. After about 20 minutes, the loudspeaker

came on and announced, “All ashore that’s going ashore.” I noticed

my father taking Piet by the arm. At the same time, my mother took

me by the arm and led me around a corner. en, in less time than

it takes to write this, she blushingly told me the facts of life. My

parents turned around and both quickly descended the gang plank,

Rie on ship after hastily being told

the facts of life before casting off, 1939

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cheerfully waving goodbye from the dock below. I later asked Piet

if dad had ﬁlled him in at the same time mother talked to me. He

laughingly said, “No!”

In the late 1930s, Hitler was conquering one small country after the

other: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland. Every Dutchman, as well

as everybody in Belgium and Luxembourg, knew it was only a matter

of time before the Germans came their way.

We would all sit by the radio and listen to Hitler giving speeches to

the German people. His speeches were ampliﬁed by loudspeakers

to huge crowds made even larger when the Nazis would empty out

factories and schools for everybody to attend. A speech would begin

in a measured and controlled voice. In a short time, Adolph Hitler’s

voice grew louder and louder until he was screaming. After each

sentence, the crowd yelled at the top of their thousands of voices

HEIL HITLER! e more the crowd yelled, the more frantic Hitler’s

voice got.

In those troubled times, Hollanders could not get visas to go to the

U.S. e only Dutchmen who could get a visa then were Dutch

parents who had minor American children in the U.S. So, in early

September of 1939, my parents booked passage for Piet and I on the

Holland America Line freighter, the S.S. Bloemendam.

Aboard the S.S. Bloemendam

T raditionally, freighters carry only 13 passengers. Piet and I were

two of those passengers; my memory of the other 11 totally escapes

me. Considering the times, it’s likely that a good number of them

were Dutch Jews. e ﬁrst night out, I was awoken from a sound

sleep by the silence. e ships engines had been turned oﬀ. Piet woke

up, too. We quickly threw our coats over our pajamas, slipped on our

shoes, and ran out on deck to complete darkness. We went to the

railing and looked out to sea for other ships, but nothing. en we

looked straight down. A submarine! A submarine with the German

Swastika was tied up to our vessel. We looked at each other and,

without saying a word, tiptoed back to our stateroom and crawled

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into bed. We didn’t exchange a word; we just lay still in suspense.

Finally, the ship’s engines started again, we got underway, and Piet

and I fell back asleep.

e next morning, we learned that, although the Germans had not

yet declared war on Holland, they still wanted to inspect our cargo.

We had passed the inspection, and they had let us continue with our

voyage to the U.S. e ship had very little cargo, only two thousand

canaries in individual cages from the Hertz Company.

Later in the voyage, once in U.S. waters, all 13 passengers were

invited down to visit the canaries. ere was only one person in

charge of feeding and caring for the birds, and I found out why. e

captain made an announcement that hidden under all the 2,000

chattering birds was other cargo the Germans hadn’t found: the

Crown Jewels of Holland, destined for safe storage in the U.S. due to

the impending war.

As we approached New York Harbor, someone pointed out the

Statue of Liberty, which brought tears to my eyes. What a beautiful

sunny day it was. Boats of all sizes were moving about, birds ﬂying,

horns blowing, magniﬁcent skyscrapers. In the crowd at the dock

awaited Mr. Paul, a family friend who was to watch us until my

parents could make it over. Now that my parents had minor children

in the U.S., they could begin the lengthy process of applying for their

own visas so that they could be reunited with us.

Piet, Tanta Zus, Rie, Mr. and Mrs. Paul with their child, 1940

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Plainﬁeld, New Jersey

A lthough the Paul family (mom, dad, and three kids) was from

Holland, the stay there was neither interesting nor fun. High school

life was the same. at entire school year, I made no close friends.

I don’t think my brother Piet did either. e high school fashion

for girls at the time was a cardigan sweater and saddle shoes. I had

neither and was simply not “in the loop.”

To be honest, even if I did have a cardigan sweater and saddle shoes,

I would still probably not have been in the loop. In class, I was the

shy new girl from Holland. Our home life was also so-so. e Pauls

didn’t laugh much or even talk much for that matter. Mind you, they

treated us as well as their own kids, but, on the whole, they were kind

of dull. Saturdays, after we had done our chores, Piet and I would go

for a long walk—always following the same route through open ﬁelds

and around grazing pastures following a narrow stream. We looked

forward to our walk every week.

Our parents’ visa took much longer than we all had anticipated. And,

after the visas ﬁnally arrived, booking passage on a steamer to the

U.S. took forever. is was, after all, wartime, and the Germans had

occupied a number of European countries, with the Jews from these

countries being sent oﬀ to concentration camps and, in most cases,

death.

ousand and thousands of people were ﬂeeing for their lives to safe

countries like America and Canada. My parents had gone through

the entire process of getting their visas and booking passage to the

U.S., which had taken years. ey were scheduled to leave from

Portugal on May 14, 1940, but, on May 10, 1940, Germany invaded

Holland and Rotterdam was bombed to near total destruction.

Holland surrendered, all in 24 hours. All plans changed. We would

not reunite with our parents until seven years later.

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To Hollywood

M y parents had earlier considered all contingencies in the family’s

ﬂight to America, including what to do if the two of them couldn’t

make it out of the country. My father had stipulated to Mr. Paul

to send Piet and I to Frits in California when school ended in the

spring. Piet and I enthusiastically anticipated our trip to California

and leaving New Jersey. e Paul family also seemed excited and

had packed our bags for us. Two days after school was out, Piet and

I were on the All American Busline (cheaper than Greyhound) for

California!

Not only were we three kids together again, but we had additional

family in California. In anticipation of our arrival, Frits had rented

us a nice apartment with two bedrooms in Hollywood, three blocks

away from the famous Hollywood Boulevard. Our Aunt and Uncle,

Jetty and Tony Reynder, lived only a few miles away in Van Nuys.

ey had a daughter, Ann, who, during that general period, married

George Clark and had children: Barbara and George.

Tante (Aunt) Jetty was a native Indonesian who had never learned

to speak English—only Dutch, along with her native language. Ann

and George (mainly Ann) raised Chinchillas, which they had been

talked into by some scammer who promised they’d make a fortune.

ey didn’t. ey told me once that they had bought their brand new

house on Oxnard Street for $2,000, shortly after they were married in

the 1940s.

Frits worked in a department store in L.A. as an assistant buyer.

Piet, being 16 years old, had to continue high school, which was at

North Hollywood High. I got a job in North Hollywood decorating

windows at Woolworth Five and Dime store. I would commute to

and from work via streetcar. One of the daily commuters on the

street car was a Mexican man. I found it odd that he would usually

have a double seat to himself. Once in a while, someone would share

the double seat with him, but then take another seat at the next stop

or sooner. I wondered if this was racism, but California’s population

was almost 50% Mexican, so what was the deal? Feeling sorry for

the old geezer, I sat next to him the following day and immediately

jumped up and sat elsewhere; he reeked of garlic! Another time, a

man sitting next to me told me that when he had started commuting

many years earlier there was a sign in all the streetcars that read

“Shooting rabbits from the window is not permitted!”

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At Woolworths I made $15 a week. e employees were nice and I

enjoyed the work. At the local Bank of America I met a local teller

named Sara Barta. We became lifelong friends, although there were

times when we would be out of contact with each other.

Our lives in Hollywood as teenagers need not have worried our

parents, who remained far away back in Holland. It was much safer

in California than in war-torn Europe, although it never occurred

to ask them if they were concerned. Back in the 1930s and 1940s,

teenage life in the big city was totally innocent. By the time Piet and I

left at 18 we had never seen another teenager even smoke a cigarette.

Never, not even downtown! In Holland, I never saw a teenager with

a bottle of beer or wine, except, as is the custom, when we had wine

on the dinner table. When served, we always made a gruesome

face of one taking a spoon of medicine, but we did appreciate the

importance of the custom.

I don’t recall that we had many friends in Los Angeles at the time

except a few friends Piet had at school and I had at work. Frits

became friends with Harry Klein who worked at a print shop. In no

time he became friends with Piet and me too. One of our favorite

pastimes would be to go to the Santa Monica Beach on Sundays with

Harry. Afterwards we would go back to Hollywood for dinner at Joe’s

Eats, where the cafeteria type meals were 35 cents. Another favorite

haunt was Clifton’s, a local chain, where they not only had singing

waiters but the price was basically “whatever you can pay.” My

friend, Sara Butler, and the rest of us were pals for some years.

Sara had an interesting family. Her parents were simple people—

farmers from Bulgaria or Yugoslavia who spoke with a thick accent.

Her mother seemed quite religious and God fearing, I think. I say

“I think” because she spoke no English at all and never made an

eﬀort to learn. All the Butler kids were born in the U.S. Sara had

an older sister who was also a bank teller as well as two brothers. I

don’t know what Sara’s dad did for a living, but, whatever it was, he

supplemented his taxable income by making ”bathtub gin,” as it was

called at the time. I think that applies to any production of illegal

liquor. Be it gin or whiskey, whatever it was, it evidentially was made

in the bathtub. Sara’s mother did not approve.

One day, according to Sara, when her mother happened to look

out the window, she saw a policeman on the beat walk by and ran

out yelling for him to stop. In her native language and in a loud and

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excited voice she told

him of her husband’s

bathtub gin goings on.

She went on to tell

the oﬃcer how bad

her husband was and

how she had told him

time and time again

to stop. Of course,

the policeman didn’t

understand a word.

Hearing the excitement,

Sara’s father calmly

walked outside and

apologized for his

wife’s behavior, alleging

she was mentally ill.

e policeman said

he understood and

continued on his beat.

Sara’s father continued

on with his sideline business.

During summer vacations, Piet worked at a gas station. After

graduating, he continued working full time and eventually bought his

own gas station.

He also did repair work on cars. When war broke out, he got a night

shift job at a San Diego factory that manufactured airplanes. At

midnight he would get oﬀ work and drive back home to Hollywood,

over three hours away.

Hollywood Christmas Parade

E very year, the three of us and thousands of others attended

the Hollywood Christmas Parade. e parade route went along

Hollywood Boulevard, and leading the parade was always Tom Mix

on his equally famous horse, Tony.

Piet at work

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Tom Mix was a cowboy movie actor and he was followed by many

beautiful ﬂoats carrying other Hollywood stars—the exception being

the ﬂoat that carried Santa Claus. is was years before stars stuck

their hands in cement and signed their names along the sidewalks of

Hollywood Boulevard.

After several years decorating windows at the Five and Dime store in

Hollywood, I decided it was time to improve my lot with bigger and

better things. I quit my job and ventured downtown to Los Angeles

city center. I went to Broadway Boulevard and started submitting

applications as an experienced window decorator. I went from

store to store and, at the last intersection, where the stores turned

from “high end” to 2

and 3

rate outﬁts, I got a job. e job paid

$19 a week in the area’s ﬁrst 2

rate store, Nelson’s. e store had

huge permanent new print signs that read “Giant Closing Sale 50%

oﬀ, Everything Has to Go!” I worked there for about a year and a

half. e sales ladies were nice. e main activity was to change the

clothes in the windows before they faded. It was not very creative

work.

Periodically I would go across the street during my lunch to

Broadway Department Store’s personnel oﬃce to see if they had any

openings in their display department. A year or so later, they did, and

I got the job. It was at that job where I learned that there was such a

condition among humans called homosexuality. e display staﬀ in

this large high end department store consisted of six men and me.

All six were gay, and they treated me very nicely. We all became good

friends and would go to each other’s apartments for dinners. Since

they were all artistically inclined, they had beautifully furnished and

decorated apartments that they had done themselves. We enjoyed

operas and plays together. e job paid more than my last two and I

was working with a small congenial group. Life was good.

An interesting event happened at the Broadway shortly before I

started working there. e Los Angeles Times, actually all the local

newspapers, were devoting their front pages to an escapee from the

women’s state prison in Tehachapi. Some clues indicated that she

could be hiding in L.A. Weeks went by and she remained at large.

An employee from the Broadway Department Store began to

wonder about a speciﬁc bed on display. It appeared to have been

slept in. He alerted the night watchman and that night he caught

the escapee from Tehachapi! She told the police she would roam the

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streets during the day and then return close to closing time, and hide

somewhere in the store until all had left. She would ﬁnd prepared

food, sometimes still warm for her dinner. I think she would also

select a few new clothes and perhaps a pair of sunglasses before

retiring for the night.

Short Engagement to Max Gorman

D uring my friendship with Sara, we would take Sunday horseback

rides. We became regulars at the stable and also the horse trails. One

of the people we met during our jaunts was Max Gorman. Max was

a rather serious, good looking young man who worked at the Bank

of America. We began dating and getting around in my car. Max not

only did not have his own car, he didn’t know how to drive. He was

the second man I dated who didn’t drive a car, which should have

been a warning to me. Anyhow, we dated for about a half year and

then decided to get married. He set a date and told all our friends

and family. Well, almost. Something told me not to write my parents

quite yet.

Everyone was very happy for us, and Sara started phoning friends

inviting them to a shower. e closer the wedding date came the

more I began to question the wisdom of the whole aﬀair. So, one

evening after a date, as we pulled up to Max’s apartment in my 2

hand Chevy, I told him I had made a big mistake and the wedding

was oﬀ. He did not take it very well. After arguing with me for

a while, he got physical. Now, in those days, the 1940s, sex was

frowned upon before marriage. I guess Max thought “Custom be

dammed. If no marriage, I’ll have some sex anyhow.” He started

struggling with me, trying to open my blouse. Max’s attempt to

overpower me was to no avail. I had been raised with two brothers—

one two years older than me and one two years younger. We wrestled

all the time together when we were growing up. Max only had one

sister. As he forcibly tried to undo my blouse buttons, I started

giggling. is made Max furious, and he got out of the car, slammed

the door, and went into his apartment.

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e only other person who was really mad at me, other than Max,

was my good friend Sara, who had just completed her elaborate

arrangements for the wedding shower.

War Work

O ne day when I was still working at the Broadway Department

Store, Sara called enthusiastically to tell me she had gotten a job

at the Lockheed Airplane Factory at $90 per month! Of course,

I immediately applied for a job and got one on the spot. Alas, it

was not in the factory, but in the small U.S. Post Oﬃce on location

there. My salary wasn’t as high as Sara’s but it was still good, given

that I did not see myself getting much higher in the window display

business. Luck came my way after we had a postal inspection. My

boss was ﬁred when they found hundreds of undelivered letters she

had stashed in a remote cabinet that needed forwarding addresses.

I was appointed the new head of our small post oﬃce and got a big

increase in salary!

A year or so went by with both Sara and I making good money, much

of which we saved for a planned trip around the world—which we

never did take. We did, however, save enough money to go to Mexico

and across the U.S. to New York with a side trip to Quebec City. We

hoped to go to Europe after this trip.

Mexico

To really see the country, we went by train, which was very

inexpensive. Since it was inexpensive, we upgraded our tickets from

class to 2

class. e porter helped us carry our gear to our 2

class seats, and we tipped him $2. We didn’t have much gear and also

carried some of it ourselves. is was our ﬁrst tipping experience and

the porter saw us for what we were: two young wide-eyed naïve girls.

When he looked at the two dollar bills in his hand, he immediately

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said that it was not enough. We had seen someone else tip $2 for

much more luggage, so we bravely but nervously held our ground.

e porter said he was going to report us to “the inspector” and left.

e inspector never came, and we were on our way to Mexico City!

Second class still did not have any berths, and we were not allowed

to eat in the dining car. at turned out to be no problem as the train

stopped at all the villages in route. We would hop oﬀ the train and

enjoy the food from the small shops and stands. ey had a great

variety of hot and cold food that was peddled along side the train

stop. Hungry passengers needed only to open the window to get a

three or four course meal.

During these numerous stops, beggars would come aboard, terribly

maimed, begging for coins. New passengers would board; others

would disembark. Some carried chickens held by their legs—perhaps

a gift to a relative they were visiting. Other passengers would bring

aboard a goat or two or several sheep on leashes. Second class was

very accommodating, and we enjoyed it immensely. I walked through

third class one time. ere was considerable more livestock there.

We were happy to arrive in Mexico City despite the extra fun the

train ride had provided. We went straight to the YMCA. We ﬁgured

they would be reasonably priced and so they were. We were given a

room on the 5

ﬂoor and learned that there were no elevators. But

we were young, so what? Mexico City is at 5,000 ft. elevation, and

for us lowlanders from Los Angeles, which is at sea level, climbing

the ﬁve ﬂoors was more diﬃcult than we had anticipated. e 4

ﬂoor had a swimming pool with benches where we always stopped

to rest and look at the swimmers before tackling our ﬂoor #5. Our

room was quite plain, just two single beds and a sink with hot and

cold water. e beds were about 2½ feet apart. Sarah became aware

that her lower limbs were becoming more and more itchy, a clue that

there might be spiders or mosquitoes? We never saw the culprits,

but Sara ﬁgured it out one morning, exclaiming in a loud voice, “Bed

bugs!!” e odd thing was that I was in the other bed, only three feet

away, and never got a bite.

I could easily say that the bull ﬁghts were my most memorable

experience in Mexico. ey took place at 3:00 sharp every Sunday.

Sara and I didn’t miss a single Sunday while we were there.

After Mexico, I went home again to Los Angeles for several years.

Piet, Frits, and I still lived together. Piet had graduated from high

school and was working at the airplane factory in San Diego. Frits

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was still working as assistant manager in a department store. He met

Vannie and they became husband and wife. Sara was still making

a large salary at Lockheed, and I was still the “postmaster” at the

Lockheed post oﬃce.

Sara and my plans for more travel soon turned to reality. Before long,

we were on the Greyhound Bus headed across country for Canada’s

Quebec City, where French was the ﬁrst language. Having learned

French in school in Holland beginning in second grade, I did fairly

well. We were there for about three weeks and then traveled by train

to New York City. We liked “the City” so much we moved from a

cheap hotel to a cheap apartment on the East Side with a window

facing the East River. We still had a goodly amount of money at our

disposal, and our days and weeks were spent sightseeing.

When I think of New York, I immediately think of our door man

at the apartment. He was a scruﬀy elderly man in his early 70s.

We greeted him cheerfully coming and going. He took a liking to

us and invited us for a cup of coﬀee at his apartment, which we

accepted. His apartment was a mess, but then the whole East Side

neighborhood was also. We sat down at the kitchen table while he

made coﬀee and searched through his cupboard for some cups.

Finding none, he reached into the dirty dishes piled high and found

three cups plastered with molded coﬀee grounds. He brieﬂy rinsed

them under cold water and poured three cups of coﬀee. I won’t go

into details on how Sara and I managed to get the coﬀee down, but

it wasn’t easy. He oﬀered us reﬁlls, which we declined. Despite it all

we survived and enjoyed the old gentleman’s stories about early New

York.

The W ACS

O ne day while we were sightseeing on the West Side, we came to a

storefront advertising the wonderful worldwide places one could see

by joining the Woman’s Army Corp, or “WACS,” as they were called.

We enlisted, our reasoning being that now we could see the world

for free! Within weeks, we and numerous other young women were

on the train headed for Des Moines, Iowa, for basic training. Sara

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and I were separated, as we were assigned to separate companies.

We saw each other on the base several times and chatted about the

diﬀerent places we might see. After six weeks of basic training, I was

transported to Rome, New York, where I had several interviews.

I took written tests to determine the type of work I would be best

suited for in the army. Another WAC I had met in Des Moines was

also sent to Rome for the same reason. She was an attractive and very

bright young woman who had been raised in Paris as the daughter

of a U.S. diplomat. It was decided that she would go to the Army

cooking school to become a mess hall cook! She was devastated to

say the least. I was ﬁrst given a typing test, which I failed. During the

interviews, however, I had mentioned that I drew pictures, so the

army assigned me to the only Special Service Company in the WAC,

the Jonathan Wainwright Company, named after a famous general.

Although I was chosen because I drew pictures, they also thought

I should learn something more practical, so I became a movie

projector operator—a skill I learned in two lessons.

In Rome, I also learned to enjoy coﬀee; before that, I had drunk

only tea. It was wintertime in northern New York State when I

was stationed there. e walk to the mess hall was about a quarter

mile, by which time my hands were ice cold. Coﬀee urns were

the ﬁrst thing you encountered upon entering the mess hall, and

I immediately would pour myself a cup for the sole purpose of

warming my ﬁngers. After some time, I would take a sip and I was

soon hooked.

Before long, our company got good news. We were going to Europe

on the Queen Mary, which was serving as a troop transport ship

during World WarII. Not only could the Queen Mary carry a huge

amount of troops, it was also quite fast, so it did not need a convoy.

is was toward the end of World War II, and fewer troops were

headed to the war zone. Consequently, the Queen Mary carried only

the number of troops that it had passenger berths for.

We landed at Fauve [??] and took a troop train to Compiegne, just

outside Paris. e Compiegne camp was a staging area for troops

before being sent to their designated assignments throughout

Europe. e bunch of us spent the nights on cots outside. It was late

spring and the weather was perfect for outdoor sleeping. When we

washed our hair we used fresh lemons for a rinse. Around the same

time, we were introduced to a new invention, the ﬁrst shampoo

rinse—so much for lemons. e short time our company was

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there we had no assignment, with the result that many of us made

frequent trips to Paris to see the sights. Just a 20-minute free train

ride would get us there. Of course, we visited all the well-known

tourist attractions, which were free to all military personnel. At the

bistros and restaurants in Paris we had the best meals we had ever

experienced. I did well communicating with the French. We were

in Compiegne for two weeks before getting transferred to Salzburg,

Austria.

Salzburg, Austria

S alzburg is an ancient walled city built on a hill with Hohensalz-

burg Castle on top. As I recall, we were stationed there for four or

ﬁve months. e birthplace of Bach, it was a renowned music center.

Bach’s house was a sightseeing

destination then and is now.

Being in a Special Service Com-

pany, our Captain approved the

plan created by certain mem-

bers of our company to put on

a play. Titled “is Gal’s Army,”

the performance was very well

received by the American troops

stationed there and sold out

every night for a week. After all,

what else was there to do there?

I had exactly one line, which was

“She was built like a brick house!”

It brought down the house every

time. I had no idea why it was so hilariously funny. Considering the

reaction I got, I presumed it was a very dirty joke. I was afraid to ask

and never did. I still don’t know what it means.

It was in Salzburg that I got my ﬁrst proposition. I was having a cup

of coﬀee in a sidewalk café; at a nearby table sat an American soldier.

We said a few words to each other, and then he moved over to my

table and we chatted on. Pretty soon, he said, “What do you say we

Rie in WAC uniform

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go to a hotel and have sex?” I said something like, “No thank you, but

thanks for inviting me.” We ﬁnished our coﬀee and chatted until we

ﬁnally went our separate ways.

Garmisch Partenkirchen

O ur Special Services Company was ﬁnally split into platoons or

smaller, and we were scattered all over Germany. At this point in

the war, the Army was designating troops to R&R (recreation and

rehabilitation) camps.

For our R&R, we were sent to our station of Garmisch Partenkirchen.

is beautiful city in southern Bavaria, Germany, is known for its

ski resorts. ere, like in all other conquered German areas where

Americans were stationed, included hotels, motels, and a huge

number of private homes that were taken over by the Americans to

house the troops. About 12 of us from our company were sent to

Garmisch Partenkirchen, where we were assigned the Opal family ski

resort home away from home. e house was large enough to easily

house all of us, and it came with the services of a cook and a maid! In

addition, we had a Jeep and driver at our disposal. Having all come

from middle to lower income families, none of us had ever lived in

such luxury.

When we went to town, every public service was free to the

conquering troops. My roommate, Fran Grave, and I were the

only two in our group to take professional ski lessons in this world

class resort. We did so practically every day for a half a year and, in

that time, became very adequate skiers. One day on the slopes, we

noticed a small group of six or seven women taking ski lessons also.

We would never see any other women skiing there, so we asked our

instructor about them, and he didn’t know either. Eventually, we

learned that the U.S. Army had decided to put on the U.S. Army Ski

Olympics. All U.S. Military could apply. About two weeks before

the event, it was ordered that women were to be included, namely

the WACS. Notices were sent out to all the camps, but not many

women stepped forward. is was in the late 1940s, and skiing had

not really caught on yet. From my recollection, there were only two

ski resorts in the U.S. at that time.

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Since no women had volunteered for the U.S. Army Ski Olympics

and time was running short, the head of the U.S. troops in Europe

ordered that they “recruit volunteers.” So these six to seven WACS,

none of whom had ever skied, were recruited for the U.S. Army

Olympics. In less time than it takes to tell, Fran and I high-tailed it

to the G.I. Olympic Committee and volunteered. We won all the

events: downhill, slalom, and cross-country.

Once in Garmisch Partenkirchen they showed a ﬁlm made by the

U.S. Army advertised widely to the German citizens, who were

“ordered” to attend. Fran and I wondered if American troops could

see it, too. We decided to go and ﬁnd out. ere was no fee, so we

just walked in. ere were no other G.I.s inside as we sat down and

watched the show. e ﬁlm started. It was too shockingly horrible

to describe in full. One scene showed the U.S. Army advancing on

a German concentration camp. e troops encountered a large pit

with hundreds of nude bodies, both men and women, in it. e

commentator said that the prisoners had been ordered to dig the

hole and take oﬀ their clothes, and then they were shot. ose who

didn’t fall in the hole were bulldozed in after the slaughter. During the

40-minute ﬁlm, you could hear a pin drop.

e Dutch and German languages are quite similar. Since I was

relatively ﬂuent in those languages, along with English, I also had

a job as a translator. Some American oﬃcers spoke gruﬄy to the

Germans, but my translation was always civilized and pleasant. A

real translator is not supposed to editorialize, but I often did. In one

case, an oﬃcer remarked that a large ugly cruciﬁx had to be removed

from a building the army had taken over. e oﬃcer made several

unﬂattering remarks about the object. I translated that by asking the

elderly owner if perhaps it would be a good idea to remove the large,

handsome cruciﬁx from the wall to prevent it from getting damaged

by the many troops moving in. She readily agreed.

In Germany at this time, cigarettes were the currency of the country,

at least in Bavaria. When walking down the street smoking a

cigarette, one would surely be followed by a German a short distance

away. When the smoker tossed out his “butt,” the follower would

pounce on it, making sure it was extinguished, and put it in a little

bag. Enough of these butts would make a complete cigarette. I was

told that waiters in night clubs sometimes got no wages but were

allowed to have all the cigarette butts in the ashtrays. Americans

were allowed to purchase full cartoons of cigarettes for a dollar.

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When we would buy something from a German, they would

demand that we pay them in cigarettes, which we happily did. I had a

seamstress make me a skirt one time for the price of two packs (not

cartoons) of cigarettes.

During the height of the war, each soldier had to do 16 hours in a

bunker, with eight hours oﬀ to get a little shut eye. Although this

shift schedule was used for war, the kitchen and meals were not

on it. Marvelous meals were served to all. It only took three days,

if I remember correctly, to get across the Atlantic to visit the Firth

of Forth in Scotland. Upon arriving, we got on a train headed to

the English border. In many European towns, the trains stopped in

residential neighborhoods where children would run out of their

homes to greet the soldiers, probably hoping they would get a stick

of American chewing gum. e surprising thing was that out of each

house would come ﬁve to eight kids! Each house! We found out later

that the majority of the children were Londoners who had been sent

to Scotland for safety from the nightly bombings. During the last

days of the war, the Germans planes and rockets pummeled London

in hopes of a long-shot victory. Winston Churchill made his famous

quote regarding the British pilots; “Never have so few done so much

for so many.”

One day in Germany, a WAC in our group told us she was going

back to her home in New York. We were all surprised. How could

she want to go home? is was the life! We were living in a world

class ski resort, staying in the magniﬁcent “Opal house,” complete

with maid and cook, free skiing, entertainment, transportation, and

good friends, both German and American.

How could she think about leaving all this glamour? e New Yorker

responded, “is is not real life, getting everything free. I’ve got to get

back to my real life some time, and that time is now.” She resigned her

commission after she had completed her minimum 18-month duty,

and oﬀ she went. e rest of us who had stayed more than a year and

a half in Garmisch Partenkirchen started to think about what our

friend had said.

My parents, who had still not managed to reserve transportation to

the U.S., were still in Holland. I hadn’t seen them in six years. About

this time, I learned that G.I.s who had parents or siblings living in

Europe could get a two-week leave of absence to visit them. I applied

and received a two-week pass, but it was for Poland, not Holland. I

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applied again, and this time they got it right and I got my two-week

pass for Holland. e only catch? ere was no transportation

provided. Passenger trains, buses, and airplanes were not running.

I asked around and got a few leads. Our jeep driver got the okay to

drive to Munich. Once there, I was told to make the rounds to the

American service clubs and ﬁnd out if there were any G.I.s convoying

north. If so, I was to ask the commanding oﬃcer if I could join them.

My only luggage was a large, heavy duﬄe bag I’d stuﬀed with things

I thought my parents might need. I could hardly drag it. I lucked

out—the ﬁrst service club I came to was packed with several

hundred servicemen. is was a bit unusual, since it was only 9:00

in the morning. I asked one of the men if by chance they were on a

convoy north, and he replied, “Yes, up to Cologne.” When I asked

if I could join the group, since I was headed to Holland, he went to

ask his commanding oﬃcer and returned shortly with a “Yes.” When

their break at the club was over, we all went outside where Jeeps

and service trucks pulled up. e convoy of about 2,000 troops all

loaded in the rigs. After a few hours of driving on Hitler’s Autobahn

Highway, I was beginning to wonder when we were going to stop to

go to the bathroom. I also wondered how that was going to work,

since I was the only woman with this large group of men. At a

wooded area, the entire convoy came to a halt. An order was given

at the front of the convoy and relayed down the line. I couldn’t hear

it a ﬁrst, but eventually the order made its way to us: “Men to the left,

woman to the right.” All the soldiers crossed the highway, and I went

to the other side and did my business. Once we got to Cologne, I had

another stroke of luck. Dutch trains were running, and one route

came very close to the town of Amerfoort, where my parents lived. I

met a G.I. at the Cologne train station who helped me haul and load

my duﬄe bag onto the Dutch train. I asked the station manager how

to get to my parents’ address. Seeing my huge duﬄe bag, he oﬀered

to walk me there with his bike, packing the big load on the seat.

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Reunited

S eeing my parents after six years was like a most happy dream.

ey had gotten a bit older and my mother had lost a few pounds,

but, of course, I had gotten a bit older as well. I opened the duﬄe

bag with all the gifts, and we talked late in to the night, catching

up on everything that had happened over the years. e German

occupation had made everything scarce, so the gifts were much

appreciated. What they couldn’t use themselves they could easily

trade for other needed items. We had a most wonderful reunion.

ey told me fascinating stories of their years of occupation by the

Germans. My parents had a small radio, which was not allowed, that

they carried to the road to listen to the evening news with the British

Broadcasting. ey also listened to the U.S. Army radio for news.

ey would hide the radio and go back to their living quarters.

When Germany occupied Holland, all Dutch food produced for the

country was conﬁscated by the Nazis for their troops. Practically

all the European countries were either still ﬁghting or occupied by

the Germans. All these countries faced the same threat as Holland:

starvation, as occupying soldiers ate their food. Much of Holland’s

vegetables and fruits were produced in the two Dutch states of

Groningen and Freisland, the farthest northeasterly states in the

nation. Amerfoort, on the other hand, was in south central Holland.

Some Dutch women with their starving families would take a purse

full of money and start a bike ride north to Freisland and Groningen

and buy whatever food they could. ere were no cars or gas

available. e farmers would grow their regular crop on order of the

Germans to feed their troops. Of course the farmers were not paid,

so any food they could hide and sell on the black market was to their

advantage.

My dad would not go up north for food. Any able-bodied man

seen on the streets would be picked up immediately and sent oﬀ

to labor camps to build tanks, ammunition, and so on. So it was up

to my mother. My mother rode her bike up twice to buy food, as

did hundreds of other women. When they rode north to the farms,

they would sleep in ﬁelds or woods. When they returned, however,

they were laden with stuﬀed bags hanging from the handle bars and

usually a box of food strapped to the back of the bike. erefore, they

would sleep in the day and travel by night, so their precious cargo

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would not be taken by the Germans. My mother said it was kind of a

fun adventure, depending on the weather, and that she made friends

with a number of other women.

e German soldiers conﬁscated anything and everything they

wanted. One of the most popular things they wanted was men’s

bicycles. ey would stop every man on a bike and simply take it

away and ride oﬀ. en the Dutch came up with an idea that brought

the whole thing to an immediate stop. ey removed the front tire

and replaced it with a very small child’s bike tire. It made it extremely

awkward to ride—but they could bike again, since the Germans

didn’t want them. Of course, there were women’s bikes, too, but no

self-respecting German male would be caught dead or alive on a

woman’s bike.

After the two week visit with my parents, I returned to Garmisch.

e trip back was easy, because Holland had not been an enemy

country. I went to Schiphol, the main airport in Holland and was told

that an American DC3 was going to Munich.

My parents ﬁnally got passage out of Holland on a Swedish ship

in 1946. It wasn’t too long after my visit to Holland that I started

thinking of the wonderful but unreal life in Garmisch Partenkirchen.

I decided to resign from the army in 1945 and head back to the states.

I was going to Emden, a port in Northern Germany and had passage

on a conﬁscated small German freighter. ere were about a dozen

or so other passengers; all were German war brides. e voyage was

not that enjoyable as the German mothers did not get along with

each other. All of them liked me because I admired their adorable

little babies. One continuous problem in the lounge was some of the

mothers liked to open the window and get some fresh air. Others

complained of the draft, saying it would make the babies sick. After

a few minutes, one of the other mothers would get up and close the

window with a bang! Around and around that would go every day.

Some of the oﬃcers’ wives would try and pull rank on the wives of

privates. is went on for the entire crossing from Emden to New

York Harbor. However, when we reached the harbor, all the husbands

and family were there happily waving and cheering. I’ve thought

about these war brides now and then, hoping they persevered.

My parents had been corresponding with their close friends Oma,

Anton, and Tante Akka, who lived in Home, Washington, and

who urged my parents to move up to their small town, which was

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populated by a large number of Dutchmen. In 1950, my parents

decided they should rent a house in Home and see how they liked it.

I volunteered to drive them up. e trip would take about a week I

ﬁgured. I was working at the Broadway Department Store at the time

and getting tired of it and ready for a change. Perhaps I would visit

Alaska. I happily quit my job and the four of us prepared for the trip:

me, Father, Mother, and Buﬀ, my one-year-old lab who I had adopted

in Garmisch.

We had a lovely trip to Tacoma, where we took the notorious

“Galloping Gertie” bridge over the Tacoma Narrows to Gig Harbor

and then on to Home. e long and short of the story is that my

parents both loved the tiny village and were delighted to see their

friends. ey met and also thoroughly enjoyed the other Dutchmen

there and decided to stay. ey were able to buy a house they were

renting and, as luck would have it, it came with a huge productive

cherry tree in the front yard. We three children would visit our

parents and climb the cherry trees, sitting in the branches for hours

eating our ﬁll of cherries.

. q

Alaska!

I was getting more and more intrigued with visiting Alaska, and

decided to take a voyage up to Southeast. I booked passage on the

Canadian Princess line, and, toward the end of May 1950, I departed

from Victoria, Canada.

Needless to say, I had the most marvelous time on my voyage. It was

even more fun having a college class of about 30 Geology students on

board. e Princess Pat arrived in Juneau on June 1. I had gotten up

early and was already on deck by 6:00 a.m. It was a most wonderful

day. Warm, sunny, snow-covered mountain peaks on either side of

the channel. ere, nestled between Mt. Juneau and Mt. Roberts, lay

the town of Juneau, population about 7,000 people.

As we approached the dock, my mind was racing, “What a gorgeous

town, setting, mountains, sparkling ocean. What a great place to live.

Oh, if only I lived here . . . I should try!” I decided to go ashore for the

seven hours it would take the ship to go north to another town and

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return. Perhaps I could get a job and a place to live. “Maybe I’m out of

my head,” I thought. “Maybe, maybe I should try. Why not? YES, I’m

going to try!”

I ran back inside to the dining hall and had a huge breakfast, then to

my stateroom, took a quick glance in the mirror, picked up my purse

with my boarding pass, and went down the gangway. I went to the

downtown Juneau business district and started looking for a job. e

ﬁrst place I went was the Sunday Press. e only one there was the

editor, Dorothy Pegues, typing away. She oﬀered me a seat, and I told

her of my experience in the Army working with one other WAC on a

bi-weekly newsletter. is seemed to be good enough for her and, to

my surprise, she hired me! She later admitted that it was my honesty

about my lack of experience that got me the job.

My next step was to ﬁnd a place to rent. I decided to look in a nice

neighborhood. Most residential areas seemed to be up the hill from

the city center, accessible by numerous long stairways. I decided

on an area that looked the most appealing and climbed up the

Street stairs to the top. I had chosen well; it was lovely area at

the summit of a hill. e other side dropped into Evergreen Bowl,

which had a baseball ﬁeld, swings, swimming pool, and two tennis

courts. On the far side ran Gold Creek at the base of a huge 2,000’

cliﬀ going up to Mt. Juneau. All this was visible from my location. It

was Sunday morning, and the area was totally still except for a large

woman hanging up her laundry. I walked over to her and said “Good

morning!” I then asked her if she knew any houses where I could

possibly rent a room. “Yes,” she said immediately. “I have a room.” She

took me inside her house and signaled me to be quiet as her husband

was still sleeping. We tip-toed through the room where there was

heavy breathing and the occasional snore and proceeded on to a

room that I rented for $5/week. e room was really a walk-in closet

and the bed was narrow, but so was I. e walking space next to the

bed was about a foot. At the far end of the bed was a table and chair.

Also on the far end of the wall was a small window that looked down

on Evergreen Bowl at the base of Mt. Juneau. e room was perfect

for me and I handed over the ﬁrst week’s rent of $5 to my landlord,

Mrs. Tapani.

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In no time at all, the rental arrangement became even better still.

Mrs.Tapani, who asked me to please call her Leela, weighed about

200 pounds and loved to cook. Within a week, I had a standing

invitation for dinner. I felt the least I could do was to oﬀer to dry the

dishes, but she would reply, “No, God is up there in the cupboard,

and he dries them.” Leela’s husband was Waino. Both of them were

Finns and were part of a large community of Finns who lived in

Douglas on the other side of the channel from Juneau.

Leela and Waino were simple and extremely nice people to live

with. Waino was a janitor and cleaned the state capitol building.

Leela like to play piano and did so very well. On Sunday mornings,

she would walk over to her neighbors’ house, the Engstroms, and

would walk in their door. Nobody locked their houses back then. e

Engstroms, usually still in bed, would hear her sit down at the piano

and start playing classical music. ey would stay in bed, listening

and enjoying it.

. q

The Sunday Press

M y main job at the Sunday Press was selling ads. Every week I

would cover both sides of the street, going from store to store asking

the owners if they wanted an ad in the next Sunday’s paper. e

merchants, all local people, liked me. And I liked them. Most often

they didn’t want an ad, but they would always oﬀer me a chair, and

we would have a pleasant chat with or without a cup of coﬀee. In the

long run, most of them became personal friends.

ere were several days when I actually wrote copy. All the

other newspapers in Alaska would send us their daily or weekly

newspapers and vice-versa. e Sunday Press ran a weekly

column, called “Happenings across Alaska.” It was my job to write

one paragraph about each newspaper’s news or events for our

“Happenings” column. Among the stack of newspapers was one from

Chehalis. I included this newsworthy article from Chehalis, even

though I knew it was a town in Washington State. I guess the editor

thought I would catch my own mistake, but, after about a month, she

gently clued me in: Chehalis had seen its ﬁnal entry in “Happenings

across Alaska.”

Rie’sMemoirs

My next blunder, I think my last, was in the advertising department.

Besides making the rounds selling ads, we also had a printing

department open to the public. People would come in for our

printing services. I sat at the front desk so I would assist them. One

day an attractive early-to-middle-aged lady walked in and told me

she wanted some cards printed. I got out the proper order form and,

with pencil in hand, asked her what her name was. She said it was

Claire and then gave me her address and phone number. I asked her

what her last name was and she said that wasn’t necessary. I assured

her that the ad wouldn’t cost any more. I pressed her for her last

name again. At this point, the editor, who sat behind me, said in a

most peculiar voice, “RIE.” I then ﬁgured out that she was advertising

for a “pick-up date,” and I pressed no more. We ﬁnished the order

with her contact information and she said thank you and left.

Dorothy Pegues, bless her heart, said nothing.

Besides getting to know all the merchants, I also befriended the ski

club members and became a member myself. Most members were

my age, in our mid to late 20s. Even though it was summer, the ski

club got together once a month in the oﬀ season to “Keep up our

spirits with spirits!” is amounted to a monthly beer bust.

Life was really good. Practically every day I congratulated myself for

“jumping ship.” I had a fun job. After living in the walk-in closet and

having regular dinners with the Tapanis, I was now sharing a house

with another gal and that was working out great. I was getting to

know all the merchants and members of the ski club and was having

numerous dates. Peter was a regular who took me salmon ﬁshing

on week nights. Others, I joined for hikes up Mt.Roberts, movies,

parties, and also on ﬁshing trips.

In 1950 in Alaska, I was more inspired than ever to paint. And I did.

A few months after I arrived, Juneau had its annual art show. ere

were about 19 serious artists in Juneau then, but anyone could enter.

ere were no judges; however, the limit was three submissions

per artist. I enthusiastically entered and, to my great delight, sold all

three! At the time, this was the only open annual art show in Alaska,

and several artists from Anchorage and Fairbanks entered as well.

Usually the show had well over 100 paintings.

One of the “serious artists,” Jennie Werner, changed my life when she

told me I should try painting in watercolors or caseins. I might enjoy

it, she said. Furthermore, there were many advantages. Caseins and

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watercolor paints were much cheaper than oil paints. Watercolor

paper, too, was much less expensive than canvas. She continued: “An

unﬁnished watercolor takes only a few minutes to dry, and you can

slip it back in your portfolio, whereas a wet oil painting you have to

carry by hand very carefully so it won’t smudge.” I was convinced to

give it a try.

Some of my favorite impressionists painted in watercolor. eir

subject matter less traditional, more informal, more everyday scenes

with everyday subjects—a woman ironing clothes, a farmer at work

in the ﬁeld, a maid setting the table, and so on. e last oil painting

I did in Juneau was of a mountain with a mountain goat in the

foreground. I sold it to a neighbor. It wasn’t long before I became

known as a “serious artist.”

My ﬁrst Christmas in Juneau, the city ran a contest for merchants

on Franklin Street to see which store could have the best Christmas

window. I turned in a beautiful snowy winter scene, but my window

did not win a prize because I had failed to put in Santa Claus or

a Christmas tree. My next assignment was to paint a Christmas

scene on the mirrors behind the bar in the Baranof Hotel. One

evening, while I was busily working on that, a ski club member and

good friend I’d once dated several times, Art Kimball, came in with

another man. Art introduced me to him: “Rie, this is Juan. Juan, Rie

Mounier.” at started a romance that evolved into marriage. We

were married by Justice of the Peace Gordon Gray on January 20,

1951, with Art Kimball as the best man. We celebrated the wedding

by having dinner at Mike’s Place in Douglas —the best steak house in

Juneau at the time. Juan played the slot machine and hit the jackpot,

winning $60. I moved in with Juan in his Douglas Quonset hut.

We then found an old dilapidated boat house on 150 feet of

waterfront, with access to the North Douglas road. When we handed

the check of $700 to the realtor, Bob Druxman, he smiled and said,

“Now you can spit in anyone’s eye.” In our spare time, Juan and I ﬁxed

up the boat house so we could move in. Art Kimball oﬀered to put

a window in one of the walls as a house warming gift. He showed

up one day to do the task. He brought the window, hammer, nails,

level, square, and started the job. When he ﬁnished a few hours later,

we all stood back and admired the work. We then noticed that the

window was at an obvious tilt. Upon a second look, we realized that

the window was the only thing level, and the house was crooked, so

it remained.

Rie’sMemoirs

When we were married, Juan was working for the Bureau of Mines

in Douglas. One day, he came home and said he had invited a new

employee over to dinner. Our guest showed up promptly at the

dinner hour. e next evening, darned if he didn’t show up again at

the same time. Of course, we invited him to stay. Well, this went on

day in and day out. Finally, Juan had had enough. After dinner one

night, he took his dinner plate and instead of bringing it to the sink,

put it on the ﬂoor for our husky to “clean.” Juan then put the dish in

the cupboard. at was the end of the surprise dinner visits.

Juan’s real aim of coming north was to fulﬁll his dream of prospecting

in Alaska and striking it rich! He had even chosen mining

engineering at the University of Arizona. is was still foremost on

his mind. One day, he enthusiastically announced, “I’ve got it! What

we should do is see if we both can get jobs at the Bureau of Indian

Aﬀairs teaching in a remote native village where we can’t spend our

money.”

. q

1951

J uan and I had dental work to be done in Seattle, where it was

cheaper and better. e most popular dentist in Juneau at the time

never found anything wrong with your teeth; perhaps that is why he

had so many patients. If either of us developed a tooth ache, then we

would chicken out and call another dentist in town to treat it, so we

wouldn’t oﬀend the popular dentist. In Seattle, however, they had

excellent dentists. We planned to stay with my parents at Lake Bay,

Washington, as they hadn’t met Juan yet. It was early July and the

cherry trees in my parents’ yard were loaded with ripe black cherries.

We would frequently climb the branches and sit comfortably up

in the tree and eat away. When my father’s birthday approached,

Juan, a good cook, decided to bake him two cherry pies. My father

was very pleased. It so happened that Juan had been able to get a

dental appointment after dinner in a nearby town. He got in the

car and started it and sat there a minute. en he got out and went

back inside the house, returning with the leftover cherry pie. “We’re

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taking this with us in case some guest comes by to wish your dad

happy birthday.” So, while Juan was at the dentist, I was out in the car

guarding the cherry pie.

. q

March 5, 1951

B ecause it was a fairly mild winter, Juan and I decided to go on an

overnight hike up Mt. Jumbo. We thought we would ask Art Kimball

along, so I called him on the phone. Our telephone was a large old

fashioned wooden phone that you had to manually ring by turning

a ringer four or ﬁve times. When the operator answered, she asked,

“Who can I ring for you?” “Art Kimball,” I answered. “Oh, Art is on

a hike up Mt. Juneau,”she explained. e operator continued, “He

expects to be back about 4:30 p.m.” I told Juan what the operator

had heard. In those days, Douglas was still on party lines, so news

and scandals spread around faster than in the present day. With our

friend Art already gone on another adventure, we decided to go on

our own.

Dusk came sooner than expected, and we started making camp

by clinging onto a long pole under a spruce tree. We hoped the

branches of the tree would protect us somewhat from the snow

falling. Sleep did not come easy. It got darker and we got colder.

After a while, Juan piped up in a weak but hopeful voice: “I’ve heard

tell that when you are freezing it helps tremendously if two people

strip down to nothing in the same sleeping bag.” I, practically in tears

from the cold, said, “Let’s go home now while there’s still some light.”

By the time we packed up, it was totally dark. Luckily, Juan had a

ﬂashlight—but it only worked for two minutes at a time, since it

was so cold the battery would die. We could get a little more light by

putting the ﬂashlight in our armpits. Finally, after a long, treacherous

journey down the mountain, we made it back to our Quonset hut.

. q

Rie’sMemoirs

King Island

W e went to the Bureau of Indian Aﬀairs (BIA) oﬃce in Juneau for

an appointment with Hugh Wade, whom we both knew, to see if

any such jobs existed. Hugh looked through some oﬃcial looking

papers in his ﬁle and said, “Yes, there are three schools that don’t have

teachers yet for the 1950-51 school year. e villages are Sleetmute,

King Island, and Barrow. e only one we had heard of was Barrow.

Where were Sleetmute and King Island? I asked if we could think

it over and let him know the next day. “No problem,” he said. We

scurried out of the BIA and over to the library to see what we could

ﬁnd out on either location. We found no information whatsoever on

King Island save for a pin prick on the Northern Bering Sea. It was

closer to Russia than Alaska. ere was very little written material on

the Kuskokwim River town of Sleetmute, as well. Barrow we knew

was located at the northernmost tip of Alaska and was the largest

Eskimo settlement in the Territory of Alaska. So Barrow was out,

Sleetmute on the river was out, remote King Island was in!

When we told Hugh the next day of our choice, he advised (well,

warned) us that 1) e King Islanders spoke their Eskimo language

exclusively. ey knew no English except for several who had been

drafted during World WarII and stationed “outside.” e school

children spoke no English among themselves—only during English

lesson in school, if they even had the class.

2) Once on King Island we were there to stay. In case of emergencies,

there would be no way to do a Medivac to Nome once the winter

set in. 3) Every bit of food, equipment, medical and whatever other

supplies we might need for nine months had to be shipped on the

BIA freighter, the SS Northstar on its annual King Island voyage in

September—everything! 4) If a woman teacher was going over, she

was cancelled out if she was pregnant. Nine months on the King

Island meant any birth would take place on the island, which had no

hospital, doctor, nurse (or even a store, for that matter).

en Hugh told us of the previous teachers on King Island. ey

were a couple who were “free thinkers,” as it were. In any event, the

woman teacher was indeed pregnant but denied it. e couple really

wanted to teach on the remote island so they went anyway. ey

ﬁgured the father could deliver the child on King Island even though

he had no experience doing so. When the birth came, it was turned

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around the wrong way in the mother’s womb. e midwives on the

island oﬀered to help but the father declined. e result was a still

birth. e baby boy was buried in the King Island graveyard along

the rugged trail to the summit of the island.

I was not pregnant and we signed up for the 1951-1952 school year.

Our King Island experiences were later published in the book King

Island Journal. e book consists of photos Juan took and letters we

had written to our parents.

ere were no doctors or dentists on King Island, so we had our

check ups before we left. We were told not to worry if war broke

out with Russia, which was visible from the island. If war did break

out, we were told, the government would ﬂy us out, presumably by

helicopter.

ere are many stories that we recounted in the King Island Journal,

so I won’t repeat them here. One story that was not in the journal

was about the litter of husky puppies we had on King Island. When

we ﬁrst arrived, we were greeted by all the dogs that had been left

over the summer to fend for themselves while the villagers went to

Nome. ey would eat bird eggs and mice. As the boat approached

you could hear the howls of delight almost a mile away! Once ashore,

it was the wildest, happiest scene I have ever experienced—about 100

King Islanders being greeted by 150 dogs racing, wagging, sniﬃng,

calling, ﬁnding, licking, hugging!

Two of the huskies came right over to us like they knew us. One

of the villagers explained that they had belonged to the previous

teachers, and they ﬁgured we were their new owners. ey were

right. e female, “Pinocchio,” was pregnant and soon gave birth to

a litter of husky puppies. After a month or so, villagers came by to

pick out puppies. A fellow named Agapuk, stopped by and chose two

white huskies. As he was leaving, another fellow came in. He said,

“I’ll bet Agapuk wanted those two white ones.” “How did you know?”

I asked. “He likes matching dogs because he makes mittens out of

them.” Needless to say, we made up some excuse not to give Agapuk

those dogs.

. q

Rie’sMemoirs

Back to Juneau

U pon my return to Juneau from King Island, the editor of the

Sunday Press, Dorothy Pegues, had died. I continued working at the

Press for a short while and then was accepted for a reporting job on

Juneau’s only daily paper, the Empire. As the “Women’s Page Editor,”

I would report on the goings on around Southeast Alaska. I received

other stories from columnists in Alaska also working for the paper.

One columnist frequently reported from various events that “A good

time was had by all!” It was so catchy that all of the staﬀ at the paper

would use that phrase for most any occasion.

e Women’s Page Editor was certainly not the most prestigious

position in the newspaper. In the early 50s, a family going to Europe

on vacation was newsworthy, perhaps a long article and a picture.

e picture was always of the woman only. If there was a wedding,

the picture would be of the bride only. “It’s the bride’s big day, not the

grooms after all,” the editor would explain.

e ﬁrst editor I worked with on the Empire was Elmer Friend. He

was about 70-75 years old and a chain smoker. He would always drop

his ashes in the tin waste basket full of paper. Frequently someone

would detect a thin ribbon of blue smoke coming out of the waste

basket. ere would be some frantic stomping out of embers or

dousing with water and then back to work, until the next time.

One time he took me aside when he heard I had moved in with my

boyfriend in his Quonset hut in Douglas. “Cohabitation is illegal,” he

warned. “You could go to jail!” My boyfriend Juan and I were married

that January.

. q

1953

W e made numerous ﬁshing trips in the summer on board our

dilapidated boat, the Puska, spending the night in various bays and

inlets. One of my favorites was called, appropriately, “Boat Harbor.”

is little hole-in-the-wall natural harbor is about 12 miles north of

Juneau. e ﬁshing was good and there was good protection from

the Southeast storms. ere was nothing man made there except

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an ancient, long-abandoned cabin. One morning when Juan was

getting the ﬁshing gear ready, I decided to take the skiﬀ ashore to

explore, and, in particular, take a look at the lonesome little cabin. As

I approached, I could see that the few windows were all shattered.

e door swung creakingly back and forth on the one remaining

hinge. e ﬂoor was covered with leaves of the fall colors mixed with

old Saturday Evening Post magazines with covers by well-known

artist Norman Rockwell. Covering one wall was a very large message

written in ﬁve-inch-tall letters—a plea for help by a man who had

already given up and had written some last words to his wife. I

copied the message in my sketchbook to relay to his wife if I ever

found out who had been stuck out there.

Juan and I were married for 13 years. We had twin boys, Felipe and

Juan, born on December 17, 1955. Raising twins is no easy task, I’ll

tell you. I would have to take a nap now and then, so I would lie on

the ﬂoor and let the two boys climb over me. As soon as I felt only

one baby on or by me I would gaze up to ﬁnd him and scoot him

back next to me. I had the twins on leashes when I would venture

out, which was helpful. Instead of cribs, we let them sleep in the

bottom drawer of a cupboard (we left it open, obviously).

Before the twins’ ﬁrst birthday, we all moved down to Wapoc,

Mexico, where Juan Sr. was working in a mine. We had a nice

house, complete with a pet pig. e twins, however, seemed to be

getting diarrhea often, which I knew could lead to dehydration.

After consulting with a doctor, it was decided that it might be best

Rie pushing Juan in a mining cart

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to get the babies out of Mexico and back to the U.S. Wapoc had a

small airplane service, or one could take a long bus ride. I went for

the airplane. I talked with the pilot and told him of my precious

cargo. He said ﬁne, but he was very limited on space and weight

restrictions, and I could only bring one duﬄe bag along with the

twins. When the small plane landed to pick us up, I realized why we

had other weight restrictions: a 300-plus pound “gringo” got out to

stretch his legs before the ﬁnal trip to Douglas, Arizona.

After a long taxi, the plane took oﬀ and we were airborne. About

halfway through the ﬂight, we heard an incredibly loud Bang! e

pilot calmly looked at his controls and continued on. A few minutes

later came an even louder BANG! More nonchalant glances about

the cabin, and the pilot looked back to me faking a yawn. en I

knew we had troubles. Well, we heard a few more very loud bangs

until we ﬁnally landed in Arizona. e pilot jumped out of the

plane and kissed the ground! It turned out that the plane’s wings

had recently been re-fabricated and the fabric had been laid on

incorrectly causing the wind force to peel it away. We had a huge

hole in the wing but somehow managed to make it.

Felipe died at the age of three years. When he was only a year old,

he developed a Wilm’s tumor—a form of cancer in the kidney, which

aﬀects mainly children. We were told immediately that it was deadly.

He lived for about another two years, painless until his death at

the Children’s Hospital in Boston right before his 3

birthday. He

was buried in a Philadelphia cemetery between plots reserved for

his Muñoz grandfather and grandmother. Cancer treatments have

progressed a lot since those early years. Wilm’s tumor is no longer

deadly but curable.

Alas, I did not have a successful marriage, but I won’t go into detail,

as it might “put me in a dark mood.” Juan was married ﬁve times;

for the record, I was #2. I’ve met #1, #3, and #5, and we’re all good

friends. I never had the pleasure of meeting #4. When our son Juan

Jr., at age 34, told his dad about his wedding plans, Juan Sr. soberly

suggested that he was “rushing into things.” e nerve!

e year I got a divorce, 1963, I ﬁgured I should celebrate. I did so by

doing two memorable things. First, I bought a painting at the Nugget

Shop on South Franklin, Belle Simpson, proprietor. e painting was

by Eustace Paul Zeigler and titled, “Yukon River Trader.” It showed a

rough-looking geezer with a scar on his neck.

. q

Rie’sMemoirs

Portugal

T he second memorable thing I did after my divorce was to take

Juan, age 11, on a three-month trip to Portugal. I decided on Portugal

because my research showed it to be the least expensive European

country at the time. It was run by the dictator Salazar. I chose the

small ﬁshing town of Nazare, which provided its inhabitants with

safe bases against raids by Algerian, French, English, and Dutch

pirates that were going on as late as the beginning of the 19th

century. is town is a marvelous tiny beach community. At the

train station were hotel hucksters, all trying to convince us to go with

them and check into their hotel. We choose the cheapest one, and

the gentleman lifted our luggage on his bike. e three of us walked

through narrow streets that couldn’t even ﬁt a car. When we arrived

at our hotel, we checked in. Our room had horse hair mattresses

covered with gunny sacks and a few hooks on the wall for hanging

clothes. Behind a curtain was the toilet. We decided we could handle

it, mainly because of the very attractive price.

In the middle of the night, I heard a strange sound. Someone was

coming up the staircase stepping very, very slowly. After getting

closer to our room I heard a hiss, hiss, hissing sound, then another

step and more hissing. I hid my head under the blanket and the

next thing I knew it was morning. As Juan and I went downstairs

for breakfast, we noticed dead cockroaches on every staircase. We

checked out before breakfast.

Our next hotel was on the waterfront—a ﬁrst class lodging, with

four meals a day of excellent food; the last meal was at 10:00 p.m.

and consisted mostly of a light pastry, a salad, and tea. As we ate in

the evening, the beggar children would stare through the window

longingly. Occasionally we would give them some food or money.

e rate there was $90 a month for both Juan and I, meals included!

e waiters, chamber maids, and other staﬀ were very nice and

agreeable, and Juan was their favorite guest.

One day, a waiter asked me if Juan might join them during their

lunch break for a snack at their favorite sidewalk café. Juan happily

agreed and so did I. When I went to pick him up later in the

afternoon, the three waiters invited me to join them for a drink

before taking Juan back to the hotel. I accepted and asked what they

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were drinking. ey replied in unison, “Brandy.” I asked my son what

he was drinking and he said, nonchalantly, “Brandy.”

Nazare had a public square with an impressive Catholic Church.

e hotel and sidewalk were also on the square. One day when I

came outside, I heard moaning and groaning along with loud crying

and sobbing. is scene was coming from the church steps, where

about a dozen women, all dressed in black, were grieving for a death

that had occurred. I found out later they were paid mourners—a

Portuguese custom.

. q

1963 Cl

thespin Art Show, Teller, Alaska

I took two good friends from Juneau with me--Yvonne Mozee

and Ann Parsons. Yvonne was one of Alaska’s top photographers,

well known for her photos of Alaskans at work and play. We ﬂew

up to Teller from Nome by bush plane. We were introduced to our

pilot who looked like he was 50 years old. is pleased us because

we were all “white knuckle ﬂyers” and felt the years of his experience

would be to our advantage. When we mentioned that to the pilot,

he proclaimed, “ere are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold

pilots!”

We arrived in Teller and went to the grade school gymnasium where

the three of us started putting up artwork. We called it the clothespin

art show, since nothing was framed and all the ﬂat or matted art

hung on a clothesline with clothes pins. My paintings were for sale

in the $20-$40 range. e show opened at 2 p.m., and the locals

started showing up. ree men who looked a bit out of place also

arrived in hard hats, tool belts, and dirty shirts. ey turned out to

be construction workers from the “Lower 48 states” who had come

for something more than the art. e artwork left them perfectly

cold but eyeballing us three women was their “cup of tea.” e show

ended at 4:00 p.m., and the men stayed around to “help us” take

down the show and lock up. Walking back to our digs, Ann Parsons

pipes up, with a forced enthusiasm and somewhat panicky voice,

“We have a date tonight!” She nervously continued, “We are to meet

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them at the school parking lot at 7:00p.m.” “And…?” asked Yvonne.

Poor Ann. She was beside herself. In a loud squeaky voice, she yelled,

“And I said yes. What else could I say?” “What else could I say?” “No!”

Yvonne and I answered in unison. “What else could I do?” repeated

Ann, almost in tears.

is went back and forth for a while, until it was decided that

we would show up in the parking lot and then tell them. At the

appointed time, we heard a powerful engine roar and horn honk in

the parking lot. Racing towards us was the largest, fastest, noisiest

construction vehicle I have ever seen. It continued its approach,

with the driver repeatedly honking the horn and waving a bottle of

booze out the window. e rig screeched to a halt three feet from us,

covering us in a cloud of dust.

Yvonne yelled up to our would-be “dates,” “No we’re not going on a

date with you. Ann didn’t ask us ﬁrst, and we say ‘No!’” “anks for

the invite, but, no.” And with that, we turned around and left. We

ﬁgured they probably drank their troubles away.

. q

Fritz Cove Road and the Hagerups

W hen we came back from Europe, I decided that my son Juan

and I should live in a more inspiring place—preferably at Fritz Cove

Road, which was entirely on the waterfront. We lucked out. Erv and

Pat Hagerup lived out there in a large house with a tiny cabin next

door. ey had modiﬁed it into a rental, and it had just been vacated

when I showed up. Juan, I, and our cat moved in. e calico kitty was

orange and black, so we called her “Halloween.”

One day I was having a cup of coﬀee with a neighbor when Juan

came running over with the news that Halloween was dying! I

jumped up and ran back to the house with him. ere in the yard was

Halloween, writhing and yowling loudly at the Hagerups’ dog, who

was looking on with a baﬄed and inquisitive expression. I told Juan

that Halloween was experiencing her ﬁrst “heat.” She was rubbing

against the pooch and yowling plaintively for him to accommodate

her.

Everything about the cabin was perfect. For starters, it had a cast

iron open ﬁreplace. It had a beautiful front lawn beyond which was

Rie’sMemoirs

a sandy beach on the waters of Auke Bay. e Hagerups had two

children: Erv, 12 years old and Aral, 7, just a year older than Juan.

Juan took the bus to Auke Bay School. e Hagerups also had two

dogs, Lady and BoBo. Sunny summer days we all would swim and

play on the beach. It didn’t take long for Pat and I to become close

friends. Erv was an “able bodied sea man” on one of the Alaska State

Ferries. He was very proud every time the ferry approached the Auke

Bay dock, which he could see from his house. He would run out to

his skiﬀ moored up out front and race over to the ferry. Erv would

then do circles around it, tooting his horn, waving and pointing to

a large sign he had made which read WELCOME TO AUKE BAY,

ALASKA’S MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE! Passengers cheerfully

waved back. I subscribed to the New Yorker magazine, and the

Hagerups to the Juneau Empire newspaper. In time, we decided

to trade once we had ﬁnished reading them. One day, Pat knocked

on the cabin door to tell me that the paper had not arrived that

morning. “Call them up,” I said, slightly ticked oﬀ. She decided to wait

a day; however, the next day came and still no paper. “Call them up,”

I said even more emphatically. “If you don’t want to, I will!” Pat said,

“No, no, we don’t want to call them. We haven’t gotten a bill from

them for 12 years!” e next day, the Empire came again.

Although on previous occasions I had told Juan the majority of the

facts of life, I had not gotten into intricate details—unless you count

the drawings of the female and male genitals I did for him when he

was younger. With this ongoing Halloween scene, I ﬁgured it was a

perfect time to “ﬁll in the blanks.” So I took Juan a few steps away and

told him the whole story, not leaving out any details. When I was

ﬁnally through, he said, “Mom, now you’ve really done it!”

While living on Fritz Cove Road, Juan, age seven, was not familiar

with “party lines” on the telephones yet. A party line had at least

six diﬀerent telephone numbers using it. Wanting to make a call to

one of his friends, Juan picked up the phone to dial. After standing

there listening for a couple of minutes without dialing I glanced over.

He put down the receiver and said, “She’s having a little operation.”

When I picked up the phone to listen in, sure enough, they were

talking about an upcoming operation. I gently hung up and high

tailed it over to Pat’s house next door to make sure it wasn’t her. It

wasn’t, and I never found out who had the operation or for what.

Erv Hagerup was a “creative” driver—creative from the standpoint of

speed. One day he had gone to the airport to pick up his niece. When

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they returned, the niece, clearly shaken, said, “Uncle was driving way

too fast, 80 miles an hour! He told me not to worry because in Juneau

you can drive as fast as your age if you’re a senior!” Erv also ran for

the city council one time; his platform was he needed the money.

Halloween loved to hunt all the little animals in the woods and

proudly bring them home for us. She would bring us live bats

occasionally and all hell would break loose when she had put one

down on the ﬂoor. I thought I had outgrown my allergy to cats, but I

had not. Dr. Akiyama told me once, no twice, that I should get rid of

my cat or I could get asthma. I asked my neighbors if they wanted a

cat, but no one took me up on my oﬀer. Finally, a neighbor suggested

Mrs. Harris, who was a cat lover. Interestingly enough, she was also

one of the descendants of Richard Harris, co-founder of Juneau

(along with his partner, Joe Juneau, who got all the glory). Anyway, I

went to talk with Mrs. Harris and told her my plight. She said, “I have

a house full of cats. My husband told me if I got another cat that he

would shoot it dead!” But she said, “He’ll never know the diﬀerence!”

and took Halloween in her arms.

We would often take boat rides in the summer out front in Auke

Bay. One ﬁne day we decided to have a picnic on one of the island

beaches, so we packed up our gear. After lunch, Pat, her daughter

Aral, and I were sitting on the beach watching Erv and my son Juan,

(age 8) roar around the cove in Erv’s high-powered boat. After some

fancy maneuvers, Erv decided to scare Juan. He headed full bore

straight for the three of us on the water’s edge. As the shore got closer

and closer Juan predictably got more and more nervous. At the last

possible moment, when Erv started to steer hard left, Juan grabbed

the wheel and pulled hard right. Zoom! Straight up the beach the

boat went, sending us scurrying out of the way. Luckily no one was

hurt and the tide was coming in to lift us oﬀ. e boat needed to

have the bottom re-painted, which Erv told his son to do—he said,

“Because I have already sanded it!”

. q

Rie’sMemoirs

Nunivak Island, 1962

I n the early 60s, I was commissioned by the Bureau of Indian

Aﬀairs to draw the reindeer round up on Nunivak Island in the

Bering Sea. e island was about 40 square miles, populated by 100

Eskimos in the town of Mekoryuk. e island also had reindeer

that were transplanted there years earlier. Now the population was

around 10,000. Every August, the BIA would do a reindeer roundup

and harvest some of the herd.

Eight runners from the village would head out to the tundra and ﬁnd

the main herd. Once they found it, they would break oﬀ 1,000 to

3,000 reindeer and herd them back to the village. As they approached

the village, they would radio ahead. e villagers, my son Juan, age

seven at the time, and I would go to the opening of the enormous

corrals they had built. e opening fanned out the width of a football

ﬁeld and the villagers would position themselves so that they would

extend the fence outward until the opening was as large as the length

of a football ﬁeld. e reindeer would come stampeding towards us

and into the ﬁrst and largest corral. ey could then start processing

these enormous beasts. Both male and female reindeer have large

racks. e BIA would have the biggest, oldest bulls slaughtered for

meat. e females and young males would be released after the

horns, which were in velvet at the time, were cut oﬀ. Container vans

full of these racks were sold to the Koreans for aphrodisiacs, we were

told.

Juan would go out to help the men in the corral, where he got to

wrestle down small and medium reindeer. He would grab the horns

and stick out his foot and trip the reindeer. Another would then help

hold down the animal. A diﬀerent person would move in to cut the

horns. Yet another would unceremoniously castrate the males to

fatten them up for a later harvest. Someone else, using a six-inch

paint brush, would slop some disinfectant on the fresh wound.

Everyone would then jump away at the same time, and the beast

would head out of the open gate to the tundra. As the reindeer ran

out full speed, the last person would be there with another six-inch

paint brush sticking out, and would paint a large blue stripe on it,

thus marking it as having been part of that round-up.

As the men were moving a group of 200 reindeer from one pen

to the other, an Eskimo took Juan to the awaiting empty pen. e

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man told Juan to stand in the

middle of the corral, about

40 feet away from where he

was going to be standing.

Juan was told that when the

reindeer start stampeding in

the corral towards him, NOT

TO MOVE! Instead, hold you

arm straight out with your

thumb up in the air. As the

beasts charge you, move your

thumb to the right and left

quickly, but not too quickly.

Well he did what he was told,

and in came the charging

200 reindeer, right at him! He

held out his arm and moved

his thumb as instructed. He

told me he could feel the racks almost touch his head as the reindeer

zipped by. Eventually, the herd passed and that was that. We ﬁgured

out later that the thumb trick was to keep Juan occupied so he

wouldn’t panic and run and get killed.

. q

Starr Hill

W e rented our cabin for many years on Fritz Cove Road until, in

1969, I bought a house on Starr Hill for $7,000. I got a loan from the

bank and paid it oﬀ in one year. Our payback plan was to lessen the

interest payments. One of the ﬁrst days in the house, my ex-boss, the

Editor-in-Chief for the Empire newspaper, gave me a housewarming

present, a sheepdog! e dog came from the Humane Society and

had been taken from an abusive owner. I couldn’t say no to a present,

especially such a nice one as this! Juan named him Hindu, as he was

studying India in school at the time.

In 1969, Hindu herded us across the Chilkoot Pass—a three-day

hike over the historic Gold Rush Trail from Skagway/Dyee to Lake

Bennett. Juan, age 14, Ruth Pederson and her eldest daughter, June,

Rie and Juan

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who was about 16, Don Messerschmidt, our trusty leader, Bobby

Mounier, 14, my nephew, from California, Hindu, our herder, and I

made up our group.

Hindu would lead the pack of us through the winding and wooded

trails, stopping every few minutes to let us pass. en he would dash

up ahead and, a few minutes later, repeat the process. Periodically

one of us would step behind a bush. Hindu, ever alert, would “ﬁnd

the missing hiker” and stand by until he or she had rejoined the herd.

Hindu lived to about age 9. Shortly thereafter, I inherited another

dog, Buddy Pierre, a large, sleek, black and white Lab/St. Bernard

that I got from Juan when he went oﬀ to Maui to go to college. My

last dog was Muncie, a yellow lab mix who reached age 13.

I always took Hindu to work with me at the Museum, but he would

stay in the car. During the morning and afternoon breaks, I would

take him for a 10-minute walk. During the summer months, we

would sit outside on the front steps and eat lunch. One time, a man

walked by and Hindu bolted after him. When he caught up to the

man he wagged and jumped in excitement. e man looked at

me with a big smile, still hugging and patting Hindu. He told me,

“He used to be my dog. e Humane Society took him away.” We

continued happily chatting and petting Hindu, and then we went

our separate ways, Hindu still wagging. It conﬁrmed to me what I

Rie with Eric Peter

and Pete Mounier

and her dog Hindu.

Rie’sMemoirs

had known all along— that dogs, no matter how mistreated, will still

always love their owner.

I had a few other labs as well who appeared in many of my paintings.

On morning walks on the Juneau beach, there are at times small

ﬂoating islands of seagulls paddling to and fro, looking for tiny ﬁsh

for breakfast. ey would always keep a wary eye on my dog, who

would love to race into the shallow water and try and nab one, which

he never did.

. q

Tenakee

T enakee Springs, Alaska, has always been one of my favorite places.

e small community of 100, including dogs, lies on the west coast of

Chichagof Island, about 80 miles west of Juneau. We have been going

there since about 1963 with our good friends the Sims. Tenakee

Springs, as the name implies, has a mineral hot springs in the middle

of town. e springs, about the size of three or four bathtubs,

are ﬁve feet deep. e temperature is 105 degrees, and there are

men’s and women’s hours, since you bathe in the nude. is is a bit

embarrassing for the timid soul, but the locals are used to it and

could care less about the naked person in the bath next to them.

Before the arrival of TV, Tenakee was much more social. ere

would be lots of card games, dinners, and, of course, the Saturday

movie. Every Saturday, the town would come to the “theater” and

watch black and white westerns. is was in the late 60s and the

movies we watched were old. e reels would often break, but we all

enjoyed it immensely.

In the early 1970s, I bought a 50’ x 75’ lot in downtown Tenakee for

$600. In the summer of 1977, my son Juan built a Pan-Abode cabin

on it—a 12’ x 20’ made out of prefabricated cedar Lincoln logs. It

assembled quite easily after the foundation was built. e cabin was

only 400 feet from the hot springs. In the evening, I would put on my

pajamas and slippers, get my towel, and walk to the bath. It made it

simple afterwards to just slip back in them, go to the cabin, and hop

into bed.

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I sketched and painted Tenakee for decades. Of the many scenes I

sketched, one for sure didn’t make it to a watercolor. As I was headed

to the bath in the evening, I was told that two drunken men and one

drunken woman had passed out at the edge of the pool. I turned

around and headed back to the cabin, got my sketch book, and went

back to the bath. ey hadn’t moved and were perfect still subjects

for me to sketch at my leisure.

I must admit that a friend and I joined the men one time after we

had had a few too many. Nothing too exciting to report, but it was

jolly. I had no plans to do it again, however.

. q

Stan Price

Stan Price and his wife lived in a cabin on ﬂoats in Pack Creek on

Admiralty Island near Juneau. e tide lifted the cabin up two

times a day. As a passenger on a small tour boat, Pack Creek was

one of our stops to see the brown bear who ﬁsh there during the

salmon run. ey invited me to come and stay with them anytime I

wanted—to just give them a call ﬁrst on the two way radio.

Several years went by, during which Mrs. Price passed away. On

a beautiful sunny day in early July, I radioed Stan, who was very

pleased to hear from me. He told me to visit and to “bring a friend.” I

phoned Ruth Pedersen, my good friend, and Jay Crondahl, my good

neighbor. I invited them both to join me on this sketching trip to

Stan’s cabin, which was a about a half hour bush plane ride away. We

packed our gear, including food and wine.

e next day, sure enough, it was sunny again, so we took oﬀ. Jay was

sitting up front with the pilot, and Ruth and I were in back. We ﬂew

over mountains and inlets, islands and bays until at last we taxied

on water right in front of Stan’s cabin. By then an elderly man, Stan

stood on the beach waiting for us. After introductions and hugs, we

unloaded the grub. As we were carrying the provisions to the cabin,

Stan stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the huge grassy tideland

and told us the bad news: the ﬁsh were late in coming so the bears

had not yet arrived at Pack Creek. ey were certainly due any day

now. He looked out over the bay and shook his head. We walked on.

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We spent four or ﬁve days at Stan’s cozy cabin and ate wonderful

meals cooked by Stan and Ruth. We picked vegetables in Stan’s

garden for our salads and periodically looked out to the enormous

meadows, scanning for wildlife. On the last day of our trip, Jay was

sitting outside on the cabin ﬂoat. In a very loud whisper, he said,

“ere’s something moving around in the bushes.” We all jumped up

and looked. Stan said, “I wonder if it’s Rebecca; she’s usually the ﬁrst

one to arrive.” en, he called, “Rebecca, we’re here. Rebecca, we’re

here.” ere was silence, and then a big sow brown bear stood up on

its hind legs. “Rebecca, we’re here. Rebecca, we’re here.” e bear got

down oﬀ its hind legs and slowly moved a little closer to us. Jay, Ruth,

and I returned to inside the cabin, closed the door, and watched

through the window. Stan was still on the back porch with his six-

foot-long wood staﬀ, his only protection should the bear become

aggressive. If a bear were to come within Stan’s reach he would

bop him or her on the nose—hard!—with the staﬀ. He would not

however, chase them away from his garden or his garbage. ey were

welcome to both. For Stan, it was “live and let live.”

ree or four years later, I heard that Stan’s health was failing and

that he was staying in a 3

rate hotel in Juneau. I went to visit him.

He lived in a second ﬂoor room with no windows. It was just a

room with three blank walls; the fourth had a door leading to the

dimly lit toilet. He was happy to see me and with the variety of fruit

that I brought him. I visited him four or ﬁve more times before he

died. I did a painting of Stan in happier days, standing on the back

deck of his Wannagan with green meadows and mountains in the

background.

. q

Art Class

Periodically I was invited to a school to give a talk or class, often to

elementary kids. I would show slides of where I sketched and what

I painted, and then I would open up the discussion with a question

and answer period. On one of these occasions, a little girl raised her

hand frantically to ask a question. “My cat had kittens last night!”

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she said. Another girl added, “My grandmother died.” ere were no

further questions, so the teacher said “Class, let’s give Rie a big hand!”

And they did.

. q

London

O n February 18, 1978, Ann Symons, a good Juneau friend, and

I, got it into our heads to go to London to see some popular plays.

To make the trip really worthwhile we would also each buy a new

winter coat; sheepskin on the outside with sheep wool for the lining.

What could be warmer? Before long, we added lots more to our list

of things to buy: shoes, slacks, sweater, gloves, etc. en I hit upon

the great idea to wear the worst clothes in our wardrobe for the ﬂight

over. at way, we could toss the old outﬁt out and wear the new,

having less luggage to pack around. I didn’t, however, have a coat old

enough to toss, so I went to the Salvation Army and told Asunta Hill

who ran the operation my plight. She nodded toward a coat rack.

Before long, I had a scruﬀy-looking coat, all wool, about knee high,

in a sickly green, for only $15! “How’s this?” I asked proudly. “Perfect”

she said. “And it has a blue tag on it, so it’s half oﬀ!—that will be

$7.50, please.”

So we were ready. We ﬂew from Juneau to Anchorage, where we

transferred planes to London. e clerk at the counter made a long

face and said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want

to hear ﬁrst?” We groaned, “Give us the bad news.” “Your ﬂight has

been overbooked,” she said. “And the good?” I asked. “We had to put

you in ﬁrst class.” A seven-hour trip in ﬁrst class! Regardless of our

attire, nobody raised an eyebrow, and we had a grand time ﬂying to

Europe.

It is no surprise that dogs appear frequently in my paintings. In my

book, “Rie Muñoz: Portrait of Alaska,” I counted 127 dogs! Many of

the dogs that are in my sketches and paintings were real, but many

were imaginary. If there was room in the painting, I would put in a

dog. My own dogs have made appearances in my paintings over the

years. My yellow lab, Muncie, is in many, but my black and white lab

Buddy is in many more, as the black contrasted nicely with the other

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colors. When, upon leaving for college, Juan gave me his long-legged,

slim-bodied dog, a friend of mine with a wicked sense of humor said

to me, “Why Rie, he is such an elegant dog—you should call him

Buddy Pierre!” e name stuck. If you look at some of my paintings

of Iditarod dog teams, you will see Buddy bravely leading the pack.

Once, a woman asked me why I had not painted a dachshund. (You

can guess what breed she owned.) I told her that I just make up dogs

when there is an empty space where a dog could ﬁt in. She asked

me if I would paint one sometime. I said I would, and fulﬁlled my

promise in the painting “Whales in the Inlet.” She was very happy.

. q

Wedding Dishes

F or Juan and Cathy’s wedding, May 19, 1990, I gave them a set

of eight dinner plates, 10 dessert plates, 10 bowls, 10 cups, and two

large serving plates. What made these plates special was that I had

painted a diﬀerent original on the front and back of each of the

pieces and then had them ﬁred. ese totally useable plates featured

all sorts of designs, including two mermaids, a blue whale spouting,

a great blue heron with a ﬁsh in its beak, ducks and an orange ﬂoat,

a wedding scene of Cathy and Juan, three geese ﬂying, and two

berry pickers. Eventually, I did more miscellaneous items, such as a

few tiles of my dogs, one of the Easter Bunny for my granddaughter

Mercedes, and a bowl for her as well, a salt and pepper shaker, and

a sugar bowl. I told them these plates were to be used. ere were a

few bowls broken over the years, but everything else survived.

. q

January 26, 1992

W hen Mercedes was born at home, Juan called, and I walked

down the 22 steps to his house. I brought Muncie, who came up and

sniﬀed the little baby. He wagged, with a special look in his eye; he

knew this was a special occasion.

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Mercedes used to love to dress up another lab of ours, Bailey, in

women’s clothes—bra, underwear, the works. Bailey patiently put

up with it. As a young girl, about seven or eight years old, she would

come and spend the night with me once in a while. She would bring

a picture of her mom and dad, the little dear.

. q

DIARY NOTES

February 24, 1992

I just ﬁnished putting the ﬁnal touches on two paintings. One is “Red

Skiﬀ Ketchikan.” I also ﬁnally painted the seaweed in “Drying Seaweed,

Haines.” I saw this scene a few years ago, when I went up to Haines to

sketch the Hooligan ﬁshing excitement. But to do a half way credible

job on the seaweed color, I stalled. Finally, I remembered to pick up

some seaweed while I was walking Muncie near the small boat harbor.

I brought it home and soaked the seaweed in a glass of water to keep it

fresh. I had forgotten about it until today when began to rot and stink. I

quickly painted the seaweed in my watercolor and tossed it.

February 26, 1992

Today, besides sending out a few handmade birth announcements, I am

looking for a legend subject to paint, because I’m in a legend mood.

A lot has happened in the last seventeen years, most of which is good. I

am happy to say that things have turned out well. One of the very good

things that has happened is that, on May 19, 1990, Juan and Cathy

Engstrom got married. It was a very large and wonderful wedding

in Tenakee. Only a month ago, on January 26, 1992, they had a baby

daughter, Mercedes Marie, named after me I am happy to say! A very

happy day!

April 3, 1995

Mercedes is three years old and talks up a storm. She’s loads of fun to be

with. I’ve slowed down considerably. I suppose I’m entitled to that since

I am 73 now. I have Macular Degeneration, a disease that very slowly

leads to blindness. My sight is ﬁne now, luckily. I also have a few cataracts

that are causing some vision problems, but that can be ﬁxed. Other

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than that dark cloud on the horizon, I’m peachy keen, which means ﬁne!

Two days ago, Juan sent oﬀ the manuscript and color separations to

Singapore, where we are getting a large book published. It will have every

piece I have every published (not painted)—about 355. e biography is

written by Sarah Eppenbach.

Rasmuson Foundation

One year, I learned that I was the recipient of the annual Distinguished

Artist Award. Along with the title came $25,000 that had to be spent in

one year on artist-related projects. is was easier said than done. My

paints and paper don’t cost a lot, so I ended up buying airplane tickets to

all over Alaska to sketch for future paintings. Tenakee, the Iditarod Race,

Aleutian Islands were all part of the travels. at spent about $7,000,

still way short. Juan had the idea of allocating the funds for a special book

we were working on: King Island Journals. We used about $17,000 on

that and were still left with $1,107.32 that I just couldn’t spend. I decided

to return the balance of $1,170.32 to the Rasmuson Foundation, along

with a list of my expenses, which I did. A month later, I got a nice letter

declining the money and giving back the $1,107.32. Juan thought this

multi-million dollar foundation must have been amused by my token

gesture, but I thought it was the right thing to do.

Memorial at Sea

On one occasion, as I was getting on the ferry to go to Tenakee, I noticed

that most all the passengers were loading ﬂowers, lots of them. We

shoved oﬀ and started on our eight-hour boat ride, ﬁrst to Hoonah, a

town of about 800, and then to Tenakee. As we were out in the middle of

Chatham Strait, the ferry made an unscheduled stop and turned oﬀ its

engines. e silence was noticeable. e many people who had brought

ﬂowers took them to the back deck. A few of them talked to the crowd,

and then they all threw the ﬂowers into the sea. I asked one of the deck

hands what was going on. He said two men in their 20s from Hoonah

had gone deer hunting in a skiﬀ. e weather had gotten rough, and

they had disappeared at sea. e skiﬀ was found on a shoreline nearby

to where the ferry had stopped. I did a painting of that scene called

“Memorial at Sea.” is was the last painting I published as a lithograph.

Bear

I spent the night at Juan and Cathy’s cabin, next to their house on Lena

Loop Road. In the morning I left my red canvas suitcase by Cathy’s car

in the driveway and went inside to say good bye. When I came out, it

was gone. e long and the short of it is that a black bear had taken the

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suitcase, dragged it to a nearby wooded area, unzipped it, and eaten the

cookies, bread, cheese, and butter that I had packed inside. e bruin

left the rest in the pouring rain, including this book of my memoirs. Juan

found the suitcase later in the woods about 50 feet from the house. Happy

ending!

In 2007, Juan suggested I might want to move to the Parkshore

condominiums in downtown Juneau. He and I would check out condos

as they became available and, ﬁnally, after about a year, we found the

perfect one with a great view. I bought it and I love it. In the winter

of 2013, I moved out to a cabin next to Juan and Cathy. It is a cozy

cabin overlooking the cove. I head out in the mornings with Juan and

my grandson Matthew, and spend the day in town in my Parkshore

condo. After school, or later in the afternoon, they pick me up. It’s a lively

schedule!

June 2009

I’m on the fast ferry from Juneau to Sitka, about a 4½-hour trip. We’re in

Sergius Narrows now and just went through at full speed. I’m excited to

be going to Sitka for a reception at the Sitka Pioneers’ Home. ey bought

a large collection of my art—about 27 framed pieces—for the Home.

I’m also going over there to see residents Bob DeArmond, Rita omas,

Yvonne Mozee, Betty Anis, and, undoubtedly, others residing there. e

Pioneers’ Home is giving me the use of one of their guest rooms for two

nights, including, I’m told, meals! Being a frugal Dutchman, this also

inspired me to come. A friend warned me, “You better watch it Rie, they

might keep you there!” My reply was, “ey’d better watch it, I might plan

to stay!”

Well, I had a great time, saw all of the above-mentioned people and

more. Yvonne has a cat, which is OK in the Pioneer’s Home, also small

dogs.

May of 2011

I’ll be 90 on August 17. In the last several months, I have been translating

from my mother’s Holland-Dutch diary, with entries mainly from 1938-

1942. Working on that has encouraged me to pick up my notes and carry

on with these memoirs.

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January 18, 2014

I’m at Peit’s house in Morro Bay now.

Juan brought me here by plane and car,

arriving on January 5. One of the ﬁrst

things he did was weigh me. e result:

108 lbs. Next Sunday, 110 lbs! Two

pounds in a week sounds realistic. We’ll

check next Sunday again. We’re eating

well. Peit’s son Pete, my nephew, is going

to check the mileage by car to see how far

we have been walking to the grocery store.

We did that ﬁve times the ﬁrst week, plus

a half- hour walk in the afternoon. On

the second week, we took three morning

walks to get groceries, then one afternoon

walk. We also ﬁt in a nap each day.

Marie Engelina Muñoz died in Juneau, April 6, 2016.

Rie with her brother

Piet in Morro Bay

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EULOGY AT RIE’S CELEBRATION OF LIFE

by Juan Muñoz

Rie Muñoz grew up in Holland and the U.S. Rie joined the Woman’s

Army Corp Special Services in 1944 and was stationed in Germany

during WW II.

She studied art at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

Rie lived on Starr Hill for many years and for the last ﬁve years of her

life was living independently at the Parkshore Condos.

Rie Muñoz received the University of Alaska’s Honorary Doctorate

of Humanities Degree in May of 1999. Her personality and art have

touched many people in a most positive way. Rie quit painting at 90

when her eyesight got bad. She ﬁnally quit driving at the age of 91,

when, quote, “People started honking at me.”

When my mom talked about dying she would say, “When I go to my

reward.” What a rich and full life.

Most of her life she was traveling. She traveled to Europe and back

many times before she was an adult. is was before jet service

across the Atlantic; so it was all by freighter.

She took a freighter to Juneau in 1950 and made this great town her

home. Rie traveled all around Alaska, sketching and painting the

people, as she saw them.

She was always looking for an adventure. Rie hiked the Chilkoot Trail

three times, went back to Europe a dozen more times in the 70s and

80s, hiking the Swiss Alps, taking a bike trip through the Chateau

region of France during grape harvest season, canal trips, hiking the

Coast of Wales, doing silkscreens in London, tapestries in Aubusson.

e traveling continued until the end. Last January and February,

Rie went down south for her annual trip to Morro Bay to visit her

brother Piet. ey would take their daily walks. When they went

grocery shopping, they would bring a baby carriage to carry their

groceries in. If you don’t think that got some looks.

She returned to Juneau around the end of February and was packing

her bags a couple of weeks later. Rie wanted to join Matthew and

me on our trip to Palm Springs. We stayed at my brother in law

Allan’s house, and Rie got to enjoy the pool, play miniature golf with

Matthew, eat fresh grapefruits oﬀ the tree, and dine out at night. I

think she enjoyed the grapefruits more than the ﬁne dining.

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We came back around the beginning of April in time for her

granddaughter Mercedes’ ﬁrst art show at Annie Kaill’s. e show

was a big success and grandma Rie was beaming.

e day Rie “went to her reward” started like any other day. She had a

cup of tea, using the same tea bag as she had the day before, because

“it was perfectly good.” For breakfast, Rie liked to have toasted

English Muﬃns with sliced strawberries on one half and cheese on

the other.

When I stopped by later to prepare her dinner, I asked her, “How

are you doing today, mom?” “I’m doing great!” she said. We chatted

and laughed a while, and then everything stopped…it was time to

watch Judge Judy, the only show she liked. We watched it for a while,

agreed on who the guilty party was, I got up and gave her a hug and a

kiss goodbye, and I left her.

A couple of hours later, as she was sitting in her rocking chair looking

out over Mt. Jumbo, she had a massive stroke, and she left us.

I guess a life doesn’t get much better than this. And it couldn’t have

happened to a nicer gal.

So let’s celebrate this beautiful life of this wonderful woman and wish

her a rich reward!

Rie Muñoz is survived by her son Juan, daughter-in-law Cathy,

grandchildren Mercedes and Matthew, her brother Piet Mounier,

and many nieces and nephews. Her ashes are buried in Tenakee

Springs.