Leah Schneider Allender was born in Kansas in 1916 to German immigrant farmers and moved with her family to Garard Creek near Oakville, WA, when she was ten. The middle child of eleven, she helped support the family by caring for younger children, cooking, and picking ferns to sell for funeral home use. The post-Depression period necessitated her withdrawal from school after the eighth grade but left her with a strong work ethic and solid survival skills.

Neighbor Jack Allender, whose father was more established and prosperous, had access to his father’s new car for courting Leah, and they married in 1936 when both were about 20. Children — Betty, Ed, and Ken —  and, eventually, seven grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren completed the Allender family.

In 1945 the family moved to Fords Prairie north of Centralia where Jack built a home and established a 12-acre farm with barns, beef cattle, a milking cow, chickens, rabbits, a pig, some sheep, and the occasional horse. Butchering, canning, preserving, plus introducing the Sunday dinner chicken to the chopping block — all part of Leah’s life as a farm wife.

Leah remained close to her siblings and their growing families. Over the years her clan gathered for special occasions, requiring her and her sisters to organize and feed the throng.   Leah managed home and children, attended school sporting events, tended to vegetable and flower gardens, and won garden club awards for her floral arrangements. And she enjoyed weaving rugs, quilting bedspreads, and making Christmas decorations from throw-away materials such as pine cones, dried weeds, and empty tuna cans.

Following this Alaskan adventure, Jack and Leah drove their camper to all 50 states, spent relaxing winters in Yuma, AZ, and summered in Centralia where Jack built a smaller home and grew dahlias.