The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [139]
Whether Clara and her friends lost thousands in a risky venture affected by the war is unknown, but returning to Spokane and taking a position as a waitress suggests that Clara was starting over. Olea did have Clara’s power of attorney, a sign of great trust between the women who shared housing in Spokane, lived on Fairview and Cleveland, and purchased burial plots together. The three women looked after each other as family.
There is no evidence that Chauncey Depew, who was a senator from New York and who did help the women return to Spokane, ever purchased the signatures. But in a twist of fate, a descendant of Helga’s did marry a great-nephew of Chauncey Depew, linking the Estbys with the Depews in yet another intriguing way.
John Doré is a speculated character. However, there was a Doré in Manistee, Michigan, around the time of Clara’s birth, and Clara Doré was the mother of a male Doré in that census; I named him John.
Clara began working for Merchants Rating & Adjustment Company in 1917, a position she held until her death from cancer in 1950. Her niece Thelma and Thelma’s husband brought Clara a bouquet during her illness, and Clara told them it was the first time she’d ever received flowers in her life. They greatly cheered her.
The women attended the Unity Church in Spokane, and when Olea died in 1935, the Reverend Emma Wells did perform the service at the Cleveland home. Louise died three years later. After Helga died, Clara and Ida shared the home Clara owned on Eighth Street in Spokane along with Bill and Margaret, who paid their rent to Clara.
Family stories record that Clara traveled with a man to Europe and enjoyed imported European furniture. The Bahrs and Portches look after exquisite settees and chairs Clara gave them. She enjoyed stamp collecting, wore fine jewelry (Norma Fay has Clara’s ring and Helga’s red shoes), and knew of fashion, though she dressed modestly and fussed often with her hair. She rode the streetcar across town to pick up special pastries and share lunch with her sister Lillian and niece. Norma Fay Lee, now in her eighties, recalls never hearing of the story of the walk until she was an adult. She and her husband of sixty-plus years began their marriage in a rental owned by Clara.
The burial plot Clara purchased next to Olea and Louise was never used by Clara. When she died in 1950, Clara’s surviving siblings (Bill, Ida, and Lillian) had her buried in the Estby plot at Mica Creek. The unused burial plot with Clara’s friends was sold back to the cemetery by Norma Fay in 1998. Ida was the last of the Estby children to die, at the age of ninety-nine.
While I discovered much about Clara, where she went and who she was with, I had to speculate about where she got the money to buy property, what she might have been doing in Coulee City, and who this man was she traveled with. One descendant reported his mother saying that Clara had been a courtesan and then corrected herself, saying she “traveled” often to Europe with a man.
Descendants reported that Ole was adamant about Helga not making presentations about the walk after they returned and that he forbade her to write the book or even speak of the journey. Knowing that the daughters burned the manuscript Helga wrote after her husband’s death, and knowing that even her son held resentment for her having left them to make the walk, it seemed feasible that Ole might well have seen the source of Clara’s funds—if they did come from “eastern parties”—as unacceptable. Helga was a guilt-ridden and shattered woman after their return, and her ability to resist the flood of grief, anger, and demands of her husband and children would have been negligible. Some answers will never be known, but I’ve tried to uncover the truth as revealed by the facts and stories as best I can.
Whether