I recently found a letter my mother wrote to my father after the major 7.1 earthquake that struck the Seattle/Tacoma area on April 13, 1949. Coincidentally, I discovered the letter the same day reports emerged about earthquakes in Venezuela, California, and Japan.
At the time of the earthquake, my mother was 22 years old. During the week, she lived in a Seattle apartment and worked as a secretary and hat-check “girl” at the Washington State Press Club in downtown Seattle. On weekends, she returned to Tacoma, where her mother and younger sister lived. She spent the weekend with her two children, Daryl Lee (“DL”) and Alene (“Nene”), who were living on a Tacoma-area farm with Helen, a trusted family friend who cared for them while my father was away. He was in Illinois, training to become an Air Force flight engineer.
My mother’s letter offers a firsthand account of what it was like to experience one of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant earthquakes. Reading her words today provides a vivid reminder that behind every historic event are ordinary people whose lives were changed in extraordinary ways.
