Obituary of Shirley Dittman Brundage

Shirley Dittman Brundage November 18, 1928 – January 18, 2007 After a prolonged struggle, Shirley succumbed Thursday, January 18th, at the home of her daughter, in whose care she had been since October. Shirley loved hats, and wore them well, and the accomplishments of her life reflect many different “hats.” She was an adventurer, citizen lobbyist, realtor, civic activist, mother, widow, grandmother, world traveler, missionary. She was a fun-loving, God-loving woman who exuded and appreciated elegance and beauty. After graduation from Irene S. Reed High School in Shelton in 1947, Shirley attended college in Bellingham for one year before signing on as a stewardess on Alaska Airlines flying Korean War servicemen aboard DC-4’s to Japan via the Great Northern Circle air route: California to Everett, to Anchorage, to Shemya at the tip of the Aleutian Islands, to Japan. At the close of the war, Shirley opted to be “dropped off” in the fledgling frontier town of Anchorage where she worked in a classy women’s clothing boutique owned by her future mother-in-law. In March of 1951 Shirley married Bruce Brundage, a Dillon, Montana native who had moved to Alaska in the early ‘40’s. Shirley and Bruce had three children: Barbara, Jeff, and Doug. As she raised her family, Shirley struggled with the remoteness of her Alaska home, but was actively involved in her church---All Saint’s Episcopal---and the Anchorage Garden Club, of which she ultimately became president. In 1966 Shirley led a successful initiative campaign that blocked construction of a multi-story parking garage on Anchorage’s “City Hall” block. The action preserved the square, and the icon log cabin visitor center, for open space and helped to win Anchorage an All-America City designation the following year. As a devotee of civic beauty, Shirley helped to create---and served as a mayoral appointee on---the Anchorage Beautification Commission. After Bruce’s death in Anchorage in 1967, Shirley returned to the South Sound area to be close to her parents, brother, and sister, and became a realtor. In 1978 Shirley joined daughter Barbara on an around-the-world voyage aboard Semester at Sea, visiting countries throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Mediterranean. In 1980 she went to China, smuggling in Bibles that were disguised as Mao’s “Little Bed Book.” In her fifties Shirley became a missionary, attending Youth With a Mission’s Discipleship Training School aboard the Mercy Ship MV Anastasis, the largest shipboard relief hospital in the world. Shirley worked in the galley and dining room as her missionary service, while the ship ministered in ports in Central America and the South Pacific. In 1986 Shirley helped to build a Bible college in Quito, Equador. As a grandparent, Shirley became increasingly concerned about what she perceived to be the declining moral fiber of our culture. She shared her concerns with legislative committees and school boards. She became a precinct committee woman, a delegate to the Washington State Republican Convention, and was---whether in a business suit making calls on legislators, or at rallies on the steps of the State Capitol---ever ready to stand up and make a difference. When asked about her deepest values, Shirley said, “to love God and let His light show in me and pass His love and words on to the next generation.” Which she did well. Shirley is survived by her children: Barbara (and Dick) Yunker of Olympia, Jeff Brundage of Anchorage, and Doug (and Terry) Brundage of Everett; four grand-children, eight great-grand-children; sister Marilyn Johnson of Shelton, brother Hart Dittman of Sun City, Arizona; two siblings of her father’s, and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. For more on Shirley's Life The Life Story Of Shirley Jean Dittman Brundage Shirley was born November 18, 1928---the first baby delivered by a new, young doctor in Shelton, Washington by the name of Dr. Linkletter. Later, Dr. Linkletter would deliver Shirley’s own son Justin Douglas Brundage, as well as many other babies born into the extended Dittman family. Shirley liked the gentlemanly way Dr. Linkletter addressed her, always as “my Dear.” Shirley’s birth was in a small house on east Cascade Street in the Hillcrest area of Shelton. At the time of Shirley’s birth Herbert Hoover had just been elected president. And within a few short months the great stock market crash of 1929 would occur, spiraling the nation’s economy into The Great Depression. Shirley was the firstborn of Harry August Dittman and Magdalene Blanche Kolmorgan. Harry and Maggie got to know one another as neighbors whose families lived across the street from one another on Bellevue Street on Hillcrest in homes built by each of their fathers. On her father’s side, Shirley was the granddaughter of Bertha Bork and Paul Dittman, both of whom emigrated from the Pommeranian district of Poland---Paul at the age of 1 and Bertha at the age of 13 via a thirteen day crossing to Ellis Island. Shirley was the great-granddaughter of Heinrich Bork and Bertha Hitz (maternally) who immigrated in 1894 on the steamer “Grimm”and August Dittman and Hulda Hitz (paternally) who immigrated in 1882. If we read the family tree correctly, it would appear that Grampa Paul and Grama Bertha were not only husband and wife, but first---and kissin’---cousins as well. Throughout Shirley’s childhood Grama and Grampa Dittman lived close by. Both of Shirley’s grandfathers built houses for a living, many in the Hillcrest area, some of which Shirley and her parents and her sister Marilyn and brother Hart lived in as Shirley grew up. Christmas and Easter dinners---usually of turkey---were at Grama and Grampa Dittmans. Shirley loved her Grama’s pretty cut glass dishes and special pale green/pale pink, border-print china upon which, for special occasions, Grama served----among other things---a new taste treat called jello. Lime flavored with cottage cheese and pineapple was Shirley’s favorite. “I loved it,” she said. Shirley also loved the “cooking smells” at her Grama’s house. Smells of homemade cranberry sauce and spicy pumpkin pies---with perfectly delectable crusts---all of which were cooked on Grama’s coal-burning cook stove. The stove also heated the heavy flat irons that Grama used for ironing. And it heated the Marcel iron that Shirley’s special aunt, her father’s sister Myrtle, used to “give Shirley a Marcel.” Myrtle would coil little Shirley’s usually straight hair around the hot Marcel iron, giving Shirley a bouncy do of Shirley Temple ringlets. For a finishing touch, Auntie placed one pink---the very palest of pink roses---into little Shirley’s hair. Shirley loved her Grama’s neat, tidy home that, to her eye, was “organized and pretty.” This, despite the fact that, as Shirley remembers, “Grampa Dittman always found the ugliest Christmas tree.” To which Grama Dittman, with a disgustful German accent would remark, “Just look at that!” But in its wooden box-stand and adorned with store-bought red and green paper garland, foil icicles, and Grama’s fragile, vintage German decorations of Christmas scenes, and a star on top, the ugly tree had---a certain air of dignity. Beautiful enough anyway to inspire Grama Dittman’s singing, in German, of “O, Tannenbaum.” Later in life, Grama Dittman fell down her back porch steps, fracturing her hip, and was bedridden and in traction for over two years. “But,” Shirley said, “she was always cheerful.” Even if Grampa, who maybe had a little drinking problem, was---as Grama put it, “soused.” Her Grama, said Shirley, “had lots of hankies. People always brought her hankies.” And she always had lemon drop candies for her visitors. But the hip never healed right. After that Grama Dittman walked with a crutch under one arm and wore a built-up shoe. While her Grama was in traction, Shirley cleaned her Grama’s house. For which she earned one dime. Sometimes Shirley pumped the pedals of the nice old, black, player piano in her Grama’s living room, turning the paper rolls that plunked out “Red River Valley” or “Beautiful Ohio.” “I loved to play that,” Shirley said. Shirley also liked to spend the night at Grama Dittman’s house, awakening to the smells of bacon and eggs and the sounds of “cowboy music” on the radio---the Sons of the Pioneers picking and fiddling “The Cattle Call.” Outside, pompom dahlias colored up Grama’s fall garden, and window boxes of geraniums festooned the front porch where Grama Dittman---sometimes half-hidden behind the huge blooms---crocheted or embroidered on summer afternoons. It was important to Grama Dittman---who never learned to write English---that her grandchildren attend school and church. From the age of four, Shirley and her siblings attended Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, the little brown church on the corner down the street. Grama and Grampa Dittman paid for Shirley’s brother Hart to attend the small church school. Shirley’s mother Maggie was born and raised in Kamiah, Idaho, where she lived in a humble country home, the third child of Blanche Kidder and Leo Kolmorgan. Of the Kolmorgans we know very little. Blanche (Grama Kolmorgan) was born in Miles City, Montana and was one of sixteen Kidder children who were raised near the namesake Kidder Ridge of Kamiah. Sometime in the 1920’s the Kolmorgans moved from Idaho to Roy, WA and then to Shelton where Grandaddy Kolmorgan worked as a mechanic, a builder, a jack of all trades. Grandaddy Kolmorgan, Shirley reminisced, was musical at heart. He had a violin, but Shirley couldn’t say that she remembered him ever playing it. And, he told Shirley, he played drums in the 4th of July parades in Idaho, but to Shirley’s recollection, he never did any drumming in Shelton. One Christmas Grandaddy Kolmorgan’s parents visited from the Midwest and gave Shirley’s mother a special gift---a fine winter coat with a real fur collar. Another Christmas, Grandaddy Kolmorgan made for Shirley and sister Marilyn a small, white, child-sized table and chair set that Shirley kept her whole life and that Shirley’s own grandchildren played at. As a child, Shirley loved to sit at the little table with Marilyn when, for fun, mother Maggie would fill tiny tea cups with coffee and cream and sugar. Shirley credits Grama Kolmorgan with inspiring her love of the outdoors. Said Shirley, “I got my walking legs early, and walking has always been a pleasure for me. When I was five or six, Grama Kolmorgan took me for long walks. We’d walk from her house on Arcadia Road, about two miles to the store where The Log Cabin Tavern is now (at the corner of Highway 101 and Arcadia Road.) Grama would buy a quart of lemon custard ice cream. And in a secret picnic spot, in the brush across the street, we would rest and eat our ice cream.” Grama Kolmorgan slept with a six-shooter under her pillow and, according to Shirley, used it a few times. Grama Kolmorgan was, in Shirley’s words, “Not a very domesticated person.” Though she did raise peas and cabbages. And Shirley remembered pleasant times on her Grama’s back porch, shelling peas and grating sauerkraut. Grama Kolmorgan was a lover of nature and animals, especially her mongrel dog, “Snub.” Shirley was, she believed, her Grama Kolmorgan’s favorite grandchild. “She just ignored Marilyn,” Shirley said. “And I felt bad.” Shirley’s father Harry was born and raised in Alsask, Saskatchewan. Throughout Harry’s life, he worked as a grocer. When Shirley was very young, he owned a produce stand in Shelton that opened out onto the sidewalk, showing off shiny stacks of apples in beautifully arrayed designs. During The Depression Harry dug ditches for the City of Shelton. “My father,” said Shirley “taught me to value family and a good home. He was faithful to his family. And he was a generous person, even though he didn’t have a lot.” During Shirley’s school years, mother Maggie worked part-time along-side her husband. Later on Maggie became the neighborhood Avon representative. It was Shirley and Marilyn’s job to keep house, cook, and---most difficult of all---keep Hart in line. Her mother, Shirley says, taught her to value “good humor and cleanliness for self and home and love for flowers and a nice yard.” Mother Maggie, said Shirley, “was cheerful, loving and very giving. As a small child, Shirley remembered bathing in the middle of the kitchen in a galvanized tube in water that had been heated on the wood cook stove. Later on, having a real bathtub was fun, not only for bathing, but because it was the perfect vat for homemade root beer, which the Dittmans bottled in old ketchup bottles and capped using a capping machine. In school, Shirley was one of the oldest of her classmates, having repeated first grade due to outbreaks of chickenpox and smallpox that caused her home to be quarantined. From Bordeaux School Shirley would run home for lunch, hoping it would be her favorite---toasted homemade bread and canned peaches from the backyard tree that thrived on the sulfur emissions from the pulp mill downtown, producing sumptuous, juice-running-to-your-elbows fruit. After school she liked a snack of raw peeled potato with salt, or a bit of homemade goulash. In third grade a man from Alaska visited Shirley’s classroom, bringing furs, and telling stories of his adventures in The Last Frontier. “From then on,” Shirley said, “I wanted to go to Alaska.” Shirley’s favorite holiday was Christmas because, she said, “the house always looked so nice.” She loved to lay under the tree---one the family always went out into the country to cut---and look up at the lights, the tinsel, the round balls, and enjoy the fresh tree smell. “I liked Christmas,” Shirley said, “but I always hoped I wouldn’t get another doll!” To earn money to buy gifts one year she picked salal and, since this was before the days of spray paint, bought liquid silver and gold and painted the leaves and sold swags door to door. “Would you like to buy a bouquet?” she asked. The next year she cut holly at the Johnson family farm, the home of her future brother-in-law. She fashioned coat hangers into circular frames for holly wreaths, adorned each with a waterproof bow and sold them door to door. Early on, Shirley found working with flowers pleasurable and, for her, easy. In fifth grade she designed her first corsage, one of pansies, which she held together with what she had on hand---rubber bands in place of wire. On hot summer days she ran along after the ice man, hoping for a shard of ice to suck on. There were neighborhood games of kick-the-can, and Walther League trips to camp in Puyallup. “I remember Daddy driving his brand new navy blue ’37 Plymouth (the only new car he ever owned) to Puyallup on Old 99. At the top of the Nisqually Hill, he liked to stop and admire the view of the valley and Mt. Rainier.” For fun, Shirley would count the turns in the road between Shelton and Olympia. Sometimes Shirley stayed with her aunt and uncle and her cousin Punk who lived on a tugboat in Tacoma. Or she might stay a week or two at her Auntie Myrtle’s house on the Cole Road where she like to ride their gentle mare named Babe. The summer that Shirley was twelve she worked for a family down the street, taking care of their three children, cleaning their house, and cooking the meals. “I liked to ride my bike many miles on a Saturday or Sunday. Around Arcadia Loop to Auntie Myrtle’s on Cole Road or out to the Skokomish Valley with our church youth group in summer. I walked out to Lake Isabel in the summer to swim and take lessons.” In junior high and high school Shirley liked art and English and geography and sports. She was in plays, glee club, a drummer in the school band, a junior high cheerleader, and senior high and college song queen. She got her start in modeling planning high school style shows for a Mother’s Day tea. She liked dancing---the foxtrot, samba, and jitterbug. As a guest at DeMolay or Boy Scout parties, 78 rpm platters played her favorites by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dinah Shore, and the progressive jazz pianist Stan Kenton whom she saw live, in concert with singer Julie Christy at the Seattle Civic Auditorium in Seattle. The new tempos of trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and drummer Shelby Mann kindled her lifelong appreciation for jazz, especially Dave Brubeck compositions. As a girl, her favorite song was “A Rose Must Remain” and also “Willow Weep for Me.” Favorite movie: The WWII classic “Mrs. Miniver.” Her favorite actor, Roy Rogers. (She appeared with him---in an audience participation sing-along---on stage at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.) Favorite actress was Ginger Rogers because “she was such a beautiful dancer.” Her favorite book, “Heidi” she preserved by making and illustrating a handmade book cover. Her favorite radio program was The Green Hornet. Favorite season? Spring, “because I could roll my long socks down!” Shirley was a teenager during WWII. Block wardens patrolled, making sure all windows were darkened at night. Commodities were rationed. Military planes flying just-above-the-roof top on practice strafing runs frightened her; she had nightmares about bayonets sticking up through the floor boards of her upstairs bedroom. In 1947 Shirley graduated from Irene S. Reed High School in Shelton, worked in the ladies ready-to-wear department at Lumbermen’s Mercantile (The L-M), modeled in their style shows and worked as a sales clerk, corsetiere, and attended college in Bellingham for one year until a friend urged Shirley to join her as a stewardess for Alaska Airlines which at the time had a contract to transport Korean War servicemen from California to Japan via Paine Field in Everett, Elmendorf in Anchorage, and Shemya at the tip of the Aleutians. In occupied Japan Shirley visited The Ginza, then just a traditional street market, and also the elegant Fujiya Hotel. When the war ended, Shirley opted to be “dropped off” in the small, but bustling frontier town of Anchorage which at the time had only a few blocks of paved streets. First she lived in hotels, then rented a room in the home of her future mother-in-law Isabel (“Izzie”) Brundage. Izzie owned a classy boutique, the nicest apparel store in Anchorage and Shirley went to work for Izzie. At the insistence of Izzie’s daughters, their brother Bruce came to the store one day to meet Shirley. Shirley and Bruce were married on a snowy March 3, 1951 at a small, family ceremony in a little log church, All Saints Episcopal, on 5th Avenue. Their honeymoon was a fly-in excursion to a trapper’s cabin on Succor Lake across Cook Inlet. Shirley shuddered, remembering that a bear paced and pawed around the outside of the cabin all night. When it was time to leave, Shirley and Bruce showshoed the runway. Flying (with Bruce or a friend piloting), fishing, and dancing were their pastimes. With housing scarce in Anchorage, Shirley and Bruce remodeled the upstairs of Bruce’s parent’s home into an apartment. Shirley had fun upholstering chairs and sewing curtains with the help of her newly purchased Singer featherweight sewing machine which she also used to mend Bruce’s work pants. And Bruce was beginning to learn his trade of electrical contracting. Alaska in those days was more remote than we can imagine. The expense of telephone calls was prohibitive. News of special events was wired, rarely, in a telegram of the least possible number of words. At her faraway home, Shirley listened to the radio show Hawaii Calls, broadcast from under the banyan tree at the Ala Moana Hotel at Waikiki. The sound of the surf and ukeleles seemed impossibly far away. “You never thought you would ever, ever go to someplace like that,” she said. But in 1953, using a $400 Christmas bonus from Bruce’s employer, he and Shirley and 18-month-old Barbara went to Waikiki. Bruce asked, “Would you rather go to Hawaii or use this for a down payment on a house?” Shirley said, “Let’s go to Hawaii.” Because, “someday,” she said she knew she’d get a house. But Bruce’s long hours at work, and the long, dark winters took their toll on Shirley. After the birth of Jeffrey in 1954, Shirley had a nervous breakdown and went to visit her parents “outside” of Alaska to recuperate. Doug was born in Shelton in 1956 with Bruce there “but,” she told him, “I’m not coming home until I have a car and a fenced back yard.” He obliged. And she came home. She struggled with the fear of her husband’s early death. Bruce had a bad heart and by the time of their marriage had more than outlived his life expectancy. And she struggled with perfectionism. Scripture memorization and a rededication to God through church attendance and involvement lead her through five years of recovery. “It took me,” she would say jokingly, “five years to learn to become a slob.” But after that, she and Bruce enjoyed five good years, the best, Shirley said, of their marriage. There were happy times at the family cabin on the Kenai River at Cooper Landing. Shirley became involved in and ultimately president of the Anchorage Garden Club. She helped to plan and exhibited in flower shows, taught flower arranging, and developed her own garden of delphiniums, calendulas, and pink petunias that lined her front porch in painted one-gallon coffee cans. Inside, in the winter, she nursed tiny seedlings under fluorescent lights on her “Gro-Lux” cart. In 1965, the year after the Good Friday earthquake, Shirley rallied a cause that covered the headlines of Anchorage newspapers from January through May. She and her longtime friend and Anchorage pioneer, Avis Cupples, brought an initiative action (Anchorage’s first ever) against the City of Anchorage. The vote successfully stopped the construction of a multi-story parking garage on the City Hall block, preserved the square for open space, and helped to win Anchorage its All America City designation in 1966. Thereafter, as a devotee of civic beauty, she was involved in the creation of and served as mayoral appointee to the Anchorage Beautification Commission. Then, in November of 1967, two weeks after she and Bruce were chaperones at Barbara’s junior prom, Bruce died in an on-the-job accident and Shirley became the widowed mother of three children: Barbara, 16; Jeff, 13; and Doug, 11. It took several years to dissolve Bruce’s business, but in the early ‘70’s Shirley relocated to Lacey, Washington where she had a home on Chambers Lake and enjoyed being near her parents and brother and sister once again. Shirley then became a realtor. She invested in several four-plexes in partnership with son Jeff. And she made her church home Evergreen Christian Center, a church alive with the Holy Spirit under Pastor Glen Cole. In 1978 she joined daughter Barbara on an around-the-world voyage aboard Semester at Sea, touring the Orient, Southeast Asia, India, and the Mediterranean. In 1981 she joined a Robert Schuller tour to China, where she visited the Great Wall, and helped to smuggle in Bibles camouflaged to look like Mao’s Little Red Book. Then, in 1982 Shirley set out to be a missionary. Now in her ‘50’s, Shirley attended Discipleship Training School aboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis. She bunked with six younger women and worked in the ship’s galley and dining room for her missionary service. After completion of DTS, she worked with Youth With a Mission in Fiji and Vanuatu. In October of ’83 she returned home to meet her four month-old grandson Justin, and six month-old granddaughter Brittany. In 1986 as a missionary from her church she went to Quito, Equador to help build a Bible college. For the next few years Shirley balanced responsibilities of grandparenting, church, and politics. She provided daycare for granddaughter Brittany, taught vacation Bible school in the summer, and during the legislative session attended weekly meetings of the Legislative Action Workshop. In business attire, she made cold calls on legislators to encourage their support of the conservative issues dear to her heart. She was concerned about education, a dumbing down of the curriculum, humanistic ideologies, and sex education that she believed was overly explicit. She supported the Right to Life movement by attending rallies on the State Capitol steps and hand-delivering a token rose to each of her legislators. It concerned her that 4,000 abortions are performed daily in the U.S. She was concerned about the socio-political welfare of our culture, specifically our children. When asked how the world had changed since she was a girl, she commented that “movies today are too scary, political, and culturally perverted and damaging to young people.” Regarding dating she said, “Kids don’t wait to get to know one another and sex is spoken of too openly in school, to their harm. I still like the old fashioned ways of dating, letting boys call first, sharing similar interests, having same Christian faith……What fellowship,” she asked, “does light have with darkness?” Homosexuality was an issue Shirley felt strongly about. One day she dressed up as a bag lady and roamed the streets of downtown Olympia incognito. Her mission was to find and destroy all the programs and posters for the Evergreen State College sponsored Gay and Lesbian Film Festival that she could lay her hands on. It irked her that such an event was funded by taxpayers. If you wondered what side of the fence Shirley was on, you had only to read her bumper sticker: “Marriage equals one man and one woman.” Shirley was fearless. She testified before legislative committees and before school boards. She was a precinct committee woman, a delegate to the Washington State Republican Convention, and by way of a church bulletin board that she kept current, she informed her church family about political issues affecting the church and family that she thought they needed to be on top of. When asked about her deepest values, Shirley said, “to love God and let His light show in me and pass His love and words on to the next generation.” Even in her later years, Shirley was active. She walked five miles easily from her place to the Sleater-Kinney area or over to the Senior Center. At the age of 71 she broke her hip playing dodge ball with a group of church kids. And even after the hip replacement, she still enjoyed a good tango. As an adult her favorite song was “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. It always made her cry. Her favorite actor was Anthony Quinn. Favorite actress: Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music. Favorite TV show: 20/20 with Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs. Favorite newscasters: Kirby Wilber and John Carlson on KVI, conservative talk radio, and Rush Limbaugh. Her favorite season continued to be spring---“when the bright daffodils and tulips and bluebells bloomed.” Her favorite vacation spot? The beaches of Greece or India. Favorite dessert? Cherio-Crème Cheese pie. And her favorite saying: “Bloom where you are planted. God will help you through. No place is perfect. Make the best of things. Ask God to change your attitude.” Adding, “our attitude determines our altitude.” What was Shirley’s recipe for life? 1 cup kind deeds 1 cup consideration for others 2 cups sacrifice for others 3 cups forgiveness 2 cups well-beaten faults Mix these thoroughly, adding tears of joy and sorrow and sympathy for others. Flavor with gifts of love. Fold in 4 cups of prayers and faith, to lighten other ingredients and raise the texture to great heights of Christian living. Pour all into your daily life. Bake well with the heat of human kindness. And serve with a smile. Memorial contributions may be made in Shirley’s name to CareNet, Mercy Ships, or Garden Conservancy.