PORT ANGELES — A Clallam County historian and author who wrote about experiences as varied as living on the Hoh River and being part of the crowd watching President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visit Port Angeles in 1937 has died at the age of 91.
Mary Lou Hanify died Tuesday in Port Angeles of age-related causes.
A memorial is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Drennan-Ford Funeral Home, 260 Monroe Road in Port Angeles.
A guestbook is available at www.drennanford.com.
Articles, books
Hanify was a prolific writer who authored more than 100 articles in travel and special-interest magazines, according to Mavis Amundson, editor of Sturdy Folk, published in 1994, which includes two essays by Hanify.
Hanify authored four books and received 22 awards for writing.
Among the books were two about the First Ladies of Washington State and Their Families: The Light in the Mansion, published in 1971, and First Families, published in 1988.
She also wrote For the Love of a Ranger, published in 1980, about her experiences as a forest ranger’s wife on the Hoh River and co-authored the Guide to the Hoh Rain Forest, printed in 1977 and 1985, with Craig Blencowe.
Born June 10, 1921, in Castle Rock in southwestern Washington as Mary Lou Price to William and June Price, she moved to Port Angeles when she was 10, according to Amundson.
She was a teenager in the 1930s and described teen life in Great Depression Port Angeles for Amundson’s book.
With her friends, she rode her bike to Lake Sutherland to swim and play tennis, went to movies at the Olympian Theater, skated at a downtown roller skating rink and visited the music store to listen to records.
Hanify wrote that despite the Depression, her family often ate well after she fished for crab off the waterfront dock with a piece of salt pork.
“There was no pollution to worry about — at least, we didn’t know it if there was, and there were no rules about measurements or sexual species of the crab,” she wrote.
Roosevelt’s visit
Roosevelt visited Port Angeles in 1937 to look at the wilderness area proposed for what would later be designated Olympic National Park.
In 1968, Hanify wrote about Roosevelt’s historic visit for The Seattle Times Sunday magazine, and in 1994, she revised her story for Sturdy Folk.
“I was one of the school children who crowded the Clallam County Courthouse lawn on Lincoln Street in Port Angeles when President Franklin Roosevelt came to town,” Hanify wrote in Sturdy Folk and in an essay on www.HistoryLink.org.
She described the preparations, arrival and events that took place during the presidential visit and the establishment of the Olympic National Park.
“Olympic National Park was born, and many of us who lived in the area at that time still remember the day the president came to town,” she wrote.
After graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1939, she married John M. Miller of Vashon, who was killed in France at the age of 22 during the early years of World War II, leaving her with a 15-month-old daughter, Gretchen, according to Amundson.
She later married Charles “Bud” Hanify, a national park ranger, and they had three children, Laura, Bruce and Carol, said Marie Beam, 95, a member of the Clallam County Historical Society and volunteer docent historian at the Museum at the Carnegie.
“She spent years driving between the Hoh Ranger Station and Forks, where her children went to school,” Beam said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
