Patrick Leamer:  

Like the “sirens” in Homer’s tales, the mountains have beckoned to me all of my life. This love of the land and nature may have been passed to me through my mother’s lineage—a lineage of Irish loggers and miners. My father and grandfather were managers of night clubs and gambling casinos which may have given me a yearning for risky adventures. I was born on December 12, 1937 in a small roadside motel cabin nestled between the mountains in the northern Idaho mining town of Mullan. Entering this world was risky for both my mother and I as my birth was not easy. I suspect that is the reason I am an only child. Following my birth, we lived in several small towns in Montana ending up in Missoula. By my fourth birthday, I had experienced what we might call a happy home life—a mother, a father, and a permanent home. I can remember mother reading to me which must have kindled a desire for hearing stories. Dec. 7, 1941 ended our happy home life as my father entered WWII, mother and I boarded a train for Seattle, mother became a “Rosie The Riveter” for the Boeing Airplane Company, and I found myself staying in many different homes. Mother tried to keep me with her, however, my running the streets of Seattle was less than comforting for her. I discovered adventures hanging out on First Avenue watching sailors get tattoos, standing outside the dance halls listening to the big bands, checking out the penny arcades for coins left in the slots, and observing the ships at port on the waterfront. After rebelling in several homes and being asked to leave, I was placed in a boy’s ranch which corralled much of my adventurous spirit. I stayed there until the end of WWII. Two weeks after my father returned from the war, I discovered my parents were getting a divorce. At the time, I spent about three weeks with my father which was the most I spent with him throughout much of my childhood. I spent my grade school years—to the fifth grade—living with relatives in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. We didn’t have TV then and much of my entertainment was listening to my uncles tell stories-stories about the mountains, logging, mining, the personalities of the woodland animals, the excitement of the hunt. I found time to steal away into the woods to watch animals. Hunting did not become appealing to me as I was enraptured watching the play of bear cubs, the peaceful movement of deer passing through the forest, the majestic elk filling the valleys with bugle calls. Combined with the listening to stories, I found reading enticing. It was a fifth grade teacher who placed into my hands the Hardy Boy Mysteries. I did find excitement, but I never placed reading a first priority in my life. My interests are so varied that I still struggle even today making a definite focus in my reading. The seventh and eighth grades were spent back in Seattle living with mother. She remarried the summer before my eighth grade and I began one of the best years of my life. We moved into a new home in Mountlake Terrace, Washington just north of Seattle. I had a new home. a mother, and father and lots of friends. Life was good. The eighth grade was a major discovery for me as I found excitement interviewing people and writing their stories. I had become bored in school with a history lesson on Seattle and wanted to do more than just read a book. My teacher listened to my request to go to downtown Seattle and interview the stage manager at the Orpheum Theater. She, with some hesitation, agreed to lettng me go to the theater. After introducing myself to the theater ticket taker as an Esperance School reporter, I was escorted back stage. Walking back stage, I felt the excitement of the curtain going up, the bright lights, the cheering crowds. Entering the stage manager’s office, I was introduced to an aging man with wavy white hair, wearing white painter coveralls, seated on an old swivel chair. He had one leg parked on the edge of a rolltop desk and leaned back in his chair. The room was decorated with pictures of Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, James Cagney and others that once performed on the Orpheum vaudeville stage. He spun one story after another as I fed my interest in vaudeville capturing every moment on paper. I was beginning a new trade—newspaper reporter. I started the first school paper—“The Esperance HiLights.” My high school years at Edmonds High led me further into the world of journalism. My writing skills were formed while working for the school paper. Also, I found creative writing an opportunity to write poetry and short stories. However, my skills did not match the skill of my peers in creative writing. I longed to have my writing appear in the school literary magazine but that did not happen. However, many stories hit the front page of our school paper. I was the editor of the “Wirelesss” for a full year which I was told was the first time in the school’s history. Being the editor, was my major contribution to the school and a desire for writing was rooted within me. However, I had completed a research paper on social work my senior year of high school which redirected my career goal. Thinking that I was going to change the world, I exchanged my career goal from journalism to social work. High school was four of the best years in my life. The only dark cloud for me in high school was losing my mother to leukemia my freshman year. Just short of two years after high school, I was married at the youn...Expand for more