Obituary of Edythe Holland McDowell Wrede

Edythe was born in Ellensburg, Washington in 1913. She was the third child and second daughter of James McDowell and Della Mae Holland. Mr. McDowell was a grocery store owner who had been born in Crestline, Kansas. He traveled to the Ellensburg area with his uncle by covered wagon in 1882. The family lived in Ellensburg for years after Edythe’s birth, moving to Yakima in 1931. Mrs. McDowell died in 1925 when Edythe was just 11 years old. Her maternal grandmother cared for Edythe, her sister, Louise, and their brother, Jerald, in the family home. As Edythe was completing high school, the family moved to Yakima, Washington where James again worked in the grocery business. Over these years her sister, Louise, attended Ellensburg Normal School, now known as Central Washington University, and took a teaching degree. Louise taught for a year in the town of Raymond and shortly thereafter married another educator, Elmer Kennedy. Shortly after Edythe completed high school, her sister and her new husband, Elmer Kennedy, moved to Orilla, a small community near Kent, Washington. Edythe followed her sister over the mountains and took up residence in Seattle. She completed business school and took a job with the Northern Life Insurance Company. She visited her sister often in Orilla. Through friends of Elmer and Louise, she met Bill Wrede. It would be another twenty years before they were finally married. Louise and Edythe remained very close throughout their lives and when Elmer and Louise moved to Olympia in the 1930’s, Edythe moved down to Olympia shortly thereafter and went to work for the State Department of Social Security. She worked in Olympia until after the start of World War II. Elmer took a commission in the Navy and was assigned to Washington D.C.. The family moved to Washington D.C. and Edythe followed shortly in 1941. Edythe joined the Coast Guard. She took assignments working on code breaking and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the women’s Coast Guard (the SPARS). The office in which she worked was taken over by the Navy. She worked with breaking communications codes throughout the war. Bill Wrede had, by this time, gone to Alaska and initially worked for the State Department of Employment Security in Juneau, moving later in the 1930’s to the Fairbanks area. At that time he got involved working with his brothers placer mining for gold in the Circle Mining District in Central Alaska. During the war, Bill also enlisted in the Coast Guard and was promoted to the rank of Petty Officer. He served as a quartermaster on a number of troop ships primarily in the Pacific, however, he was posted to the East coast on several occasions and on those occasions he and Edythe dated and shared a number of friends in the Washington D.C. area. Following the war, Edythe volunteered with the Coast Guard for an assignment in Korea. She sailed to Korea in 1946. While in Korea she met and agreed to marry another man. When Bill got word (back in Alaska) that Edythe was engaged, he went out and purchased an engagement ring and mailed it to her with his proposal. By the time Bill’s ring arrived the first engagement had dissolved. Edythe responded to Bill’s proposal and they agreed to be married. She resigned her commission and had to make her own arrangements for returning to the United States. She sailed into San Francisco in late January of 1948 and Bill met her. They were married at his sister’s Episcopal Church in San Jose, California on January 29, 1948. The reception was in his sister, Olga Womer’s, home. Edythe and Bill honeymooned in Carmel. Following the marriage, Bill returned to Fairbanks to prepare a home for the newlyweds. Edythe took the train back to the Kent area and prepared to leave for Alaska. She arrived in Fairbanks a week later with all of their wedding presents, her clothing and her personal effects. That first night the house they were renting burned to the ground. They basically had to start over with nothing. From this bumpy start they went on to build a relationship and a family filled with love and hospitality for all. Bill and his brothers worked the mines in the summer and purchased a dry cleaning firm, which they ran in the winter. Summers were spent in the bush on the family placer mine. Edy was one of the regular cooks for the mining crew. The winters were spent socializing and doing volunteer work. One long standing family tradition became the hosting of a holiday open house for friends and acquaintances. The family worked for months preparing decorations and food and the guest list always included a broad sampling of the Fairbanks community. The food, conversation, and refreshments flowed freely and the event was often the topic of conversation for months afterward. Over the fourteen years that they were in the Fairbanks area, they made many lifelong friends and were very active in the community. Edythe was involved in the Garden Club and very active with the First Methodist Church in Fairbanks. Their two sons were born in these years. The boys had a unique experience growing up in the rural community and the wilderness. During the early sixties, Bill developed emphysema and his health progressively deteriorated. In 1962 the family moved back to Seattle. The first year the Wrede’s actually traded homes with a family that was considering moving Fairbanks. The Wrede’s new home was right across the street from Edy’s sister, Louise, and her husband, Elmer. After the first year in Seattle, the family moved to North Seattle. Bill did not work steadily from the time that they returned to Seattle. Edy returned to full time work as a secretary/receptionist for a psychiatrist in downtown Seattle. She worked steadily until her retirement in 1979. In 1967 Bill succumbed to the emphysema and Edy was left to raise two teenagers through the height of the sixties counter-culture. She took her son, Ron, to the Beattles concert when they came to Seattle. Throughout all of this, Edy held the family together and pushed to resolve the teenage acting out to the point where both sons are happily married and raising families of their own. She has provided a model and an inspiration to many that have known her over the years. Edy has always been a strong, personable, independent woman. She has loved gardening and socializing in all of the areas where she lived. She was an avid bridge player and has made that a staple of her social life. By the early seventies both of the boys had moved out to be on their own. Edy returned to her independent life, making friends and traveling. She traveled to Europe and England a number of times and truly enjoyed meeting new people and seeing new places. The travel bug had bitten her early in life and journeying has been an important part of her whole life. She was a long time volunteer at Ballard Community Hospital and very active in the United Methodist Temple in the University District in Seattle. In the late 1980’s both of her boys married their current wives in Seattle. Fritz married his third wife, Gail. Neither of them had children from their previous marriages. Ron married Kathy. Kathy had two children from a previous marriage, Aragon and Amber. Aragon is currently living in North Carolina and Amber is attending college in Seattle. Both are important members of Edy’s family. She lived in various apartments in Ballard and Magnolia Bluff throughout these years always close to her sister, Louise until Louise’s death in 1992. As her own health began to slip she moved in with her son Fritz and his family in Olympia in July 2002. She once again took up light gardening and rekindled her relationship with her grandson Will. She had been the primary caretaker for Will during his first and second years of life. Will is now seventeen years old. To this day there is a special bond between these two that is hear-warming and bright. Edy has two other grandkids from her second son, Ron’s family, Brian and Brianna. Brian is 15 years old and Brianna is 13. Ron and his wife, Kathy, live in North Seattle in the former home of one of Edy’s traveling companions. In May of 2005 with her health continuing to slide, Edy moved into Mother Joseph Care Center, Olympia. Edythe, 92, died on Tuesday, April 14, 2006. Please leave memories and condolences in our guest book by clicking on the "View Guestbook" link below.