<Begin Segment 16>

JC: And remind me, Miss Azalea Peet was the person who was in Nyssa. She had been a missionary in China, but she --

FO: Japan.

JC: I mean in Japan, excuse me. So she was a Quaker, Friends, Quaker.

FO: She had connections, but she was a Methodist missionary, uh-huh, and she was here in Gresham before the war.

JC: When was she a missionary in Japan?

FO: It would be prior to the war. She served seventeen years or such. And then after the war, she went back again to Japan. She's a graduate of the Hunter College from a very well-to-do family.

JC: Did you maintain contact with her?

FO: Uh-huh, until she went into retirement home in North Carolina. And that's where she passed away and the home wrote that she was no longer, but we corresponded all the way through. I think she's been gone five, ten years now, maybe, a wonderful woman.

JC: This is kind of an odd question, but having been the recipient of a benefactor's enormous generosity, have you ever, have you in turn tried to do something or had the opportunity to kind of... I don't know what it would be because there's not but, I don't know, somehow --

FO: Well, my son tried to sort of push me into it. In his senior year at the medical school, he was a medical officer at the Donald Long Home here. And occasionally, he would bring, he took kids up skiing, and he'd drop by here at the house and such. And he'd say, "Mom, why don't you take in a couple of foster's kids." And I said, "Jerry, I'm working, and I don't think I have the tolerance, whatever, to take in foster children." But I remember him saying, "Mom, why don't you take in some foster kids?"

JC: It's interesting because that gives you such an appreciation for what your benefactors did, I mean when they took in you and your sister. I mean it was, it's interesting to me that, how that happened.

FO: But a foster, well, they're not all unruly. But this particular incident, he took these two kids to ski at Mount Hood. And of course, my son is a skier, so he was in the more advanced area of skiing, and he picks up these kids later to bring them home. And when we were here, there's a red pill in the hallway there. And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Those kids." That little short contact, they've already pick up some, whatever, pills with that group they were, he says, "I thought he was talking a lot more than he usually does." So they already picked up some pills while we were with the skiing group. Now, isn't that something?

JC: The Southworths, did they, did they have a particular connection with the Japanese American community that they decided to be the benefactors for you and your sister? I mean --

FO: Well, I think it's with acquaintance with my sister at Lincoln High School because she was the high school teacher at Lincoln, and she served twenty-seven years there or such. And then later after she retired, she was adviser to many of these local high schools. She was making rounds, I know.

JC: So she knew your sister before you all went to Japan?

FO: No. My sister started at Lincoln High School, and that's where she met my sister.

JC: So when your sister came back from Japan, did she come, she was the first one to come back?

FO: Uh-huh.

JC: She came back by herself to where?

FO: Oh, let's see. She had another contact in town where she was studying drafting, sewing. It was also a Japanese family, and she stayed at their hotel and learned drafting and such. Maybe it was through that contact. It's a little vague as to where her first contact was with, but the Southworths also adopted a son, but he was already out of the home and such by the time we arrived.

JC: Japanese American?

FO: No. She was, he was an offspring of one of her students, an illegitimate person. The grade school, I think an eighth grader or such from what we hear.

JC: Did they have any particular religious affiliation, the Southworths?

FO: Not really. They first lived at Montgomery Drive in Portland, and then they bought this, a land in Troutdale, and they built their home. That's where they lived for many years. They're both gone.

JC: Yeah. That must have been like losing a parent.

FO: Uh-huh. Oh, she was particularly fond of our son because he was such a good scholar. She just, being a good student and a schoolteacher. Yep, she really was fond of him.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.