PORT ANGELES — Actors will depict six colorful characters from Port Angeles’ past during a walk through Ocean View Cemetery on Saturday.
“Whispers From Our Past: A Spirited Walk Through Ocean View Cemetery” will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Space is limited to 20 adults. The tour is not suitable for children, organizers said.
The cost of the tour is $20. Participants will park at Ocean View Cemetery 3127 W. 18th St., and meet at its chapel.
The walk will visit the graves of six residents of Port Angeles’ past — Doc Ludden, Tom Guptill, G.M. Lauridsen, Minerva Troy, Elsye Winters Mitchell and Madge Nailor — while actors tell visitors about the lives of each.
The tour is presented by the Heritage Days organization, which is a partnership of the Port Angeles Downtown Association and Clallam County Historical Society.
“Every town has its own rich history,” said Kathy Monds, executive director of the Clallam County Historical Society.
“What makes that history come to life and be remembered are the people — some famous, some not — who contributed their time, money and support to make their community a better place to live.”
Tickets are available at Odyssey Bookshop, 114 W. Front St.
Each visitor will receive a Whispers From Our Past bag with souvenirs of the walk. Hot cider from Lazy J Farms and Doughnuts from Cock A Doodle Doughnuts will be served.
Heritage Days, a festival marking the history of Port Angeles, was celebrated in August and next year will be held in mid-September.
The committee plans events every two or three months leading up to 2012, when the city will mark its 150th anniversary, said April Bellerud, event chairwoman and owner of Odyssey Bookshop.
Port Angeles was established as a townsite by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 by executive order.
“We want to broaden the scope of what Heritage Days is all about,” Bellerud said.
“It’s so much more than places. It’s the people who really make our history colorful,” she said.
Background
Here is some information about the people who will be remembered during the tour.
■ Doc Ludden was known as the Bee Man of Geyser Valley, which is near the Elwha River, Monds said.
Little is known about him before he arrived on the North Olympic Peninsula in 1906.
Ludden homesteaded on the Elwha River, made his own clothing, hunted elk, worked as a hunting guide, cut hair and sold honey in Port Angeles, Monds said.
■ Tom Guptill was an artist who came to Port Angeles in the late 1880s, Monds said.
He mostly did sign painting, was active in the Klahhane Hiking Club — also writing poetry for the club — and the Clallam County Sportsmen’s Association, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1920.
Guptill illustrated one of E.B. Webster’s books, Monds said.
He worked upstairs in a building at 201 E. Front St., out of what was the Johnson and Bork Paint company. The building eventually housed Parker Paints and is now vacant after a fire last year.
■ G.M. Lauridsen, whose name lives on in the G.M. Lauridsen Trust and Lauridsen Boulevard, arrived in Port Angeles in 1982 after emigrating from Denmark.
He landed in Connecticut in 1880 and became a U.S. citizen in 1886, Monds said.
Lauridsen was an entrepreneur with several businesses, including a grocery store. He also built the Lincoln Theater on First Street.
He took a world tour and wrote a book about it: Impressions Gathered on a 39,000-Mile Tour of the World. Copies of the book are available at the historical society’s research center at the Lincoln School Complex at 933 W. Ninth St. in Port Angeles.
■ Minerva Troy was the only Clallam County woman to serve in World War I, Monds said.
At the age of 41, she joined the American Red Cross as either a nurse or a nurse’s aide, Monds said, and served in hospitals in France in 1917.
Troy was a painter and singer who followed her father to the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony after he moved to Port Angeles in 1887.
Known for her china painting, she made her living teaching painting, Monds said.
Her father had his business and home in the building at 138 W. First St., now known as the Richard B. Anderson Federal Building.
“She did not want to give that property up after his death in the 1930s,” when the federal government wanted to install a post office there, Monds said.
“The townspeople raised enough money to build her a new home so that she would agree to give up the land without a fight,” Monds said.
■ Elsye Winters Mitchell was the only adult war casualty on U.S. mainland soil during World War II, Monds said.
Originally from Port Angeles, she and five children were killed in Oregon by a balloon bomb from the Japanese, Monds said.
She was 26 years old and pregnant when she was killed.
■ Madge Nailor will be represented by her granddaughter, Brenda Nailor, on Saturday.
Madge came with her parents to the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony in 1887.
In 1919, she was appointed treasurer of Port Angeles and served in that position for 30 years.
She died when Brenda was in her teens.
For more information, phone Monds at 360-452-2662.
