1952 Honorary Member Profile : Wanda Palmer Miller

Food, music, hospitality, and hard work. Those were the key ingredients in Wanda Palmer Miller's honorary membership conferred in 1952, 20 years after she and husband Ross Palmer joined the Spokane Mountaineers.

Her obituary in the summer 1966 Kinnikinnick read-

"The success of many a summer outing was assured by her skill in organizing, her unfailing ability to meet any emergency, and her tact and kindliness. Many a wonderful meal she turned out for hungry climbers and hikers, under the most primitive conditions..."

Wanda and Ross were a great team as Ross climbed through the ranks to be president from 1938-1941. Their shared love of cooking fueled hungry participants on the club's very first annual summer outing at Upper Priest Lake in 1935. "And how we did eat! Ross and Wanda did a 100 per cent plus job with the commissary...," the Kinnikinnick reported. Kudos continued: the 1938 Wallows write-up extolled the "the customary incomparable cuisine." Cooking skills were applied at the annual breakfast and "beefsteak" hikes and New Year's Eve celebrations atop Mt. Spokane.

A Board trustee from 1948 through 1951, Wanda was also a committee mainstay: summer outing, membership, social, contact, educational, courtesy, project, and music. Her 10 years on the latter tell of a time when singing was an integral part of club activities. They sang around the campfire on trips, caroled in town and on the annual Christmas tree hike, and published a Mountaineer songbook.

The Palmers' place at S. 1123 Lacey St. was "home" to many club functions: the climbing course exam, a "cabin shower" for the Mt. Spokane property, spring business meetings, Halloween parties, caroling rehearsals, progressive dinner courses, and more. "What could be nicer than a tummy full of one of Wanda's famous hot dishes?" asked a 1947 Kinnikinnick write-up for an evening of movies at the Palmers. Skiing and sledding on a nearby hill, or an in-town hike, were often followed by a "feed" on Lacey St. "Palmers' cozy fireplace is calling us," the Kinnikinnick said. "Bridge, movies, or listening to records. To work up an appetite, meet at the Post Office at 4 p.m. and hike to the Palmer House...hot dish provided, also, marshmallows to roast by the fires."

The popular couple were high school sweethearts in Abington, Illinois, where Wanda Jameson was born in 1899. Her father was a paperhanger. One of nine children, she worked in The Glove overalls factory office there following graduation in 1917. Ross worked for a Chatauqua outfit that produced educational dramas, lectures, and music. Wanda and Ross married in 1923 and moved to Chicago without jobs. In 1931, after the Depression closed the movie theater Ross managed and then the gear manufacturing plant where he had found work, they returned to Abington with their 2-year-old son, Bob, to stay with Ross' parents.

Then Spokane called. A letter from Wanda's sister, Nancy Jameson, who worked for Long Lake Lumber Co. here, said a shirttail relative had a job for Ross at the new Golden Age brewery he was opening. They could live with her in Browne's Addition. The 1932 drive-on dirt roads west of Iowa-took 7 or 8 days, Bob says.

The Depression also brought Wanda and Ross into the Spokane Mountaineers. Aunt Nancy was already a member. Bob explains that some of the guys at Long Lake who were Mountaineers urged her to join because "no one had any money and this was cheap recreation." The summer outing was another bargain. They didn't have cash for the fees, Bob remembers, but the club said, "If you can cook, you can go."

Daughter Mary Kay, now Mrs. Fred Dayharsh, was born in 1934. She and Bob remember their place "always full of Mountaineers" when they weren't somewhere else with the club. On hikes, Bob recalls a lot of teasing because of 5-foot, 1/2-inch Wanda's "tiny, short legs," despite her fast pace. Mary Kay has early memories of the "big backpacks everybody wore" and how her mother enjoyed snowshoeing.

"The whole family was musical," Bob reveals. "Mom played piano and could sing...both of us kids played piano." On club trips, "everybody harmonized around the campfire." Wanda was organist for the Eastern Star lodge; Ross was music custodian for, and sang in, the Mendelssohn Club. Family fun was abundant. Wanda loved to tell jokes. "She was always a barrel of laughs," Bob remembers. "That's why people were drawn to her."

"It was a good childhood, with good people," Mary Kay emphasizes. Bob points up the value of "being exposed to all this good citizenship...and lots of school teachers." As their parents never had a car, they'd catch an early bus a block away for the downtown Post Office where most club trips started, then often board another bus for the trip starting point.

They had always been thrifty, gardening and growing their own chickens. (Little Mary Kay watched her mother apply budgeting skill while shopping for Mountaineer summer outing food supplies.) Ross earned $80 a month, Bob recalls, as secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Cereal, Flour, and Soft Drink Workers, a position he held until switching to the postal service when World War II began.

Wanda's widowed mother came to live with them in the mid-40's and was bedfast there for several years until being moved to a nursing home. "Mother would visit her nearly every night after work," Mary Kay remembers with admiration.

New summer outing cooks took over following Ross' sudden death from a heart attack in a downtown optical store in 1950, but Wanda continued on the outing committee, as trustee, and on the project committee. The Kinnikinnick reports, "Wanda started the ball rolling with a luncheon for 11 members, adding $5.50 to the building fund." And later, "Any ideas for raising money [for the new Mt. Spokane "chalet"] will be appreciated. Call Wanda Palmer."

Necessity sent Wanda back to work, for the Spokane Title Co., 3 months after Ross died. More of Wanda's time was now spent with a Masonic group. At one of the dances, she met Shriner Larry Miller, a postal employee. Marriage to Larry in 1954 brought a move to the north side, plus a Post Office job sorting mail every Christmas. Larry joined the Mountaineers, and in 1956, a "winter potluck" that included a short hike "as a preliminary to the well-laden table of gustatory surprises" was scheduled for the Millers' at N. 5822 Post.

Masonic activities replaced those with the Spokane Mountaineers; Larry was not an outdoorsman. While sitting next to Larry playing cards in April 1966, Wanda dropped over on his shoulder and was gone.

Memories of Wanda Palmer Miller remain vivid. Typical is this from former club president Helen Stowell: "She was real outgoing...always laughing...always willing to do anything!"

Lorna Ream