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closeSumner resident turns 100
Roxanne Cooke
Sumner resident Gertrude Ellison will celebrate her 100th birthday with a special proclamation by Mayor Dave Enslow during a reception in her honor on May 17 at Sumner Presbyterian Church.
She was born Ella Gertrude Parrot in Anoka, Minn., on May 16, 1908, where her pregnant mother was visiting family. Their home was in Pollock, S.D., on the shores of the Missouri River.
Her family came from mostly English stock but none enjoyed the same longevity as her. An older sister lived to the age of 92.
Ellison was the fifth in a family of eight surviving siblings. The older four were children of previous marriages for both her parents. She was the eldest of the four born to their union.
“Lots of people died of tuberculosis in those days, leaving widows and widowers, so people remarried,” she explained.
Ellison graduated with a two-year teaching certificate and became a schoolteacher for nine years. The school was about 25 miles away from home so she had lodgings with people who lived closer.
This still meant she had to walk three miles every day to get to the school, where she was the only teacher. Her duties included sweeping the floor of the one-room school, building the fire and teaching students ranging in age from 6 to 17.
One day after dismissing her students because of a heavy blizzard, she started her long trek when the blizzard hit hard and she had to take cover from the high drifts that swelled around her “like ocean waves.” She became disoriented and fell asleep. Soon, though, she heard the sound of bells and thought her end had come. But they were sleigh bells on a horse and the rider saved her.
Of those days she also remembers dancing a waltz with Lawrence Welk when he played the accordion at a social dance.
“He lived and worked on his father’s farm, about 20 miles away from us, and used to play the concertina before he became famous as an accordionist and a band leader,” she said.
During the Depression, teachers were only paid with warrants and, even though her father was an important man, including postmaster and fire chief, the drought and the lack of money made life too difficult in the Dakotas.
In June 1936, she drove six family members across the country to Washington in a 1932 Ford sedan that allegedly had been owned by John Dillinger, the notorious FBI “Public Enemy No. 1.”
The family came to Puyallup to pick raspberries and, seeing the rich soil in the valley, her father said, “I think this is paradise,” because nothing could grow in the Dakotas at the time.
After a trip back to Pollock to fulfill a teaching contract, Gertrude returned to Puyallup and has remained in the area. She married Roy Ellison in July 1939 and the couple had three sons, Wilton, Russell and Burton. Today, she has eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Her husband died in 1965. She went back to teaching in 1959 and completed a bachelor’s degree at Pacific Lutheran University in 1967. The family had moved to Sumner in 1951 and she taught in the Sumner School District for 14 years.
Today, she has lost a great deal of her sight and requires hearing aids and a walker, but she lives independently in her Sumner home.
Her family half-jokingly attributes her longevity to the bowl of oatmeal she eats for breakfast every day. But she thinks enduring the hardships, especially the harsh winters, of her younger Dakota days have had a lot to do with it.