Edna Sharp

Edna’s tip

Jon gives us this history from his maternal grandmother, Edna (  Uncle John's mother-in-law, mother of Evelyn,grandmother to Jon, Dean and Patty): 

Elfleda (grandma Sharp) was the waitress during her working life, and served  United States President  William Howard Taft, who was a notorious eater,  two successive breakfasts on the same sitting.  She served him at the Chandler Hotel, the finest facility in Coos Bay, Oregon.  For which she was tipped 10 cents. 

 Edna was Fleda Edna Wooldridge who was 19 years old when she married Paul Luther Hall of Kansas.  Her marriage license is dated April 9, 1913.  Her daughter Evelyn was born on  in March of 1914.  However, the marriage ended when she fled in the middle of the night by train, and never looked back. Later, she would remarry Mr. Zweiker and bear a son; and outliving him, would marry Fred Sharp. 

Susan adds:  "Grandma" Edna Sharp came from strong Oregon pioneer stock.  I remember her from the years that she and Fred Sharp lived at Charleston, OR, near Coos Bay.  When Milly Sampson tired of a blue parakeet that she called "Josie," she gave the pet bird to Edna.  Edna re-named the bird "Elvis," and taught the bird, on command, to dance back and forth from one foot to the other, like Elvis.  

The home that Fred and Edna shared was beyond the end of paved roads, where roads consisted of a couple of planks laid down on the sand.  Theirs was the last house I remember being served by an outdoor toilet, an "Outdoor Hoosie."   Its architecture was classical:  It had a half-moon vent hole cut over the top of the door.  Fred Sharp was a painter, and the outhouse was well painted. 

Jon brought Edna to the family reunion of the 1970s.  For a woman born in 1894, she was still going strong, driving her own car well into her 80s.