Jean lived (in 1991 and for many years) at 1818 Bigelow North, Apt 303, Seattle, Washington 98109. Jean died Sunday at 9:00 AM. She died of heart failure in Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. She was conscious until 1/2 hour before her death. According to her daughter, Marcia, she was aware that she was dying and was comfortable with it, who said, "Mom knew where she was going."

Lawton's cremains were kept after his death. Jean was cremated, and their ashes were then scattered together. A few days after Jean's death, Marcia, though not sure, thought she and her sister would probably scatter the ashes over the water where their parents and friends used to enjoy boating together.

Jean's funeral was in her church.

In 1986 Ellen Jean (Armstrong) Gowey recorded 270 minutes of her life story at the request of two daughters. This, below, is a transcript of the first 45 minutes of that record, recorded on November 17, 1986.

On January 27, 1919, I was born on a frigid winter day as only Nebraska can produce. I was born at home on my parents' farm with, I believe, a lady doctor in attendance. I was dead [laugh] on arrival, a blue baby. My life was saved because this doctor knew enough to get washtubs full of hot and cold water and change me back and forth between these until I started breathing. Kind of eerie to think about. It's always been a little bit of a joke in the family, I think. But it isn't very funny, is it? Many years later, after we moved to Seattle, Mother told me that my dad said at that time that he thought that I was a very special baby, and he was very certain that I would grow up to be an outstanding person. I have never told anyone that, and it's not something that I have felt proud about because I'm not sure he would think so. Nonetheless, maybe I'll be like Grandma Moses and really get under way when I'm 90.

I know that my dad's parents, my grandmother and grandfather Armstrong, moved to Mira Valley, the farm community just south of Ord, where all my grandparents lived and where my dad and mother were born. They moved there from Hancock County, Illinois. Ammie's (James Ammiel Ollis) grandfather Matthias Ollis had emigrated from England to Illinois (with a brief stop in Kentucky), settling the Ollis clan in Hancock County, IL. My Grandfather Ammie Ollis, Mother's dad, was born near Appanoose in Hancock County.

My mother's mother, Sarah, came over from Northern Ireland when she was 18 years old. She was living in Hancock County, where she became engaged to marry Ammie's older brother Matthias. But Matthias died before they married, so two years later, she married Ammie. They moved to Mira Valley near Ord, where they had eight children, pretty much bing, bing, bing. She did not survive the last one, which was my Uncle James. Grandma Sarah died eight days after Uncle James was born.

(Explanatory note added by J. Keith Cook: The official record is that Sarah died of a heart attack. But the story that has passed down through the family is that she had sudden and severe hemorrhaging. Whichever may be true, she did die suddenly. She had recovered successfully from the delivery of her last baby James eight days earlier, and had dressed that baby the day she died, and had enjoyed a good noon meal that day. She was said to be well and sturdy. But then, not long after dinner, she became very ill quite suddenly. (In that culture, "dinner" meant the noon meal.) Ammie was in Ord at the time (8 miles north). Word was sent to him to get home right away. He rounded up a physician, and the two of them rushed back to the Ollis home, but she had died by the time they got there. The family story is that Ammie whipped his horse almost brutally in his attempt to get to his wife as quickly as possible.)

My mother was 13 years old, so she was left pretty much with the responsibility of her seven younger brothers and sisters, so I know life was not easy for her. My mother's Aunt Libby, her father's sister, moved in with them and took over and helped raise all the kids. Uncle Oliver was a hired man; hired help lived there, worked on the farm, and ate their meals with the family. Aunt Libby ended up marrying Oliver, which caused a great deal of consternation because the family did not think that he was quite worthy of her [laugh].

In later years, my grandfather Ammie Ollis made the very, very sad mistake of marrying a widow by the name of Eliza Ellen (Carey) Knott, who had three children, and I think it was pretty much downhill, at least for my mother and her family because Mrs. Knott was not nice to them. And in the process, she took grandfather for about everything he had. He had been and was a very successful farmer there. After I'd moved to Seattle, Duane took me out and showed me the house that my mother grew up in. It was quite lovely. I believe it has been torn down now, and a big mansion was built there by some very wealthy people.

My Armstrong grandparents retired from farming. They were also successful and eventually sold their farm and moved into Ord. They both died during my first two or three years of life.
My dad was the youngest of 7 children, and he and my mother went to high school together and were sweethearts. She rarely ever talked about him. I always felt that the memories and his early death were too painful to even think about, much less talk about their early years. She did mention once that she didn't kiss Father until they were engaged. Sweet.

I know that my dad was highly respected in the community and much loved. I have read several articles that were written about him after he died. My grandfather Ammie Ollis was well known all over the state. He was a mover in the state of Nebraska in those early years. He was a State Senator. He was a founding partner of both the Valley County Fair and the Nebraska State Fair. Was responsible for a lot of legislation that is still in force there. I believe that his picture hangs in the Senate building in Nebraska as one of the outstanding senators.

I'm sorry I never knew him. He ended up working for the Federal Land Bank, and it's his office chair from that office that I have here in my apartment. It's my understanding that the reason my parents sold their farm and moved to Kimball, Nebraska, when I was a year old was that my dad did not have good health and felt that he needed to get away from farming, and they had that money and had plans to invest in a business out in Kimball. I'm not sure what, but he had a partner who ended up with the money. I don't know what happened. My mother never talked about it, but I know she was a little bitter about that.

Can you imagine your grandmother being bitter about anything? But she had a few things that she struggled with during her lifetime to be able to forgive. Anyway, it left my parents penniless with six kids. Margaret was born after we went to Kimball, and my dad held down several different jobs, but his health was never good, and eventually, they had to sell the home they had bought when we moved to Kimball, where I spent my very early years.

My memories of those early years are somewhat shadowy. I'll tell you some of them. You know Ed Grey. His dad was my dad's cousin, and our families were close. Ed and I played together when we were little kids, and, of course, that relationship on and off, on and off basis, has continued all our lives. I have very special feelings for Ed Grey.

I also had another cousin who was the same relation to me that Ed is. His name was Wallace Walter White. We had a lot of double cousins in our family. They lived right close to us in Kimball. Wallace and I played together, and I have a very big memory that he got diphtheria and died when he was four years old. I don't remember a whole lot about it, except that I know that it affected me very, very deeply.

There were many neighborhood children around our house, and I started very young to be a very active and, I guess you'd say, very spirited girl. Margaret was a darling little blonde, pink and white baby who was very special to the family. I can remember having a few feelings about that. Nothing I can put my finger on, but I'm sure it motivated me and some of the scrapes that I got into to get attention, no doubt. That's what the psychologists would say today, wouldn't they?

Margaret was born in a hospital, and when my mom came home with her, my brother Ed was allowed to carry her. He was about nine then. And that was a very special treat, and I don't know whether I had sinister motives in mind or not, but I, I had a little kiddy car at that time that I dearly loved and, anyway, I rode it between his legs, and he fell and dropped the baby. I went into our front bedroom, which is about the only room in the house I remember, and crawled under the bed so nobody could get at me. I have no recollection of what happened. Whether I got spanked, or whatever, but boy, I sure remember that.

I can also remember a birthday party that either my sisters Ruth or Lois and I were not included and were supposed to be out of the way, but I, once again, wanted to have a little part in it. Ruth and Lois both had little rocking chairs that just fit them as little girls. I got up and stood in one of these rocking chairs and rocked. Then I decided I'd fly out, I guess. I (Laughing all the way through this sentence) could remember putting my arms up like a bird and, anyway, I didn't fly. I caught my foot on the arm of the chair and went down, kerr-bang on my face, hit my face on the corner of a built-in bookcase there, and just about ruined one cheek. It swelled up from my hairline clear down, and my mother had to sit for hours every day rubbing that, inside and out. It didn't cut it, but it evidently destroyed a muscle in my cheek, and there were good things that came from that because forever after, I had a dimple in that cheek, which attracted a lot of attention in my lifetime, even when I was growing up.

It's also the house where I rocked my highchair when I was a baby, or pretty young. I don't know how old. Anyway, I had some teeth, and I finally managed to tip it over and came down and hit my new front tooth on a knob on a buffet, and the tooth disappeared. They figured I'd swallowed it. I don't know, but anyway, it caused a little mystification, I guess. But when my
permanent tooth came in, it had a scar on it, which I still have except that it's capped, so it doesn't show.

Due to subsequent events, it was thought that my brother Ed had had polio when he was about three years old because as he began to develop, one leg was not normal and one foot, so it was along about that time that my parents took him to Kansas City twice for surgery. In those days, they didn't know a lot about polio, and they did an operation on the muscles on his legs, and we kids were farmed out to various relatives.

One of my dad's sisters, Aunt Mary, of whom I was scared to death, came and stayed with us. She was a missionary type [laugh]. It's, as only missionaries could be in those days. Very severe, knew absolutely nothing about children and didn't have a very happy time. I just vaguely remember that. Anyway, Ed walked on crutches a lot of those years that I remember in Kimball. But somebody gave us a pogo stick, and boy could Ed make that thing go. He would jump up and down the steps and down the sidewalk. He could move faster on that than the rest of us could walk. I remember trying it myself, but I wasn't heavy enough to make it go.

I started kindergarten there in Kimball when I was five years old. Remember very few years of that. It must not have made a very big impression. We used to line up when the whistle blew and march into the school to, probably, Sousse's band record.

I loved music at a very early age. I used to try to play the piano and loved to sing. And in my kindergarten class, we sang a little song, which I don't recall now, but it talked about apples, and so I chose to be different and call it cherries, and when we'd come to that word, I'd say it real loud and course it had the desire affect. The first time the teacher let it go. I well remember getting my hands spanked with a ruler twice for doing it. I don't remember whether I quit then or just what happened, but I sure remember that. Consequently, I used to have a very soft spot in my heart for little kids when they do certain things that are a little ornery.

It must have been along that time that my parents had to sell the house they had bought when we first moved to Kimball. Next, we moved to a house with a small acreage right outside of
Kimball. I know my dad was working at the post office at the time and was trying to do that and do some farming. We raised chickens. I recall that Ed and Duane tied corn kernels on the end of strings, let the chickens swallow them, and then pull them up. Isn't that gruesome? It was pretty fascinating to a little sister who tagged along.

We had a car at that time. I think it was a Buick touring car. Ed had taken some instruction in driving. Back in those days, farm kids drove when they were very young - without a license. I think my sister Ruth learned when she was 13 or 14. Anyway, Ed, I believe, started the car one day when it was sitting out in the long driveway, from the road into the barn, or wherever they kept it. He got it going and then couldn't stop it, and he ran over a little sapling tree that my dad had planted and smashed it to the ground, and ran into the door of the garage. He got the car turned off and then disappeared, and there was much consternation that day. I can still remember that because Ed hid someplace and they couldn't find him. They were afraid he'd gone and committed suicide or something. They eventually found him. I don't know what happened after that.

That was the house where Ruth and Lois were washing dishes one night, and I was in my jammies, ready for bed, walked through the kitchen, and was right behind Ruth. She didn't know I was there; she turned around from the stove with a tea kettle full of boiling water, and it knocked over, and she poured the tea kettle of boiling water from my left shoulder down my whole arm. I can remember the screaming and carrying on. Oh, the pain. They called the doctor. My mom got me down and cut my jammy tops off me. I won't describe the site that I remember very vividly, but it's a wonder that I didn't come out with a withered arm or at least a scarred one because they used to rub Unguentine or something in those days over burns and then wrap them up real tight. That is not the way to do it; the way burns are treated better now. But, anyway, it must have been some kind of a miracle because there were never any scars.

Also, this is the house where I suppose one day when the whole family was ready to go to a big community picnic and church, we were all cleaned up, and I was teasing Ed. He started to chase me and without going into any detail, 'cause you don't understand about old touring cars, I went through the back seat of the car and caught my arm on a sharp thing on the side of the car and ripped open an artery on my left arm. I still have quite a scar there. I don't know how they kept me from bleeding to death. I think it kind of discombobulated the picnic as I recall, and I had a lovely big bandage on there, which I dearly loved to show off—shades of the days when girls liked to have Band-Aids on.

Also, this is the house (in Kimball) where my dad died. I mentioned that he was working at the post office, and I don't know whether the car wouldn't run or whether it was to save gas that he walked to and from the post office out to this place, which was a considerable hike. The weather had been nasty. It was wet, and he had caught a cold, but he felt he had to keep working and got pneumonia. Nowadays, penicillin would have taken care of it, but in those days, pneumonia just killed people, and that was it, period. He died on Halloween night, a terrible death. Ruth remembers it. Margaret and I were farmed out to some friends when they knew this was imminent, so I have little recollection of it. Mother never talked about it. It was too painful for her to recall because he was 40 years old, and she was left with six kids and no money.

Sometime very shortly after my father's death, I assume the decision was made that Mother and the 6 of us would move to Hastings, Nebraska. I suspect that her brothers and sisters had something to do with this decision. For one thing, it was closer to Ord, and it was a college town. Mother's dearest desire was that all of us would be able to get a good education. I don't remember the move at all or what it took to get us ready. It must have been a very trying time for my mom. The older brothers and sisters could help some, I'm sure. Margaret and I must have just been in the way.

I remember the first house we moved into in Hastings. It drove my mother nuts. We didn't stay there for a very long time. But I did start into first grade while at that house in a grade school very close by. I don't know just why, but I was very, very unhappy at that time. I suppose having been taken away from my friends and people that I knew and loved and felt comfortable with. And, of course, our father's death. But I know for a few days I would go to the school, but I didn't go inside the school. I'd walk around the building and fool around until it was discovered that I wasn't in school.

The only recollection of that time in my life was of a little grocery store down the street from us. It was called Heasley's Grocery, and Mr. and Mrs. Heasley ran it. They were very dear people. I would go in there and never have any money to spend on candy, but I would stand and look longingly at the candy. I'm sure with my nose pushed up against the glass, I usually ended up with my favorite confection, which now makes me feel nauseated, but it was about the size of a cupcake. It was a chocolate shell with marshmallow stuff inside. Very gooey and I thought very wonderful. But I shall never forget the Heasleys. They used to give Mother things now and again and once in a while would slip a bottle of whipping cream in with her groceries and not charge her for it.

Many years later, after they were married, Duane and Margaret came back to Hastings, lived in an apartment up over the Heasley's grocery store. Funny, the little things that one remembers.

I mentioned we didn't stay in that house very long. Moved to another place close to the college. Mother's idea was to help earn a living for all of us by taking in roomers, and I think she had some college professors living with us at that time. That, too, is very vague. I started into another grade school to finish first grade and made friends and was very happy there. I had a sweetheart, a boy that was at my house. We played together on the playground. He even took me to a movie one afternoon, which proved to be very embarrassing in our high school years when we both ended up in high school together, not having seen each other since first grade.

Not long after I got out of first grade, we moved again into a different section of town this time. I started into another grade school, Longfellow, where I went until I got out of 6th grade. When I started at Longfellow, it was an old building, but they were building a brand new one all around us. I went into the new building the following year. But for some reason or other, they skipped me from 1st to 3rd grade that year. I have a lot of happy memories of that season of my life.

The house that we lived in I don't remember a whole lot about. I remember we had some cats, and one of the kitties got down the hot air register and hit the basement, and there was much to do to get the pipes opened and get the poor kitty out. He was meowing and meowing and meowing. This is the house where Duane managed to build a little radio; I can't think what they were called. {Ham radio?} They weren't called radios, but there was a receiver set. It was a funny little thing, and we could get one station, and believe me, that was a thrill to be able to hear voices coming from somewhere outside of our house.

There was a park called the Waterworks Park very close to our house. I spent a lot of time there on the swings. I loved swinging, merry-go-round, and all that sort of thing, but I also got to walk through that park on the way to school. And I can particularly remember it when it was snowing or deep snow, of slogging through that snow.

I earned a pair of ball-bearing roller-skates that year and probably had those until I left Hastings when I just turned 18. As a little kid, I sold the subscriptions to the Omaha Bee (newspaper) door-to-door to earn the skates and ended up getting them, which was some kind of a project for a little kid, but I was very proud of myself, I know. I loved them and loved skating, and if my mother ever wanted to punish me, she just removed the skates, and that took care of it.

The years at Longfellow were fun and happy years again. We moved again a couple of times during that time, but that part didn't affect me much. I'm sure it did on the rest of the family, but Margaret and I were sort of shielded from some of the problems of the depression. We were aware that we didn't have a whole lot, but neither did anyone else.

I loved school. I had teachers that I liked very much, and we had very different classes from what you girls had. I had a music class that was probably my all-time favorite because I loved music! During those years, I started to take piano lessons and was good enough to do a lot of accompanying by the time I was in 5th grade. Also, I did a lot of singing. We even had a girls' sextet at the grade school when I was in 5th and 6th grade, and I sang in that, and we sang for programs. I can remember one song that I won't sing for you. But anytime I hear it, which isn't very often anymore, I always think back to those days and how much fun that was. My musical talent was probably one of the most pleasurable things in my lifetime, and I miss that very much.

I also remember the art class we had where we didn't fool around drawing lines; we learned about color and paintings. We looked at paintings, and the teacher talked about them and about the artists, and these were the great paintings, which I still love and remember, and therefore can't get into the modernistic type junk that's around today. I think that this sort of thing is somewhat lacking in children's education now.

Probably next to music and art classes, recess was my favorite subject. I loved the swings. We used to swing real high and jump high. It appalls me now to think of it, but once I jumped out, caught my dress on the side of the swing and ripped it clear up the side, and had to go home—my poor mother. I don't know how she kept me in clothes.

I discovered jacks at that time and became the Longfellow jacks champion. We used a golf ball, and I just adored playing jacks. We sat on the sidewalk to play jacks during recess and after school, which went on for several years. No doubt children in those days had, in some ways, a lot more fun than children do now.

I recall the freedom that we had. We weren't afraid of being molested or burglarized. Nobody ever locked doors. We had many children in the neighborhood and had a lot of fun and games, summer and winter. Of course, it snowed a lot in the winter, and I try to recall what we wore out in the snow on earth. We surely didn't have the snow bunny suits or any of the types of clothes that people have now to go out in the snow. But we played fox and hounds. I won't go into the details of that, but that was a fun game.

We had a great big vacant lot close to our house, and in the winter, we could play games in the snow, and in the fall, we'd play games with the leaves, and we played baseball. I remember all of the childhood games so well, particularly on summer evenings when the whole neighborhood got out there - play pom-pom-pullaway, kick-the-can, and hide-and-seek, red-light-green-light. Those are a few that I remember.

I also remember fireflies, which you girls have never seen, I suppose. They were little bugs that flew at night, and they had tail lights on them. It was a great sport to be out in the evening and catch fireflies in a glass jar. We didn't harm them at all. We'd catch them and put them in there, and the whole jar would light up. I think we let them loose. It wasn't a case of being cruel to them. Simple things were fun.

Mom made her living partly by taking in roomers. We had a lot of neat and interesting people who lived with us. It was just a way of life for us as youngsters. I didn't stop to think that other people didn't do this. We always had a houseful, and they were treated as just part of the family. Mother also did a lot of baking. I remember all through my school years coming home and having the house filled with wonderful smells of bread and rolls and cinnamon rolls and donuts, cookies and pies. Ed had a basket and sort of a platform built on his bike, and he delivered bread and pies to people who ordered them from Mother. Many pies were delivered daily to the student coffee shop on the campus of Hastings College. Margaret and I had a little cookie route. There was a certain kind of cookie [Linda or I might have that cookie recipe] that she made, and we had some orders ahead of time, but sometimes we just went door to door with them. For some strange reason, we thought that was really fun. I think we sold them for 15¢ a dozen. I think I still have Mother's original recipe. I think the recipe made about nine dozen, and she could make nine dozen cookies for 39¢, so selling them at 15¢ a dozen gave her a little profit off of it.

During those later grade school years, I developed a strong sensitivity to my peers on the sidelines and became somewhat of a champion of the underdog. My mother did that, and I'm sure I used her as an example of helping people in need, one way or another. As a child, I stood up for the underdog mostly by fighting.

In the neighborhood where I lived the longest, we had many kids, and one of the families that lived across the street and down was a nice family - the Zooks. Mrs. Zook was a friend of my mother's and was in the PEO chapter with her. Her son was my boyfriend for several years; we played together and had a good time. But there was a daughter, Betty Zook, older than me, who was mentally disabled but physically very, very strong. She was a bully, and she hurt the children in the neighborhood on occasion, and I undertook to save them from her. I remember trying to defend one of the little boys in the neighborhood that she picked on, and she once gave me a bloody nose over it. It's a wonder she didn't break my nose!

I remember one of the few times that I ever saw my mother absolutely livid with anger. I had been trying to protect one of the neighborhood kids from Betty, and she took me down on our big driveway, straddling me while bumping my head up and down very hard on the concrete. My mother happened to look out the window and saw it, and she came barreling out there with murder in her eyes. Betty took off. At that point, my mother went and had a good talk with Mrs. Zook. The bullying situation got better after that.

They used to quarantine families who had measles, mumps, chicken pox, or scarlet fever in those days. It seemed that I was always being quarantined with the rest of the family when I didn't have the disease—poor Mother. The two worst cases were when Lois was in college, I believe. She got scarlet fever and was very ill. She should have been in the hospital, but as often happened with scarlet fever, she developed a severe ear infection and needed a mastoid operation. We were quarantined in, just Margaret and I, with my mother and aunt Ethel Ollis from Kansas City. Ethel came and put herself in quarantine with us to help my mother because Lois was so ill. Margaret and I were young, and it was a hot, hot summer. We couldn't go outside. We couldn't make any noise. It must have been a lot harder on my mother than on us. It came to a point where Lois had to have an operation, and the doctor came to the house and performed the surgery on our kitchen table on one horribly hot Sunday morning. I can still smell the ether. The operation demanded going into the skull right behind the ear. We could hear the sounds, and, well, it was a pretty bad time. She did recover. Nowadays, that would be taken care of with antibiotics.

Margaret was sick with scarlet fever at one time, so I was quarantined in with her and Mother for three weeks. She was not as ill as Lois had been. After a family was quarantined, they had to leave the house for a whole day afterward while the house was fumigated. I sure remember the day that Margaret, Mother, and I got to leave the house while they fumigated it. It was a wonderful day because we were all released from prison!

The church figured very heavily in our lives at that time. I went with my mother to the Wednesday prayer meetings and, of course, to church on Sunday morning. All six of us lined up on the pew with my mother. Even when Margaret and I were very small. We drew pictures and did all kinds of things, which, I'm sure disturbed people around us, but it was mother's idea that we should be there every Sunday. Also, we went to Sunday School, but I must say that I don't think I learned a whole lot about what it was to be a Christian during those years because I don't think there were too many examples around me in that great big church.

Our mother is the one who always stood out to me as an example of what it means to be a Christian, as she modeled a servant life, always taking care of others.

At church, I believe that the beautiful music was the thing that attracted me more than anything else. There was a lovely big five-rank organ and a good organist, and the choir was made up of the college conservatory students. The director of the conservatory directed the choir, so we had outstanding music. My brother, Duane, had a beautiful baritone voice. He sang in the choir and did a lot of solo work.

When I was in grade school and junior high, while he was still around, I used to play the piano to accompany Duane when he practiced his singing. I always felt at that time, even though I understood and I do now, that it was a dirty trick that I practiced with him at home but never got to accompany him when he was out in public. Duane sang a lot. Lois took voice lessons and did some solo work, although not nearly as much as the fellows did.

Even though we didn't have many things during those years, we did have good music, and I suspect that my tastes in music and view of music, in general, were shaped in my early years. I've always been very grateful for that.