John Munro

John Montgomery Munro was the first child of Alexander and Janet Munro. He was born September 12^th, 1891 in the old Pederson house on the family farm at Crystal Springs, and was named after his grandfathers, John Munro and John Montgomery. John knew the value of hard work and education, and he had a deeply ingrained sense of integrity. He was also ambidextrous and could write in “copper-plate” cursive with either hand.

 

When John was a boy, Suquamish Indians spent the summers camped on the beaches of Bainbridge Island, often digging clams to sell in Seattle in hand-woven baskets. One day John and his brother Duncan heard a rhythmic noise in the woods up on the hill, just beyond their property. When they explored, they found native people shaping a log into a canoe right where the tree had fallen. The boys watched the canoe take shape, inside and out, before it was moved to the beach. They remembered and marveled at this throughout their lives.

As he was growing up, John was a role model to his younger brothers and sisters. He took on a great deal of responsibility at home and later he worked with his father on various jobs in Tacoma and elsewhere. At nineteen or twenty, he was apprenticed to a Seattle architect and his future seemed bright. Imagine – a young, intelligent architect with a working knowledge of the trades.

 

But that wasn’t meant to be. John became very ill while working in Seattle and returned home to Bainbridge. For many years, there was a sharp disagreement in the family about his illness. Some adamantly believed that he had the Spanish Flu. Others believed that he had Tuberculosis which, in that place and time, carried a heavy stigma. At the height of his illness he lived in a tent on the south side of the house. His mother cared for him in the tent and fed him raw eggs for their high nutrition and easy digestibility. She also kept a large kettle of boiling water on the cook stove by the kitchen door, and every dish or item that came back from the tent was placed in boiling water to sterilize it. It’s easy to imagine her fear. How could she save her first-born child and, at the same time, keep the remaining nine healthy? Her youngest, James, was an infant or toddler. 

John survived his illness, but he never again thrived. Many times he would regain his strength and stamina and begin to live a fuller life, but any virus or illness would debilitate him, and recovery was always painfully slow. Although he worked various jobs around Bainbridge Island and at the naval shipyard, his health never allowed him to build a career.

 

His most memorable job was as one of the first school bus drivers on Bainbridge Island, and the first to use a motorized vehicle. He transported the Crystal Springs kids to Winslow High School for the princely sum of $7 per day. His contract required him to “furnish suitable conveyance equipped with comfortable seats, and top and side curtains which shall be used during stormy and inclement weather”. The suitable conveyance was a Ford Model T truck. At times, three or four of the kids on his route were his younger brothers or sisters. 

 

 

John also farmed the family place, raising produce, keeping bees and milking a cow or two. Before there was a road to Westwood (north of the family place) there was just a trail that led from house to house all the way to the end. Most of these were summer homes for people who lived in Seattle and elsewhere. John delivered milk, eggs, bread, firewood, etc. along the trail during the summer months, and kept their old homes warm in the winter. He also had a delivery route for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, made soap for the family, and kept all the neighborhood motorboats running.

Ralph Munro remembers being stung by perhaps twenty honeybees when he was about eight years old. Uncle John calmly sat with him and removed the stingers, scraping each with his pocketknife.

As his mother aged, John became her caregiver and the caretaker of the home and farm. After their mother’s death in 1952, John and James continued to share the family home.

John was always a quiet, independent presence. He loved his extended family in an undemonstrative way. As he aged, he retained a profound intelligence that he rarely shared with others. His focus was on keeping things simple, living his daily life by the old ways, and preserving the family place and the memories that were attached to it. John passed away on August 16^th, 1986.

 

 

 

 

 

John was well into his eighties when he told this story about his mother:

My mother heard some women gossiping about a neighbor family – they were having a hard time. One of the women said that if they couldn’t get by on Bainbridge, then they should move somewhere else. My mother was furious, and she sent me to find the family’s oldest boy and bring him to her. When he got there, she marched him up to the Diggens and showed him the potatoes we had stored there. She said “These are our potatoes. They’re all we have for the winter. I want you to come here every day and take enough for your family, we will use enough for our family, and we will run out together.”

 

And he also told a story about his father:

My father was looking for a horse for the farm. He heard there was a good horse for sale at Port Orchard, so my father and brothers and I took the rowboat, and we took turns rowing from Crystal Springs to Port Orchard [about 4 miles]. At Port Orchard we left the boat and started walking the five miles to the farm where the horse was. When we got close, Papa stopped to talk to a neighbor and before long he asked about the horse. The neighbor said, “Well yes, he’s a good healthy horse, but he’ll kick children.” My father had ten. He turned around and we went home without even seeing the horse.

Then he found Fanny. She was an Army horse from down at Fort Lewis, but she was surplussed out because she had a wound on her hock that wouldn’t heal. Papa bought her and took her to the old Ferrier here on Bainbridge. He saw the problem right away. The shoe on her right foot was scraping her left hock. The Ferrier clipped about a half inch off the inside edge of her shoe and Fanny never had a problem again. She worked the farm here for years – our good horse.

For many years a horseshoe hung over the back door of the family home. If you looked closely, you could see that one side of the U was a bit shorter than the other.

       

John’s letters to his brother Bill are a precious glimpse into his life and personality. We’re very fortunate to have these letters which were saved by Bill’s daughter, Cecelia, and shared with us by Cecelia’s daughter, Patty Wiegert.  You can view them below.