Local enjoyed 'being led astray'

(This column is sponsored by Belwood's Furniture, and will appear in The Daily Bee each Sunday. You are asked to identify the person seen in the picture. Next week you will see another picture of this person that will identify her. Here are some hints to help you recognize the individual you see today. If you think you know her then call me at 1 (800) 507-9426. Please spell your name - it helps.)

"My family came from Oklahoma, and they came to Bonner County in 1917. I was born up Rapid Lightning Road. My dad was logging, but he got a job working for Humbird Lumber Company, piling lumber in box cars. When I was 13 days old we moved to Kootenai, and we lived there until I was about three years old. We then moved to Sandpoint and my dad worked for the White (A.C. White) Lumber Company.

"Before I started to school, my family moved to Elk, Washington. We then moved to Otis Orchards, Washington, and then to Chelan, Washington. We moved back to Sandpoint in 1937. My mother's family all lived in Sandpoint.

"I really don't remember a great deal about my preschool days. I had four older sisters and four younger brothers, so I was kind of sandwiched in the middle. I do remember playing paper dolls an awful lot. McCall's magazine had a whole page of paper dolls, and my older sister, who was married, would always send that sheet of paper dolls to me. I would draw clothes for the dolls and make them fit. I enjoyed doing that. We had a Hills Coffee jigsaw puzzle with a picture of a coffee pot. I remember putting that thing together, probably a hundred times. I was kind of a loner as a child. All I can remember that our family did together was go to church, and go to church, and go to church. I am not sorry because I am proud of my heritage.

"I started to school in Elk, Wash. It was a white, square building, and the first and second grades were together. I will never forget that in the first grade we had the alphabet all around the top of the blackboards. Every morning we would go through every letter and all the sounds of that letter. I know that I could read by November. I started the fourth grade at Elk, and later went through the eighth grade in Chelan, Washington.

"I went to high school in Sandpoint. I attended the school on Pine and Euclid. A certain boy would walk by my house and we would walk to school together. This boy later became my husband. He played football and I was a cheerleader. I played clarinet in the band, and I was in the Honor Society, and the Commercial Club.

"We double-dated a lot, and we would go to the back door of Dub Lewis's bakery for hot glazed doughnuts. We paid two cents a piece for them. I didn't go to the Panida, or to any movie, because it was against my father's religion. I didn't go to a movie until I was 16 years old, and my boy friend sneaked me into a movie when were visiting in Spokane. It was an Andy Hardy film and I thought it was really risque. He also taught me to dance and to play Pinochle. He just really led me astray, and I enjoyed being led astray.

"I graduated from high school in 1941, and I went to work in the office at the Sandpoint Creamery. I got married on November 15, 1941, and my father performed the ceremony. My husband had a job in Boise, so we moved there after we were married. Later, we heard that they were paying a dollar an hour at Farragut, so we moved back to Sandpoint.

"I have two sons and two daughters, and I have 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, and one on the way.

"I worked with my husband in the family business for many years. I can say that it was started with a prayer that was answered."

(I have given just the early years of today's mystery person. To give more would reveal the person's identity.)