At long last, the nonfiction story of an 1847 pioneer mother of four young sons who lost her husband at the Snake River on the Oregon Trail. She later married the first American to settle north of the Columbia River and hosted such well-known people as Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens and Ulysses S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, George McClellan, who later became US generals. Kickoff of Matilda Jackson Legacy Day is Saturday, Oct. 26, at the first courthouse in Washington state, where she lived.
Norma Clark with her book and daughter Heather A. Neafie
What prompts a couple with two grown children to give up a lucrative job and leave for the jungles of Cameroon? Only the Lord who spoke clearly to Norma (Booth) Clark and told her the time to go was “Now!” She and her husband, Gilbert, stepped out in faith, joined Wycliffe Bible Translators, and raised financial support to train and work in the field. They sold their house, their furnishings, and even their beautiful lakeside summer home. But God pointed out they’d see many other beautiful places, and they did. After training in Oklahoma, they spent a year in France preparing for missionary work in Africa. In this book, Norma Clark recounts their experiences in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon; Mexico; and other places where they served with Wycliffe Bible Translators, a missionary field that spanned three decades.
“I want to thank Julie Zander for all the work she did to get Norma Clark’s story into print. Julie was wonderful to work with and very encouraging. At 95 years young we knew it was time to get Mother’s story published. Finding Julie was an answer to prayer. I have also given Julie’s name to a friend.”
Heather Anderson Neafie
“Thank you for your help in getting my book ready for publishing. Following God’s Lead has been received well. Most comments are ‘encouraging’ and ‘easy to read.’ My book is now in England, Canada, Colorado, California, and Washington. It was a privilege to have met you.”
During sixty-three years of marriage, Dr. Ken and
Clarita Burden raised four children, welcomed six grandchildren, and followed
the leading of the Lord in their vocations and avocations. They donated time
and money to missions through the Seventh-day Adventist Church. When they
weren’t working, tending to medical patients or teaching piano students, the
couple drove their RV across the United States, boarded a cruise ship to
Europe, Africa, or South America, or hopped on an airplane to fly overseas.
During their travels, they visited every county in the country and more than
one hundred nations in the world.
Dr. Kenneth H. Burden graduated from Union College in 1948 and from Loma Linda University in 1952. He worked for the U.S. Public Health Service before accepting a mission assignment in Puerto Rico, where the family lived for twelve years. After six years in the Napa Valley of California, he and Clarita moved north to Chehalis, Washington, where he became a partner in Steck Medical Group.
“Julie Zander has an engaging personality and great skills in obtaining needed information and organizing work in an interesting fashion as illustrated in the well-done autobiography she did for me. I would highly recommend her for any such endeavor.”
As a child growing up in the Philippine Islands, Robert A. Wheeler saw his normal childhood change drastically when the Imperial Japanese Air Force bombed Manila on December 8, 1941, the day after their planes destroyed United States battleships at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.
Bob, his younger brother, Albert, their American father
and German stepmother were incarcerated first at Santo Tomas University and
later in the Los Baños internment camp, where they spent 2½ years with more
than two thousand other Allied men, women, and children, trying to survive on
sparse diets under brutal captors.
Then, on February 23, 1945, “Angels” dropped from heaven above to liberate the internees held at Los Baños. Paratroopers from the 11th Airborne Division, particularly the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, rescued the prisoners, who were immediately evacuated to U.S. lines aboard Amtracs by the 672nd Amphibious Tractor Battalion.
Repatriated to the United States in April 1945, the family finally settled in California but never forgot the men who saved their lives.
In his memoir, he describes life as an internee and adapting to a new life in the United States.
To read about the author and his book, see The Chronicle article.
“I couldn’t have found a better editor and publisher for my book, A Child’s Life—Interrupted by the Imperial Japanese Army, than Julie Zander of Chapters of Life.
“Everything went smoothly, culminating with a very attractive book that contained historic pictures that Julie found in her extensive research.”
I enjoyed working with Jess Daniels on his memoir, a coming-of-age story of a young man’s journey on the pathway of life—a journey that begins on the outskirts of a south-Texas city, proceeds through the wilds of north-central Idaho, and eventually ends on a college campus in western Montana, some two decades later. Unbeknownst to him, it is his remarkable journey to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he evaded throughout his young life…and to a wonderful future that he could never have imagined.
Drawing from the experiences of his early years as a forester working in remote forested regions of the western United States, Daniels likens his faith-journey to the challenges of trekking the wilderness. While at times it seems an enjoyable, even exciting, adventure, it can suddenly become a challenging, even harrowing, experience for which one is ill-equipped.
Much of the story centers on his youthful adventures in the wilds of north-central Idaho in the 1950s, a life-changing wilderness experience during three summers in his college years: working in a remote logging camp, as a mountaintop fire lookout, and as a “smoke chaser” fighting forest fires in the wilderness. In his charismatic writing voice, Daniels describes close encounters with a hungry bear, a wild mountain goat, and sudden death on a high mountain and a wild river.
When I was nearing completion of my book manuscript (a 10-year effort), I planned to self-publish it using MS-Word software. I quickly realized that it would be a laborious task with an uncertain outcome—I needed professional help to make my book all that I wanted it to be. Then I remembered working with Julie Zander on a book which we co-authored some years earlier; I was very impressed and pleased with that published book, as I am with my current book. Julie edited and formatted my manuscript to produce what one publisher’s rep called “a very handsome book”—one that I am proud to claim as my own. Any author needing professional assistance would do well to contact Julie McDonald Zander.
What else do you do when
you’re 91? Besides running a steam locomotive as an engineer, if you’re Harold
Borovec, you publish a history on a long-defunct railroad.
Borovec, a railroad fan
from his early childhood, worked for Edmund Lambert on the Cowlitz, Chehalis
& Cascade Railway in the 1940s, and listened to the older man share stories
of his years working on railroads. He remembered those stories and wrote them
in a book that he published this summer: “I Was No Nutsplitter! Railroad
Machinist Recollections of E.R. Lambert as recorded by Harold Borovec.”
By the way, in railroad
jargon, “nutsplitter” is a slang word for “machinist.”
I started working with
Harold to publish his book about seven years ago. He meticulously wrote and
edited page after page of text. He paid me to scan the photos and design the
book, which Gorham Printing in Centralia printed. Gorham’s talented Kathy
Campbell, who helped paint one of Centralia’s first building murals, designed
the cover.
As I read the stories of
Mr. Lambert, as Borovec refers to him, I wanted to know more about our local
CC&C Railway, which was abandoned in the 1950s. To that end, Borovec is
working on his second book, a history of the old logging railroad. The line was
later owned by the Great Northern, Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific and Union
Pacific.
But his first book
focuses on the history of the Gilmore & Pittsburgh, which operated from
1910 until 1939 in Beaverhead County, Montana, and Lemhi County, Idaho, with
headquarters in Armstead, Montana. Lambert worked on the G&P from 1910 to
1914 and again from 1923 until it shut down in 1939.
Lambert, who was born in
January 1882 in Kentucky and died in Chehalis in May 1972, shared his photos of
the G&P with Borovec. He is buried at Claquato Cemetery with his wife,
Ethel. They married June 5, 1912, in Bear Lake, Idaho.
If anyone knows about
railroads, it’s Borovec. He and his wife, Alberta, followed the abandoned
G&P tracks through the mountains and plains of Idaho and Wyoming as he
researched this book. They also traveled together to railroad conventions
throughout the United States. Woven throughout the books is a sweet story of
the love Borovec shared for Alberta, his childhood sweetheart and wife for
67 years. She passed away April 22, 2013. They were the parents of three sons
and a daughter.
In the mid-1980s, she
spent most Saturdays alone as her husband and other volunteers devoted
countless hours to restoring the CC&C 1916 locomotive No. 15, which began
pulling the Chehalis-Centralia Steam Train over former Milwaukee Railroad
tracks west out of Chehalis in 1989. Harold has served as an engineer on the
train for nearly three decades.
In 2012, the last page
of the March/April issue of AAA’s “Journey” magazine featured Borovec on the
steam train’s No. 15 locomotive. A year later, in 2013, Borovec received the
South Sound Heritage Association’s Heritage Award for his excellence and
service in local historical preservation.
Harold and his brother,
Byron, purchased Central Fuel Co. in 1955 and delivered coal throughout Lewis
County. They sold their business to their sons in 1990.
Borovec’s book is
available for sale at the Lewis County Historical Museum and the
Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum. The cost of the 242-page book is $27.
I enjoyed working with Thomas Chandler Jr. of San Jose, California, in publishing his memoirs, From Fa rm Boy to Global Ambassador, in 2017. During our interviews, he shared a remarkable story of how a dyslexic pig farmer from Illinois become Southeast Asia director of a worldwide missions organization providing relief to victims of tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, and other natural disasters. His ability to play basketball opened doors for educating a “dumb jock” and enabled him to spread the Good News to people in thirty-two nations. In this book, with humor and humility, Thomas Chandler Jr. explains how he came to know Jesus Christ and become a global ambassador by putting feet to His Word. God often uses the most unlikely people to spread His Good News. Here’s what Tom had to say about the experience:
“Because I’m acute dyslexic it is very difficult for me to read and write. When my granddaughter, Hannah, asked me a few years ago to write down my “missionary stories,” I was frustrated on how to do that. Then a colleague, Linda Jo Reed, that I worked with at Partners International, recommended Julie McDonald Zander.
“Julie and I clicked from the first moment we met. She is easygoing, listens well and is very perceptive. I would just talk … often on ‘rabbit trails,’ yet Julie was able to follow a theme and timeline. She is professional in following all the requirements of good authorship and publishing. We were the perfect match for each other. She understood this farm boy and patiently was able to community my life story in written form with excellence.”
Two years ago, I was honored to help Dorothy “Dotty” Jean (Stump) Light published her book, Busy and Blessed: The Memoirs of Dotty Jean (Stump) Light. She passed away in April but first shared her life story with friends and family. During 2017, I helped her husband, Frank M. Light, publish his book, Glimpses of Life: The Memoirs of Frank M. Light. His story tells of growing up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he learned to ski shortly after he started walking. He served in the Army, earned a degree in music education, taught for five years, and opened a music store in Springfield, Oregon. He married the love of his life, and they raised eight beautiful children together. I worked with his daughter, Lise’, to publish both her parents’ books. Here’s what she had to say:
“Our family is tickled silly to have our Dad, Frank Light’s memoirs Glimpses of Life written and completed, and all before Christmas! We are indebted to Julie in making his dream a reality. Without Julie’s knowledge, experience, and dedication, the completion of his memoirs would never have happened. Because of Julie, Daddy’s stories are now permanent and in print for friends and family to enjoy – both for this present generation and the ones yet to come.
“Julie is gifted in her ability to get people to feel at ease, open up and tell their stories. Her skill in editing and grammar is irreplaceable.
“Julie’s recommendation to use Gorham printing for the project was perfect. They did an excellent job. Books look great!
“Prior to Christmas of 2016, Julie was also invaluable in helping Mother, Dotty Light, complete her memoirs, Busy and Blessed. She passed June of 2016. The family and those who knew her are extremely grateful to have what she considered the important riches of her life, written, printed in our possession to cherish.
“Kudos to you, Julie, and thank you!”
Lise’ Buell, Brush Prairie, Washington
Her sister, Amy Light of Vancouver, Washington, said this:
“Thanks so much for all your invaluable help with both of my parents’ memoirs. Daddy loves his book and says he likes it even more as he reads it. He’s looking forward to sharing with his friends and family.”
Once again I had the privilege of working with Judith Litchfield of Portland, who wrote Providence White Caps: The Diary of Bernice Lorang, RN. She based the story on the diary her aunt kept while training at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Vancouver, Washington. This is Judy’s third book Chapters of Life has published. The first two were One Historic Summer at a Seaside Resort and Grand Canyon Rafting Adventures.
