Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum

Interview of Darlene Waara Bjornsgard July 25th, 2014 Naselle, Washington

Interviewers: Gordon Strand & Brandon Benson

Q. [00:00:00] Today is July 25th, 2014 and we are doing interviews for the Nordic American Voices Oral History Project at the Naselle School in Naselle, Washington. Today, we'll be interviewing Darlene -- A. Bjornsgard. Q. -- Bjornsgard. My name is Gordon Strand and I am assisted by Brandon Benson. Welcome, Darlene. A. Thank you. Q. Thank you for participating. And we would like to you to first identify your name, date of birth, where you were born and give us your family history. Give us your story. A. [00:00:37] All right. Okay. My name is Darlene Jane. I was Waara, which came from V äära which was my great- grandparents' name, Autiovaara, Johan and Anna. They homesteaded here and I live on their property now. I was born in Raymond, Washington, just up the road, closest hospital at the time, March 9th of 1944. So I've lived here my entire life. I've lived the last 21 years on my great-grandparents' homestead, which was always my dream. It was kept in the family. It was very difficult during the Depression years. A great aunt who was widowed just raised potatoes and did whatever she could to keep the property intact. So her daughter was left with it and her daughter had no children and knew that I had always wanted to live there. A. [00:01:35] So we initially bought four or five acres and then, on her death, we got the rest of it which was, I guess, probably about 100 now. But now I have two children that own on it, one particularly. So it's still in the family and I still do live there. Johan and Anna -- she was Anna Varanka (phonetic), and she came from the Posio area ]close to] Kuusamo up in the northeast. They came here in 1894, came around the cape. They worked in San Francisco long enough to get monies enough to come to Astoria, Oregon. They were in Astoria for, I think, just a year or two and then they were able to come over and homestead the property that I live on. I happen to have their homestead papers from Northern Pacific Railroad. I have, in fact, her spinning wheel she brought from Finland and her trunk and several of their things, their passports. A. [00:02:45] So they lived there their entire adult

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lives, raised their children. They came with three children, three or four, lost one on the way from Finland, and then had the rest of the children, including my grandfather [Charles Waara (Autiovaara)], on the property that I now own. My father was raised just across the creek. We're on the Salmon Creek. My grandfather sold Aladdin lamps from here to the California border, I guess, and suits. He died when I was a year old, so I never knew him, but I have a cousin of my father's that kept everything. So just a lot of the memorabilia is in my possession. I'm 100 percent Finnish and I have checked pretty well in Finland to know that. A. [00:03:53] I married a Norwegian, so I kind of messed it up a little bit for my kids, but they have grown up here, four of them. Three still live here. They all went to college, came back. One was here for 10 years and then moved on to the Portland area, but all of the other three families are here. They are all involved, of course, with the festival and have kept as many of the Finnish traditions as possible. On my mother's side, they came really much later. Grandpa came in 1908 and he had married my grandmother in Finland, but she waited there for a year. Basically, many of the families who lived here still were their friends in Finland. They would contact their friends there, tell them about the place. Their neighbors here really were their neighbors in Finland, [many] who I remember very well as a child. Q. What was the motivation for leaving, do you know? A. [00:04:56] Just the better life. I do know with my great-grandparents who came from the Kuusamo area -- it was very, very tough times there. They seemed even a little reluctant to talk about it up there in the northeast, because I guess it was. It was just very, very bad. So they came just to get the better life. Grandpa [Pollari] did too, although he had talked -- not during my lifetime but with my mother's -- his intention was never to stay here. He was going to come here, work, make some money, and go back to Finland. Then the following year, he had my grandma come and I've thought so many times, I just can't [imagine her coming alone]. She was such a wonderful lady who never really learned English. She could understand English, but she never really spoke it. So we grew up learning Finnish along with English. I've spoken Finnish my whole life. A. [00:05:54] So she came through New York -- and then she had a brother in the Midwest, Warren, Ohio -- stayed there for a while, and then came here. They settled here in Naselle, and lived here, and raised all five children here, including my mother. I do know that they were married already in Finland.

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Grandpa farmed and was a real entrepreneur. He just did it all and had a couple of farms by the time he died. I always used to ask him when he was going to retire, "Well, I'm going to. I'm going to and then I'm going to make a trip back to Finland." At 75, he took a spill off the roof of the barn, but came out of that just fine and then just lived a few more years, never retired from the farm, never retired from milking, never got back to Finland. Q. Never got back. A. [00:06:54] No, never got back. I know my mother's mother -- we called her Aiti, which means mother. It was Aiti and Grandpa to us. Her mother [my great-grandmother] died just ten months after she came here, but she did not know of that until much later because they didn't get information [quickly] here. There is one story that I'm just thinking about that was kind of interesting. Grandpa was the first one from his family to come and they were from the Pohjanmaa. Grandpa came first from his family from Veteli. My grandmother was from Lapua and they were married in Sievi. But he was the first one, so he worked and made some money and paid for a brother to come, who actually ended up staying in Canada. Then he paid for a sister to come and she lived her whole life in Astoria. Then another sister was going to come. A. [00:08:00] We met her. Actually, she's been here and we met here many, many years ago and also in Finland. She had her ticket in hand and there was the ship that went down. The Titanic went down, scared her to death. She never came. So when we have been in Finland and met her children and grandchildren, it's just so odd for them to think that they should have been Americans, but she did not come. She was, I think, the only one that didn't. Anyway, they lived here their entire lives. We grew up with Saturday night sauna. Of course, the saunas, until very recently, here in Naselle have all been the old-fashioned wood saunas outside. I think there's only maybe three that are indoor right now, which is a little strange almost. A. [00:08:59] But we grew up with that. They were farmers and had -- all the Finn families around here were farmers and did some logging, of course, too. But they had what were called chicken meetings. And basically they had a chicken co-op thing, I guess. And I remember as a little kid, those were just really fun nights. I think they met maybe every couple of weeks or once a month and it was mostly a lot of talking and the Kahvi Aika with all of the foods, lots of food, always lots of food. That still is a tradition here even our graduations, people that come from out of town. I mean,

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everybody has a smorgasbord because that's what you do as food. My mother and my grandmother would just be horrified that I have served plain coffee to people. I mean, not even with my mother, you just wouldn't do it. You just would not do it. Q. What would she serve? A. [00:09:56] You'd have something. You'd have cookies, cake, usually a table full, even if you weren't expecting company. But always something with, there was never that, a plain cup of coffee ever. Sugar and cream, you know, most of them did. A lot of the men -- I remember one of the pastors from the Congregational church was a very good friend of my grandparents. When he would come -- and my grandpa did this too, they would pour their coffee into the saucer, I guess to kind of cool it, and they literally drank it from the saucer and almost always with ballasokaya, which is cube sugar and they just drank the coffee through their teeth. There are a few people that still do the cube sugar like that but I don't see anybody drinking coffee from the saucer anymore. I guess the Depression years and so forth here -- my mother always said, because they were the Finns and people that lived here were farmers, they never really were affected really that much because they were frugal anyway. A. [00:11:02] They had plenty to eat, really did not have difficulties over those years. As we learned about it in school, I used to kind of question that and she always said, no, they really didn't. But everybody gardened and everybody had milk, and meat, and fish. Q. They were able to hold on to their land. A. I don't know. There may have been some people that lost their land. I do know, because -- it was that many years before when my great-grandparents came, and there were some very, very hard times, and they almost lost it. My great- grandfather had, they said later -- I don't know how they really knew this from a real diagnosis -- a brain tumor and so he left my great-grandmother. He was about 52 or so [when he died]. So she raised her children and that was very hard. But I have a lot of the receipts. She would take potatoes and eggs to the grocery store and do exchanges here. Q. What year was that? A. [00:12:05] That was the early 1900s. They were here so much earlier than my [maternal] grandparents were. But my parents both went to Naselle to school. Mom did not know English until she started school, which was very common, very, very common here. They just didn't learn it until then. In fact, my aunt, my mom's older sister, was the first one in the family to go to school and she was taught just a few English

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words. She always laughed. The key words -- I can't even remember what they were now but maybe one was, "I need to go to the bathroom," or whatever it was. But anyway, they didn't know English until school. But both of my parents went to school here and graduated, as did myself, and my Norwegian husband, and all of my children. A. [00:13:04] So what is very common here and seems very unusual to people outside of here is that it's so multi=generational. My grandson right now is selling sima out in a booth and the boy with him, which is a very distant cousin, share the same great-, great-, great-grandmother. Those two boys' mothers were classmates. They went to school here. Then I went to school with the next generation, with their grandparents. That is very common here. It's just so multi- generational and I guess that's kind of unusual. There's so many of us that stay here. Many, many of my classmates are here and, as we've had reunions now, many of them are obviously past retirement age and so have actually come back to the area. Q. Can you explain why that is? A. [00:14:10] I always tell them when they've lived in Seattle, or Alexandria, Virginia, or wherever they've been that I think that their picture has gotten a little [distorted] over the years, sweeter than it really was or is. But you remember all the good stuff, and it feels comfortable here, and your roots are here. And so many times, I warn them that we do not have the culture that you're used to. I remember one gal -- and actually, she has moved back from the east coast -- I visited a couple of times in Washington D.C., and I said, "I'm just afraid that you have a picture of what it was, and things have changed," and so forth. But she is just pleased as can be and she was so into so much culture there and so involved. They do actually go in the winter for a few months back. A. [00:15:07] But I thought that coming back here may be a little bit of a culture shock when you've been gone. But I think it's just maybe a comfort zone and it's just the roots are here. For me, it's hard to visualize anything else because I have never left. I've never left here. We do winter now for a bit in Arizona and that's been good. But I've just never left, so I don't know anything else. I've always said that we that are here, I guess, are sort of in a rut, but I've had many of my classmates that have said, you know, no, you really weren't. I, fortunately, was a travel agent for many, many years, so I've seen a lot of the world, but I haven't lived anywhere else. Q. And you're close enough to Astoria that it would seem like you have access to a somewhat large city. A. [00:16:06] Exactly. Exactly. Now with the bridge,

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you know, we've had the bridge. We used to take the ferry and that used to take a little longer. In fact, my sister and I had Finn Ware, a Finnish business there for 23 years. Q. That's how I know you. A. [00:16:19] Yes. We started that in 1987 and, actually, it was Friday, the 13th of November, when we opened in 1987. Q. You used to give things to our auction. A. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes. We sold it four years ago to a Finnish gal, Saara Carlson, who is out in the gym right now with her booth. We just loved it. We had a cousin from Finland who had Finn Ware in Vancouver, B.C. and then he actually started getting into discount stores and that sort of thing, which now my son does under the same name, and he is the one who got us into Finn Ware, really, even though we were familiar with the product. We just made our sixth trip to Finland last June and took our daughters and granddaughters, my sister and I. Q. So what did you stock the store with? What was the A. [00:17:13] We had Iittala. Iittala glasswork was our bread and butter. Actually, Iittala told us in the early years -- I never really know if I could believe this -- we were the top seller in the United States. But we do get a lot of tourism there and we became a destination store. We also did a paper catalog. We did go online, but most of our clientele liked the paper catalog and what was so funny is, even though we would do the catalogs -- we didn't do them real often, but we did them every couple of years -- people would order out of this old catalog. Iittala sent us on a wonderful tour of Finland. There were 22 of us and there were three from the west coast, my sister, and I, and Tuulikki from Portland. So Iittala Arabia was our bread and butter forever. It was something that we sold a lot of. A. [00:18:14] Then we also did a lot of novelty things. We tried to do lower priced novelty things so people could buy just little Finnish things. But we were very careful to keep everything authentic. It was either Finnish or it was Finnish American and then Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, we did sell. But Finland products were our main thing. We did Finnish sweaters for years, of course, all the foods, did a lot of licorice, coffee, which they still do. Then we had a few Finnish local craftspeople that we sold their items. Q. How big of a store was it? A. You mean square footage-wise? Q. Yes. A. [00:19:03] We moved three times. We started out in

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the only spot that was available in town. It was seven feet wide and 30 feet long and it was just barely big enough. I mean, five people and we had a crowd, but we were in there for a year. Then we opened a second store in Cannon Beach, which is a very heavy tourist town. We had a very, very nice store there, but it's kind of a walk-through town, typical beach town, so we only stayed there a couple of years. Our Astoria store carried our Cannon Beach store for all but just a couple months. So I think we had about 2,700 square feet when we ended in our last store. That's where Sarra is now. We were also sort of the matchmaking center. The old Finns would become widows and widowers and we'd see them. A. [00:20:07] They'd come in and tell us their sob stories and we always laughed that sometimes only a month, or two months, or four months later, you know, we'd see them striding by and we always knew. We always said we'd make more money with our counseling than we would have selling our product because they just would find another lady. Every year, we hosted on Pikkujoulu in the winter before Christmas -- Pikkujoulu is little Christmas -- but the first weekend of December and the big holiday in Finland, we would host all the veterans and all the Finnish people. We'd just put chairs around our store, and did an open house for them, and honored them all through the years. Q. So you're a little bit of a community center too. A. [00:21:00] We were. We really were. We gave viili [starter], the yogurt type of Finnish food, so we always kept viili samples in the back and just gave them to anybody that wanted it for a starter. Yeah, people dropped their stuff off and met there. Yes, we really were. It was wonderful. I loved it every single day I went. We had wonderful employees who are still there, but we loved it. We had such good employees that we could leave for three weeks at a time without ever, ever having to worry about the store. We had a lot of Finnish spoken especially in the early years. We had a number of Finnish people in Astoria and, even though they could speak some English, they were not about to deal with you in English in the store. They wanted to be spoken to in Finnish, which we did. Q. Did you have many visitors from Finland, itself? A. [00:22:02] We did. We did. They would be brought in there by relatives just because it was such a novelty. They took a lot of pictures and through the years we always put a little Finnish American flag, like this, only with the American flag too, the cross flags. We always put that on our business card and gave them to all of those. We had a lot of Finnish exchange students from various places that came to the store.

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Actually, when we mailed our catalog toward the last couple -- we mailed out 6000 catalogs, pretty much, I think, every state. Q. Is there any other comparable store of that size elsewhere that you know of? A. [00:22:46] Portland. Tuulikki and Eero had a store in Beaverton for many years and they have sold it now. It's maybe not quite as big, but it's terrible that I don't even remember the name of the store anymore, but it's in Beaverton. It would be, I would say, comparable. In Salem, there was one for years. It wasn't a Finnish store, but it was a Scandinavian store that had a fair amount of Finnish things in it. No, not really. The only place that we ever saw stores really with as much Finnish items as ours were in the Midwest. In Minnesota, there are some. It was just a wonderful career. I worked for the Appelos. I started when I was 15 and I always said I went to Appelo University because that's where I learned about selling, from -- Q. That's the guy with the general store, correct? A. [00:23:52] Yes. From the time I was -- well, before my time. Yes, they had actually three of them. Even when I started, there were three of them in Deep River, Grays River, and Naselle. So I worked for them for many years and then did bookkeeping and billing for a number of years. Well, I overlapped a little bit, travel agent for many years and then overlapped again with the store. Q. When was your first trip to Finland? A. 1993. Q. Tell us about that. What was that like? A. [00:24:20] Actually, that first trip, we flew in to Sweden and rented a car there because it was so much less to rent a car there and put it on the ship. So we did the overnight thing. We didn't know at that time where our grandparents -- we do, of course, now. Hongo (phonetic) is where they left from, but we didn't know that at the time. So when we came into the harbor -- we came into Helsinki on that trip because we have made other trips and done that through Turku I'll try to say this without breaking down, but we were just speechless. I had decided before I left that I was just not going to get emotional on this trip because if I start to cry on this trip -- I meet all these people and some of them had already been here. My mother's cousins, I knew and her aunt. I just thought I'll never stop crying, so I'm just not going to. I'm just going to do this trip. A. [00:25:19] So when we pulled into the harbor -- my sister and I both felt the same way and, I mean, we were speechless. It was so emotional. It actually is every time to

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some degree, but the first trip, my word. I just couldn't. Several things astounded us. One was that it was like home immediately, even though it was a big city and we were just there a few days in Helsinki and then headed out. When you get an hour out of Helsinki, you are really in real Finland. I mean, Helsinki really isn't real Finland. Most of our relatives -- we had made a lot of contacts before and kind of knew about, but we met so many, many people. We rented a car for three weeks and just made this loop. Did not go to our father's side on that trip because we really didn't have any connections. May Johnson Adair, who has the genealogy booth here -- her husband had passed away and she's remarried now. His relatives happened to be some of our same relatives up in Kuusamo. A. [00:26:27] So our second trip, we went up there and those people did not speak a word of English. We thought we were going to meet a couple of people and we got there and they had all these relatives and the table just full of all this food. There was a man at the table that looked just exactly like our father's brother, Uncle Bill. It was like he'd come back from the dead. You couldn't hardly look at him because it just was him. So I told him during the meal, excuse us, we probably keep looking at you a lot, but you just look so much like our Uncle Bill, we can't even believe this. So when we went to leave, he told us be sure and greet your Uncle Bill. We never had the heart to tell him that Uncle Bill had died many, many years ago. We never told him. That trip, again, was really, really emotional. We were taken -- everything just fell into place. A. [00:27:30] These people knew where my great- grandparents had homesteaded or had lived, excuse me. Well, I don't know if they really homesteaded there, but their property. She knew exactly where it was, up this rocky road. There was actually a little snow on the ground and she loaned us her boots. As we have found out now, as we've gone back to her house over the years, we have heavy connections on my great- grandmother's side with her on the Varanka side. But anyway, that was quite another amazing experience. No one has lived there for years. The people that own the property, I guess, live in southern Finland and maybe I shouldn't say this on a film, but we've probably done some little bit illegal things. We've taken a few little plants and we've dried them. In fact, we've got them framed, and rocks and all kinds of stuff from their property. A. [00:28:28] Then there were some buildings that were just really about falling down. We crawled underneath and there were homemade ladders there. And she said these have been here

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for so long. The rungs were so different than anything. We actually took one of those apart and put it in the lining of our suitcases and had our frames made out of those. But that was a neat experience and, every time we go, we plant a Finnish and American flag on their property. We did it again. It's now become ceremonious almost. It's just an old road that very few people live on, but I have talked to people on the road that do know of them and so I've gotten a few stories about them. My great-grandmother, before she died, was written up in an old Apostolic Lutheran book. They actually published a book of their deaths for the year. A. [00:29:32] It was published in Minnesota, so apparently, the different churches sent the information. So I have a wonderful story about her last few weeks and what she said. And so that's been just priceless to me. It's so difficult for me to read that because it's the old, old, old Finn. I have had a Finnish lady here in town translate that for me. It's really a treasure along with so many of her things. I have her Sunday apron, which she wore on Sundays that's quite intricate and very old now, of course. I have it here on display at the festival. But I do have a lot of her things because of a cousin who saved everything. For 91 years, she never left the property. She lived next door to me and, I mean, did not get rid of a thing. So it's been wonderful to have their leather pouches that they carried their passports in and even my great-grandfather's glasses. Q. That's great. You mentioned sauna. And that's a Finnish thing. So that was common throughout every family? A. Yes, and still is. Q. Okay. Tell us about it, how you were introduced to it, what it means to you A. [00:30:52] To tell you the truth, I don't have one. I shouldn't even admit that, but I don't. For one reason, my Norwegian husband would have to take salt pills afterwards if he went in one. He tried it a couple of times and he sweat for about two days straight like he used to [playing] football. So he just doesn't like it at all. But yes, I remember my earliest recollections of the sauna, we'd go down the hill, always on Saturday night. The ladies all went in first. I was so young and so little that I remember I sat in a galvanized tub. I remember that very well. And there was a dressing room first with the old rag rugs, we called them, loomed rugs. And then the sauna was very, very, very steamy. When we were little, of course they didn't let us go up on the higher benches because it's just about suffocating up there. But I remember we would throw the water. It was just fun with the little metal cup that

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we would use. Throw the water onto the rocks, just river rocks on the wood-fired sauna, and steamed. There weren't any showers. We just used buckets and there was a faucet in there. Now, of course, in Finland, even the real saunas have shower. Even if they're wood, they still have that. Q. This was on the family property? A. [00:32:16] Yes, absolutely. Every, every, every home had them. There wasn't a house without a sauna. I'm also told, before my time, that many times the ladies gave birth in there because it was warm and it was of course sterile. It was very clean. But Finns are very clean. I mean, they really are. It's a lot of food and very clean. Everything might have not been fancy and I've always said that's the one sad thing that has happened in our community. It's nice that we're a little more diverse now, but when I grew up, this was a very modest town. There were some people that had maybe more money, but even the poorest people or middle class, I guess -- everyone was tidy. It was mostly Finns. If you didn't have much, you kept it clean and you kept it tidy. When I went to Marquette, Michigan, I went into the Finnish neighborhoods. I was like walking into the 1950s here. Everything was tidy. The fences were painted and that's the way it was here. Unfortunately, we have gotten to be a very sloppy town here. We have a lot of rentals and we have a lot of people. I don't know if it's just this generation or if it is just not caring when -- I don't know. I don't know, but it's just not like it was for that. Q. So what sort of holiday traditions do you have that you -- A. [00:33:48] Well, Santa comes even when we don't have little children. Santa has always come in person on Christmas Eve. I told my children, "You marry Christmas Day people because we do Christmas Eve." Christmas Day really, occasionally we have a dinner and a lot of Finns do have, but Christmas Eve is the main. It really, really is. When I was a kid, I remember the little candles on the tree, just a few, and there are a few people that still do it. It drives me a little nuts. But anyway, Santa always came, handed out the gifts, we always sang to him. Our Santa costume, when I grew up, got pretty distorted looking by the time I was in middle school. But my sister and I have continued that. We still have Santa come and we do some of the foods. A. [00:34:44] We do the sima, like the kids are serving out there right now and I haven't made riisipuuro (phonetic), but I grew up with that. I don't do the fish-head mulligan like I grew up with, either. But Piirakka, which is a Finnish item which I was introduced to as an adult, I really, really love.

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It was the cardamom bread, pulla, of course, prune tarts always at Christmas. And then when we've been in Finland over Easter, mammi is what they serve and it's kind of a brown, sweet, porridgy kind of thing. You can even buy it in the stores. Sima, in Finland, you can buy bottled. You can buy it like you can soda here. I do recall when I was growing up, there were always Finnish speaking clerks here in the stores of course because people like my grandmother -- I mean, that's how they dealt. A. [00:35:44] But I'm also told that, in the 1950s you really could hardly get a job in downtown Astoria. Every store had to have some Finnish speaking, and even when we first opened, you heard a lot of Finnish on the streets. That has been replaced by Spanish now. Now that's kind of the second language that you hear. Of course, across the river, there were a lot of Chinese and lots of people, even my age, remember the Chinese mailman who could speak perfect Finnish. Q. Really? A. [00:36:14] Yes, he delivered mail and learned Finnish enough that he could deal with all of his customers. One of the gals that worked for us is a few years older than me, but she remembers him very well. Q. Where was the post office, in Naselle? A. [00:36:29] No, this was in Astoria. Yes, we had a post office here, but the Chinese came in and we didn't have Chinese here. When I grew up, we had a few Japanese people that were in the oyster industry in Nemah, and still are. But no, that was the more diversified city of Astoria. When we grew up, that was our closet town. We took the ferry. We did all of our dentistry over there and, of course, babies were born over there and, many times, babies were born before people got over there. Carlton Appelo, you've probably heard was born on a fish boat. Of course, he's a few years older than me. Q. We were hoping to be interviewing him. A. [00:37:12] That will be wonderful. Yeah, that will be wonderful. He was my boss. Q. So why don't you tell us about what you're wearing. A. [00:37:17] Yes. Most of the Finnish costumes are from Helmi Vuorelma's in Finland. I'm trying to think of the town, Lahti, Finland, most all costumes. This particular one has been available since the very early 1980s. It's sold all over the world. It's been marketed all over the world, but it was actually designed by three ladies here in Naselle, Eva Wirkkala, who was from Finland, and Maria Wirkkala, who was from Finlan,d and is actually visiting there right now, and then another lady who is actually Danish [Carole Alves]. The three of them really

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did the design and then this was made by the Hanhisalos in Finland. Their weavings and their products are sold all over Finland. You'll see the Hanhisalo label. But they took on this costume because they knew Eva. A. [00:38:22] So the blue and the white are, of course, for the Finnish flag and for the water. The green is for the forest and the red is for the blood that was shed for Finland's freedom. This piece of jewelry was done by Kalevala Koru which is probably the main, old Finnish company for jewelry. It was designed by them with Finland in the center and you cannot buy this pin unless you buy the costume. I wish I remember the name of this, not little. I got this kind of as an award symbol thing, contributing to Finnish traditions a few years ago. This is the only other pin and, really, Eva would probably be turning over in her grave because I did put these little earrings on. I put a watch on this morning and I could just hear Eva in the back of my mind saying, "No extra jewelry with the costume," so I took it off. Q. So it was really designed by Finnish Americans here. A. [00:39:38] Yes, although Eva and Maria were both born and raised in Finland. They lived in Naselle as adults. Maria married a man here and came. Q. So its roots are here. A. [00:39:48] Yes. Yes and no. It would be. So that's why this one is called the foreign Finnish costume. So it's for people like me. Your roots are in different parts of Finland because your father came from one, your mother from the other. What happens is, the costumes are all based on region. My sister has the Munsala one, which is my mother's side of the family. But that's why this was designed because, for most of us, we're from more than one part of Finland. So that's what it's for. Yes, so in fact, a little girl is going to be running around with a little tiny one that my granddaughter wore. She'll be here on the grounds tomorrow with it. Q. So you've been certain to pass things on to the A. Yes, very much so. Very much so. Q. Do any of your children speak Finnish? A. [00:40:39] Very little. Would you believe my oldest daughter is a Spanish teacher? Although three of them have been to Finland. One has been there twice. They know words, and phrases, and mostly things probably they shouldn't say because their father thinks those sound funny because, to him, the Finnish phrases don't sound bad because he'll just say them. I just always tell him, you come to the festival, you be careful with your Finn. But yes, we have tried to pass on. I know there's a fine line here about Finnish pride, but I grew up with

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what I thought was a healthy Finnish pride. It wasn't like we're better than, but we had a lot of people that came in the store that said oh, my family didn't teach us Finnish because we were Americans now, and that's not what we are anymore, and you just leave that. I don't think that I'm unusual here in Naselle to say that we grew up with a healthy Finnish pride. It was no better, but it was good to be a Finn. Q. I understand. Do you know did any of your family have contact during World War II when Finland was -- A. [00:42:02] I'm so glad you asked that. That is one of my early recollections as a child and that is something again, now I'll try to keep my emotions intact, on our first trip. My mothe,r and aunt, and grandmother, I remember very well, sewing. They put this stuff in big boxes, wrapped them in like, almost like a dish towel of white muslin fabric. They stitched around all the edges and then they would write in this black ink the names, and sent coffee, and food stuffs, and clothing. I remember that vividly, vividly. When we went to Finland -- and it was my grandmother's side of the family -- we went into the most modest home of a relative. And she just wanted to give us everything. She just would take stuff from the shelf and say, "Please take this, please take this." And I just wasn't really comfortable with it, but yet we felt like -- and she just cried. A. [00:43:07] She said our family would have never made it if it wouldn't have been for your family because her father, my grandmother's brother, Ilmari Kuitula had been killed in the war and was left with these stair-step children. I think there were eight or nine of them. We've seen the picture. And she said, even the shoes, they wore until they fell apart and just passed them on as much as they could. She has died now since, but we saw her on the first three trips and, every time, she just thanked, and thanked, and thanked. Even a year ago, on our last trip on our last day, one of my grandmother's nephews who is older than I, but remembered the war well, is a very stoic man. He just got very teary eyed and he said, "I know I've thanked you before, but I just want to say thank you." Of course my sister and I really had nothing to do with it other than observe, but yes, yes, most definitely. Q. Do you think that was common in the area at the time? A. [00:44:24] Yes, I think it was very common. The Congregational church which was strictly a Finnish church until the mid-1950s -- that's all they spoke there. There were a fair amount in the Lutheran church too. My grandparents were in the Congregational church. My grandmother, especially after she was widowed, any time there was a Finnish service -- and Finnish services went on here until I was through high school. There

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were still Finnish services. All three churches would have them. But the Congregational church in about 1954, 1955 went to English and Finnish, but it was strictly Finnish before. A. [00:45:02] I also remember that the men sat on one side and the women sat on the other side. And I remember never thinking a thing about that, that, that was odd. I always sat with my grandma if I went with her. Also they had the basement with always the food. You never had anything without the Kahvi Aika. But yes, it was, because those people were all very, very close. They were all very close. All the churches had women's organizations and really as I grew up, I always went to all three bible schools and we just all -- Q. What do you mean three? A. [00:45:40] Well, the Congregational, Lutheran, and Assembly of God which I attended. Q. All Finnish? A. [00:45:45] They all had some Finnish services and English all through the years. That of course has ceased now. Those people were all so compatible and there was, well, and still is, a real Finnish unity here. I know that maybe it's been really hard. The Air Force was here for years, and they came, and now of course the Youth Camp,[a Washington State] juvenile [institution] is here. And so these people come and I think my generation tries to be inclusive. But the Finns as a rule -- maybe I'm the exception because I always said I blame it on the Appelos. Being in the store and I had to talk -- are a little quieter. My Norwegian husband is, too, but I think many of them felt that they came into a really cliquish, close community, which is really sad, because I don't think people meant to be cliquish here. But there is something to be said. I still consider the people that came 30 years ago newcomers. I try not to do that and I try not to say it, but in my mind, they are. I don't like that attitude, but I think it has happened here and it's probably made it difficult for some. But that's probably gotten better over the years. Q. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. A. [00:47:19] I'm such a rambler. Q. No, you didn't ramble at all. It was wonderful. A. You know what's going to happen. This is going to end and I'm going to remember all the important stuff. Q. We can do it again. A. No, no. Q. But thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you so much for participating and at some point you will get a copy of it. I know your family's going to appreciate it. A. Maybe someday, yes.

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Q. Your grandkids, yes. Thank you. A. Thank you. (Proceedings concluded.)

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