Gladys Myrtle Kipp

1890s

Born 1 April 1893 in Chilliwack, British Columbia, on the road named for her family.

1900s–1910s

A store clerk at W. T. Rolfe's Dry Goods from August 1909, then at Lillie's Grocery, before leaving in June 1911 to start a nursing course in Vancouver.

1910s

Married Harry Lobb. On 7 November 1919 she followed him across the line into Blaine, Washington, on the Great Northern Railway.

1920s–1930s

Raised her family in the Bellingham area, visiting her parents in Chilliwack at Christmas. She was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on 5 July 1939, before Judge Jeremiah Neterer.

1980s

Died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle on 8 July 1984, aged 91.

A Musical Childhood in Chilliwack

Gladys Myrtle Kipp was born on April 1, 1893, in Chilliwack, British Columbia, and grew up on the Kipp family farm — a household with no telephone, radio, or electric light, but one that produced a remarkably well-documented childhood. She nearly drowned in the mud during a flood in 1894, was badly cut by glass the following year, and watched more than one neighboring house burn down from her upstairs window over the years, on one occasion narrowly putting out a fire of her own making when her sister Frankie dozed off reading the Eaton's catalogue with a lit lamp too close by. She was a serious student of music from girlhood: she passed Royal Academy music-theory examinations, performed piano recitals and elocution pieces at Chilliwack's Knight's Opera House, sang in church cantatas, and in June 1909 played the women's chorus in a full production of Gilbert and Sullivan's “The Mikado.” She was also an able athlete, winning foot races at the Chilliwack Fall Exhibition several years running, and played third base for the “Roses,” her high school's baseball team, in a 16–15 win over the town's public school in 1906.

Nurse's Training and the Spanish Flu

After a spell as a store clerk in Chilliwack, Gladys left in June 1911 to train as a nurse in Vancouver, joining the Burrard Sanitarium staff before ill health forced her to abandon the course in February 1912. She tried again a few years later, training at Vancouver General Hospital from about 1916, and by May 1916 had completed a year's training — her sister Frankie was training there alongside her. In the winter of 1918–19, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic, Gladys nursed at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, then returned to Vancouver General that June to work in the operating department.

Marriage and Ferndale

Gladys married Harry Lobb in Mount Vernon, Washington, on August 23, 1919, and crossed into Blaine, Washington, that November to join him. She helped with the books at Lobb Electric Company in its early Ferndale years — sales, collections, minding the store — while she and Harry raised their family through a long string of Ferndale homes, from Sterling Avenue to Malloy Avenue to the house they finally built on Vista Drive in 1953, and wintered for years afterward in Arizona. In her later years in Ferndale she returned to nursing part-time, working three days a week as a visiting nurse in December 1944, and went on to volunteer for many years at Swedish Hospital in Seattle after she and Harry retired to the city.

Widowhood and Later Years

After Harry's death in 1969, Gladys moved between Bellingham and Seattle, living at Orchard Terrace and then at an apartment on Terrace Street in Seattle, near Swedish Hospital where she continued her volunteer work. She died there on July 8, 1984, at ninety-one.