History's Window: Lorena Hawkins

Editor's note: Longtime historian Bob Gunter spent his life diving into history, capturing the people and places of the community, highlighting what made it special. Bob's tales would take the reader on a journey of someone in the community, sharing their life, their stories and celebrate what make each person unique. "Tell me a story,” he would ask the person - or two, or three, or as many as he could coax out of them.

Below is one such tale, where Bob would offer tantalizing clues and challenge his reader to guess "Who Am I?" Below are the stories he wrote about Lorena Hawkins, which originally ran in April 2006.

Part 1

(This column was sponsored by Belwood Furniture, and will appear in The Daily Bee each Sunday. The first week, readers were asked to identify the person seen in the picture. The second week, they were shown a photo of the person as they were at the time of publication along with additional stories about that individual.)

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 pre-school 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 jig saw 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, Washington. 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 risqué. 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.)

Part 2

My name is Lorena Taylor Hawkins, and I was born in the Pack River area, on August 24, 1923. My parents were Wallace Thad Taylor and Edith Mae Satterlee. My mother’s family lived where the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch sits today. My father was the first minister of the Nazarene Church in Sandpoint. I had four older sisters and four younger brothers, so I was sandwiched in the middle. 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.

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, Otis Orchards, Washington, and then to Chelan, Washington. We moved back to Sandpoint in 1937.

I started the fourth grade at Elk, and later went through the eighth grade in Chelan, Washington. I went to high school in Sandpoint, the school on Pine and Euclid, and I graduated in1941.

A certain boy would walk by my house, and we would walk to school together. This boy later became my husband, and his name was Edward Hawkins. I didn’t go to the Panida, or to any movie, because it was against my father’s religion. When I was 16, Ed sneaked me into my first movie. He also taught me to dance and play Pinochle. He really led me astray, and I enjoyed being led astray.

Ed was a beautiful dancer, and since I was not allowed to go to dances, I told him it was alright with me if he went to the high school dances. My bedroom window had three little holes in it. I would run a string through one of those holes, and tie the other end to my toe. When Ed left the dance, he would come by and pull on the string. I would wake up, go to the window, and we would talk.

Ed graduated from high school a year ahead of me. He went to a trade school to learn cooking. He loved what he did, and I always thought it was so neat that he found something, early in his life, that he liked to do every day of his life.

Ed and I got married on November 15, 1941, and my father performed the ceremony. Ed had a job in Boise, cooking at an Air Force base, 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. Ed got a job in construction and I never understood that, because he couldn’t pound a nail straight.

Ed went in the army near the end of the war, and was sent to Japan. He was discharged in 1946 and that is when we went in the restaurant business. We had a little restaurant, across from the Sandpoint High School on Euclid, called, “The Duck Inn.” Ed cooked for Templin’s in Coeur d’Alene for three years. He worked at a restaurant in Spokane, called the Zepp Inn, on Trent. That is where he developed the bleu cheese salad dressing.

The man he worked for at the Zepp Inn was dissatisfied with the blue cheese dressing they were using. He said, “It looks like someone could come up with a decent dressing.” Ed prayed about it, and one night he sat up in bed and said, “I’ve got it.” The next day he made it, and the rest is history. Mrs. Davenport, from the Davenport Hotel, and Mrs. Ridpath, from the Ridpath Hotel, would bring a quart jar to get the dressing for their family.

We bought a restaurant in Pullman, and we were there from 1950 to 1956. On a trip back to Sandpoint we found that the Kaniksu Restaurant was available. We bought it, and in 1957 we took our crew out to Hershell Weaver’s Litehouse Restaurant, in Hope, for a Christmas party. Hershell asked Ed if we would be interested in buying the Litehouse. We had to borrow money to buy it, and we opened up on March 15, 1958. It was rough times. We had live music on Friday and Saturday nights, and people would come to dance. Ed and I taught dance lessons, above the restaurant, on Sunday nights, and that gave us some customers. We had to do everything we could to make it go, it was tough.

On Mother’s Day of 1982, we served 654 dinners at the Litehouse. Ed died in 1984, just when Litehouse Dressing was beginning to take off. I would never have dreamed when I poured that first cup full of dressing into a glass jar that it would development into what it is today.

Ed and I had two sons and two daughters. Their names are: Douglas Hawkins, Diana Parsons, Claudia Mae Parsons, and Edward Hawkins Jr. I have 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, and one on the way.

(The following recognized Lorena: Don and Nancy Johnson, Wilma Allen, Celia Snyder Paris said that she once lived on 6th street about 4-5 blocks from Lorena. She and Lorena walked to high school together. Undeen Rainey recalled taking dance lessons from Ed and Lorena.)