CLYDE
Clyde who was born in Yakima Washington in 1896 went to Lacombe Alberta Canada in 1907 with his parents. He was 11 years of age. He was the only Dorsey who was musically inclined, playing the violin, tuba and harmonica.
As an American citizen he did not volunteer in WW1 and escaped the draft in 1917 when he married Emma Potter who worked for his mother as a maid in the Dorsey Hotel in Lacombe. During the war years he carried the mail for the Royal Canadian Postal Service.
After the war in 1919 they moved to Spokane.
Clyde workd for the Seattle Portland and Spokane (SP&S) in their electrical shops in Spokane. While there he invented an armature winder and the Railroad claimed "shop rights" as he did it in their shops on their time. After receiving the patent they promoted him to an outdoor lineman and gave him a railroad pass good for any member of his family in Canada or the USA as long as he worked for the Railroad.
It was using this pass that my mother Emma returned to Gananoque Ontario pregnant with me and I was born there becoming a dual citizen like my brother Bob who was born in Lacombe Alberta. She returned to Spokane 6 weeks after my birth.
In 1925 Clyde was electrocuted when he cut a supposedly dead wire and although he recovered he quit his job on the Railroad and decided to farm near Colbert Washington where his father owned a 40 acre tract of timber. He rented the farm from a man named Owen Willard whom he had met in Canada.
The farming venture was terminated in the fall when he was notified by the City of Spokane that he had successfully passed the Civil Service exams and he was placed on The Spokane Fire Department.
He was lucky in that when he moved back to Spokane from the farm his mother's house became vacant and h was able to move in rent free.
Return to Clyde.