A Man Called Sky

Back in the early 1980's, a few years before my grandfather, Earl Carpenter, passed away, I pleaded with him to give me an oral history of the family. He thought I was joking. I told him that I felt that any family should record their history, if possible, for the survivors to peruse, for posterity.

After all, the history of our family is unique is many ways, and yet it is also the history of all families in the brotherhood of man. One fine Saturday, after Mom-Mom(my grandmother Emma) had fixed us some breakfast, they both set down with me, and said OK, let's talk.It was cute watching them correct each other as to dates and names and events. So, the following is the family Carpenter's oral history, at least part of it. After a couple hours, they fatigued, and they promised to continue later. Later never came. But there are some salient and prideful facts that cover those turbulent years from 1897-1936.


THE CARPENTERS

PART ONE

Earl Lymon Carpenter was born September 21, 1897 in Spring Coulee, which was about half way between Omak and Okanogan. [Ironically, on Pop's death certificate,they put his birthday at 1887, claiming that he was 99 years old when he died, and actually he was 89. At some point, Pop changed his middle name to Melbourne,and dropped the Lymon ].

My grandmother, Emma Louise Look was born December 3, 1901 in Bluetown, later to be called Kettle Falls. Pop's parents were James LymonCarpenter and Emma Rosetta Thomas-Carpenter. My great grandmother, Emma, was called Nana by the family. For the record, Earl was called Pop, and my grandmother, Emma, was called Mom-Mom, for Mom's Mom I guess.[Interesting that Pop's mother was named Emma, and he married an Emma ]. Nana's first husband was a Mr.Frost, and she had two children, Annie (Angeline) Frost, and Alma Frost. Later, with her second husband, James Carpenter she had three children, Earl, and two sisters Ardis and Erma. Mom-Mom's family had six children, Albert, Leitha, Arthur, Emma, Bertha, and Esther.

The Carpenters moved in late 1898, early 1899 to the homestead, up in the mountains, on Tunk Creek, 12 miles east of Riverside, toward Republic. It wast here that the cougar almost got Pop [At two yearsold, he remembers sitting in his diaper, watching his mother do the wash in the creek. He heard something, and as he turned, he was looking directly into the face of feline death. A Cougar was inches from him. He looked into those yellow cat's eyes, and even at his young age, realized he was in grave danger. Miraculously, Nana saw the mountain lion in the same instant, and somehow in a rush of motherly courage, she ran it off. But the fear of cats, and hatred for them, always stayed with Pop. He never even liked, or tolerated house cats after that; and if he came on to a feral cat in the woods, he was glad to kill it.]

Sometime in 1902-1903, the Carpenters bought a home one mile north of Riverside. They lived there until1909, when Pop was 12 years old. He remembered fondly those halcyon days living along the Okanogan River. He drank and swam in its pure water, and they could ice skate on the frozen river in winter.[Pop's love of that river cropped up in many of his fabulous paintings for all the decades that followed.]. Theyowned 160 acres, across from Riverside, and on it were 40 acres of good tillable land. They had 200 head of cattle, and they raised watermelons commercially. They sold them all over the area; Okanogan, Republic,Cheesah, Oreville, Tonasket, Conconelly, and Molson.

When they lived there, Pop's grandfather, on his mother's side, was Knute Thomas. He was the sheriff ofOkanogan County. At that time, Riverside had about 200 people in it. In1908, Pop remembers seeing his first automobile, when he was 11 years old. He saw it at a distance. He remembered paddle wheel steamboats churning up theOkanogan River. There were two of them, the Pringle,and the Oregonian. They would, of course, come up the great Columbia River, to the mouth of the OkanoganRiver, and only in high water could they make their way from the mouth, at Brewster, all the way up (15 to20 miles) up to Riverside. [In the 1950's, at some point, Pop seeing my interest in history, he gave me a family heirloom, a ticket for the steamboat "Pringle". God, I wonder where that ticket is today. Probably tucked away in some dusty corner in one of my secret places.].

Pop went to school in a one room school house in Riverside. His teacher, Mr. Boer, was a tough guy, who used to beat up the bigger kids with willow switches. Sisters Ardis and Erma were born by then. Ardis was born in 1900, and Erma in 1907. Pop played hookey a lot; probably read too much Mark Twain. He repeated, at least, two grades. His parents never really knew what was going on. They never asked. His real responsibilities, as it was for all farm kids, were the chores on the farm.

Mostly Pop spent his school days out fishing, and fooling around in the woods. In class, mostly, he would draw cartoons. This would outrage Mr. Boer. " You are too stupid to learn!", the teacher howled," All you are good for is to draw cartoons. You are going to flunk. Your drawings are pretty fair, and that is fine, because you won't be worth a damn for anything else all the rest of yourlife !". So Pop quit school at the end of his 8th grade year. [As much as I loved school, and I loved my grandfather, as a kid, I always marveled at how he had managed to educate himself. He read voraciously, and his recall was incredible. Like his career as an artist, Pop was a self-made man. He created his education, and his art, out of the Depression, and out of his own heart and soul.]

Pop and sister Ardy rode horses a lot, riding both to check the family cattle, and for fun. To own a good horse at that time was the epidimy of cool. Pop rode a great mare, Eunis. She was tall, and strong, and very fast. [ A lot of great stories came out of the adventures with those horses, racing with each other, and racing against neighbor's nags]. For fun, they would walk around and kill rattlesnakes. They would use a horse whip, or even just a stick. [Growing up on the west side of the mountains, where there are no pit vipers, I was always frightened as hell of rattlesnakes. Pop knew how easy they were to kill, and he never feared them. He always warned us of walking too close to the sagebrush, because some of the smarter snakes would crawl up into the bushes, and then be able to strike a target above your boots.] Using the horse whip, they killed snakes at 20 feet. Using the willow branches, he killed them at 3 feet.They would snap their heads off, literally.

PART II

They lived about two miles from the Colville Indian Reservation. He remembered the Indians as friendly, and that most of them habitually wore blue denim bibbed overalls. Pop sent a lot of time being barefoot, all summer usually. His father, James, built a big house on their place. He actually was a carpenter, and was great working with his hands. He had one of the first powered irrigation motors in the area, with a centrifical pump; it could suck water up from 32 feet below. They used water from the river, to irrigate their watermelons.

In 1909, they sold thatplace for $ 4,000.00. They moved to Greenwood, and
they bought a 160 acre ranch. It cost $5,500.00. James had to borrow 1,500 bucks from his mother. She lived in Omak. She lived in what was the Carpenter family mansion, 12 to 14 bedrooms. The Carpenters had built it themselves.

There had been an Indian uprising in1904. The government issued them a couple dozen
needle-guns; rifles that had bayonets, and they used single shot rimfire cartridges. All the women and children in the area forted up at the Carpenter mansion. Afterward, when they tried to hunt with those rifles, not one cartridge would fire. The govenment had issued them boxes of duds. After Pop's greatgrandmother died, they turned the place into a poor farm.

The Look family, Mom-Mom's folks, lived about a quarter of a mile from them for over 10 years. They sold out in 1919. In the interum, Pop became good friends with Art Look; great pals. And that's how he met Emma (Mom-Mom). She was the girl next door. She and her sisters used to devil Pop, kid him a lot. Pop too, was surrounded by girls. He had four sisters, and no brothers. Pop said that he tried to go back to school twice, at Greenwood off and on for two years, and later he went to school in Meyer's Falls.

About age 14, he picked up a violin, and was a natural at playing the fiddle; his Dad showed him some of the basics. There was some kind of Community Theatre. James and Nana were very supportive of being in theater. Pop appeared in a production of DOT, THE MINER'S DAUGHTER, and he played a little black kid. At that time Pop had never seen a negro, only cartoons and pictures of them in newspapers and books. James organized the show, and he played the Miner. Pop seemed to have a flair for acting, and he worked up several skits that he would appear in at local Grange Halls. Nana was involved too.[ And it appears that the gene pool was thick with this love of theatre, as in the 1960's, when I began my career as an actor ].

James Carpenter was about 5'10" tall, weighed 185. He had quite long arms, and was a wrestler and boxer.When Pop grew up, he too had long arms, and he could box the ears off most young men. A guy named Lawrence Rush, organized a boy's boxing club. One of the boys, a Clark Harlow became a terror, quite good. Later he got involved in the IWW Socialist movement, long before Pop became progressive, and decided to fight for the brotherhood of man. Earl was 21, and Emma was 17 when they started dating. But it all happened after the farms were sold.

TheLooks left in 1919, and in 1919 Nana divorced JamesCarpenter. She took Pop and Ardis and Erma, and moved to Spokane. James went back to Okanogan, and lived with his widowed brother. Pop had taken a correspondance course on Cartooning in 1915. He continued it until 1920, when he had to go to work, and help support his mother and sisters. Pop said, and I had not realized this before, that he and Art Look both were drafted in 1918. They were scheduled to go overseas on the 17th of a month, and the First World War was over on the 11th. So, fate intervened, and Pop did not have to go and fight.

Pop had a pal, Ted Ellis, who was 6 years older, and he had to go to France and fight. He became a sharpshooter, as I'm sure that Pop would have been. At one point, Ellis had to stand for forty days in the trenches, with water over his feet, could never lay down. He ended up getting arthritis so bad, that his health was impaired for the rest of his life.

PART III

In 1920, Nana remarried for the third time [odd the parallels in a family. My mother, Betty married three times, mostly to losers. My Sister, Clystie, married three times, mostly to losers. My wife, Melva, when she married me, this was her third marriage. But of course, only her first two husbands were losers ]. Nana married Ray Hoezington. He was a drunk, and a wife beater, and all around lovely man. Some of Nana's poetry reflects her feelings about the man.

In 1921, Pop worked at the Owl Drugs in Spokane. He was hired as a display helper. The Looks came down to Spokane, and that's when Pop dated Mom-Mom for a couple of years. For a time, he took a job vacated by Ted Ellis, up on Wild Horse Creek, in Brownley, Oregon. He fed 800 head of cattle all winter. [We have a picture of Pop in a cowboy hat, wearing a luger that Ted had loaned him]. During that time, he lost a 200 dollar violin.

Earl Carpenter and Emma Look were married in 1923. Pop got a job as a milkman. Pop said the Looks lived out in Hilyard. One time in 1922, he went out there for a date with Emma, and Emma's sister, Leitha, told Pop that Emma was not at home. Then she made sure that Pop saw Emma in the window with another young man. No one knows how close the family came to having a whole other legacy on that day. Pop was outraged, and hurt; very angry.

He quit his job as milkman, and he borrowed 100 bucks from his Dad, James. Pop really felt that he had a broken heart. He only knew one thing to do, to return to nature, to head into the mountains. So at 23 years old, he and a buddy took off to be gold prospectors along the Salmon River. For this trip, they bought a horse, a pack saddle, and a 30-06 rifle in Grangeville, Oregon. They hiked across to the Clearwater at Harper, and they traveled to Elk City, and then down to Dixie, Idaho; almost a ghost town at that time. Ironically, there was one person in the whole town, and his last name was "Carpenter". He ran what was left of the post office. They crossed on ferry at the mouth of the Thunder River, and across the Big Salmon River. They worked their way up through the Chamberlain Basin along Big Creek, and they emerged, came out, on the old Mormon Ranch on theMiddle Fork of the Salmon.

It was Albert Curry's place. They stayed a few days, and had lots to eat for a while. Pop shot a bear there. They traveled on along Wilson Creek, over Mt. McGuire, down Pine Creek all the way to Panther Creek. While camped there a bear ran over their beds in the middle of the night, and scared off the horse; but that's another tale. It took them five days to build a raft, so that they could cross the Salmon River.

They continued to follow Wilson Creek and they came out on Snowshoe Johnson's place. They hiked out to Shoup, and then up to SalmonCity. They sold their rifle for $5.00, took a stage to Red Rock, and then they hopped a train. Lots of hobos on the train, but they always had to worry about being VAG-ged (caught for vagrancy). If caught, they would have been put into a chain gang. At one point, they leaped from the boxcar they were in, onto the top of a passing passenger train. They rode the top of the passenger train until it pulled into Idaho Falls. As it slowed down, he and Roy decided to jump off. Pop was hanging onto the side of a ladder, when he leaped off, and he landed on top of a yard bull (railroad security cop). Pop got up and ran. He could run like the wind in those days. He ran smack into a wire fence. Crawling under it, he found himself in a cemetary.

He and Roy each had a WWI Army whistle. Blowing softly, they figured out where each other was, and they found each other. This was in November. They had to wade across an irrigation ditch, and the water was colder than hell. Coming out of it, they hid in a huge stack of straw in the middle of a farmer's field.They soon discovered there was a large bull in thefield too, so they burrowed down in the hay, and slept the sleep of the weary and the homeless. At daylight,they slipped out, and were run off by a 400 pound pig.

PART IV

Earl and Roy walked into Idaho Falls, and they go tjobs loading railroad cars; great sacks of peas that weighed hundreds of pounds. That night, they went to sleep in a boxcar. They were awakened by a yard bull. He "took them into custody", putting them into a shed along the tracks. They went in, and he rolled a big rock in front of the door. Later they broke a window, and it was too small to crawl out of. They picked the lock on the latch for the door, and pushed the rock out of the way. They hopped an outgoing train, and got the hell out of there. They rode in a boxcar all the way into Nampa, Idaho, and waited until their car was put off onto a siding. They slipped further back into the yard, into another boxcar. They tore newspapers off the wall, and wrapped themselves in them to sleep, and to ward off the chill of the night.

The next morning, they panicked because the boxcar door was locked shut, and they thought they were stuck, and trapped inside. It turned out, though, that they were able to slide open the door on the opposite side, and they fled. They went into the hobo jungle, and got something to eat. It seemed like they were always hungry. They took a job, worked all day for $2.50, so that they could get a meal somewhere. Then they hopped a freight to Payette. They broke into an empty house,and they stole some fresh bread. Bread never had tasted so good, Pop remembered. Roy bought Bull Durham tobacco and some cheese, and Pop shoplifted 5 cans of salmon.

They landed in Baker, Oregon, and they buddied up to a fella. Turns out, he asked them to be his bodyguards, because he had 200 bucks in cash on him.He bought them a big meal, and they agreed to help him and protect him. They rode the rails together, and Pop said that a couple of times, they had to fight their way out of places with their fists. Cattle cars were hard to ride in, because the cattle crap was so deep.There was no real way to clean one's clothes, so you just had to live with the stench. All the other hobos could tell who had ridden the cattle cars.

When they got to Yumitilla, the guy parted company with them.They ran into two little kids, 9 and 11 years old, crying their eyes out. Their parents had deserted them. The guy, before he left, fed them, and gave them ten bucks. They moved on, riding a grain train into Yakima, and they got work working at the apple harvest, picking apples and building apple boxes. That night they were walking back to town, Yakima, in the dark.

They were just walking along the road, when all of a sudden, WHAM !!!, and Pop blacked out. He woke up on an elevator. A guy told him that he had been run over, hit by an Overland car, and that Pop had broken the guy's radiator with his head. It took 24 stitchesto sew him up. Pop was told that he was flopping like a chicken, that blood had spurted over ten feet in the air. Roy clamped off the arteries, and probably saved Earl's life.

A big Swede was driving the car, and he claimed that he never saw them. In those days, the headlights were very dim, like two thin white beams. Pop came to full consciousness in the hospital. TheSwede paid all the medical bills, and gave Pop 40 bucks; a hell of a way to earn some money. So Pop had enough real cash to get himself home to Spokane. He had just arrived, and that morning as he was walking down a street with his head all bandaged up, he me his mother, Nana. She took him home.

Pop met Emma socially at the Owl Drugs, while she was visiting with her brother, Art. Pop, next got a job at the Alexander Film Company. Then the company moved toDenver, and he lost that job. Pop and Mom-Mom got married November 25, 1923. [ I remember fondly their50th wedding anniversary in 1973. My mother had died,in 1966, but all the rest of the family was there. After Pop retired, he left the west coast ofWashington, and returned to live out his life in Spokane. His son, my uncle Dick, went with him.]

WhenPop died in 1986, they had been married for 63 years. As they recalled it, they got married while working in a logging camp. In 1922, Alma was a cook in a lumber camp. Emma came up too, for the job. So their romance flared up while at the camp, and they were married there. Pop built a honeymoon cabin, and he managed to crush a disc in his back while building it. It was quite a soap opera really. Previously, Emma had gone back to Meyers Falls for a visit. And the family would not let her return to the logging camp. Ted Ellis was working there, and a giant of a man called Fred Schonwald. Pop had heard some ugly rumors about Emma, after she left. So after dinner, one night, Pop stood up and announced that he did not know who had made these remarks about his fiancee, Emma, but if any one of them would admit to spreading the rumors, Pop would beat their head off. No one stood up to challenge him.

Then Earl traveled to Meyers Falls to get his bride-to-be. Her father tried to punch Pop three times. Leitha screamed that she had a gun. Pop did not care. He was there for his woman. He had ten bucks he had borrowed, and Ted Ellis's old wedding ring. Emma agreed to go with him. Emma's brother Si called Earl out, and told him that he was going to whip his ass. Pop got on the back of Si's motorcycle, and they rode out of town to a lonely field. They got off the bike, jerked their jackets off, and stood eyeing each other.Then they shrugged, laughed, got back on the motorcyle, and went back to town.

Pop and Mom-Mom drove back to Ted Ellis's house. They got on a train, and rode to Colville on a Sunday morning. Pop snagged a fella off the street for a witness, found a justice of the peace, and got married. They stayed in a hotel that night, and then went back to the logging camp the next day.

The course of events gets jumbled up as my grandparents endeavored to recall things. It turns out that after he lost the job at Alexander Film Company, and before he got the job peeling poles at the logging camp, before he was married, he was taking a train ride from Colville. He wanted to get off the train at Orin, but he was told that the train did not stop at Orin on Sundays. So he decided to hell with it, he would just jump off as it slowed going through town. He got to the rear car, stepped down on the last step, and slipped. Hanging on, he was dragged for a ways, with his feet popping on the rails. He saw a switch coming up, and he let go. But he let go too late. He struck the switch, and bashed the hell out of his left shoulder and arm. He tore a lot of tendons and ligaments. He never did go to a doctor, couldn't afford to. There was no blood, just a terrible impact and trauma. After they were married, Pop moved through four or five jobs in the woods. At one point, they worked up near Republic in a logging camp where his mother,Nana, and his stepfather, Ray were at. Ray was a foreman on the job. Pop had been considering traveling to Denver, and seeing if he could get his old job back at the Alexander Film Company.

Ray was a real horse's ass, and one point, he fired Pop. So Pop and Emma went back to Spokane for a time. He wrote to the Alexander Film Company, and they were willing to give him a job. So he borrowed another 100 bucks from his father, James, in 1924, and off they went to Denver. Pop's job paid 25 bucks a week. Then he got a job at Sun Drugs, as a window trimmer, for 35 bucks a week. While at Alexanders he had met a guy, named Ernie Heizer. For a time, he roomed/stayed with the Carpenters. At some point, as young men tend to do, he and Pop went into business together. They called it FASI Studio, which meant beauty in Chinese. But soon, they went broke, and were back to zero. Ernie went on to an opportunity in Chicago. Later he sent for Earl and Emma, wanted Pop to do medical artwork for 75 bucks a week. But Pop was making more than a 100 bucks a week at Sun Drugs, and Emma was pregnant with Betty, my mother. Ernie kept pestering them, trying to convince them that he had hit the mother lode in Chicago.

The Carpenters had lived in Denver for 1.5 years. But, finally, they moved to Chicago. Emma was 6 months pregnant. When they arrived in Chicago, the fabulous Ernie was broke, and had no job. He wanted to set up another studio with Pop. They arrived in February, and they left in May 1926. My mother, Betty Lee was born April 20,1926.[ Mother died in 1966, just before she turned 40, from uterian cancer. I was 22 years old at the time.].

Father James bailed them out, and he sent 200 bucks. So they moved back to Spokane, and lived with Emma's sister Bert. Pop got a job with Culbertson'sDepartment store, as a window trimmer, card/signpainter, background/display artist. He worked there for two years, until 1929. Their second daughter, Georgia Alene was born April 19, 1929. [My little aunt, Georgia, whom I never met, died at 12 years old, from scarlet fever, in 1942; just before the family decided to move to Seattle. Emma was already there, working at Boeings. Pop and Dick and mother, joined her there. That adventure is recounted by Uncle Dick on this site.]

We all know what happened to the country in 1929, what was looming on the horizon for all of them. In 1929, they lived out on Deadman's Creek, out near Mt. Spokane. A lot of the gang lived out there, Earl and Emma, Pop's sister Erma and her husband Roy, Nana and Ray. Erma met Roy in Republic, and she married him when she was 17 years old. Pop, then got a job working for Montgomery Wards, and he moved his family back into Spokane proper. He worked there from 1929-1931.Their son, Richard Donald was born January 9, 1931. He was the baby, and he had two lovely older sisters.[Life has a way of dealing us body blows. His middle sister died in 1942. His oldest sister, Betty, died in 1966. Now Uncle Dick, and his lovely wife, Jean, have some rural acreage high on the plateau above Cheney.]. At Montgomery Wards, Pop worked his way up to being display manager. They even offered him a promotion, if he would move back to Chicago, to their home office.But as is often the case, when a man of the people gets a job as part of management, the day finally arrived when they fully explained the fine print in his job description.

With a large corporation it is "them and us", them being labor, and us being management. They required that he inform on any of the staff that were complaining; to be as Pop put it, a"stool pigeon". He refused to comply, and for his integrity, he was demoted to furniture refinisher; and then in 1931, they fired him. In desparation, Pop looked to the family for the answers.

He moved to Meadow Creek, near Bonner'sFerry, Idaho. The family had interest in a mine there, called THE SILVER SPOON. Nana and Ray, Alama, and a guy named Glenn Dodson were the officers. It went broke, but Earl and Emma were stuck there. It was the middle of winter, and the Depression was hitting hard all around them. Pop used his hunting skills, and he shot deer for most of the population. That winter he killed 28 deer, and the folks devoured them. Roy andErma, Roy had always been a logger, were already relocated there. Roy and Pop logged in seven feet of snow. At one point, Pop ran out of ammunition. So he would go to a hungry family, borrow their guns, and bring them back meat. He recalled that they killed one deer with a pick and shovel. A game warden caught him poaching at one point. He was taken to court. But Pop was feeding the judge's family too, so the case was thrown out.

In the spring, Roy and Erma left. Again, with the pieces jumbled, their memories were jostled. Pop had a buddy I remember, C. MattyMatthews. He met Matty, and his wife, Georgia, while he was working at Culbertson's in 1929. So Matty and his wife came up to Meadow Creek too, broke and hungry. Pop was hunter and patriarch for all of them.This was a role firmly etched in his psyche. He seemed to be that, to play that role for the whole of our family until his death. In 1931, Pop and Matty, and their families, returned to Spokane, and they worked together.

Pop and Mom-Mom lived at Matty's mother's house. Pop jerry-rigged the gas appliances, and lived all winter free. In 1932, Pop worked again atMontgomery Wards, as a sign painter and artist. Then they moved over on Crown Street, in the Hollywood district. [44 years later I lived in Hollywood, CA, as a professional actor; mostly out of work, at liberty, hustling and being miserable]. He was out of work, and went on the W.P.A..

At one point, Pop had an outside job, ditch-digging or some such labor. He had no money for carfare, so he walked every day five miles to work. He had no work boots, or decent shoes. This was in the winter of1933, and he wore out a lot of cardboard in the soles of those old shoes. From 1933-1936, he did a lot ofWPA pick and shovel jobs. Rent was 8 bucks a month. If there was an indoor toilet, rent went up to 10 bucks amonth. Pop's wages at that time were $55.00 a month,working 6 hours a day for two weeks, and then there was a two week lay-off to let others work. And there were no other jobs in the interim. In 1936-37, hepicked up some sidejobs painting some high schools.Then they sent him to Ft. Wright. At that point, hisWPA job was paying him $85.00 every two weeks, and the US Army paid him full time at $170.00 a month.

A Capt.Pangborn built the Post Exchange. He was an architect.He asked the house painters if any of them could paint landscape paintings. Pop raised his hand. Pop had been painting Charlie Russell copies, and a bunch of them were hanging at the Hub tavern. Capt. Pangborn went over and checked them out, and he was amazed at Pop's talent. He sent for Pop. He felt that Pop was better than Charles Russell, that he painted better detail.He had Pop painting Russell copies. Pop painted over35 Charlie Russell copies. The job lasted for over a year.

In 1939, as the Depression was beginning to wane, he worked for a time at Jenson-Byrds. But he got fired because of his "politics". He returned to his job at Ft. Wright. And there, gentle readers, is where the grandparents ran out of steam on that fine day, and the storytelling ended, and the Family Saga, of course, continued. We know the family moved to Seattle in1944, just before I was born on Flag Day, June 14,1944. Perhaps, we can implore Uncle Dick, the last surviving original family member, to fill in theblanks, from 1944, to 1989 when Pop passed away. UncleDick is a bit shy, but maybe Aunt Jean will rattle his cage, and share this history with him, and put him to work finishing the tale, the tremendous tale of theCarpenters.

Glenn "Butch" Buttkus, grandson, nephew. 2004