Page 6 - 2022 SWHS Spring Newsletter for website

play around the deep water and dock Effie also managed the Greyhound “I wished I had listened a little better
where steamers were loading cord wood bus stop a few doors down from the and asked questions then, but I was just
forced Effie to close her business. launderette and lived in the back room. a 13-year-old kid,” he said.
She became a widow at age 26 and She cleaned the Langley Methodist Helen Price Johnson, now serving as
remained single the rest of her life. Church and taught Sunday School there State Director for USDA Rural Devel-
The article continues: for many years. She also tended bar at opment, remembers Effie as “a strong
She moved out near Brooks Hill and the Doghouse from time to time, and woman with rough hands, gray wavy
in the 1920s there was a series of jobs, was a popular columnist for the Whid- hair, and a no nonsense, business de-
first at the school, then at the Peterson bey Record for a number of years. meanor. Effie was a hard worker!”
Glendale store and post office, next at a Journalist Sue Ellen White comment-
Clinton grocery store, and finally back Memories of Effie ed, “When I arrived on the island in the
again to the school job. “Grandma Effie Mae was very in- fall of 1970 Langley was a quiet place
For a time she traveled throughout dependent, and self-supported,” says with many empty storefronts. The main-
the western part of the state selling grandson Tom Christoe, who took care stays of the town were the Primaveras’
Youth Skin cosmetics but she soon re- of her in her declining years. “She also Star Store, Rich Clyde at the garage,
turned to Langley where she worked in had a great sense of humor.” Norm Desdier at the Doghouse, the Post
a restaurant for a year. Later she oper- Granddaughter Jan Christoe re- Office, and Effie.
ated a market in Anacortes. For a time marked, “Gram Effie was as industri- “She was quite elderly by then, but
she worked in a shipyard that was con- ous as a young, single mother with two still industrious, shuffling in her slippers
structing ocean-going tugs. kids to raise could be. She worked hard between the laundry and the Doghouse,
She shucked oysters in sub-freezing physical labor all her life. where she cleaned the place. She ran the
weather in Bellingham, then worked for “She recruited me to work with her on laundry, which was also the Greyhound
the ships service cafeteria at the Whid- her cleaning jobs when I was a young bus stop and package drop.
bey Naval Air Station. During WWII teenager. I remember cleaning the Chris- “Effie was friendly to us newcomers
she was a Civil Defense plane spotter tian Science Church, Dr. Purdy's office, and was a constant, but quiet, presence
and with more than 2500 hours of duty, George Pennock’s newly constructed along First Street. She kept things run-
enough to earn a citation. Langley Motel as well as others. She also ning that people needed–the laundry, the
During all of this she always consid- worked as a waitress at the Langley Cafe. bus stop–and kept the Doghouse clean,
ered Langley her home and after four “My brothers and I were summer vag- which must have been a chore after the
years of wandering she returned in abonds as both parents worked, so we weekend dances in the back that caused
1948 and opened a gift shop and a laun- spent a lot of time hanging out at the the building to shake,” she said.
derette /dry cleaning service in Langley. beach and at Gram's shop. Granddaughter Jo Smith remembers
It was located adjacent to Earl Ste- “My mother Hazel (Effie’s daughter), riding the bus from Anacortes to Lang-
phenson's Barber Shop on First Street was editor of the Whidbey Record at ley as an 8-year-old to spend a week
to the right of The Doghouse. the time, and the three of us spent ev- with her Grandmother.
ery summer day at the “She was the best! I remember hang-
beach. Gram would of- ing out at the laundromat with her and
ten treat us to ice cream playing on the beach. Then she would
at the Langley Cafe, or take me to the Star Store for a milk-
offer a few pennies to shake,” she said.
spend at the candy store Effie and her birth-father Oliver evi-
directly across the alley dently reunited, for she took care of him
from the cafe,” she said. in the final months of his life in Langley
“Effie always wore in 1936.
these fluffy house slip- Effie, Oliver, and her mother, Ella
pers as she walked be- Bradshaw Cogean Morse are all buried
tween the laundry and in Langley Cemetery.
the Greyhound bus sta- There was a large turnout for her me-
tion,” Mark Myres re- morial service when Effie died in 1979.
members. Her headstone has an etching of ma-
“She was a nice lady ple trees on it along with the inscription:
and used to tell me sto- A Very Special Person.
ries about growing up in Indeed she was.
Effie, (left) and some of her siblings: Lillian, Joe, and Langley and about Jacob
Lena Cogean. Anthes, the town founder.
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