Eleanore Martinson's Obituary
Eleanore Signe Martinson
Eleanore Signe Martinson, who snipped the ribbon to open the Douglas Fir Plywood Association's Home of Living Light at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, died June 10 in Puyallup of complications from a blood clot. She was 94. She grew up with eight brothers and sisters during the Depression, was valedictorian of her high school class, married her sweetheart after his return from World War II and loved to garden. This spring, on her last visit to her yard ablaze with rhododendrons, she couldn't resist deadheading a few wilted blooms. She was happiest when surrounded by family, friends, flowers and music. Eleanore was born in Grandview, Wash. on Feb. 11, 1920, the daughter of Carl and Ida Wold. When she was a girl, her family moved to Parkland south of Tacoma where Eleanore grew up with three sisters and five brothers. She attended a Lutheran parochial school then took the bus to Roy High School, where she was valedictorian of her 1938 graduating class. Washington State College offered her a full scholarship, which she had to turn down. The Great Depression still gripped the country and her family couldn't afford even the incidental costs of a college education. She once told her son, Jim, that on her 12th birthday her mother gave her a special present -- a can of corn that she didn’t have to share with anyone. She ate half on her birthday and saved the other half for the next day. Eleanore was frugal, except when it came to others, especially her sons, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. She met her husband, John, at a dance at Fruitland Grange Hall near Puyallup. John actually had noticed her earlier at her high school play -- Eleanore said he remembered her because she had the only kissing part. They began dating and Eleanore eventually went to work as a secretary at Weyerhaeuser in Tacoma. John worked at a grocery store on K Street and later at Boeing. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served in England then France. They got engaged before he left. Eleanore said she only felt jealous once -- when her soon-to-be husband wrote that the city of Paris was "pulsing with feminine pulchritude." They loved to dance, especially schottisches and polkas. Sometimes they'd return to John's parents house after a date, roll up the rug and dance until dawn. Eleanore was an accomplished piano and organ player -- she learned by ear and continued playing her organ through the last year of her life. They married on Groundhog Day -- Feb. 2, 1946 -- and lived in a house they mostly built themselves on his parents' small berry farm in Summit. Theirs was a mixed marriage. Eleanore came from solid Norwegian stock, John was the only child of Swedish immigrants. At Christmas gatherings at her parents' house, he was greatly outnumbered. After the war, John went to work with his father at Puget Sound Plywood, a worker-owned mill in Tacoma. Eleanore raised their two sons, Robert and James. She was a den mother, volunteer, member of the Orthopedic Guild, head cook and drill sergeant for her sons and several neighborhood kids, including Bob's lifelong friend Bruce, whose daughter unofficially adopted Eleanore as her grandmother after her own grandmother died. Eleanore kept the books for a grocery store she and John co-owned with a boyhood friend. She also was a field boss on the raspberry farm they owned with John's parents, Anselm and Sally Martinson. Neither son remembers their mom ever driving the family car. But during berry season in those early years she drove a 1954 GMC flatbed truck, with a compound-low manual transmission on the floor, picking up berry pickers just before dawn in the hilly countryside around her home. Jim still has the truck. As Eleanore and John saved money, they added to their house, doing most of the work themselves. Some Christmas pictures show a tree standing against bare studs in the new living room -- she and John hammered up sheetrock as they could afford it. It was hard work -- Eleanore once fell from a scaffolding while painting and broke her wrist. John worked his way up from the green chain to the sales office at Puget Sound Plywood and eventually to general manager. His career took them to Anacortes, where he was general manager of Anacortes Veneer Co., to Milwaukie, Ore., then back to Anacortes. Eleanore made lifelong friends at every stop. In 1962, as president of the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, John oversaw the association's futuristic plywood house built for the Seattle World's Fair. Eleanore joined him and other dignitaries when she cut the ribbon to the house on the Fair's opening day. John loved Eleanore's cooking. He'd bring customers home to eat rather than take them to a restaurant -- often, Eleanore observed smiling, unannounced. Eleanore loved to travel. When Bob and Jim grew up, there were camping and fishing trips to Skate Creek and vacations in whatever Northwest town the plywood association was holding its annual meeting. In Anacortes, the family bought a boat -- aptly named Lasta Mido -- and cruised through the San Juan islands pursuing fish, crab and spectacular scenery. Later, she and John took trips to California and Montana and visited their sons and their families in Oregon, Arizona, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. They retired in the 1970s and moved back to the home where they'd started. Where raspberries once grew they planted Christmas trees and named the you-cut tree farm Jo-El, for John and Eleanore. Son Jim eventually took over the tree farm, which just observed its 40th year. After John died in 1994, Eleanore continued to travel, visiting sons and their families in Bradenton, Fl., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Vassar, Mi. She and a friend took a cruise in Hawaii, and explored the islands from the ground, sea (submarine) and air (helicopter). Bob and Jim had planned a trip to the coast with her this summer. She loved the ocean. And, of course, being there with family. Eleanore is survived by her sons, Robert and wife Suzanne of Kelso and James of Tacoma; her grandchildren, Jessica Burton and husband Eli of Holt, Mi., Chandra Reisberg and her husband Josh of Tacoma, and Elisha Phillips of Tacoma; great-grandchildren Lucille and Alexis Burton of Holt, Mi., Eli Reisberg of Tacoma, and Kaitlyn and A.J. Phillips of Tacoma; her sister and best friend Lois Bortle and husband Kenneth of Tacoma, Wa.; several nephews, and a clutch of nieces whom she loved and thought of as her daughters. Services will be at XXXXXX on Thursday, June 19, and Mountain View Memorial Park, 4100 Steilacoom Blvd. SW, Lakewood, WA 98499. ADD where gathering will be afterwards. Memorials may be made to the Lutheran Church of Christ the King, 1710 85th St. E., Tacoma, Wa. 98445.
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