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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Lois Imogene Bark 
April 28, 1983 
Cassette 1, Side 1 
 
 
Mary Giammona  00:01 
Hello. This is Mary Giammona interviewing Lois Bark, who is the curator of textiles in Seattle's 
Museum of History and Industry. We are at Lois's home at Sandpoint in Seattle. Today is April 
28, 1983. This is side one of tape one. I guess we're going to start talking about your childhood 
first. So, tell me what you know. 
 
Lois Bark  00:22 
I was born in Port Blakely on Bainbridge Island, and that was the largest salt water sawmill in 
the world at that time. And my father's father had come from the east to the island in 1903 to put 
in the machinery of the mill after it had burned down. Of course, my mother already lived on the 
island, she'd been born on the island and so my mother and father met there and were married 
about five years after they arrived in Port Blakely. And I have an older sister, and I was born 
there, of course, in 1916 and went to the Old Port Blakely school, and my dad helped build the 
old Presbyterian Church in the little town of Port Blakely. And oh, as children, it was a 
wonderful place to grow up; we knew all the country roads and would, one of my little 
girlfriends and I, our favorite place to walk to was the Old Port Blakely cemetery. As small girls, 
probably about oh, six years old, and we would pick pink bells along the way and then sit just 
quietly in the old cemetery and look at the gravestones and the squirrels and you know, animals 
would come because it's right up in the middle of a forest. My sister and I still go there every 
year because my mother's mother is buried in the Old Port Blakely cemetery. Not many people 
know where it is even anymore. And oh, in a couple years ago, I did a segment for PM 
Northwest on the little ghost town of Port Blakely. My generation is the last of the children that 
were born there, that grew were there when the mill was operating. And of course, I have just 
some very little memories of the mill at that time, it was never as large at that time as it was in 
the early days. There was a big country store, and my girlfriend's dad was the butcher in the Port 
Blakeley store. So, we would always go there to get weenies and big dill pickles, and we'd get to 
ride on the old grocery truck over to the country club, where all the wealthy people lived. And 
it's interesting that today I know many of the people that lived there, and have met them in later 
years, and we've reminisced a lot about the early days in Port Blakely. My dad worked for the 
Port Blakely Mill Company and then for Skinner and Eddy, and we moved to Seattle, I think it 
was 1927 and moved out in the north end. And I attended Greenwood Elementary School, and 
then went to Ballard High School. Junior high schools weren't there yet, I think, just probably 
maybe the next year or so. Both my sister and I went to Ballard High School, and we walked 
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from Greenwood, 80th and Greenwood to Ballard High, which was quite a ways, both ways. 
And so, we always enjoyed that, oh, we had lots of good times there. Our family was very 
family-oriented. We just had girl cousins, we didn't have any boys in our family. My dad had 
five brothers, and a few of them had girls. And our family was really with our own immediate 
family more than outside friends so much, and everything we did was sort of within that family 
circle. So, growing up in Seattle was interesting, and we used to go on camping trips in our old 
touring car and go to Mount Rainier and places like that, and camp, of course. We used to go up 
to an old mining town called Robe and my grandmother would always go with us, of course, and 
take everything with her. We always had ice and, her sons would get feel aggravated because she 
would just bring everything along with her. And we have lots, lots of good times there. But it 
was, as I say, all family mostly. Didn't know anything about boys when I was little. And it's 
funny that the all the girls that-- well, it's just my sister and I, and then we had two cousins and 
we just have boys, there are no girls now. But I was the last and the youngest of the Rayne 
family, and they hoped that I would be a boy to carry the name on, but I gave my son my family 
name so he could carry that on. When I graduated from high school, of course, it was in the 
middle of the Depression, and so I wasn't able to go to college, although I had planned to do so, 
and so I just had some small jobs after school. 
 
Mary Giammona  06:02 
This part here has been edited at Lois's request, probably about a minute before the tape picks 
back up. 
 
Lois Bark  06:37 
I had always wanted to be in medicine, and so the war time was my opportunity to do that. And I 
joined with two doctors, Dr. Slyfield and Nelson, who had a tuberculosis sanatorium at by 
Fauntleroy, and I was in their city office, and I learned to be an X-ray technician and a medical 
technician in their office in downtown Seattle. And so I was with them for almost 10 years, and I 
enjoyed that, I've always worked with people. And I taught-- electrocardiograms were quite new 
then, and our doctors, because Tuberculosis was, of course, then, a disease that was almost 
curable, our hospital was one that hadn't won a test for streptomycin, really, truly a miracle drug. 
And so they went into heart work then, and I learned the electrocardiograms and all the things 
associated with heart treatment, and then I taught the use of electrocardiography to other 
technicians. And I met my husband at the University of Washington. He was an electronic 
engineer, and he, at the time I met him, was working on some electrical devices to transfer heart 
sounds over the telephone, and so that you could, a doctor could, over the phone, see, or hear 
what a person's heart was doing. And he worked with the doctors at the orthopedic, he sort of 
started the electronic division at the new medical school then, at the University of Washington, 
and he enjoyed that very much. He did a lot with hearing and was sound because he was a radio 
engineer. And so in about 1940, almost 1950, I guess he decided that he wanted to do something 
else. He was an extremely brilliant man, and did have some problems, physically and mentally. 
And we went to, of all places, the South, and wanted to just get away and do something different. 
So, we went to Alabama, and we lived in Birmingham and Montgomery, which is a wonderful 
experience, I've always enjoyed the south since visiting, the other people were very friendly. And 
after we were there for a while, he decided he would go back into electronics. And then he had a 
very classified job with Boeing, but it was at Towson in Maryland, which is near Baltimore. And 
we then went to Baltimore, my son was born there in 1952, so, we stayed there just 10 months, 
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and then returned to Seattle. I, of course, did not work any of that time. My husband beame more 
ill as he returned here, and then was in the aerospace division of Boeing. And we had a very 
pleasant life, quiet, always a very quiet life. My son and I were very, because my husband 
couldn't do many of the things, or didn't like to do many of the things that boys usually do with 
their dads, I was the one that did those things with him. But he and his dad had a very close 
relationship, through science, through electronics and so on. And when he was just a little boy 
like two years old, he'd be, tied him up to the bench downstairs, and his favorite toys were oh, 
like globes and things like that. And he knew how to solder when he was about four. So, he, for 
the time that he they were together, he had a really happy time with him, but he did continue to 
sort of deteriorate, and-- So, just to, for diversion, and I became a docent at the Museum of 
History and Industry. I was involved, of course, in the school, so, I was PTA liaison between the 
art museum and the Museum of History and Industry, and having grown up as the daughter of a 
pioneer of Washington, I felt that was the most appropriate place for me to be. So, I was a 
volunteer, a docent, there for five years. And my husband was in a sanitarium for a while, and 
they asked me at the museum if I would like to come and take the place of the Director of 
Education who was leaving. So, at 48, I had to start, I started a new career, and my husband died 
just a few months after that. And so it was a fortunate experience for me to have worked as a 
volunteer there, and then to be asked to work there beyond the staff, because I knew everyone. 
And to start off at that age, you know, after not having worked for about 15 years, it was kind of 
difficult. So, it was, probably I should have looked around a little bit more for better salary and 
fringe benefits and things, because there weren't any there at all, and, but I didn't and, but I 
started a whole new program there, and it was very successful. We had no training there as 
docents when I first was there as a volunteer, so, that was my first job, then, to establish a regular 
training system for docents. And we had a wonderful program, and I've been asked to go many 
places in the state to start different programs in different museums, the capital museum, in 
Yakima, and many of the smaller museums, Mary, more to give them some ideas of how they 
can start a program of their own. And I had about 125 volunteers, and that was my main job 
there, but I also had the gift shop, and of course, I coordinated the volunteer services. But I 
always was interested in costumes, and I happened to be a friend of Blanche Payne, who was the 
head of the Home Economics Department at the University of Washington. And I met her just 
about five years before her death, and she really inspired me too, because we did not have 
anyone at the museum who was interested in costumes. They did not really have a professional 
staff there at all. And so I began to study the history of costumes, and I did the exhibits for a long 
time. And I finally then just, I suppose because I was there, and the only one that knew anything 
about it, I got the job of being, doing the exhibits, and then finally, as costume curator. But that's 
been a wonderful experience for me. And, of course, I'm known, I guess, best in the city, as 
being the hat lady. I do a hat show about 50 times a year; it's called 100 Years of Hats. And I 
speak to all kinds of women's organizations, and I bring a collection of hats from the museum. 
And talk about changes in women in that 100 years, from 1850 to 1950 and then I used the hats 
as an accent of the costume that I'm talking about. It's amazing to me that people, seems like I've 
done every women's club in Seattle, and I go [inaudible]-- Next week, I'll go to Olympia, and 
I've gone to Sequim and way up to Bellingham, but-- and I've done reruns also in some 
organizations that I do, University women's clubs and faculty clubs, that sort of thing, but PEO 
groups, church groups of all kinds, mother-daughter banquets, I'm very big in that. And 
springtime is my busiest time, but I enjoy doing it, and it's kind of a fun program, and women 
seem to enjoy it. I teach at the Lifetime Learning Center. I teach adults Seattle history, and I've 
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been doing that now for two years, and I enjoy that too. I work with older people quite frequently 
also. Of course, we do our programs in nursing homes and at the orthopedic, so, we cover almost 
every kind of individual in the city. And because, noticing that so many of the young people who 
come to the museum are not able to read very well, my latest adventure is working with the 
Washington Literacy Council, so, I'm looking forward to having an adult student and we'll see if 
we can teach him how to read better. So, that brings me up to date.  
 
Mary Giammona  17:02 
Oh, you answered all my questions, but let me ask you, [?and they're great?], going back to the 
beginning, do you remember your grandparents very well? 
 
Lois Bark  17:10 
Oh yes, I was quite young when my grand-- I did not know my mother's mother, she died before 
I was born, nor her father, either, and but my grandmother was a wonderful grandmother. She 
was German, of course, a real good cook. And I was only four when my grandfather died, but he 
was a, he was very nice man. And he used to kind of, he loved the theater, he was English, and 
he always took my sister and I on Saturday, when we'd come to Seattle to visit, they lived up on 
Queen Anne Hill, and he would take my sister and I downtown, always to see vaudeville shows 
at the Pantages and Palace Hip theater, those are two of the early vaudeville houses, but he did 
like theater. And I guess I've always enjoyed it too and, maybe from that early exposure, because 
I was only four and five years old, probably-- well, he died when I was four, so, I must have been 
even younger than that, but I remember very well going to some of the plays and comedians that 
he enjoyed going to. My grandmother, of course, had all these granddaughters and no grandsons. 
And she had had five sons of her own, but my sister and I guess, were her favorites, and she 
would always have special things that we like to eat and so on. My sister was not strong as a 
little girl, she had asthma, and of course, they didn't know much about treating that in those days, 
so, we would come to town often and stay with my grandmother and my sister, sometimes, 
several times, had to go to the hospital. But she always remembers that I entertained her by sort 
of preaching or telling her stories to entertain her. And I guess, although I was terribly shy in 
high school, somehow I did take a course in public speaking there, and it has never bothered me 
to speak to audiences at all if I am acquainted with the subject. So, I've always enjoyed that. I 
guess I've maybe done that, kind of a ham, since I was little. My sister and I are very close. She 
lives here now in Seattle, she lived away for quite a number of years, but we are still, you know, 
we do a lot of things together. And my son Roger, of course, Roger lives close by, but he's not 
married, and he comes and sees me quite often too. So, I live a very quiet life, but I enjoy the 
theater and the ballet and, of course, gardening, I do all the yard work here, in my house, around 
my house here, and I've always liked that, and probably flower arranging. I used to be and do a 
lot of Japanese flower arranging. Now I just do it occasionally, but I used to teach that also. So, 
just a variety of things, but mostly just around the home. I guess I've always enjoyed a house and 
a home and a family, probably more than anything. And, but I would it would be nice to have my 
son married, some grandchildren, maybe 
 
Mary Giammona  20:41 
What was the size and the sense of the community where you were growing up? I guess I'm 
being [inaudble]-- 
 
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Lois Bark  20:46 
The number of people?  
 
Mary Giammona  20:47 
Yeah.  
 
Lois Bark  20:48 
Well, it was a very small, little country town. And I imagine they were only probably-- Right in 
the little town itself, there were mill people all working in the mill. And of course, the ferry came 
to Port Blakely when we were small, and then it was changed to Winslow. But I imagine right in 
the little town, there probably weren't more than 500 people. And the doctor, there was a doctor, 
but no hospital on the island, and my sister and I were both born at home. But it was a close 
group too, we grew up with many Japanese children because the, there was a Japanese 
community there, and many of the Japanese people worked in the mill, and then they had 
marvelous farms on the island. There were lots of Scandinavian people also, and, but I think the 
relationship with the Japanese people, I've always treasured that because of the wonderful 
families and we enjoyed their companionship in school. I can't [inaudible] just consisted of a 
hotel and sort of barracks for the single men that lived at the mill and and then they-- of course, 
the country club people came in the summer, and that was always we, they, we didn't consider 
them islanders, you see. They were always the city people who came, and they were different, 
sort of, than the ones who lived on the island. Always. We didn't travel much because then, in 
early '20s, the roads weren't that good. We did have a car, but we just seemed to stay right in the 
little town itself and watch the ferry come in. One thing that was kind of interesting at night, 
because it was a large mill, the women in, it was just a one one street that faced the water, and it 
was a big harbor, and sailing ships, of course, came there from all around the world to pick up 
lumber. And when the mill whistle blew at night, at five, I suppose, the women would have all 
the children come inside, especially the little girls, because they didn't want them to hear the 
rough language of the men off the ships and the workers, and that was just a thing that always 
happened. The mothers, the women, all seemed to go inside at that time. It was kind of Victorian 
town, but my grandfather was superintendent of the mill, and they lived in the big house closest 
to the mill, and then the smaller houses were all down the street, and kind of little Victorian 
houses, Gingerbread fronts and porches and so on. It was a very nice place to grow up. And we 
enjoyed the, of course, the beaches and the woods, and I still do, just part of something that 
grows inside of you, I guess. Always have, we have to go back every year to kind of go to all the 
places that we knew when we were kids. So, it was enjoyable. 
 
Mary Giammona  24:18 
You mentioned earlier, when we talked that you had an aunt and an uncle. Your mother's aunt 
and uncle, I guess, that sort of took the place of your grandparents.  
 
Lois Bark  24:26 
Yes. 
 
Mary Giammona  24:26 
What was that like? 
 
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Lois Bark  24:27 
Now, they lived just around on the other side of the island, a place called Crystal Springs, which 
is opposite Bremerton, and their name were Syversen, they were Norwegian, and grandpa, we 
call them grandma and grandpa, although I guess what would I don't even know what 
relationship they really were. They were half, my mother's mother was half sister to Mrs. 
Syversen, and she came from Norway with her. But they had seven daughters, and as they grew 
up, Captain Syversen gave each one of his daughters a plat of land; he had homesteaded there. 
And so all of these aunts lived, each in a different little house, all in a row. And we always had to 
go when we visited, of course, being Norwegian, they always had food in every house and coffee 
on the back of the cook-stove and so on. So, we would always have to visit every one and eat. 
And the main farm was the Syversen farm, and he had a big orchard and cows and so on, and we 
used to play in the hay loft. And he was a very handsome man, very tall, with a snow white 
beard. Very patriotic, he was proud to be an American citizen, and on the Fourth of July, he'd 
always had a big flag pole in the front yard, he'd always put the flag up and shoot off his gun to 
celebrate. But they spoke Norwegian, of course, to one another. My mother did, could 
understand Norwegian, but she did not speak it. And of course, we did not either. But of course, 
coming to this country, many people from other countries wanted to be American so badly that 
they did not want to speak their own tongues, which is too bad, and so they, so, my mother didn't 
speak it at all, although she was raised in a Norwegian Lutheran Church and so on, her catechism 
was all in Norwegian. But her, her mother died, really quite young, around 50, I think, so, she 
died before my sister was born. My sister was older than I, so, I never knew her at all. And her 
father, and she did have a brother, my mother did, but they both disappeared, so, I never knew 
them either. But that was always a fun time, and aunt, one of the aunts lived up on a hill, and 
always reminded me of Heidi, because it was like an Alpine field, flowers grew in the field, and 
it was a little house made of logs. And at Christmas we would go, and she could play the little 
concertina, and we would sing Norwegian songs. And then she would have what was called 
small jul with cookies on the tree and nuts and things. And small jul was the day after Christmas 
when you ate the things that were on the tree, so, we always look forward to that kind of special, 
little Norwegian treat then. But they were wonderful ladies, and they all lived to be way up in 
their 90s, every one of them, and I think the last one just passed away, oh, just about four years 
ago. So, we had them with us almost all our adult lives too. 
 
Mary Giammona  27:58 
So, were there other traditions of marriages? Or did you ever see any weddings? Or were there 
traditions with birth, anything like that? 
 
Lois Bark  28:05 
No, I can't say that there were, because our family were not very prolific as far as having 
children, and the girls in our family, the cousins were all about the same age. I think, in our own 
family, our, my mother and father, my two, and my sister and I, probably had more of the ethnic 
background than any of the others, because my mother, being Norwegian, we would celebrate 
many things that they did at Christmas. And I remember she would serve lutefisk, you know, on 
Christmas Eve and, that sort of thing where, none of the others did that, I mean, on my dad's 
side, of course, wouldn't have done that. So, we were more, probably, oriented to the Norwegian 
side than we were the German side with my grandmother. Although, she did that too, but we 
seemed to be closer to my-- probably because we lived on the island naturally, and it was always 
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hard to come, cross on the little boats and so on. But we always went back there, even for many 
years later. But when we moved to Seattle, then we were closer to the family that lived here, and 
all my father's brothers lived in Seattle. So, we had a couple of girl cousins, and then his two 
aunts, my grandmother's two sisters lived here, three sisters, I guess they were lived here, and 
then they had their families. So, we had another little group over here, about 35 people, but it 
wasn't a large family, because no one had more than-- well, my mother and dad with the two that 
was the most, they all just had one child, or none at all, so, the family is all gone, you see, now. 
And so my sister and I are the last ones, outside of our children, that exist in that family, which is 
too bad.  
 
Lois Bark  30:14 
Sure.  
 
Mary Giammona  30:14 
I think I'll stop here next. The tape's gonna end really soon.  
 
Mary Giammona  30:18 
[Inaudible] interrupt you.  
 