Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Dimmick: I don’t remember. (smiling)
Hughes: Sheldon says you responded, “All of the above.”
Dimmick: Probably true then.
Hughes: It sounds like Jim Dolliver’s personality doesn’t it?
Dimmick: It does.
Hughes: Well, it says in our research that there’s a biography that someone named Susan
Cook did with you. Supposedly it’s in the State Archives. We can’t find it.
Dimmick: I don’t recall that at all.
Hughes: Well good. Then I’m starting fresh.
I just finished interviewing Adele Ferguson, the longtime newspaper columnist. I
asked her about her date of birth and she said, “There are three things you should never
ask a woman: her age, her weight, and her salary.” So, with all apologies, for the record,
please give us your full name and date and place of birth.
Dimmick: Carolyn Joyce Reaber Dimmick. I was born in Seattle, Washington, October 24,
1929, The daughter of Maurice and Margaret Reaber.
Hughes: Reaber. I was going to ask you how to pronounce that correctly.
Dimmick: “Ray-bur.” My dad was Danish, a hundred percent Danish. And when his father
came here they changed the name from Riebe to Reaber, thinking it sounded better.
Hughes: Ellis Island did that a lot. In fact, Justice Smith’s father’s name was Delpino – Juan
Delpino. And at the Florida equivalent of Ellis Island they decided that he should be John
Smith. So your dad faired better than that. And Joyce, J-o-y-c-e?
Dimmick: Yes.
Hughes: And Reaber is spelled?
Dimmick: R-e-a-b-e-r
Hughes: Tell us about your parents.
Dimmick: My mother was the daughter of Sophia Donnelly.
Hughes: Is that D-o-n-n-e-l-l-y?
Dimmick: Yes. And my grandmother married Howard Taylor, who was English. My
grandmother Sophia was Irish, and we have a castle in Donegal. My daughter and I and my
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