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Bowling shirts were all the rage and she roped her sons into helping too. When the kids were older, however, she made space in their recreation room to house an embroidery machine, and went back to work, from home, for her previous employer. “I was pretty much stay-at-home,” Dunham added. “They all worked the minute they were old enough.” “They weren’t bad kids, but they were boys,” Dunham said with a smile. Two more boys joined the family and kept Dunham busy taking care of the family in their home in North Seattle, while her husband worked for Seattle City Light. Their first son was nine months old when he finally met his father. (Dunham was sharp as a tack, computing dates, recalling names and events with impressive clarity.) He served in the Navy in the South Pacific for three years, three months, and eight days. Undeterred by his heckling, the couple were married, and remained so for 68 years until George’s death in 2010. “Whatever,” she said, an endearing tic that ended many of her statements. After covering the mess with ashes from the fire and scooping it up, her friends burst out laughing, finally letting her in on the joke. On one of their first dates, he conspired with a roommate to plant prank dog poo in her house. Soon she’d fallen for George Dunham, who hailed from Brinnon, and a sense of humor that reminded her of growing up as the youngest child in a family of five, often tormented by her brothers. She was hired on at a company that did custom embroidery for letterman jackets and the like. “It’s a good thing there were police officers on every corner those days,” she said, as she was constantly asking for directions. Without a car, far from the farm, at first the city was overwhelming and isolating. “When I first went to Seattle, I hated it,” she said. Her father sold surplus milk to Darigold, a Northwest farming co-op.īut life changed abruptly for Dunham when she left the farm at 20, and moved into a place in Seattle with two other women she knew from her community. They had a lot of gardens, she said, and milk cows. Hamilton High School, where she graduated from, had maybe 100 students.

“I lived on a farm with my dad and my family,” she said, near Skagit. “I’m not much on Seattle and the cities.” Her son, Wes Dunham, 71, had brought her mail over, and the stack was just two days’ worth of birthday wishes.ĭunham is glad to be back in the country these days, which is close to her heart. Her kitchen counter was piled with cards still tucked in their envelopes. “I miss that a lot.”ĭunham was about to celebrate her 100th birthday. The intricately carved drawers haven’t been opened in a while, as Dunham suffers from macular degeneration.īut the machine still works, she attested. The other is a 120-year-old treadle sewing machine, handed down from her mother. Laura Jean span of time that Cressie Dunham has lived is reflected by two objects on opposite ends of her living room.