Clara Emery, 96, known for rollicking tales

In an orchard in Salmon Creek, not far from the Columbia River, a very old climbing rose wound its way through the branches of a tilting, gnarled apple tree. Clara Emery, who grew up in that Finnish-speaking Wahkiakum County community, often wondered if the rose was holding up the apple or the apple holding up the rose.

As an adult, she came to see the rose and apple tree as a metaphor for a happy marriage. She was married 76 years to Bud Emery, whom she had known only three days before they exchanged their wedding vows.

Mrs. Emery, 96, died in her sleep Sunday, Jan. 21, at the Federal Way retirement home where she and her husband were living.

On Thursday, Bud Emery, their daughter, Anne Anderson, and a small group of friends gathered at Salmon Creek Cemetery for the burial, not far from where Mrs. Emery grew up.

In July 7, 2002, the Emerys were featured in a Seattle Times story in which Mrs. Emery explained one way to a happy marriage was "never going to bed angry."

Friends knew Mrs. Emery for her sense of humor, and her stories of the couple's lives together told again and again around her dining-room table over coffee and cookies. Often her rollicking tales would be followed by her husband's droll "Oh, Clara!"

Mrs. Emery was born in Centerville, Klickitat County, on Aug. 23, 1910, and while still young moved to the homestead at Salmon Creek, in a Finnish settlement. She grew up speaking Finnish. She went to Lower Salmon Creek School and Naselle High School and worked in the Deep River Cooperative Store, when Deep River was a thriving logging and port town.

She remembered riding with her mother in a horse-drawn cart to the polling place in 1920, the year women won the right to vote, knowing that her father and brothers thought women voting was a silly notion.

In 1930, Mrs. Emery and a girlfriend went to Newport, Ore., for a few days and it was then she met her future husband. He had patches on the sleeves of his sweater and she found that "humble and endearing," she told The Times in 2002. The couple they were with decided to get married then and there, and Bud and Clara dared each other to do the same.

They were married in the middle of the night in a double wedding July 7, 1930, at the home of a Congregationalist minister in Newport. Over the years they endured the death of two children as well as separation during World War II and when Bud went to sea and worked on a seagoing dredge up and down the Oregon Coast.

Mrs. Emery, who lived on Queen Anne Hill and in Puyallup before settling in Federal Way, was also uprooted when her husband was transferred to work on a dredge in the Panama Canal Zone, and she was left alone during the Panama Flag Riots of 1964, when resentment over U.S. policies spawned violence. When told to evacuate, she grabbed the first things she thought of, "a gun and clean underwear," she once told a friend.

No matter what hardships she faced, Mrs. Emery triumphed and never lost her "sweet nature," said Celeste Riedel, a longtime friend.

Besides Mrs. Emery's husband and daughter, she is survived by three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Memorial services will be at 1:30 p.m. today at Foundation House, 32290 First Ave. S., Federal Way.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Deep River Pioneer Lutheran Church in care of Penttila's Chapel by the Sea, P.O. Box 417, Long Beach, WA 98631.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com