Clara Olive Senff Bowe is related to the Longfellows through Green Longfellow's line. Here is a small part of her story.
CLARA OLIVE SENFF TIED A STRING ON HER CAMERA AND TOOK THIS EARLY "SELFIE" IN SEATTLE WA IN 1935! CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE OF HER MEMOIRS
Clara left ANACORTES after graduating high school at AHS in 1928. She lived in Seattle at the Emerson Apts. on 8th St. after her job at the local bank (now the home of Gere a Deli's) ended in the Great Depression years. She worked for the HOLC for three years, saving everyone's homes by giving the money to the people, not the banks. The government-sponsored (HOLC) Home Owners' Loan Corporation was a better idea than govt. bailouts of corporate criminals who caused the problem in the first place. She lived in the Lowell Apts. , worked for Standard Oil for three years in Seattle and then in CA for three years, then worked as an administrative secretary for General Telephone in Santa Monica CA for 20 years until retiring in the 1970s and moving back home to Anacortes where her mom Gladys Senff eventually entered San Juan Nursing Home, leaving their home on 23rd and R that was bought with the small amount of money they got from urban renewal who took their family homes near where they later built the skate park in the 60s. Her sister Jennie Senff LeMaister, married Clyde LeMaister , who was born on these San Juan Islands, (Decatur or Cypress?). He was Samish and French Canadian. He worked as an employee/owner at the plywood mill and was an avid huntsman and fisherman and a jack of all trades. He grew a great garden every year too and he and Jennie made their own wines from local berries. Clara and Jennie's brother Les Senff was a fisherman and he and his wife Scotty were members of the local Eagles, and their families still reside here. Her nephew is a local crab fisherman and her great-nephew is the basketball coach at AHS. The story of Pearl Harbor and her being sent there a year later to Hawaii with 100 secretaries secretly and they could not tell anyone is part of the story in the memoirs. Read and enjoy! Also they are online in book form with links from this website. Clara was 101 on 3/26/2012 and we hosted a library circle room birthday bash from 2-5 PM. Clara passed on at home on March 3rd, 2014, one day before her first and only great granddaughter turned One. Thanks, Clara, for a life lived with joy and love for family and friends!
We will miss you! andi bowe, Clara's daughter.
DONNA SENFF-MATA WROTE THIS LETTER TO CLARA AND ANDI
