booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Chapter Three: Alone in the world
It was March of 1951. Booth Gardner was 14. One day, “out of the blue,” his mother
called. “You’ve got spring vacation coming up and I’m going to talk to your Dad and take
you skiing,” Evelyn said. “By the way, since we haven’t seen each other very much, bring
a friend.” Brick grudgingly consented, and Booth invited his buddy Steve Merrill, who had
been with them on a trip to Sun Valley the previous year. This time it was a shorter outing
to Mt. Hood in Oregon.
“It was snowing hard when we got there on Saturday,” Booth recalls, “We were
supposed to leave on Sunday, but it snowed so much we couldn’t get out and we ended up
staying ’till Tuesday. I had more fun than I ever had with anybody,” he says, voice quavering
with emotion nearly 60 years later. “The snow was too deep to ski, but there was a bowling
alley nearby and we spent a lot of time there. It was the happiest time of my life. She was
glib – witty and fun. All the help there loved her.”
“His mom was a wonderfully easy person to be with,” Merrill says. “We had a lot of
fun. One night, Booth and I were jumping on the two twin beds, back and forth. Booth landed
on my bed and it broke. When he confessed to his mother, he made a point of telling her that
it was the bed I slept in; he left out the part that he had jumped onto my bed from his.”
Evelyn enjoyed being around the lively
boys, but she was also anxious to get back to
Seattle. Her hobby was raising orchids, and a big
show in Santa Barbara was only a week away.
The Beall Company had a large greenhouse on
Vashon Island, Booth recalls, “and they were after
her to go down to the show. They said, ‘You’ve
got a winner. You ought to be there.’ ” That
Friday, Evelyn got word that her orchid was the
sweepstakes winner. She caught a flight for San
Francisco and picked up Booth’s sister, who was
attending Sacred Heart Convent School in the Bay
Area.
Southwest Airways Flight 7, a twin-engine
Douglas DC-3, departed Santa Maria at 8:16 p.m.
on April 6, 1951, on what should have been a
20-minute hop to Santa Barbara. “Two minutes
later, it made routine radio contact. That was the
last word.” When it failed to arrive, a search was
immediately initiated. Norton Clapp, who was in
Eveleyn Clapp with one of her prize orchids in 1951.
Gardner family album.
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