1957 Honorary Member Profile : Harriet Gadau Foster

Harriet Gadau Foster was an honorary member for 5 short months, from October 1957 until she lost a long battle with diabetes at the age of 26 on March 7, 1958. Fellow Mountaineers recognized 10-1/2 years of service to the club when they voted her its youngest honorary member.

The 15-year-old Lewis and Clark high schooler paid her $2.00 junior dues in 1946 and was appointed to her first of several years on the Outings Committee the following year. She worked on the Membership and Social committees for 2 years each and spent 6 years on the Contact Committee diligently phoning members for all listed club activities, as was then the custom. Harriet helped staff the club's booth at the 1950 hobby show.

Harriet led her first hike for the club-6 miles to the top of Brown's Mountain from the end of the Rockwood bus line-on her 16th birthday, May 11, 1947. Her next time as leader, the Kinnikinnick write-up describes High Mesa and Palisades-"From there in the fresh out-of-doors for a 5-mile highland hike of little lochs and heather-or at least ponds and spring wildflowers." She co-led a 20-miler in 1948 to Devils Den using the old Rockhaven trail. In 1950, it was a huckleberrying trip to Mt. Spokane.

Former president Helen Stowell remembers Harriet as a pleasant, blonde, bespectacled fellow hiker "about my own height-5 ft 4 in." Ex-member Bernadine McClincy recalls "she had very bad eyes." Bernadine has happy memories of a progressive dinner stop at the W. 729 Shoshone home where Harriet lived with her widowed mother, Elizabeth L. Gadau, principal of Audubon and Manito grade schools. Her father, Eugene L. Gadau, who worked in real estate, died after Harriet joined the Mountaineers.

What motivated Harriet to join the Mountaineers? Her brother, Eugene Gadau, doesn't remember her as an "outdoors person." But her love for bird watching and collecting bird eggs may give a clue. Summers spent in Berkeley, California, with her and Eugene's bird-egg collector grandfather, Jules Labarthe, were influential. "He had the third largest domestic bird egg collection in the country," Eugene recalls. "They were housed in huge 6-foot-high, 4-foot-wide oak cabinets." (This collection was eventually donated to the University of Nevada.) The children also hunted bird eggs on summer visits to a family friend's wheat ranch near Grangeville, Idaho. Harriet spotted the eggs and 3-years-younger Eugene gathered them. "She wasn't a tree climber," he points out.

Stamp collecting was another hobby Harriet acquired from their grandfather. Eugene also recalls that Harriet liked history, took piano lessons, and belonged to both the Girl Scouts and the Campfire Girls. "She did a lot of babysitting, too."

Harriet's marriage to John G. Foster occurred "only a year to a year-and-a-half before she died," Eugene recalls. Foster, a Harvard mathematics graduate, was listed in the City Directory as assistant actuary for Great Northwest Life Insurance Co. He and Harriet lived at S. 805 Adams. Eugene doesn't know how the two met, but old Mountaineer records show a John Foster paying dues in 1956 and 1957.

"The diabetes didn't start getting bad until she was 24 or 25," her brother says, remembering the years of daily insulin shots she gave herself. A report at the October 1956 annual meeting noted that "Harriet Gadau is critically ill in the hospital," according to the Kinnikinnick.

Upon Harriet's death, the Spokane Mountaineers paid her one last tribute: a contribution in her name to the crippled children's summer camp "in which she was much interested." Her widower returned to his native New York and remarried.

Lorna Ream

Ferrier expertise and work went into one more big ski project-the construction of yet another ski tow in 1961. This was a "modified" (very!) J-bar with an overhead revolving cable and ropes (discarded by climbers) hanging down from metal hangers. The Model A gave way to an electric motor.

Dorothy, always a Chalet work party regular, gained a reputation for initiative. She had been unable to convince others that the usable, but very "eaten," overstuffed furniture should be replaced. So, more than once, other workers would arrive to view smoldering piles of ashes with a few springs peeking up here and there!

Long before, in the 30's, she teamed up with Matie Johnson (later Daiber) to introduce shorts as appropriate women's garb. "We just showed up in them one Sunday," she laughed. "A few eyed us dubiously, but pretty soon all were wearing them!" Motherhood didn't appear to hamper Dorothy's Club activity. After Jeff's birth in 1939, she served as trustee, librarian, historian, and on the Summer Outing, Educational, Outings, Social, Winter Sports, Projects, Music, Kinnikinnick, and Contact committees, some of them many times. Her record was 11 years on the Contact Committee, two as chair. During World War II, she co-edited the typewritten The Mountain Review, published bimonthly and mailed to 25+ Mountaineer servicemen and women. Besides climbs, hikes, and ski jaunts, she led bicycle trips (sometimes to climbing rocks), ice skating parties, swimming outings, "hobby nights," tennis competitions, picnics, and more. Her final jobs were Ski Committee treasurer in 1963 and 50th anniversary planning in 1965.

Earl served as president in 1943, and vice-president, treasurer, and trustee. Besides chairing and serving many times on the Climbing and Winter Sports committees, he worked on the Commissary, Educational, Contact, and Outing groups. Of note was the time in 1940 when Earl rehearsed and dressed in pink tights as part of the "Boots Ballet" male chorus line for the Club's public carnival. And Helen recalls well the Yoho summer outing where Earl "waded into a raging torrent" to rescue Frank Hefferlin during a precarious river crossing.

At the Ferriers, there were Board meetings and general business meetings, classes, lawn parties, progressive dinner courses, New Year's parties, potlucks, and more. And there were "Spirit Lake Days" at the cabin the Ferriers shared with Ken and Betty Henderson, another pair of Mountaineer climbing and skiing stalwarts. "You had to do these things because the Club needed it," Dorothy said emphatically.

How did these two happen to be in the same place at the same time?

Dorothy was born in 1910 in Mother Lode, BC, where her tool-and-die man father worked in the Nickelplate Mine shop and her mother taught piano. She was in the first grade when her mother died in Vancouver, leaving eight children. "I went to a great-aunt in Okanogan County," she recalled. "What you did in a small town room and board when in high school in Penticton. I was living and working in Vancouver when my oldest sister asked me to live with her in Libby, Montana. She was lonesome." There, Dorothy worked for a zonelite company. "When I was 19, times got kind of tough so I went to Spokane." Dorothy did office work and lived with a friend of her mother's. "Mrs. Flatz thought I should join the Spokane Mountaineers."

Earl was born in Cle Elum in 1915 where his father was a railroad engineer. He graduated from North Central High School in Spokane. "Earl couldn't get on with the railroad because he wore glasses," Dorothy explained. But he heard about a job in the Washington Water Power garage while on a climb.

Earl was foreman of a WWP construction and maintenance crew for many years. When he retired after 39 years, they moved to Coeur d'Alene and lived on the river. "We had a canoe, rowboat, and motorboat," Dorothy remembered.

They lived in East Wenatchee for a time before Earl died and then Dorothy moved to Everett in 1990. The year before her death, she was still hiking. "I walk all the time," she claimed. "I need the exercise."

The family outdoor tradition continues. Jeff, Chris, Gordon, Jane, and their families are still outdoor lovers, and include annual family ski reunions in the Cascades and the Sierras in their activities. Jeff is an IBM senior engineer in San Jose. Chris, who lived next door to Dorothy's house in Everett, teaches high school special education classes. Gordon is a cabinetmaker in Duvall, and Jane is a computer network administrator at Stanford University.

"I enjoyed the Club and got a lot out of it. They helped us," Dorothy emphasized that day when she recalled the past.

Her ashes will join Earl's, sprinkled on the Chalet's old ski slope.

Lorna Ream