Photo Album #1 by Helen Burke Truher

created 1952 est.

with recent narrative by her sons, grandchildren, others later

web site revised -- January 12d, 2004 - Jack Truher

Some of the scenes in this album are of Scenic in the Cascades. Some are from Sovies Island near Portland. And there are photos from hither and yon in the northwest.

To aid in the narrative, letter identifiers appear for each of the individual pictures on a page. High resolution versions of these photo albums pages are also available on request. This web page is in progress.

This lists all the album pages; each page having 4-8 pictures:
PA1_00
PA1_01
PA1_02
PA1_03
PA1_04
PA1_05
PA1_06
PA1_07
PA1_08
PA1_09
PA1_10
PA1_11
PA1_12
PA1_13
PA1_14
PA1_15
PA1_16
PA1_17
PA1_18
PA1_19
PA1_20
Here begins identification of the persons and associates of the individual pictures on each album page, with progress to date . PA1_00
The first album page of this web site, PA_1_00, is actually the album cover. This cover is a composite from different eras. don't know when I got this album, but it may have been directly from mother HBT.

Picture A at top of this PA_1_00 cover composite is of mother not long after she had been hired as a permanent Pasadena Elementary Schools teacher. This was probably about 1952.

Picture B of of my mother Helen Truher with her two sons, Jim and Jack. So mother was making a connection to me about these twho generations with this album.

Picture C is Nancy Truher with our children Nate and Joel as toddlers about 1970.

Picture D of the cover is grandmother Kathryn Burke. I think I remember the day when my mother prepared her mother for this picture by a professional photographer.

Picture E of the cover is father JWT1, probably about 1952.

some progress
PA1_00

yet to detail
PA1_01
PA1_02
PA1_03
PA1_04
PA1_05
PA1_06
PA1_07
PA1_08
PA1_09
PA1_10
PA1_11
PA1_12
PA1_13
PA1_14
PA1_15
PA1_16
PA1_17
PA1_18
PA1_19
PA1_20

Following language includes email messages in October 2002.
Many links are yet to be made between text and pictures.

From: "James W. Truher"
Subject: "House" where Jack and I lived summer/fall in 1940.
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 19:26:25 -0700

"I started 1st grade in a 2 room school house while living in this "house" with Jack and parents. This is on Sauvies Island then reachable only by a 3 car, 150 yard ferry ride. Sauvies is a few miles N/W of Portland on the edge of the Columbia River. The porch was a tree stump and the toilet was an outside hole in the ground with a shed built around it behind the house. My memory is that Dad built this in a day, it was one room inside divided by a blanket hung from a clothes line inside."

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From: "Jack Truher"
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 4:51 PM
Subject: Late 1930s, Jim & Helen Truher family, on road jobs

"Jim is looking for some scenes from Scenic or Silverton, the mountain areas near Seattle when our dad was a highway superintendent for a small, contractor name Coyle (more eventually explained later in this book). From the album above, here are the most likely pages I could find with this association: PA1_05, PA1_17, PA1_016, and PA1_20 ."

Comment by Jack again:
Michael's email in 2002 added another recollection:

"I have information about the stump. seems as if dad's road crew was using dynamite and the stump arrived airborne by mistake."

Jim responds to Michael in 2002 ...


"I don't know for sure, but I'd bet a lot that the tree that has been cut and laying on the ground was cut by dad and co-workers and that it is from the stump which became our porch."

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To Jim from Jack:
"Would these pictures of you, JWT2, and mom and Helen Nelson been taken at Sauvies Island?"

From: "James W. Truher"
To: "Jack Truher"
Subject: Re: where photo?
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 14:11:36 -0700

"No, I'm too young. I think these are in Central/Eastern Washington, someplace like Walla Walla, Yakima or even Wenatchee, in which all of we lived for brief periods."

James W. Truher

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Michael wrote,

"I have information about the stump. seems as if dad's road crew was using dynamite and the stump arrived airborne by mistake."

"A stump has to be secured by it's original roots, or it doesn't make a very good porch. But I have a vague recollection of some flying tree parts."

Jack wrote:
"I presume you mean you recollect a conversation, rather than have some written record.

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Michael answers:

"I recall mother's horror story about a bear on the porch, which I have assumed took place at Scenic, not Sauvies Island."

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From: "James W. Truher"
Subject: Re: "House" in 1940.
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 08:25:15 -0700

"The particular porch stump I referred to was still in the ground and I believe the tree was felled to create the porch, I don't think this felled tree in the photo arrived by air. There were lots of other trees and stumps that we were involved with though! The bear on the porch was at the Scenic house. Also we had an ice box for food storage at Scenic, but I don't remember who delivered the ice blocks. I don't think we had electricity at Scenic, cause like lots of other places I remember gas lanterns for light and flash lights to get around at night."

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James W. Truher
From: Michael Truher
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 6:44 AM
Subject: Re: "House" in 1940.

"The story I heard was that mother didn't think much of this experience."

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Jack responds to Michael:

"That must true, Michael. She was depressed by the poverty. I recall for example on a trip from Seattle to LA, maybe late 1941, we stopped in front of the only, "large" department store in Pacific Grove (near Monterey). She was ecstatic to see the fancy clothes and shopping opportunities. I never reacted that way."

"Still, she obviously relished the variation of the Seattle nature experience in her 1980 chronological record of the Seattle era - which record I will copy and send to you both one of these days. When I was about 21, as all military junior officers will, I considered whether to stay as a career soldier. I said, "I would be out by the time I am 41". She said contrarily, "those are your best years", which I thought strange. Is it clear which years are better than other years?"

"In that same 1980 chronological record, mother opens with a photo of the "houses that dad built", showing only 803 Morada and 245 Hillside houses. The Sauvies Island cabin was purged from her progression. You recall she referred to the 2-3 room house near the Seattle-Tacoma airport as his "bachelors' degree", the 803 as his "masters", and the 245 as his "PhD." Maybe so, but he got a few honorary degrees along the way. When we talked about house building, dad cautioned me -- he said, "you can become a slave to these places." But that didn't subdue his obsession with building."

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Jack wrote:

"Michael, I imagine you don't remember grandmother Burke much. You were eight years old when she died in 1955.

"She was already somewhat incapacitated when we moved to LA in 1947, increasingly so as time passed, able to walk just a little in the interval and unable to talk at the end. I didn't know how to deal with her. Mother thought I should have been more solicitous. But she couldn't shoot baskets or hop on one foot, so we didn't have a lot to talk about. I didn't know her when I was a toddler, and by the time we moved to L.A., she wasn't well."

"Mother often commended dad for working so diligently to make the apartment over the 803 garage ready for Grandmother Burke. Jim Jr did the framing and sheeting I recall, and I spent a thousand hours as a carpenter's assistant for data in that apartment. Not jovial encounters, but I learned a lot about what it takes to do that kind of work. Pop would sometimes become unreasonable -- preparing me to tolerate and cultivate all the cantankerous but productive coworkers I have known since."

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Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 10:17:08 -0700
From: Jack Truher
Subject: Kathryn Mary Murphy Burke

"Here follows a few other scenes of the era. My brothers were interested in what records I have from Scenic in the Washington Cascades, where our parents lived briefly during a highway construction project in 1938.

"Whereas my mother's most careful record shows our grandmothers' name as Kathryn Mary Murphy Burke, you will sometimes see Catherine instead in some of the other records. Karthryn is now the name of my grandmother, mother, and niece."

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The rail scene is probably earliest, perhaps 1910. The Scenic mountain shacks appear in a scene with grandmother Kathryn Murphy Burke holding baby Jack in 1938.

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From: "JBT" Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 1:06 PM
Subject: Silverton


"Jim, as you asked, I found a Silverton, Washington State photo. It's not in this album, but I've put a copy here anyway"

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From: "James W. Truher"
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 13:46:30 -0700

Yea! That little rickety swaying wooden bridge across the river scared the hell out of me and made me afraid of high places until I was in my 40s!!!!
James W. Truher "Great stuff, lots that I have never seen."
James W. Truher

Michael wrote:
2nd item, "Historical text", in this list was especially interesting, reminding me of Grandma Burke's arranged marriage.

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"Jack wrote:

"You are referring to her youthful arranged marriage to an older man, James Burke. We have those dates. It seemed to have worked out, until our grampa James Burke died abruptly of a heart attack after arriving in the L.A. area. Mother always said that grandmother Burke was very careful with money and able to take care of herself and her children with only income from boarders in the property (here left center picture) she managed to acquire."

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SOME HISTORICAL ITEMS FOLLOW:

Kathryn Burke with boys, Jim and Jack Truher, 1943

Historical text about Kathryn Murphy Burke,

Descendants of James and Kathryn Burke

Some of Helen Burke Truher's text about her mother, Kathryn Burke.

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