Lenora Cassin

LENORA JOSEPHINE DOLMAN, MONROE, HAMPTON, CASSIN

By Leanne Rowlands,

Daughter

Mom was born at home, on the dining room table, on November 24, 1920, to Nellie and Charles Rueben Dolman.  Her childhood home was near Green Lake on N 57^th Street.  She was the fifth of six children, and was born the day her brother Joey, who died as a toddler, was buried.  Her parents gave her the middle name “Josephine” in honor of Joey.  As a child during the great depression her family got by without much money, and her father, who was a carpenter, had a difficult time finding work.  When between jobs, he would fish to help put food on the table.  Her mother worked as a domestic, and between raising 6 children, keeping the house, and her job, she was one tired wife and mother.  According to mom, her dad did not help with household chores as that was considered women’s work; definitely a sign of the times.   Mom had a very close relationship with her mother and always kept her near to her heart.  Unfortunately, she seemed to harbor resentment towards her father, describing him as hotheaded and selfish.

Mom graduated from Lincoln high school in 1938.  She told my sister, Laurie, that she worked just one day at the Guild 45^th Theater in Wallingford.  On her first and only day working there, her boss pinched her on the fanny, and she decided not to go back. She also worked as an elevator operator in the Smith Tower in downtown Seattle, which at the time was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River, and as a switchboard operator for Bell Telephone.  Mostly, she was a stay-at-home mom.

Her first marriage was to Bill Monroe.  They had two children together, Arthur Francis, born in 1942 and Steven Charles, born in 1944.  It was a brief and difficult marriage that ended in divorce when the boys were still toddlers.

Her friends, Russ and Vera Breazeale, introduced her to their friend Ernie Hampton, a handsome motorcycle cop.  They fell in love and were married on December 7th 1946. Ernie eventually became a plumber for the University of Washington.  In 1948, Leanne Eileen was born, and in 1957, Laurie Joyce was born.  They had a fairly typical (and sometimes rocky) marriage for the time, struggling to get ahead and building their own home in which to raise their family of 4 children. They managed for 21 years through good times and bad.  On July 24, 1967, Ernie died suddenly of a heart attack at the young age of only 52.

Fortunately for mom, she only had one dependant child living at home at the time (Laurie, age 10), but it must have been very scary for her trying to figure out how to earn enough money to pay the mortgage and raise her young daughter alone.  She decided to go to business school and learn clerical work.  She also joined Parents Without Partners, and there she met Tom Cassin, at the very first event she attended.

Tom, a retired Naval Commander, was in college at the University of Washington working on his teaching certificate, and later became a schoolteacher for the Mercer Island School District.   They were married in June of 1969, and together they finished raising Tom’s son, Dan (he was 19 at the time – so they didn’t do much “raising”) and mom’s daughter, Laurie.  They had a comfortable and happy marriage.  They had a waterfront A-frame built on Mud Bay in Bremerton, on land that Tom had purchased in the1950s while in the Navy, where they lived for several years.  Tom had a long, daily commute to his teaching job on Mercer Island for a couple of years.  However, when he retired from teaching, he and mom enjoyed their A-frame, the view, and quality time together.  Mom enjoyed helping Tom in the garden.  They enjoyed an active social life with friends they made at the Retired Officer’s Club at the Navy base.  They loved music and sang in the Suquamish Congregational United Church of Christ together.  Tom played the guitar and they sang folk music at home.

They did a little traveling, mostly to Hawaii, a cruise to Alaska, and enjoyed staying at luxury ocean front hotels in Oregon.  Mom loved reading, and always had a book in her hands.  She also enjoyed working crossword puzzles, drinking coffee or sweet white wine, playing bridge and classical piano. Together, Mom and Tom enjoyed cooking, especially wonderful holiday meals, and we as a family enjoyed devouring them. Tom made a drop-dead delicious pork roast and mom the best hollandaise sauce, pies (she made piecrusts from heaven, just like her mom), and a chocolate cake filled with cream cheese, not to mention tuna casserole, scalloped potatoes, pot roast and many other wonderful dishes.

In 1995, Mom and Tom made their last move together, to a brand-new condominium in Redmond, Washington, to be closer to family.  They enjoyed their new condo.  It was close to everything – movie theaters, grocery stores and restaurants. They joined the Northshore United Church of Christ in Woodinville and developed a circle of friends, and enjoyed singing together in the choir.  They had a young friend, Duane, who came all the way from Poulsbo regularly so that he and Tom could jam on their guitars and the three of them enjoyed singing folk music together.

In early 1999, Tom, who had been a smoker since he was a teenager in the Navy, developed lung cancer.  He passed away on October 21, 1999 at the age of 82.  Mom was alone again and in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  In 2001 she sold her condominium and moved to Emerald Heights, an extended care facility in Redmond.  A year later, she met Ev (Everett) Mansfield, and they enjoyed keeping each other company for 3 years.  Ev died in 2005 at the ripe old age of almost 95.  Mom’s Alzheimer’s had progressed, but she lived on for another 3 1/2 years.  She passed away on November 21, 2008 at Evergreen Hospice, 3 days short of her 88^th birthday.

I can only imagine how difficult it was for her, living without memory.  I remember her once telling me that she felt like she was going crazy and asking me why she couldn’t remember her husband’s name.  In the last years of her life, the one person she always asked for was her mother, Nellie.  She also often spoke of her beloved childhood dog, Ryan, who, according to family lore, once rescued her when she was a toddler by grabbing hold of her diaper with his teeth, preventing her from going out in the street.  I hope mom and grandma are having a wonderful reunion, mom with her glass of sweet white wine and grandma (who rarely drank alcohol) with her favorite beer, a Miller High Life.  And I hope that Tom is accompanying them on his guitar as they catch up on their years apart, and that her dog, Ryan, and my dad, Ernie are also there to welcome her.

Mom was a spicy, strong willed, colorful character and was at times a bit irreverent and difficult to get along with (I’m sure she would like it noted that she would say the same about her children), and if she felt the urge, she had no problem telling you to “go to hell”.   In her later stages of Alzheimer’s she would tell me “I love you” and “go to hell” all in the same breath.  And though she had her faults, as we all do, and she and her children had strained relationships from time to time, we were family, and we all loved each other in our own unique and quirky ways.  At this sad time we would love to hear her say, “go to hell” a few more times.   She will be missed.

Mom was preceded in death by her father and mother, Charles (1948) and Nellie Dolman (1977), her ex-husband, Arthur William Monroe, husbands Ernest Hampton (1967), and Thomas Arthur Cassin (1999), her companion Ev Mansfield (2005), her son, Steven Charles Monroe (Hampton) (1999) her brothers, Joey (1920), Roy David (1922) and Charles Dolman, her sisters Evelyn McIntyre (1970) and Katie Robinson (1996).

She lives on through her children, Arthur Hampton, Leanne Hampton Rowlands, and Laurie Hampton, step-son Dan Cassin, her grandchildren, Erin Rowlands Wright and Lindsay Rowlands, Arthur Hampton and Genevieve (Genny) Hampton Inman, her great grandchildren, Kylie and Ashlyn Wright and Hannah, Ashley and Bruce Inman.

Mom’s request to be cremated has been honored and her ashes have been placed with Tom’s at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington

A gathering of family and friends will take place on Sunday, January 4th, at 11:30 a.m., at Emerald Heights in the Garden Room.  Please join us for a lunch of mom’s favorite casseroles and desserts, sweet white wine and coffee (other beverages, too!).  Please bring your funny (mom wants to be remember for her sense of humor), sad, maddening stories, prints of any photos of her that you have, and your laughter and your tears.

Her family would appreciate donations in her memory to the Alzheimer’s Association.

A saying and a poem that were mom’s favorites:

“Growing old is not for sissies!”

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN, I SHALL WEAR PURPLE

(also known as Warning)

by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other peoples’ gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.