Articles written by Mary Alice Johnson Basye

Mary Alice Johnson Basye|Oct 10, 2018

The recent article about the Swinomish totem poles was of great interest to me, as I was there when the original poles were dedicated in 1938. I was eight years old and with my parents and sisters had driven up from our home in California to visit my grandfather, Andrew “Carpenter” Johnson, at the family farm on Beaver Marsh Road. One Saturday during our visit the party line telephone in the kitchen rang, and the caller told us that Eleanor Roosevelt would be in La Conner that very afternoon. My mother dressed my little sisters and me in our...