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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Janet Askren Brown 
April 23, 1987 
Cassette 2, Side 1 
 
 
Deborah Gates  00:02 
This is Deborah Gates. It is April 23, 1987. I am on my way to the home of Mrs. Janet Brown in 
Seattle, Washington to interview her for the Washington Women's Heritage Project. Well, Mrs. 
Brown, last time you started to tell me how you met your husband and when you got married to 
him, would you like to just continue from there? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:29 
You mean, before where I met him in the first place? 
 
Deborah Gates  00:34 
Right. You said you met him at the church.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:36 
Yeah. 
 
Deborah Gates  00:36 
That you decided-- 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:37 
--I was 13 years old? 
 
Deborah Gates  00:39 
Oh no, your second husband. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:41 
Oh, the second. Oh, that's right. 
 
Deborah Gates  00:43 
Right, right, you decided that it was time for you to remarry. And-- 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:47 
--yeah, when I got to 40, I was kind of desperate. I didn't want to live the rest of my life alone, so 
I decided I better look around, see what I could find that was eligible. But he had been playing 
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the piano for me down in the primary department, and so I... Yeah, I guess I started flirting. 
[Laughs.] Anyway. 
 
Deborah Gates  01:16 
That must have been quite new for you to start flirting? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  01:19 
Right. It took us three years before we decided that the girls would accept him, and we went on a 
couple of trips. And mother-- my mother went with us to be the chaperone, of course, but it 
helped the girls to get acquainted with him. [Inaudible.] 
 
Deborah Gates  01:53 
Did they get along? Well from the beginning, did they have a good rapport? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  01:58 
Well, they tolerated him. It was pretty hard there for a while, but everything worked out. It was a 
shock for him, too, to get two teenage girls who-- he'd never been around children too much, 
didn't know much about-- kind of upsetting to him when they wouldn't obey or anything. He had 
many problems with my one girl. The other one was fine. She did everything she was supposed 
to, but one was a real rebel. She ran away, wouldn't go to school, tried several different schools. 
He had a real headache with her all during her teen years.  
 
Deborah Gates  02:59 
Which daughter was that?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  03:01 
The first one. 
 
Deborah Gates  03:09 
Did your husband-- was he able to be some help with her? Or was that not a-- was he also a 
problem too, getting along with her?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  03:23 
It upset him so that I just kind of managed without him, because I didn't want him to be upset. 
Having two people upset is kind of hard. I was teaching and driving the car at that time. I kind of 
forget all that, because it was such a traumatic time, I'd rather just forget it. 
 
Deborah Gates  04:00 
All right. Now, you also had mentioned last time that when you got married, your husband, he 
had to fix up the basement so there'd be more room in the house.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  04:08 
Yeah, he, before we-- he could move in, we had to have a room in the basement where I put a 
double bed. Had small rooms, just real, tiny rooms in the house. And then he fixed up the 
basement, and each girl had her own room. 
 
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Deborah Gates  04:39 
Down in the basement, or did you move down-- 
 
Janet Askren Brown  04:41 
No, the girls were upstairs. I was down the basement [inaudible]. Worked out pretty good, we 
had a lot of-- he has remade-- remodeled most everything he could in our house. He's made it 
real airtight and everything with efficiency that we could get, we have a heat pump and he made 
over the whole kitchen. Helped put in a washer, and dryer, and things like that. He was a 
maintenance man, so he knew how to do everything, and he'd been a wonderful help in fixing up 
the house. We have such nice things right now. And he was real dependable, because he would 
come home at the same time every day and I appreciated that after having a doctor. Of course, he 
was just an intern. He left when he became a doctor, but I'm sure would have had funny hours, 
and this way, at least I had somebody that was dependable from home at the right time, you 
could kind of plan on what was going to happen. I didn't think... 
 
Deborah Gates  06:17 
And who was the boss in the marriage, or did you discuss things pretty equally? Who managed 
the money? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  06:25 
That's kind of hard for me, because I've been 13 years on my own, and had my own money and 
that, so I just kept my own checking account and I think-- I don't know for sure, but right now, I 
buy the food and he pays for the gasoline and the two cars. He has certain charities that he gives 
to, and I have certain ones I give to, but we keep our bank accounts separate, but we do talk over 
what we're going to do, consult with each other. But it's kind of nice because it gives both of us 
independence. Since he had been 46 years before he got married and had been a bachelor, that 
was hard for him too, to have to come and share everything with someone else, but we never had 
any fights. Neither one of us were the fighting type. And then being Christians, you [inaudible]. 
 
Deborah Gates  07:55 
So you're both still active in the church. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  07:57 
Oh yeah. We have such a little church that we have to do many different things in it, and so we 
give a lot of our time to that. The other day, my husband's been-- whole day-- [phone rings]. He 
was taking the wax off the floor in the lower reception room because we were getting a new 
carpet laid the next day, and so he's busy all day long, doing that. Every time we have a wedding, 
he goes up and waxes the floor. 
 
Deborah Gates  08:45 
At the church. How many bedrooms did this house have before he remodeled it? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  08:52 
Well, it has three, but it's such a tiny one that one room for a double bed in it, now we just have it 
for games and things that the children have. Yeah, kind of a storage.  
 
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Deborah Gates  09:12 
It's a real cozy house.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  09:14 
Yeah, we don't really need a big house until the weekends, when we have the three grandchildren 
here. It was okay when they were little, but boy, now that they're teenagers, they take up a lot of 
room [laughs]. They're all taller than I am, the three of them. Because of Lynne's divorce, they 
were five years without a mother, so I was kind of like a second mother to them, and had-- did all 
their sewing and mending, things like that to help them out. But now they're married. He got 
married again to a-- that's five years ago. He got married to a nurse in the Group Health Hospital, 
and so, things are-- she loves to sew, does a beautiful job, so she does things for him. [Phone 
rings.] No, they are kind of getting it together better now. And [inaudible]. 
 
Deborah Gates  10:37 
So when Lynne was divorced, you said they were without a mother for five years, but you meant 
because she was working, not-- and that you were helping out, or was she kind of gone for a 
while? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  10:53 
She's been hither to yon and well, she kind of had little jobs and things like that. She still was 
kind of wandering around, not around to take any responsibility. 
 
Deborah Gates  11:11 
So did the grandchildren live with you? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  11:14 
No, no. He took care of them. 
 
Deborah Gates  11:16 
Oh, he had-- I understand. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  11:17 
It's kind of hard for a man to take care of three kids and then-- and Miriam wasn't even in school 
yet. She had to go to daycare for the first year because he's still working at Boeing. So he had to 
give her up early and take over to the daycare here at Lutheran Church, pick her up after work, 
cook your meals and all that. So he had a lot to do. I helped with some of the extra things. We've 
always taken them every year to-- on our vacation. Go down to Cannon Beach,  there's a Bible 
conference there, and beautiful beach, and kids just love it. This year, we don't dare tell them, but 
we're going to try and go on our own, and not take them with us this time. 
 
Deborah Gates  12:27 
I think you deserve that. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  12:28 
[Laughs.] But they have-- both the two older ones have jobs, and so they wouldn't be able to get 
away too much anyway. We'll probably look at-- well, they-- fact, they all three of them had jobs 
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in August last year. Miriam was doing housework for a lady. She'd go once or twice a week, the 
lady had paid her for that, and then Tracy was doing babysitting, and Mark got the job at Burger 
King, so he was working there, but they hadn't been giving him much hours just lately. He's got-- 
I'm trying to get him to get another job, because he just yesterday called and he got accepted at 
Bellingham, and so he wants to get his junior and senior year up there, probably. He's finished at 
the Shoreline Community College. We only go for two years, and then gonna go to Bellingham 
after that, but we think it'll be good for him, because he needs to get away from home and kind 
of grow up. He skipped the third grade, so ever since he got to junior high, he's been a year 
younger than all these other kids, and he's kind of had a hard time working in with the other kids. 
I would never recommend that again to anybody, because it just didn't work in his case at all. 
When you get older, especially in the junior high years, kids make fun of you. You know, you're 
not growing up. You don't have any beard or anything like that. Puberty, slow, of course. It's just 
been hard for him. Although he did pretty good in jun-- in senior year of high school, he seemed 
to fit in well. When he graduated, several-- many of the kids clapped for him. So, I was so glad 
because he-- I had gone to that school several times to talk to the counselor when he was in 
junior high, because the kids made so much fun of him, put ink in his locker... 
 
Janet Askren Brown  15:31 
Yeah, he would come over and we'd talk after school sometimes. I kind of would advise him, 
sort of, we've always been real close. It's nice. College ages aren't quite the same, but you know, 
he still talks to me quite a bit. When he found out about going to Bellingham, he called me 
before he even called his mother, so I thought that was kind of nice, but... The second one is 
having problems of liking school, except now she's got-- she found out she could be on the 
annual staff and write for the school paper in her senior year. So now she's real happy about 
going to school, and she just got a job at Jack In The Box, right close to their house. So she's 
thrilled to pieces about that, because she wants money. She's not going to do-- she wasn't going 
to go to college or anything, until we kind of convinced her she's going to get any money that she 
wants to buy clothes, she'd better get a college education. I think she's convinced now that she'd 
better buckle down and try to get good grades, but she playing around there for a while. I think 
she's kind of settled down. And Miriam, I just found out now, Lynne called, said that she's going 
to be captain of the relay team? I'm not sure. Anyway, she got chosen to be a captain for 
something in her school. She's a real helpful child. She thinks she'd like to be a doctor, and then 
she thinks like to be a veterinarian. She changes everything a little bit, but she loves little kids 
too. Takes the babies and things like that. Likes to carry them around. When we had Grandma 
alone when she first came out of the hospital. We hired Miriam to come and take care of 
Grandma, and she did real well. An older person, because she's the type that likes to [inaudible] 
all the time. She helps in the kitchen. Wants to help everyone all the time. She's that kind of a 
child. 
 
Deborah Gates  15:31 
Just because he was smaller and younger? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  15:31 
Uh-huh, and they were real cruel going into Junior High. 
 
Deborah Gates  17:07 
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Did you spend a lot of time, then, talking to him? 
 
Deborah Gates  18:12 
Are your grandchildren active in the church also? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  18:29 
Yeah, until they moved out to Kenmore, it's a little hard for them to get in, and... [?But?] they do, 
until Grandma got sick in December, they've been coming every other week and staying the 
whole weekend here, from Friday to Sunday night. Well, take them home Sunday night because 
[?Gil?] wanted to be with his new wife, on the weekends that she's off because she works a 
week, then she's off a week, and then she works [inaudible], so on the weekends that she's off, 
but he wants to be and do things with her, and... She has already raised her two kids, and they 
have children, so now she's a grandma, and he became a grandpa real quick, like. 
 
Deborah Gates  19:32 
Oh, to her children. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  19:34 
Yeah. So now they've got this family, you know, and they've got, they already have three 
grandchildren in the five years they've been married. She's got three grandsons, and there are two 
more coming up, one in May, and another in September or something. So, he's got another whole 
family to worry about. You know, and all that. It's a little hard on the kids, because when the 
grandchildren come to visit, then they have to do all the babysitting, and they have to clean the 
house. And he has them really working hard, the-- well, and she does too. She thinks they-- her 
kids got jobs, and so these kids should too, and her kids did all these things, and so she kind of 
holds them up to his kids, which is a little bit hard on them, you know, kind of critical of him. 
The middle one is having trouble with it, but the other two are quite compliant and they get along 
alright. Tracy has problems with that. Because I've had to do so much with them, I haven't done 
too much with the other children. But then they have a father that wants them to be in the family, 
and the whole family do things together, and he wants to be kind of entirely separate from us, in 
a way, although when we have-- well, Easter or something or a holiday, they always invite us 
over. And she's a real good cook and has a beautiful house in Olympic Manor. She has always 
been the clean one, and she likes to entertain. She was a quiz kid in, think it was, fifth grade. She 
was chosen in her class to go down and be on a TV program and is real smart. Right now, 
because-- well, she stayed home and taken care of the kids and done a real good job, and also 
had Boy Scouts-- Cub Scouts, at her house. And then she also types the bulletin for the PTA 
every month. She's helped her husband with some of his typing, a lot of his typing. And he was 
going to, three nights a week down to Tacoma to get his lawyer's degree. Did that for three years, 
and so she had to take care of her kids a lot by herself. And she did a lot of his typing for him, to 
help him get through too. But now, because he wants to try to quit his civil service job someday 
and just be a lawyer, because he just, you know, starting on his new career, but he can't kill up 
the old job until he gets the lawyer who's going, you know, he's just on his own, which is a little 
hard. He tried to get in with some other lawyer, and he tried all sorts of people, but he doesn't 
have any particular pull, you know, to get in with or for them. So he's on his own. There are two 
other lawyers in the same-- it's a converted house over on Stone Way-- 32nd and Stone Way. He 
doesn't have the time to go to court, so he just has to take other kind of cases where they, you 
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know, like wills and things like that, because he still has his job, and he's-- has 12 men under him 
in this VA. He's been giving schooling to the veterans. He tells them how much schooling they 
can get. You know, when they were getting it for free and that-- so that's why he started going to 
school himself, because the time was running out, and if he didn't start it when he did, why, he 
wouldn't have gotten help with it-- 
 
Deborah Gates  25:30 
--for his VA benefits-- 
 
Janet Askren Brown  25:31 
--or his own. So he decided he's going to be a lawyer, and got that just a couple of years ago at 
Christmas time, so we gave him a big party, and his mom came up. His parents lived in Alaska 
for many years. And they would come down at least once a year to visit, stay a week or two, and 
now they've retired down in Turlock, California, and they still come up once or twice a year, and 
they're very close family. They're real kind to us, we've gone down to visit them too. His brother 
is a doctor, a surgeon down there. He went to Portland and graduated from Seattle Pacific also. 
So he got a lovely, big home down there, and then, in their backyard is a nice swimming pool. 
And then on the other side of the grass in the same block, and they're finding out in their 
backyard is the parents bought a house so they're together a lot, but so then I guess they feel 
guilty and come up and visit their other son as often as they can. 
 
Deborah Gates  27:11 
Yeah, did your daughter Beryl-- you mentioned she does tithing for PTA. That's volunteer work? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  27:18 
Oh yeah. 
 
Deborah Gates  27:18 
Does she work for a salary? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  27:20 
Yes, I was getting to that and I forgot. They-- because he's trying to quit one job and go into the 
lawyer bit, she thought, Well, maybe if she could get a job that would kind of help him, and 
maybe he could make the transition. So just-- well, in January, she went down to Seattle Pacific 
and took a test. She did 80 words a minute, only two mistakes, and they were going to hire her, 
but she only wanted part-time, and they said, well, we'll have to get somebody to take the other 
part-time, and they still haven't done it yet. So she waited and waited, and you didn't hear 
anything from him. So about around the first of March, she went down to this other place, I 
guess she saw it in the paper or something. Anyway, she went down and she took the test, and 
she got a perfect score. And that's the only-- she got the best score of anybody that had ever 
taken it. So they hired her right away, and so she's working down here by the Seattle Center in an 
insurance office, and she works from nine till one. It's real busy place, so she's typing all the 
time, and real busy... 
 
Deborah Gates  29:03 
Did she go to college? 
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Janet Askren Brown  29:05 
Oh, yeah, she took English major. She didn't really have anything particular in the way of trade, 
you know, that she could do, but she didn't work anyway, because she got married, and he didn't 
want her to. Well-- 
 
Deborah Gates  29:24 
--did she go to SPU? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  29:25 
Yeah, she graduated from there, and so did he. When he got up-- he had to go in the army. And 
because... It was really funny, because he registered from Seattle, and they sent him up to 
Alaska, to his hometown, [laughs]. Anchorage. And so, he was-- they lived in the basement 
apartment in the parents' home for a year or so while he was at Fort Richardson, and we went up 
to visit them, and that's when the man walked on the moon, you know. I thought it was '60-- or 
'69, so he'd get a nice trip up there. And then, after that, he came back. He had been offered a 
scholarship in Washington, D.C., to the Georgetown University when he graduated from college, 
but because he had to go with the service, he didn't get to use it. So when he got out, he applied 
again, and they said, Sure, come ahead. So then he got to go to Washington, D.C. for a whole 
year. I think it was just a year. 