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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Janet Askren Brown 
May 7, 1987 
Cassette 3, Side 2 
 
 
Deborah Gates  00:01 
80-- It is May 7, 1987. This is Deborah Gates. I am now on my way to the home of Mrs. Janet 
Brown in Seattle, Washington, to interview her. Mrs. Brown, I would like to start today by 
asking you how you feel about getting older. Did you have a difficult time with your change of 
life? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:26 
Not too bad because my blood pressure, I check out with the doctor every three or six months, so 
he would give me hormones and things, so I got by pretty good.  
 
Deborah Gates  00:41 
So in other words, he kind of prevented you from having really a difficult menopause? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:47 
I had hot flashes, but he gave me something for it, so [inaudible] take it. 
 
Deborah Gates  00:53 
And when did you have your menopause? How many-- about how many years ago? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  00:57 
I've been trying to remember, but any time a doctor asks me, I can't really remember. I must've 
been around 50. [Inaudible.] 
 
Deborah Gates  01:16 
Now what I would like to ask you, how do you feel about the role of women today? Do you feel 
things have changed much since you were-- since you're alive and you've worked? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  01:26 
Yeah, I know my daughters have different feeling toward marriage than I do. I... When I was 
young, it seemed like getting married was about the only thing to do, although I felt like I should 
have some security blanket of having an education first. In case I ever needed it, I would use it, 
but I had hoped when I got married, I'd never have to work again. But it didn't work out, with 
either husband [laughs]. I have to work till I was 55. I didn't take time out for the children to be 
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born, and the older girl was in kindergarten before I went to work. I was just going to go to 
school and renew my certificate, because you have to renew it if you don't use it. You know, I 
hadn't used it for-- since 1940 and so then, the-- I think I was 51. I needed to get it renewed, so I 
started out to school in September, but by the end of October, they needed a teacher, and asked 
me if I'd do it, so I didn't finish that-- a renewing of it, until I went to summer school and night-- 
I think I just went to summer school. I don't believe I went to night school. But I went for many 
summers, I think at least five summers, to get another year too, because we were required to get 
another. A fifth year for teaching. That's why I would go to summer school. 
 
Deborah Gates  04:02 
So if you wish your life could have been different, what would you like to have been different 
about it? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  04:13 
Wish I'd had a husband and didn't have to work. My one daughter has been able to raise her 
children without working. However, now she feels she should help her husband out. So she has a 
part-time job. I don't think we had part-time jobs so much in our day, in that day. Work long 
hours or not at all, I believe. People depended more on their husbands than they do now. I think-- 
well, this is an opinion, but if people-- women didn't work as much and they depended on their 
husbands, they'd be more happy to stay with them and not divorce so easily as they do nowadays. 
 
Deborah Gates  05:17 
If you had it to do over, would you be a teacher again? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  05:23 
Yes, I enjoyed that very much. I'm not very gifted at being a teacher, but I-- in the way of 
discipline, I was not good at that, and I'm glad I'm not a teacher now, because I think kids are so 
much harder since TV has come into prominence. You have to practically stand on your head to 
get their attention, and they don't listen like they used to before TV came. 
 
Deborah Gates  06:00 
Do you wish you could have gotten more education, maybe gone on to get your Masters, or do 
you not think about that? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  06:07 
No, I don't think I could be smart enough to do that? Well, I might, but I'm not that much of a 
student. 
 
Deborah Gates  06:18 
And what would you say was the happiest time of your life? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  06:21 
I don't know. For schooling, I think college was, but... I think right now, I'm very happy. I am 
more or less apt to be optimistic and enjoy the present rather than the past. I think that's a healthy 
way to look at life. 
 
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Deborah Gates  07:05 
You don't like to look back at your unhappy times either?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  07:08 
No, just forget them. I don't like to talk about them to people. Just don't mention my past to my 
students hardly ever. 
 
Deborah Gates  07:25 
The good times either? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  07:26 
No, not particularly. I try to talk about their future rather than mine. 
 
Deborah Gates  07:39 
These are the students you're teaching English to, the refugee students? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  07:42 
Right. [?They don't need to?] know much about me. I hardly talked about them. 
 
Deborah Gates  07:51 
And what would you like to see for your granddaughters? How would you like their lives to be 
the same as yours or different than yours? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  08:00 
I hope that they will do the vocations of things of life. I believe my older one is too much 
worried about making a lot of money rather than what she can do good in the world, but she may 
get [?over it?]. She does spend her money wisely when she gets it, but she sure is interested in 
clothes. That's all she can think about right now. But she's 17, guess that's part of it. And what 
the other one would like to be, a veterinarian, or a doctor. I don't she'll make a doctor but she 
might do something in that way of helping people. 
 
Deborah Gates  09:12 
Would you like your granddaughters to get married? Would you be disappointed they decided 
never to get married? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  09:19 
Yes, I would, but I don't know that they will. The older one says she doesn't want to, but she may 
change her mind someday. But I don't think Miriam has said anything about it yet. She's so 
helpful that she would make a good nurse, or that type of person that helps people all the time. 
She'd make a good mother. She's crazy about babies, so I hope she gets a chance to. I hope they 
get good Christian fellows, somebody can be trusted. 
 
Deborah Gates  10:07 
You think it's important that they have children? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  10:15 
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Sure hope so. [Laughs.] I want great-grandchildren. Love grandchildren, they're wonderful. 
That's about the nicest thing in life, children, great-grandchildren, grandchildren. Mom's the one 
that's got the great-grandchildren. She sure enjoys them too. When you get older, that is so 
important to you, I think. I see some of these people who have never been married, and their 
mothers and fathers die, and they're the only ones left, and no family, [?gives a sigh?] for them. 
They really have no place to go to celebrate Christmas and things like that, and it's always hard 
because they feel like a third party no matter where they go. People take them in and that, but it's 
still hard for them, I think. But if you have your own family, it's so important, that love of your 
family. I think that's really a neat part. We're hoping to have a picnic in the backyard of Beryl 
Jo's house for Mother's Day if we can. If it doesn't rain, but it looks like it might be a good 
weekend. Hope so. 
 
Deborah Gates  11:56 
And a lot of your values and philosophies seem to have come from the church, and that seems to 
have been the really strong point of your life. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  12:05 
Yep, right. I've always been very active in the church. 
 
Deborah Gates  12:10 
And you said your grandchildren attended? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  12:17 
Yeah, my other daughter and her husband are very active in their church too. They go to a 
different one because they felt they'd have more of their own identity if they went to a different 
one than we did. And so they went to one that has many young families and lots of children, big 
Sunday school, young peoples, and the boys are active in that, and they just love it. They're 
doing so well. I was real pleased with them. 
 
Deborah Gates  13:03 
Did your church teach that there's some type of life after death? Do you believe in that?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  13:09 
Sure. Did you happen to see Highway to Heaven last night? 
 
Deborah Gates  13:16 
No, I didn't. What was it about?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  13:21 
Well, this man was a very-- he was a high executive, and everything that happened, why, he was 
going to buy his way out of it, and he would-- they said that he had all this oil spill and fish were 
dying, and it was from his chemicals in his plant. And he says, Oh, well, just deny it and pay 
them off, or something like that. And then he bought off a councilman to condemn a building or 
something so that he could buy it. And he did so many things, you know, wrong and dishonest 
things. And so then, he had this dream that somebody came and shot him and that he was dead. 
And then the angel took him and showed him how he could do good things, and he would feel so 
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much better. And so, he said, You have one week to live, and see what you can do of good. And 
so he changed entirely, and he was so happy. Before that, he hadn't had any friends. He had to 
have a bodyguard to-- so nobody would shoot him. But after that, he had friends, and he fell in 
love with a girl so... She was helping with one of these Victory Gardens and teaching the 
children to plant seeds, and that, and to take care of the flowers. And it made him so happy to see 
what he could do and to repair the tenement that he just changed completely. And he'd been 
reading the Bible, the angel had given him the Bible, and he fell asleep reading it, and had this 
dream, I guess, afterward, why, he-- it was only a dream, but he had thought it was real, and so 
he did change, and did complete turnabout, and he was so much happier than he'd ever been in 
his life. I think that's important to think of others, even when you have troubles yourself, you 
think of other people and you forget your own problems. 
 
Deborah Gates  16:03 
Sounds like it was a wonderful movie.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  16:05 
Yeah, it was really good. I hope my grandchildren do those things. 
 
Deborah Gates  16:07 
I It sounds to me also, like you were a woman ahead of your time, in a sense, because you were 
divorced, because you worked, you were college educated, raised your children, yet you still 
followed some of your own interests. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  16:43 
Well, I guess one of my main hobbies was sewing for the grandchildren. Sewed for my own kids, 
of course, but didn't have too much time in those days when I was teaching also. But I did. I did 
do it, you know, in between times, of course, Saturdays and things like that, so. But I like to read, 
that's one of the things I think keeps a person up on things. 
 
Deborah Gates  17:29 
What did you read mostly? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  17:31 
Well, some of the time-- lately, I've been interested in history, because when I was in school, I 
didn't study it too much. I just wasn't interested particularly, but now I feel so many things that I 
missed out on, that everybody else knows about, that I'm trying to catch up with them, and some 
of the books that are classics. And then I had thought I should catch up on them too, and I read 
those. Then I went through a period of reading many Christian novels. My girlfriend at Camano 
Island and I'd share books, and we [inaudible]. My cousin, came over from Tacoma, and we'd 
give her books too, and we'd share them and bring them back again. But I was reading one about 
the Light and the Glory, and talking about Americans. Started with Columbus, went through the 
Revolutionary War. And some of the things, you know, what happened about how our country 
was founded on the Word of God and people really committed their lives to spreading the word 
of God in a new country, a new place, and they quoted from different ships' logs, and things like 
that. They'd done a real good survey and research into all the actual events that happened, and it 
was so good. I just enjoyed it very much.  
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Deborah Gates  19:42 
And this was from the Christian standpoint? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  19:44 
Mm-hmm. It was written by Peter Marshall's son. 
 
Deborah Gates  19:55 
How do you feel about the way, when Columbus came, the way the Indians were treated? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  20:02 
Don't think that was very good, but sure made mistakes in our country alright.  
 
Deborah Gates  20:11 
You had mentioned early in beginning of this interview, that when you went to Los Angeles, you 
had taken a little negro doll down with you. And I thought for-- that was unusual in a white 
family, especially in those days, for a little girl to have a negro doll.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  20:27 
I don't know why, but I did. I loved that little Patsy doll, it was so cute. I guess I've always liked-
- well, I tell you, my mother and father had wanted to be missionaries, and then I came along, so 
they didn't go. Then, when they got to be-- when we went down to Los Angeles, they thought 
maybe they might be able to go then. But they-- in those days, the Mission Board said, Oh, 
you're too old. You can't learn the language, so it's too late. And so then when I grew up and 
graduated from college, then I wanted to be a missionary. And so did my husband. He was going 
to be a missionary doctor. We had signed our applications, great big pages and pages of telling 
all of our history and all that, and sent them in. And then just a week before we were to find out 
when we were going to go, why, then Bruce got in trouble with this other lady, and so he told me 
about it, and said, I can't be a missionary. And he wrote back to the board and said, No, we 
couldn't go. So, we had always really wanted to go to another country and tell them about Jesus, 
but it didn't work out. So in a way, teaching other people has always been one of the things I've-- 
of other countries, you know, good things I thought about. Although, in the one thing-- this 
particular thing I'm in, they don't stress Christian. The Bible's not in it. Some of them do have, 
but I've already started in this, and so it doesn't exactly work out. Just English for the teaching, 
but they see that you love the Lord, and I, once in a while and tell I'd them about it. 
 
Deborah Gates  23:06 
Are these people Christians or are they different religions? Aren't they maybe Buddhists or-- 
 
Janet Askren Brown  23:10 
--Buddhists and Muhammad-- Muslim? I have had some that-- from Korea, who were trained in 
our mission schools there, and they were Christians, but majority have not. They've been other 
religions.  
 
Deborah Gates  23:37 
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And you mentioned also that your parents weren't accepted as missionaries because they were 
too old. But it sounds like you don't believe age is a factor in stopping people or stopping from 
learning. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  23:56 
No, if my husband were able to and I was in good health, I would like to go now. They have a 
way where retired people can go and just stay, you pay your own way and volunteer for certain 
period of time, and maybe, like a year, something like that, and do what you can while you're 
there. You know, maybe help with building a hospital, or do-- probably teach English, or do 
office work, or something like that. But we are not able to, really, so. 
 
Deborah Gates  24:38 
Would there be one area in particular you'd want to go to? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  24:43 
Not particularly. I have some friends who went, a couple years ago, over to Kenya. And they 
were in a school where they were missionaries' children, so they didn't-- they could speak 
English to them, and worked out fine. And one of my other girlfriends at church has been over to 
India and taught in an English-speaking school. The people in India, most of the well-educated 
ones speak English anyway, and in their schools. And I'm so amazed that this lady from Pakistan 
that I teach knows English quite well. Doesn't know how to spell it too much when you start 
writing it, but she can understand quite a bit. She has a real upper class, and all of her children, 
except one, are doctors or dentists, and she had six children. But do you know she got married 
when she was 17? Had a-- no, I think it was before that. 13, I think, and had a baby when she 
was 15, and then she had six all together. But-- and then, of course, her mother had to pick out 
her-- who she was going to marry. And now she's in this country. Her girl has come over from 
India just recently, and she was a doctor. She just graduated. I don't believe she has done any 
doctoring yet, but she is going to go to the university and get her M.S. degree, and she has had 
several people from different places in America, call her up on the phone and asked if the boy 
could marry her girl. The mother has to choose, and she's got one now she thinks would be okay. 
She's checked him out, and she had her daughter, who's in India, check out his family, and see, 
you know, if they were a good family and everything. And so, she's given her consent, but she 
said she's not going to let her get married till after she has her degree, then she can get married.  
 
Deborah Gates  27:37 
And the daughter agrees to this? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  27:39 
Yes, she has seen him for about a, I guess, a weekend or a week or something, but that's all-- he's 
way back, I think, in New York or somewhere like that. And it's such an interesting thing to-- 
they wouldn't think of doing it without the mother's consent. The dad is dead now, but the mother 
seems to be the one that is responsible in Pakistan, in a Muslim country. 
 
Deborah Gates  28:16 
So they've still held to their old value system. And I'm wondering how you feel now seeing the 
world change so much, how you feel about women having babies out of marriage, and... 
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Janet Askren Brown  28:28 
Don't believe in that at all. I don't believe in abortion or anything like that.  
 
Deborah Gates  28:32 
But then, what if a woman was not married and pregnant? Do you think would be better for her 
to have the baby than an abortion?  
 
Janet Askren Brown  28:39 
Have it adopted. So many people that would like babies, can't have.  
 
Deborah Gates  28:44 
But what if she had money? Or maybe her mother could help her to raise a baby? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  28:50 
Oh, sure, she'd keep it if she could. When it's yours, always such a tug that you wouldn't want to 
give it away. You couldn't help it. Having a baby, it's a wonderful experience. That's about the 
nicest thing a girl can do. 
 
Deborah Gates  29:16 
How do you feel about all the sex education now that's going on in schools. Do you think that's 
good? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  29:25 
No, I don't. I would prefer that the mothers would teach you at home and give the moral value to 
it, rather than just the physical side of it. They need to know that too. But I think that if the 
parents were educated enough, they could do it themselves, to say abstain until marriage. 
Especially with AIDS now, you really need to just forget about it. It's too dangerous.  
 
Deborah Gates  30:06 
It's pretty scary.  
 
Janet Askren Brown  30:07 
Yeah. [Inaudible] that article I've been reading about there, it's like a plague. 
 
Deborah Gates  30:23 
I know you don't like to talk about your unhappy times, but would you just like to tell me what 
the unhappiest time of your life was? 
 
Janet Askren Brown  30:32 
When my husband left. [Inaudible] pretty sad. I didn't tell anybody at church though, I just kept 
going and didn't tell anybody for a long time. And when I did, they didn't seem to-- some of the 
kids, I think they didn't know what to say, but they didn't seem to sympathize terribly much. I 
mean, I-- anyway, I was disappointed. 
 
Deborah Gates  31:16 
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You didn't feel you got the support you needed. 
 
Janet Askren Brown  31:21 
I think they just don't know what to say. In those days, it was quite a disgrace to be-- [tape ends]. 