Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

taking a man’s job if they went back to the classroom?
Dimmick: Well, I don’t know what the theory was but I know that when the war came along
they were using Rosie the Riveters and everybody went to work. So that changed everything,
I believe.
Hughes: So did your mother go to work then?
Dimmick: No. She wasn’t doing anything like that. She was just writing and staying at home,
taking care of the kids. As I said, later she taught in community college and they extended
her. She was still teaching at 75.
Hughes: What did she teach?
Dimmick: She taught English to the foreign born. She taught French. She taught math, she
was very smart. She was a substitute teacher for a number of years in the high schools
around here. You could be a substitute teacher by then.
Hughes: As a girl, what did you like to do growing up? Did you read a lot of books?
Dimmick: Oh, I read the Oz books. Remember the Wizard of Oz books?
Hughes: My wife collects them. She still loves her Oz books.
Dimmick: Sure, we all do. … I don’t know what happened to mine. They were left in Juneau,
probably.
Hughes: Was there a movie theater in Juneau. Could you go to the Saturday matinee
growing up?
Dimmick: I don’t recall ever doing that in Juneau because I came down (to Seattle) in the
third grade. I went to fourth grade down here.
Hughes: So you were there four years?
Dimmick: Kindergarten through the third grade.
Hughes: What elementary school did you go to here?
Dimmick: We moved back to Ballard and I went to Whittier Grade School. Then we moved
up on Phinney Ridge and I went to Alexander Hamilton, then to Lincoln High School, on the
other side of the Ridge, in Wallingford.
Hughes: Was that a real close-knit neighborhood growing up? The kids all walked to school?
Dimmick: Yes. Well, school was right across the street from me. John B. Allen was where I
went for fifth and sixth.
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