Sylvia was the fourth child of Sofia and Eli, and their only daughter. She read voraciously, but never finished high school. Instead, she married Esmerald Robert Goodman, “Uncle Buck.” Leaving school wasn’t unusual for a woman born early in the 1900s, but she happened to mention it to Patty and me when we were in our early teens. Patty was fascinated, and Aunt Sylvia hurriedly stated that in the 1960s, girls should finish school. It didn’t work—Patty left school and married early on anyway. Buck and Sylvia’s only child, their daughter Audrey, was born in 1930. She took all her looks from the Goodman side of the family: she was a slim brunette with clear features, and quite a beauty.
Uncle Buck was a career Coastguardsman. He had a lean build, straight dark hair, and wore a brush-style mustache. Among other duty assignments, he served at Bandon, Oregon. Buck and Sylvia were living in Bandon in 1936, when sparks from a logging operation ignited a fire in the gorse that had invaded the site—planted by an immigrant nostalgic for the gorse of his native Ireland. The town was destroyed. In 1986, Buck and Sylvia were interviewed about the fire. They were living in Eugene, OR, and were 78 and 76 years old respectively. They were interviewed by reporter Don Bishoff for the Eugene Register Guard for a story that ran on October 1. It doesn’t scan well in JPEG, and this website doesn’t support PDF so that I can post it, so I summarize it here.
On September 26,1936, Buck was the commander of the Coast Guard station in Bandon, OR. He had gone hunting, and Sylvia was cleaning house, a Coast Guard apartment overlooking the Coquille River, when Bandon burned. Thirteen people perished, and all but 16 of the 500 buildings in town burned to the ground. Most of the population of 1500 were left homeless. “My friend Eleanor came rather breathlessly up the hill, dragging her little girl with her, and said,’We’ve got to get out of here—I’ve got a pound of butter, you get a loaf of bread ‘” Sylvia said. “She was excited.”
People panicked. One woman told her husband to throw the silver in a pillow case and bring it to the car. He brought all the pillowcases, and no silver. “Sylvia didn’t function much better,” the reporter said. He quoted Sylvia, “I got a paper sack. I had just bought a carton of Camel cigarettes. I ripped open that carton and took out one package of cigarettes. And at the last moment I decided someone might get injured, so I stuffed the bag full of freshly laundered dish towels and bath towels—and that’s all that I took.”
Sylvia told how some townspeople gathered in the Coast Guard parking lot. One older couple was weeping because, although they had brought some furniture, they had left their dentures in the house, and didn’t know if they could afford new sets, ever again. Later, they discovered their home and their teeth intact, but their furniture burned when the Coast Guard station ignited.
A Coast Guard boat evacuated Sylvia and Audrey to the north bank of the Coquille, where they spent the night, but not so eventfully as a woman who gave birth on the beach. On the south bank, people were forced to wade into the ocean when the driftwood on the beach ignited in the heat of the fire.
After his hunting trip, Buck rushed home to find only ruins. He had to take a bearing on the light house, which hadn’t burned, to find his way. The Coast Guard boat took him to Sylvia on the north bank, but Audrey had already been evacuated to Coos Bay.
Sylvia worked for several days in a Red Cross soup kitchen and clothing distribution point. Buck and his eight-man crew set up temporary quarters in the lighthouse. The town was rebuilt, but Buck was transferred to Ilwaco, WA, before then. But they saved one souvenir of Bandon, a pair of teacups that had fused in the heat of the fire.
That’s the end of Don Bishoff’s article, but Buck and Sylvia told me a few more stories about Bandon. After the fire, she combed through the ashes until she found a special coin, and American three-cent coin made of nickel.
Buck told of some coastguardsmen finding a baby seal, and putting in into the warmth of the station over night, where it promptly perished: seals don’t sweat, and it got too hot.
And he told me of the Japanese fire-bombing of the American west coast during WWII. He saw a plane coming down the coast. He aimed the anti-aircraft gun at the plane and held it in his sights. But he didn’t fire: he had absolutely no ammunition in his station. Wikipedia says:
The Lookout Air Raids occurred on September 9, 1942. The first and only aerial bombing of mainland America by a foreign power occurred when an attempt to start a forest fire was made by a Japanese Yokosuka E14Y1 "Glen" seaplane dropping two 80 kg (180 lb) incendiary bombs over Mount Emily, near Brookings, Oregon. The seaplane, piloted by Nobuo Fujita, had been launched from the Japanese submarine aircraft carrier I-25. No significant damage was officially reported following the attack, nor after a repeat attempt on September 29.
Brookings is near Bandon, but Buck shouldn’t have been there by 1942 unless he was transferred back after Ilwaco.
Buck eventually had to take medical discharge from the Coast Guard. He had had appendicitis, but also had lost part of his hearing in one ear. And he was bitter at being accused of being disloyal, because he wore a mustache shaped like Hitler’s.
His discharge was medical/honorable, and he continued to receive medical treatment at the Coastguardsmen’s facility in Seattle. In particular, he received traction for a back injury. That’s where Sylvia went for her physicals, too, and where she was just leaving the doctor’s office when she thought to mention an itchy wart on her neck. It turned out to be melanoma, but she survived. But after that, Uncle Buck gave her a nickname that he used affectionately, but he could have been nicer: I heard him call her “Wart.”
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