ANNA GOSVENOR

1949 - 2023

CALDWELL - My name is Bill, and I was lucky enough to be married to my wonderful wife for 56 years. I'm writing this in 1st person because nobody else knows more about her than I do. I'm skipping around some as things come to mind, but that's the way our life together was.

Anna was born in Melba, Idaho. She lived there until she graduated from High School in 1967, then moved in with two other friends and went to work as an aide at Mercy Hospital. She turned out to have a natural talent for the job. The patients loved her enthusiasm and sunny disposition.

When the other two girls decided to give up and move home, Anna moved in with my parents instead. What? Time shift and background explanations needed.

From her early teens Anna worked in the fields, giving half to her mother to help the family. Her dad had contracted jaw cancer and could no longer work, so it was very tight, and Anna grew up very poor.

When she joined a corn-topping crew she was in the row next to me. I didn't believe in love at first sight, but I was wrong! I asked her out the first time I met her, and she said yes! One of the luckiest days of my life. The following week we had a Saturday off so we double-dated with Jack and Amy off the crew to help keep the conversation moving. We ate at a Nampa restaurant, went to the Snake River Stampede, then drove to Boise and ordered a large pizza at Shakey's. By the time I left for school in Moscow I had given her my class ring and we were going steady.

She stayed with my family when they moved to Bremerton Washington so my dad could accept a job offer at the Navy shipyard. Anna easily used a good recommendation and was hired at a large private hospital as a ward clerk.

I was attending the University of Idaho in Moscow on a full ride scholarship from the Navy. It covered books, fees and $50 a month spending money. It was tight but I was just getting by. During the summer I had no chance to earn extra money because I was required to go on a 10 week cruise. I was paid 50% of ensign's pay, about $275 per month. Not nearly what I could have earned otherwise.

Between her hospital job and my new job, we were making good money, so we started talking about taking the next obvious step. I proposed on 7/10/1969 and we were married on 10/10/1969. We moved into our little one-bedroom house and the future seemed bright.

We enjoyed a wide range of activities. We often stopped by a small fish store in Gorst and bought a half pound of loose crab meat wrapped in butcher paper. Then she would open the paper and feed me pieces of claw meat while we drove around exploring our new home.

We went North as far as Port Townsend, followed the Hood Canal to where it ends, and discovered several small towns we had never heard of. A lot of the time, though, we just drove aimlessly, talking about everything and anything while listening to the radio.

To the South we drove past several small fishing villages on our way to Tacoma. We also went to our first McDonalds and agreed they were better and faster than the Red Steer in Nampa.

One of our favorite things to do was to drive my car onto the Bremerton-Seattle ferry, leave the car parked on the loading deck, then go above and sit in the seats at the bow and enjoy the ride, or up in the covered area if the weather was bad.

We would go back to the car and drive off the ferry. Sometimes we went sight-seeing, once we saw Aretha Franklin and another time we took the underground tour, which explained how bartenders were paid to drug customers when drop them down the chutes into the tunnels. When they woke up, they were already at sea with no way back.

But our favorite thing to do was take the ferry to Seattle, then buy a return ticket to Bremerton and park the car in the return Queue.

Then we'd go to Ivar's clam bar and always place the same order: Two large orders of fried scallops, french fries and a spicy red dipping sauce.

By then it was usually close to time to drive the car onto the ferry, grab our food and find two good seats for the return trip. After we started moving, we'd take our time making the food last and sometimes feeding each other like couples often do.

This went on for several months until one day I was given a 7 day lay-off notice from my boss. When I showed up the next day there were literally hundreds of guys standing around waiting for information. There is a 50-seat class, and they would be running us through as fast as openings came up. Until then we were instructed to report to our normal supervisors and start the long process of returning all of our tools to the shops where we got them. As a mechanic the majority of my tools like my screwdrivers, my tool belt, my drills and bits and the like could all be turned into my own tool manager.

Now came the hard part. Going through my tool chits grouping them by shop. At the electric shop I only had to turn in a fuse puller, some connectors and a few other odds and ends. I brought my rain gear from home and turned it into the riggers shop. One by one I visited the other shops until I was told to show up at the classroom the next day.

I had to hang around until 5 other classes went through, then filed in and took a seat. We were told the Navy was cutting back a lot on their Naval spending. They were reducing the number of ships in the fleet and the shipyard was scheduled to reduce from 14,500 to 4,000 employees within six months.

To make matters worse the Boeing company changed most of their military contracts to a large military contractor in southern California. This led to the largest layoff I've ever seen: Between their 4 manufacturing plants Boeing laid off 175,000 employees each month for 18 months.

Three days later two other couples, Butch and Barbara, and Dale and Leona, all of whom worked at Boeing, met at our house and we left after supper to drive through the night and miss most of the other refugees heading East during the day.

We also had the first new addition to our little family, a 2-month-old red Daschund we named George. Anna bought him as soon as he was weaned so we'd had a couple of months to start potty training and thank goodness he turned out to be very easy to break. Although George pretty much had about a two-hour limit, when we told the others everyone agreed that a break every two hours was a good idea for everyone. So, George spent some of the night sleeping in Anna's coat pocket then he'd wake up and lick her fingers or chin until he fell back to sleep.

The next day Dale and Leona left us to go to their home in Garden City. I followed Butch to a home his family supplied for him near Bruneau because he was working as a crew boss for his uncles. They were generous enough to offer us a place to stay for a few days, but my belief has always been, and Anna agreed completely, that fish and guests begin to stink after three days, so we went through a couple of places, one in Melba, then a second to get us into Nampa so we could go to work at Birdseye, a frozen food plant.

The last place we rented belonged to a nice old guy named Ernie. After he watched us for a few months, making sure we were paying the rent on time and taking care of it, he came around one afternoon and made us one of the most generous offers imaginable. He told us he had 15 rentals and wanted to start selling them off so he and his wife could travel.

He then asked me if Anna and I would like to buy the house. I started to say I'd like some time to think it over, because I don't like making snap decisions, but I only got about three or four words in when Anna cut me off.

"Bill, Ernie has made an amazingly generous offer, and we are going to take it! Remember our 3 life goals? Raise a family, buy a house and live Happily Ever After." Then She and Ernie started talking to each other and after answering some questions Ernie told us his lawyer would be by to pick up the down payment and get our signatures on the contract from Ernie. She was right to ignore me, of course.

We bought the house next door the following year. Since then, we've always owned at least one house and when we retired in 2019, we had two very nice homes, one in Boise and one in Nampa, both fully paid off, so when I fell and broke my back, putting me in a motorized wheelchair. The money we got from selling both houses got us through everything. Since then, a good friend named Peggy Litty, who had a stronger financial background than we did, referred us to her financial advisor so now I let the professionals do what they do best.

We owned a house in our early 20's, now all we had to do was the easy part: start a family and live Happily Ever After. Except it didn't seem to be happening. We decided to visit a local fertility specialist, who did some tests then sent us to the University of Utah fertility clinic for a second opinion. When the reports came back, we were both infertile. Then it was a matter of applying to the state of Idaho and waiting for our turn to talk to a social worker.

Then a miracle happened! Anna's sister was going to have a baby and wanted to offer it to us! I contacted Idaho social services and told them about the baby, but the reply was that it made no difference. We were going to have to leave Idaho, or the state would place the baby in foster care.

My mother's family was pretty large, and they were clustered around Modesto in central California, so I looked up adoption legal services in the yellow pages and found a lawyer named Greg the next day.

He explained the rules to us: the baby had to be born in California, had to stay in state the whole time, had to have regular prenatal care, and we couldn't leave until the Judge released us, which usually didn't take very long.

A few days later I drove down, rented a small house, and came back to get Anna. We made the trip in one day and met with Greg so we could meet the Judge and start our required year.

Bill Jr was born 12/2/1977 and for the next year we both enjoyed watching him grow up. Anna's brother, Harold and his wife Susie, drove down three days after Bill was born and since Carol was eager to get back together with her friends, they took her back to Melba with them. When our year was complete, we moved back to Nampa.

While we were gone Carol had given birth to another baby. Eventually she would have two more, giving Bill 2 half-brothers, Matthew and Mark, and a half sister named Sarah. This meant we could check off step two: we had a house, we had a family, and we could now live Happily Ever After.

Over the next few years, I started a small business, went back to school at BSU and got an accounting degree, went back again and got an MBA, worked as an auditor for Idaho transportation department, then spent the last 13 at Hewlett Packard years until we retired in 2019. I just blasted through most of our lives because this isn't my story, it's my wife's, so the rest of this will focus on our life together.

Over all those years Anna and I went about the business of living Happily Ever After. We had a fairly large group of friends who we entertained, visited and talked to on the phone.

Most of the couples had kids who were close to Bill's age, so that led to even more interactions. An example was Halloween, when the mothers would take the kids trick or treating while the dads stayed home, passed out treats and took turns seeing who could tell the grossest joke or biggest lie about how great they were.

We still enjoyed getting in the car, stopping to buy some finger foods like tots or fries (no cheap crab here) then just driving around, listening to the radio turned down low and chatting or just enjoying each other.

She also enjoyed cooking. We couldn't afford expensive food all the time, so we ate our share of rice-a-roni and grilled cheese sandwiches. Once in a while, though, we'd treat ourselves to things like coconut shrimp or I'd pick out a thick steak for me and a pork steak for her.

Unfortunately living Happily Ever After doesn't guarantee that everything will be perfect. At the age of 28 our beautiful son Bill had a heart attack and died before he got to the ER. He left us a daughter in law, Amanda, and a granddaughter named Charlotte. Charlotte was born several months after Bill died, so she never met him.

Bill's death almost destroyed us, but we had the support and encouragement of our friends and family and in time our loss faded, although it never completely goes away.

We started noticing problems with Anna over a period of a few years. Anna had to have her right shoulder replaced, her right hip replaced, her right knee replaced, and her left knee replaced twice. Her regular doctor sent her to a specialist who diagnosed her with Osteomalasia, which makes your bones soft and easy to break. The cure was long and painful, for the next two years I gave her a painful shot in her stomach, every day. At the end of that, the doctor rechecked and pronounced her cured.

Nobody lives forever and my wonderful wife passed away on July 18th, 2023. By coincidence her faithful dachshund, Annie, had died not too long before, my wife had held her and comforted her until she died in Anna's arms. So now I'm comforted by knowing my wife is being guarded by a fat little weenie dog until I join her.

Goodbye my beautiful, wonderful wife. I love you and will miss you every day until I join you.

Funeral services for Anna Gosvenor will be conducted by Pastor Mike Holloman on Friday October 6th. At Caldwell United Methodist Church, 824 E Logan St in Caldwell. The ceremony will begin at 2pm.