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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Eleanor Josephine Danner Bilimoria 
April 14, 1985 
Cassette 1, Side 1 
 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  00:02 
Today is April 20, 1985. This is interview one, tape one. My name is Elizabeth Leslie Gallery-
Fox, and I'm interviewing Eleanor Danner Bilimoria, B-I-L-I-M-O-R-I-A. Eleanor has agreed to 
share her life, her story, and upon completion of this series of interviews, her life, her story will 
be donated to the Washington Women's Heritage Project archives. Eleanor and I have decided to 
discuss today the first 25 years of her life. She will begin with where she was born and what it 
was like growing up.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  01:03 
[Inaudible] okay. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  01:08 
Does that sound good?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  01:09 
Yes.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  01:09 
Okay. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  01:10 
I was born in Rainier Beach, which is a part of Seattle, Washington and June 12, 1909, which 
was the month the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opened. My mother talked about the 
exposition many, many times, so it must have been a very important event for Seattle people. I 
had an older sister and three older brothers. My sister was 20 years older than I, and although 
Mother had hired help of a hired girl, they were called, my care was in the hands of my sister. 
And it's interesting that for the first three years of my life, when we lived at Rainier Beach, I 
have no memories of my parents at all, but I remember my sister, who would pick-- she raised 
lavender and then picked the long branches of the lavender and made beautiful little sachets of 
them, putting several pieces of the lavender together and weaving in and out with  silk-- tiny silk 
ribbons. They were beautiful things. And she also made hangers, putting the lavender in and then 
sewing silk over them so that they were very fragrant. She was doing those for my mother for 
Christmas one year and told me not to tell. Of course, I did, and it was a big fight over that. I 
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remember also going to Inez's wedding. She was married when I was three, and I remember 
being in my buggy and watching the proceedings. It was lots of sunshine. I remember that. My 
three brothers, I remember to some extent. I remember one particular incident. My father worked 
in an office downtown Seattle, and his secretaries would make candy and send me packages, or 
when I would go in with him to see his office, they would give me some... Must have been 
penuche in a big slab and wrapped in wax paper. So one day, my three brothers were outdoors 
working on something, and I came out and there was something there on the table which looked 
exactly like this candy that the secretaries gave me. So I said, "Ah, candy." And my middle 
brother, who was the most rambunctious of the three said, "Yes, you want some?" So I took a big 
bite, and it was Naptha Soap. And so then he didn't know what to do. He got water and washed 
out my mouth. And of course, it made--  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  04:15 
Oh [they laugh]. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  04:15 
And the soap bubbles and it tasted just horrible. Well, the three of them bribed me not to tell. My 
father was very strict with all of us and when he said, "Do something," we did it. There was no 
argument about it at all. You asked me to name my parents, Gazella Marie Young was my 
mother from Kansas, and my father, William Sheridan Danner, and he had the German ancestry, 
and she had the English, Scotch-Irish background. I probably was very badly spoiled because I 
was the youngest of the family. My youngest brother was nine years older than I. I was a 
mistake, obviously. Across the street from us was the Presbyterian-- no, it was the Methodist 
church across the street, and had a young couple as the minister and his wife there. And after I 
had my breakfast at home, I would go across the street and have breakfast with the minister and 
his wife [they laugh]. And then when I finished there -- and I do remember having hotcakes 
there, we'd never had hotcakes at home for some reason or other, and so my introduction was 
from the minister to hotcakes -- and then after breakfast there, I would go next door to Grandpa 
Harrison and have breakfast with Grandpa Harrison [they laugh]. It's no wonder I'm overweight.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  06:00 
Eleanor, how old were you at this time? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  06:02 
I was-- this is from one to-- or from birth to three years old, because we left Rainier Beach when 
I was three. Fortunately, that's one nice thing about moving a lot. You know the ages at which 
things happened within a certain perimeter. And because I was the only small child in the 
neighborhood, I got extra attention, which probably wasn't very good for me, but Grandpa 
Harrison, after we'd had breakfast, we played checkers and he always let me win, and I loved 
Grandpa Harrison. And when I tried to play checkers with my father, I always lost and that 
wasn't any fun at all. My father had always wanted to live in California, so when I was three, he 
sold the house -- and it was a big, three-story house with a huge yard -- and we all-- Mother and 
Father and Earl, the youngest brother, went with me to California. I didn't name my sisters and 
brothers, did I? Inez Myrtle was my sister. Albert Lea was my oldest brother. William Delbert 
was the middle one and Earl Young the youngest and Earl was nine years older than I. I 
remember the boat trip to California, watching the whales, and one particular event where I had 
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climbed up on the railing so that I could look out over the top and the deckhand came along and 
scooped me up and took me to my mother and set me down and told her to "keep watch on this 
child," because there was just the two bars. But we didn't stay in California too long. I'm not sure 
just how long. As I understand it, we had sold the house at Rainier Beach in June, and on the 4th 
of July, it burned down.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  08:15 
One thing that I remember about California-- I didn't have any friends there. I didn't get 
acquainted at all, and I was very lonesome. When my sister sent a big package for Christmas, she 
put one wrapping on it and a person's name, and then she put another wrapping on it and a 
different person's name and another wrapping and a third person's name and so you had to pass it 
around, and I found it very hard to give up a package when it had my name on the top.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  08:49 
[Laughs.] 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  08:52 
So when we returned from California, we-- Father bought an apartment house on Queen Anne 
Hill. I have two memories of Queen Anne Hill. One was going to kindergarten the first time in 
my life, and I just adored it. Oh, it was such fun. And I think it was only three weeks before the 
poor kindergarten teacher didn't have enough pupils to make a go of it and closed, and I was 
heartbroken. And I remember going home with-- loaded down with colored papers, shiny 
colored papers and gold colored papers and red ones and purple ones that she had given all of us 
to take home. The other thing that I remember there, there was a woman up-- who had an 
apartment upstairs invited Mother and me to tea one afternoon. And while the two ladies were 
sitting having their tea and talking, I was sitting on the floor on the tiger skin rug, busily pulling 
out all of the whiskers. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  10:03 
[Laughs.]  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  10:03 
Oh, she was furious. So I got sent to bed without my supper that night, and I remember going to 
the table and trying to get my father to say I could come and being sent away [laughs]. I don't 
know how long we lived on Queen Anne Hill, but then we moved to Vashon Island to a 32-acre 
farm, and probably the most influence in my childhood was living on this farm for four years 
from ages six to ten. As we... I suppose I must have ridden in automobiles in Seattle, because 
when we got to the dock at Vashon, we were met by a horse and a carriage going up this winding 
road, which I thought went down to a precipice in the ocean below, and I was terrified. Of 
course, the family worked very hard on this house and the farm, and I was so spoiled, I didn't 
have to do anything but play. I remember at one time, my brother had this long garden, huge, 
long rows, and he offered me 10¢ a row to weed. Well, I lasted about less than an hour, and I 
didn't get many weeds. In the summer, he would take his vegetables and the horse and buggy and 
go down to the waterfront where the summer people lived in beach cottages and sell the produce. 
And I would get to go along, and, oh, I just loved those trips. They were such fun.  
 
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Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  11:36 
So you would go on horse and buggy to these families? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  11:49 
Yeah. We had a horse and we had a cow and we had chickens and we had pigs, lots of pigs, and 
they were such fun. I loved the pigs, and I had all of the troughs for feeding the pigs arranged as 
my restaurant, and I would feed the pigs 6-10 times a day [laughs]. And there was one little red 
pig, and I called him Dinty More after the comic strip, Jiggs and Maggie and Dinty More. Dinty 
More had red hair. And I fed him so much, he would follow me around all over the place. And 
he got fatter and fatter and fatter. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  12:47 
[Laughs.]  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:47 
And so one day, a woman came to buy a pig. She says, "I want that one." [Laughs] It was Dinty 
More. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  12:57 
Oh.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:57 
Oh, I cried and cried and cried. So my father gave me the $10 that he had got for the pig, and I 
put it in my bank account for years and I saw that $10 in there. I knew where I had gained that 
$10. They had remodeled the farmhouse, and he had huge sleeping porches. There were two 
sleeping porches [inaudible]-- I think one took two double beds and one a double bed and a 
single. And right outside of the sleeping porches were three huge honey locust trees, and I had 
my swing out there and my hammock, and that was a wonderful place to play. In the winter, we 
had wonderful family evenings. My middle brother played the piano by ear, and the oldest one 
played the mandolin, and the youngest one played a banjo and cornet and harmonica, and I sang 
[laughs]. And I think those evenings were something that are largely lost to people today, and it's 
too bad, because they were really just great. We'd have popcorn and peanuts, and my father 
would take me on his lap and peel apples and peel it in one long string, and they were just 
wonderful evenings. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  14:33 
Can I ask you... Just curious about the comment that you think those kind of feelings or 
memories or experiences are gone in today's families. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  14:45 
Very few homes have a piano. There's something about getting together with music that is very 
unifying. And now it's the radio or the television and you sit there and run off during the 
commercial. Conversation is not nearly as [?extant?] to the extent it was then. It's a memory that 
I cherish. When my-- when World War I, or when America went into World War I, my oldest 
brother, by that time, had gone to California and joined the Navy. And the middle one joined the 
Army, and because he could play the piano, my father just sent him sheet music after sheet music 
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and he always said that that was what kept my brother from having to go overseas, that they sent 
him from one camp to the other to play for the troops. Albert went on his ship to the 
Mediterranean in Italy and [inaudible]. And then would send me postal cards and brought me 
back a huge stack of picture postal cards. And I think that's where my fondness for travel began. 
I wanted to see these places that he told me about. My mother worked very hard on the farm. 
There was not only cooking three meals a day and doing all of the wash, and of course, in those 
days, it was put the wash boiler on the wood stove where you burn the wood, heat the water, do 
the white clothes boil-in, hang them out on the clothesline. And in those days, they talked about 
Monday being wash day and Tuesday being ironing day and Wednesday being the day they 
baked and nobody dared visit anybody, except on Friday, when everybody was free. You had to 
get your work done. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  17:02 
Was that actually followed by people? That was a-- 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  17:05 
Pretty much. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  17:06 
--cultural respect for families? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  17:09 
Right. You didn't go to a visit a woman on Monday because you knew she'd be busy, very busy. 
And then they would, once a year, slaughter hogs. That squeal, I used to cover my ears and hide 
until it was all over. And then shave the hairs off of the pigs and butcher them. And then my 
mother had to make sausage and bacon and do all of these things. We had an underground place 
to keep the milk and the dairy products, and I would watch her churn the butter. And of course, 
she had to bake all the bread and the cakes and the pies and with the three boys and my father, 
the pies would be gone in no time.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  18:04 
And you.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  18:07 
And me, I helped. Yes, indeed, I ate very well. My brother, youngest brother, and I used to argue 
endlessly that-- as to who had the best birthday, because his came in January, and that was the 
only time we had ice cream, because we could go out to the marshy section of the farm and get 
the ice and make ice cream. And of course, we had cream that was so thick you could eat it with 
a fork. Well, my birthday was in June, and I could have strawberry shortcake and fried chicken. 
[They laugh.] 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  18:42 
Oh, yes, school. I started to school. I had to walk two and a half miles each way. And I thought 
the first grade was just wonderful, and my teachers were-- my teacher, singular, was just 
something to be emulated. When I'd gone to my father's office and gone to the doctors, I noticed 
that the secretary and the nurses all had to do as they were told, and this man at the head ordered 
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them around. And my teacher was pretty autonomous. She did what she wanted to do, I thought. 
So I decided that I was going to teach, and I was going to teach first grade, and I was going to do 
it the next year.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  19:39 
In second grade? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  19:41 
Because I reasoned that [laughs] a person who had just gone through first grade would know a 
lot more about it than somebody who'd been out of first grade for 15 or 20 years. My father had 
been a teacher, and my brother thought he would like to be a teacher, and I was determined I was 
going to be a teacher, too. In the second grade, we knit washcloths for the soldiers, and if 
anybody else's was like mine, [laughs] it was pretty scraggly, it couldn't be used for anything but 
a washcloth. But in the third grade, we were better than that and we knitted baby bonnets for the 
Belgian war babies, orphans. And at church, we fixed missionary barrels and we talked about the 
terrible Turks. And I remember the slogans, "This was the war to end all wars," all the 
propaganda. "Make America safe for democracy," but if you fought this war, you'd never have to 
fight another. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  20:56 
When my oldest brother Albert was shipped overseas, we had a long, long, long walk from the 
house down to the road where the mailbox was, and I liked to go down and get the mail, bring it 
back. Well, the next day, my brother found a letter on the path, and that was the letter my brother 
had written saying he was going overseas. So I don't know whether I got spanked for that or not, 
but I was certainly in the doghouse. And another time, my brother Earl had a pig. I had my pig, 
he had his pig, and he was fattening it up. And somehow or other, I went into the pig pen and 
didn't shut the gate, and the pig escaped. [They laugh] So the whole family had to go hunting for 
Earl's pig, and he was just beside himself, and he was so angry with me, so I probably got 
spanked for that, too, any bad situation. Earl was very clever. He had-- my father-- when we first 
went to the Vashon Island, my father had dug a well and beside the big-- I don't know what you 
call the building that's put over a well, where the pump had to be up high, and there was a water 
tower in the top. What I got out of this was a sand pile, a huge sand pile that was a wonderful 
place to play. And there was a little shack next to this building, which my brother took as his 
domain. And he had a crystal radio set which he built, and was the first radio I ever heard. He 
also had a Morris chair. I had a rocking chair, and he had a Morris chair with the cushions. And 
he wired the cushion so that if I go in there and sit down, I would get an electric shock. [They 
laugh.] And it happened more than once. I wasn't very smart about catching on. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  23:32 
We had a big snow storm, I think it was 1918, the heavy snow, and we went to school in a sleigh. 
That was such fun, bells on the horses, and we were all tucked in with blankets. I had a new 
dress. My mother had time to sew, and she made me this beautiful ivory colored dress, and had 
put tatting. She'd make this tatting and put blue tatting around the neck and the cuffs. And I was 
so vain, I had to show off my dress. And I went out in the snow with no coat on at recess. So I 
came down with the flu. I also fell into the snowdrift, which Mother had to come and dig me out 
of. And I got pretty soaked, so I came down with the flu. And back of the living room, the 
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fireplace was in the living room, and then there was a room in back of it, which we called the 
library. So-- and there was a fold-out Davenport there, and my mother brought in a bed and 
stayed with me there until I recouped from the flu. My sister, by this time, had three little girls, 
and she and her family would come over to Vashon to visit, spending a couple of weeks at a 
time. And I would anticipate Irene -- she was the oldest -- especially Irene coming. Oh, I just 
couldn't wait until she got there. And within 30 minutes, we would be fighting. [They laugh] And 
it would go like that, on and off all the time they were there. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  25:20 
The family had friends in Seattle with whom we visited and who came over. And when I was-- 
there was a young boy my-- no, he was a year older than I, a regular Huckleberry Finn-type [they 
laugh], and we had a long walk on Sunday night when he came to visit. And so I promised to 
marry him when we grew up. I had to have my tonsils out, and we were to come in and to stay 
with his family. And when my doctor found out that we were going to a home where there was a 
young boy, he was not at all interested in this and said that I should go home, and just quick as I 
could recoup to go home. So I didn't have much fun there. I had to just watch this lad out the 
window. And it was so interesting, he had a load of wood that he was to put into the basement 
and stack. Well, it wasn't enough to just carry the wood down. He fixed a pulley up through this 
tall tree and got all of the kids in the neighborhood come [laughs] pull the wood up and down, 
lower it into the basement. So that was fun to watch. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  26:47 
You were-- so now you're-- you're about 10? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  26:49 
It's between 6 and 10. I don't remember when these things particularly happened.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  27:01 
I was sent to Sunday school, and I liked that, because it meant having somebody to play with and 
to be with. But I found it very difficult, and I decided that man had not-- God had not created 
man in His image. Man had created God in His image, and that either the ministers didn't know 
what they were talking about, or the Bible didn't know what they were talking about. So I was 
pretty much a misfit there.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  27:35 
So you actually really remember feeling that. You actually felt sort of a-- you tried to reason 
what they said. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  27:42 
And it didn't work. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  27:46 
Oh. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  27:46 
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My father would go on business trips, and he always brought me a book when he came back. 
And I had a primer for many, many years, and-- from which I learned to read. And I think I still 
have Hans Brinker, or The Silver States that he brought me. I often used to get the youth 
companion. And I wish I had those copies today. I think they're worth a fortune. That was a very 
interesting mix. Oh, and the movies! We had movies in Vashon Island once a week, Saturday 
night, and the adults had chairs, but we kids would sit on... They put up apple boxes and boards 
across in the front, and we all sat down there on [laughs] [?bouncy?] board. There were two 
sisters called Jane and Katherine Lee who used to do the darnedest things, and we loved their 
movies. And I always thought that my life was as exciting as a movie. But I watched how hard 
my mother worked, and I didn't think getting married was a very good idea. And an ironing day, 
she'd have to heat the iron on the stove, iron by hand all of his shirts, clothes, and whatnot. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  29:23 
My father gave me a lovely locket and this ring. On my 10th birthday, I received a Schoenhut 
doll, and they are heirlooms now because they bent at every-- 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  29:39 
Joint?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  29:42 
--every joint, that's right. And my father had the first car on Vashon Island, and we had a big 
picnic at the end of school every year. In the fourth grade, we went to Point Defiance Park. That 
was a big excursion. And then my brother had graduated from high school, and so we moved 
into Seattle. So that was the end of one episode. It's interesting, his high school class had seven 
people in it, five girls and two boys, and he married one of the girls, and she's the one I'm having 
the 85th birthday celebration for.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:52 
So we moved out onto, Northeast 63rd, right close to Roosevelt High School, between Brooklyn 
and whatever the next street is. At that time, we had two of Earl's friends living with-- 
 