Betty and Don MacDonald in Hollywood
Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Betty MacDonald influenced many writers, artists and fans to move to Washington State.
They adore her books and her unique descriptions of nature.
Patricia Longhi is one of many examples.
That's such a great story of Vashon Islander Kay Longhi.
Don't miss this very interesting story, please.
Reading this delightful story I'd like to move to Vashon Island.
Islander Kay Longhi and her twin sister were only 6 years old when they moved to Vashon from Chicago in the 1950s, but Longhi, now in her 60s and still living on Vashon, can vividly recall the move and the events leading up to it.
The decision to leave the Midwest was made by Longhi’s mother, Patricia Longhi, who Kay said was tired of living in cities and longed for the same kind of authenticity she witnessed on childhood vacations to a farm in Maine. Patricia found that opportunity in a 1954 radio interview with infamous island author Betty MacDonald.
“Arthur Godfrey interviewed Betty MacDonald on his radio program. She talked about her book ‘Onions in the Stew,’ and it intrigued Mother,” Kay Longhi said. “When Daddy came home, she announced that we were moving to Vashon.”
Please don't miss the very interesting article below!
I totally agree the author of an oustanding Betty MacDonald biography needs a very good sense of humor.
We will be able to offer you very witty and exciting stories because of our outstanding Betty MacDonald research and many interviews with Betty MacDonald's family and friends by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
We are going to publish new Betty MacDonald fan club items including new Betty MacDonald interviews by Wolfgang Hampel.
Work and life of Betty MacDonald had been honored by Wolfgang Hampel in Vita Magica.
More Betty MacDonald events will follow.
Anyway - we agree that Betty MacDonald's brilliant sister Alison Bard Burnett and Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel have a very good sense of humor.
Betty MacDonald fan club fans from 5 continents enjoy these unique very witty interviews and new ones will follow.
We are looking for signed or dedicated first editions in great condition with dust jackets by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen for our fans.
Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography and new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Join one of our Betty MacDonald fan club research teams, please.
Thanks a million in advance for your outstanding support.
Let's talk about Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest.
You can vote for your favourite Betty MacDonald book cover.
Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest winner will be owner of a signed first edition of one of Betty MacDonald's books.
Send us your mail, please and maybe you'll be the winner of Betty MacDonald fan club surprise.
Good luck!
Our most important research item is an updated Betty MacDonald documentary with lots of new info and interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel told us that Betty MacDonald fan club research team does an excellent job in supporting him with his several Betty MacDonald projects especially an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
Reading this updated Betty MacDonald biography you'll learn the true story of many personalities in Betty MacDonald's books for example the mysterious and rather strange Ms. Dorita Hess from 'Anybody can do anything'.
Tell us, please what should a Betty MacDonald biography include?
Don't hesitate to send us your thoughts, please.
I'd say a real Betty MacDonald biography should also include fascinating info on Betty MacDonald's fascinating brother and sisters including adopted sister Madge.
As we can see Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett got so many fans because of her unique interviews with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
We are going to offer some interviews by Wolfgang Hampel, never published before.
Many fans adore the new outstanding website of beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli.
Surprise, surprise!
We found new radio manuscripts and shows.
We are working on Betty MacDonald fan club exhibit and an updated Betty MacDonald documentary.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel told us that Betty MacDonald fan club research team does an excellent job in supporting him with his several Betty MacDonald projects especially an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
Betty MacDonald fan club event team is very happy to hear from you and they got some really great ideas for the next International event.
Thanks a lot!
You can join Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club on Facebook.
Join us, please. We have lots of fun and joy and had several International ESC meetings in the past.
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica is fascinating because he includes Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.
Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.
Letizia Mancino's magical Betty MacDonald Gallery is a special gift for our Betty MacDonald fan club fans.
We'll have several International Betty MacDonald fan club events in 2019.
Join us in voting for your favourite city, please.
Greetings,
Tina
Wolfgang Hampel's very witty book 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is No 1 Buecher de TOP List.
Wolfgang
Hampels sehr witziges Buch ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is
my favourite animal ) ist No 1 Buecher de TOP Liste.
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
buecher.de - Schnell, Günstig, Versandkostenfrei
Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, weil Krimi-Königin Ingrid Noll Wolfgang ... sehr, daß wir die monatliche literarische Veranstaltung Vita Magica von Wolfgang Hampel bald einmal besuchen können.
Wolfgang Hampel's Satire ist mein Lieblingstier in Buecher de TOP list
You can order Wolfgang Hampel 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' (Satire is my favourite animal)
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Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung "Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg
Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
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Kay Longhi’s parents, Francis and Patricia Longhi, at their north-end home on Cowan Road in the 1960s. (Courtesy Photo)
Coming Home: Betty MacDonald interview drew Longhis from Chicago
Islander Kay Longhi and her twin sister were only 6 years old
when they moved to Vashon from Chicago in the 1950s, but Longhi, now in
her 60s and still living on Vashon, can vividly recall the move and the
events leading up to it.The decision to leave the Midwest was made by Longhi’s mother,
Patricia Longhi, who Kay said was tired of living in cities and longed
for the same kind of authenticity she witnessed on childhood vacations
to a farm in Maine. Patricia found that opportunity in a 1954 radio
interview with infamous island author Betty MacDonald.“Arthur Godfrey interviewed Betty MacDonald on his radio program.
She talked about her book ‘Onions in the Stew,’ and it intrigued
Mother,” Kay Longhi said. “When Daddy came home, she announced that we
were moving to Vashon.”Kay called the early 1950s the “go-go time,” as the interstate
system was being built and car culture was catching on. So, a couple
months after hearing the interview, the family packed up their canary,
dog and belongings — Kay said her mother was a “great animal lover” —
and drove the more than 2,000 cross-country miles to Washington.“I remember crossing the border into Washington and remember
standing in the back seat — those were the days where you could do that,
no seat belts — and Dad stops the car in Spokane and says, ‘We’re
here,’” she recalled. “I just remember thinking, ‘We came all the way
for this?’ Spokane was not much to look at and didn’t quite meet the
expectations I had.”The family’s journey obviously had to go a little farther west,
but ended at a motel on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue. Kay and her family
stayed there a week while her father found a job. Shortly after, the
Longhi family moved to West Seattle.
“A tiny house clinging to the hillside” is how Longhi recalled that first home.
She and her sister started first grade in West Seattle before the
family moved to a home on Cowan Road at the north end of Vashon the
following year, 1955. Her mother fell in love with the island and never
looked back.
“We came to this island, which was secluded, out of the big
city,” Longhi said. “We could see the mountains, as well as the sound.
She would walk all over Vashon and loved being surrounded by water. She
was very, very happy.”
The home was also not far from MacDonald’s, although Kay says her mother did not find that out until after she bought the home.
“I don’t know how she knew the house (Betty Macdonald’s) was close … but she was aware of it,” Kay Longhi said.
And while her mother never met MacDonald, she did meet her sister, Mary Bard.
Patricia Longhi went on to live in that same north-end home for
56 years. She moved out in 2011, three years before her death at the age
of 91.
“Mother was very much a loner in her heart. She liked solitude and
wanted to be in the rugged, great outdoors,” Kay Longhi said before
explaining that her mother grew up in an affluent family in New York
City and was expected to become a socialite.
“She abhorred the life,” Longhi said. “She loved the summers she
spent on the coast of Maine. They always went to Laudholm Farm — a
working farm with outbuildings that were rented out in the summer.”
It was a lifestyle similar to that of the farm that Patricia
Longhi found on Vashon, and that authenticity and community is what has
kept Kay Longhi here. Longhi attended college in Portland, moved to
Seattle, then moved to North Carolina and Mobile, Alabama, but because
her mother was here, she followed what was happening on the island and
would always come visit.
“Because I was raised here, I never lacked a sense of home,” she
said. “The community here has been my go-to place both mentally and
physically. I’ve always been very centered. There’s a real sense of
community and home I’ve never felt anywhere else.”
Longhi moved back to Seattle in 1997. By 2008, her mother was in
her 80s and suffering from dementia, and Kay moved into a small cabin on
her mother’s property to take of her. She was eventually moved to a
memory care home in 2011 and died in 2014, but her mother’s dream of
rural living in the north-end home continues to this day, as her
great-grandchildren are growing up in the same house.
“My sister’s child, so my niece and her family, live there,”
Longhi said. “Houses don’t come up for sale on Vashon because one
generation leaves and another comes in.”
But the Vashon home is not the only lasting evidence of Patricia
Longhi’s search for a more rural, authentic life. During her life on
Vashon, she discovered the Washington coast, and Kay said her mother saw
many similarities between it and the Maine coastline of her childhood.
She and a few other island families bought land and primitive cabins in
the mid-60s on a strip of coast that is now part of the Olympic National
Park.
“The federal government came in and claimed eminent domain and
declared it wilderness. There were two choices, either have the home
torn down and take the money the government gives you, or have the
government take it over when the owner dies. Mother put the home in her
children’s names, so it’s still there.”
The three-story cabin has no electricity and no running water. It’s tall and skinny, perched on a cliff so her mother could see the water below her. “For Mother, it was the ultimate solitude,” Longhi said. “It was just about where she wanted to be.”
The three-story cabin has no electricity and no running water. It’s tall and skinny, perched on a cliff so her mother could see the water below her. “For Mother, it was the ultimate solitude,” Longhi said. “It was just about where she wanted to be.”
