1992 President Evelyn Pratt

1992 - Evelyn Pratt

I was born in Pittsburgh, PA, but don't know much about it, since we moved to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, when I was 4 months old. Dad worked in my uncle's music store until the Depression hit; when we moved to New York City. I was 5. Mother and Dad were employed as cottage parents in a delinquent boys' facility –no place for a little girl. For 2 years I lived with an Irish Catholic woman and her 20-something daughter.

My parents got me back when Dad was hired by the U.S. Post Office... We rented a second-floor apartment in a NJ town across from NYC.. One day we smelled smoke; our landlady was moving things to the garage. The town's volunteer fire department arrived, and they carried Mother, me, and the dog I'd rescued from under the bed, down to safety.

A year later, to Mother's delight, Dad was transferred to Denver. (As a teen, Mother had lived in Boulder and loved it.). WWII hit; we moved from a North Denver rental house a block from my junior high to a nearby suburb. Eventually I got a scholarship to the University of Colorado, where I majored in biology instead of geology because "women geologists can only teach or look through a microscope." The UC Hiking Club was a godsend.  I hiked and/or rock climbed with them every Saturday.

After graduating, I took a "help repair Europe" trip to Bosnia and London. I’d earned a fellowship at the University of Washington, and returned by bus from Montreal to Seattle. Lovely weather all across the country, but it rained from Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle, and I said to myself, 'I’m staying in the Pacific Northwest ONE YEAR." And more than 60 years later, I'm still here...