A family’s saga, told by mother and daughter

JOYCE — Eleanor Corey Guderian remembers helping take apart her family home — board by board — and relocating it down the highway.

She also recalls being one of 10 children growing up in Joyce with an authoritarian father and a mother with her own brand of humor. The Corey family, said this daughter, lived a hardscrabble life that gave her vivid stories to tell.

This Saturday, Guderian will set up a table at Joyce Daze, the annual festival along state Highway 112 near the Joyce Depot Museum which will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and offer her new book, “Pots, Pans & Peace: The Legacy of Margaret Corey,” published in 2020. She’ll also have copies of its predecessor, “Sticks, Stones & Songs: The Corey Story,” her 2014 memoir of growing up the seventh of 10 siblings.

Inspired by her mother’s journals and love letters, “Pots, Pans & Peace” covers more than 50 years of life on the North Olympic Peninsula — from Clallam Bay to Port Ludlow — where her father served as a minister.

“The book is written in my mother’s voice,” said Guderian, 78, an author, music teacher and public speaker who lives in Stanwood.

She added that “Pots, Pans & Peace” steps inside the marriage of a feisty wife and her faith-infused husband, starting with their move from Tacoma to Joyce.

In 1937, Arthur Corey bought the Ramapo grange hall and turned it into the family’s home and church. By the mid-1940s, he decided it was time to move, hence the dismantling and relocation of the house onto a larger piece of land.

There were years when the family had no car; “we were so dirt poor,” Guderian recalled. Her dad became an itinerant preacher, catching rides on delivery trucks across Clallam County.

He also taught a Bible class, led a prayer meeting and preached some Sundays at Joyce Bible Church. It “became a lighthouse in the community,” Margaret remembers.

The arrival of a new pastor, new rules and “variances of opinion,” as Margaret called them, led to departure from Joyce, first to a Sequim group called Olympic Gospel Tabernacle and then to Swansonville in East Jefferson County.

Arthur taught Bible study and led the singing while Margaret played piano, and gradually he became the primary speaker at the church there. By the late 1970s the couple had put down roots, and on Easter Sunday in 1980 Arthur led the first Christian Congregation of Port Ludlow service for more than 100 worshippers.

He pastored at the Swansonville Church for nearly 20 years until his death, Guderian noted.

With “Pots, Pans & Peace,” she sought to chronicle her mother’s journey through 60 years of marriage to a man who was “not easy on her, and not easy on us,” she said.

“Servants of the Lord … are human and they act like humans. That makes the story rich.”

Margaret had her own mind about things, Guderian added — but her husband’s will dominated the relationship. At the same time, “he couldn’t live without her.”

Arthur and Margaret celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1989 with a family reunion. Soon after, Margaret discovered she had cancer and underwent surgery, but never fully recovered.

In October 1990, a few months after Margaret’s death, Guderian came to stay with her dad for a while. In her book’s epilogue, she writes about their second morning together. At the kitchen table, Arthur told her of a vision he’d had of his wife standing at the foot of his bed.

“There she was, dressed in a shimmery green dress, the young, beautiful woman with whom I’d fallen in love. It was as if she wanted to assure me she was young and healthy again, and we’d be together forever.”

The Coreys lived through the Great Depression, World War II and a lifetime of change. They raised 10 children who have traveled widely; several of them are getting together in Joyce on Saturday.

Guderian, for her part, hopes readers will delight in her family’s story, told from different perspectives in her two books. Both are available at Odyssey Bookshop and Port Book and News in Port Angeles, at the Joyce Depot Museum and via the author’s website, eleanorcorey.com.

“My parents had such a love for each other,” Guderian said, “that overshadowed, by far, the trials that came their way.”

________

Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladaily news.com.