September 17, 1927 an unforgettable force of nature was unleashed upon this Earth: Laurel Piippo was born. She’d be 93 this week, but despite multiple, hard-fought battles she waged against four different types of primary cancers (not metastatic cancers, cancers that had spread from one location to another, but each one unique unto itself in their origin), her wild, exuberant life came to an end August 26, 2015. But since it’s her birthday week, I’ve had her on my mind – and always in my heart – I’ve been impressed to share some things with you about Laurel and what she meant to me.
She was my ultimate confidante and I was hers.
Specifically, she gave me her longtime computer, which contained all of her writing of many, many years, not wanting all of the personal stories contained therein to fall into anyone else's hands. I removed the hard drive from it and kept it in a safe for years, but wiped it cleaned a few months ago -- zapped it intentionally with a bulk eraser (degausser) -- to protect her ultimate privacy in life and in death -- so that she could take to the grave all that she had intended to leave untold. My
final disposition of her hard drive was in keeping with her wishes. That's all
I can say. But there would have been a treasure trove of material there, if she
would have consented to do otherwise with it.
Laurel lived for opera -- anywhere in the world. Anyone who might have ever made the mistake of thinking that because
she loved opera, she loved classical music. Uh, no. She didn't love classical
music. She didn't enjoy attending performances of the symphony. She didn't love musical theatre. She didn't love Broadway. She certainly
didn't love Broadway show tunes. She LOVED opera. Period. She endured
everything else.
She did not want an obituary to be written about her. She definitely did not want a morbid funeral. But she did allow for what she referred to as an "awake wake" and meticulously planned it herself. In other words, she wanted to go out in style -- on her own terms -- and orchestrated a big celebration of life while she was still living, so that she could be present -- AND see who showed up to share her stories. But that was it. Others have written about her, but I dare say I knew her better than anyone. https://www.tri-cityherald.com/.../article33307245.html
When she retired from teaching, she launched her own travel agency. During her lifetime she traveled to more than 110 countries. She would go any length to see an opera production! And to introduce others to the opera.
When she was just a little girl – a second grader – she came home from school one afternoon. As she walked through the house, calling out to her mother, she found her in the master bedroom -- dead. She had committed suicide.
It was my good fortune as a student at Kennewick High School to have “Mrs. Piippo” (Laurel Piippo) as my English teacher. She was a wild woman! She even gave me an “F” on a paper I wrote once. It was supposed to be a ‘true story.’ She added that she thought it was “so fantastic, it could not possibly be true. If it was true, you would have received an A+!”
She was not just a great teacher in my own opinion, but even years after her retirement from Kennewick High School when the school celebrated its centennial, she was voted “Favorite Teacher” out of all 100 years that the school had been in existence. Clearly, she earned the title of "Teacher of the Century!" Her husband Toivo Piippo was a beloved teacher and record-setting coach in Richland, Washington. The two of them were a dynamic duo shaping the lives of young people for decades.
It’s not uncommon in school for a student to be sent home to change clothes when he or she has shown up to school in ‘inappropriate’ attire. Classic story about Mrs. Piippo! The Kennewick High School principal sent her home from school one morning to change her clothes. She had shown up to class wearing a paper dress! Yes, indeed. A dress made from paper. It was the ‘60s after all and a freewheeling time, but he didn’t find it appropriate and thought it was just too risqué and potentially risky that someone might just tear it off of her and leave her standing naked in front of the class.
She was known to be tough. Students lived in abject fear of her ‘red pen’ as she would critique their often-feeble attempts at creative writing. If you were a good student, there was no need to live in fear. By ‘good student’ that simply meant if you completed the assigned course work, participated in class (looked awake and alive), and made an effort – you were ‘in like Flynn.’ I was a good student. I loved her from the start.
It was in the mid-1960s and early in her teaching career when my fellow classmates and I were under the tutelage of this zany woman with an expansive vocabulary who opened up a whole new world of literature and experiences for us bringing in people from foreign countries as guest speakers into our classroom. If they were flirtatious with the students, she would quickly put a stop to that.
But just having this exposure to people from exotic places around the world was quite novel and eye-opening. At that time, there were no Black students in our school and Kennewick still had “Sundown laws” on the books. It was as white as white can be. The John Howard Griffin book Black Like Me was on our reading list. When Mrs. Piippo signed my yearbook, she admonished me to, "Remember to beware of foreign men and to stay away from the Ku Klux Klan!"
Every year during her teaching career, she organized trips with her students and family members as chaperones to travel to Europe. Oh, the memories that were made!
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| Laurel Piippo with grandson Micah shown during a cruise after her retirement from teaching when she had launched her own travel agency to show others the world |
When she was just a little girl – a second grader – she came home from school one afternoon. As she walked through the house, calling out to her mother, she found her in the master bedroom -- dead. She had committed suicide.
The trauma of that haunted Laurel for the rest of her life.
According to Laurel, her father had never been very involved with the day-to-day lives of the children and was at a loss as to how to care for them. As if it wasn’t bad enough that their mother was dead – and what Laurel had seen that day – her father sent each of the children away to live with other relatives – separating them by great distances and completely breaking up the family. I have always believed that that is what fueled her passion for opera, that the stories allowed her to lose herself in them and let her emotions out, let those tears flow, as she had had to hold her emotions in over so many years about the painful death of her mother and loss of her family when she was a little girl.
I left Kennewick High School after my cousin Kenny Howell was killed in a car v. train crash. He and I had both planned to be doctors. But that’s a story for another day…
I went away to a private Christian boarding school for my senior year. But Mrs. Piippo and I had a special bond and we remained in contact. Our letters went from being handwritten to typewritten to composed on the computer to taking the form of email in the later years. We each wrote voluminously back and forth to each other from high school in the '60s all the way through the end of her life -- we were still in regular contact via phone and email.
She was a prolific writer although not particularly tech savvy. I encouraged her to create a blog. She left that for me to do on her behalf. So, I formatted a blog for her. She’d write the articles and email them to me, then I’d upload them to her blog. https://piippospassion.blogspot.com/
We became very close when I was in my early 20s. I was working for a neurologist in Seattle at Northwest Hospital at the time, Dr. Ted Rothstein. Laurel was suffering from some symptoms (twinkling lights in her eyes) that I recognized as scintillating scotoma, a precursor or prodrome of possible impending stroke. She was clueless about the potential significance of it. But I convinced her it was critically important that she be seen in consultation STAT. She trusted me enough to come to Seattle and be seen. Indeed, her BP was sky high and she was on the verge of a stroke. Ever after that, she credited me with having saved her life. That was our bond.
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| Laurel Piippo (left) hosting elegant tea party with Claude Oliver, Diane Anguanst and Carl Holder |
As time went on Laurel had her first bout with cancer, and then another, and another, and another…
Each cancer was a different primary tumor. She suffered so much!
Laurel Piippo faced it head-on and bravely underwent round after round of:
- Surgery
- Radiation
- Chemotherapy
- Slash
- Burn
- Poison
- “Slash, Burn & Poison” imprinted on them.
- She would not be silenced.
- She was not going down without a fight!
- And she would not go quietly into that dark night!!!
When she learned about that – and living in Richland, Washington since the early 1950s – she was acutely aware of the goings on at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, she was also aware that one of the major nuclear reactors was being mothballed at a cost of Billions of dollars a year – just to have it mothballed. She researched the issue thoroughly, doggedly and determined that it COULD BE RETOOLED and COULD BE used for the PRODUCTION OF MEDICAL ISOTOPES.
That fueled her crusade to stop the shutdown and mothballing of that reactor and instead CONVERT it to the production of medical-grade nuclear isotopes for treatment of cancer patients so that even though the patients would still need radiation therapy, at least it would significantly decrease the cost of their treatment by having the isotopes manufactured her in the United States.
Laurel Piippo devoted 100% of her life-force to building a consortium of scientists, patients, family members, community leaders (Kiwanis & others), and political leaders to try to make that happen. She even organized a “Cancer Fighter Train” – an actual TRAIN – and took ALL of those people who were involved on a sojourn from the Tri-Cities in Washington to a government and scientific meeting in California in the Bay Area to try to convince the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to HALT the process of ‘mothballing’ that reactor at Hanford and instead CONVERT it to the production of much-needed medical-grade nuclear isotopes.
Despite all of the science and all of her energy and all of her best efforts: It didn’t happen.
Laurel Piippo’s friendship to me through the years was a bond that could not be broken. However, in my own family, when I met Charles (who is now my husband) and wanted to just introduce him to my father, I was instantaneously disowned and disinherited. Why? Because he’s black. Or I should say, because my father could not get past the fact that Charles is black and refused to even lay eyes on him or ever even meet him. That phone call was the last time we ever spoke. I had just wanted to arrange a time to have an introduction. But, no, that was not going to happen. That was it. I was no longer part of the family.
That year at Christmas I received a card in the mail from my father. I was quite eager to open it. The front of the card said, “With Warm Holiday Greetings…” but inside he had typewritten “I never did hate Blacks, but I did and I do when they ‘take’ White girls.” His final words to me. He died without having met (much less) ever getting to know Charles, whom he would have had the best time with. Charles would have laughed at all of his jokes and been so loving. Such a shame…
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| Laurel Piippo with Charles Jones aboard the Link Light Rail train in downtown Tacoma after the three of us had attended a performance at the Pantages Center |
Charles and I were married in a lovely outdoor ceremony in Pioneer Park on the Bandstand in Steilacoom alongside Chambers Bay on a warm July summer evening on his birthday now more than 26 years ago.
Charles’ mother was radiant and dressed elegantly that evening.
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| Left to Right: Toivo Piippo, Laurel Piippo, Jaynie Jones, Charles Jones and Mattie B. Jones |
And it was Mr. and Mrs. Piippo who had driven all the way across the state from the Tri-Cities to ‘stand-in’ as parents for me during our wedding ceremony.
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| Left to Right: *Edward Charles Rippe (Bible-bearer), Whitney Cook (flower girl), Debbie Cushon (matron of honor), Rev. Simpson, Jaynie Jones (bride) and Charles Jones (groom) *Edward Charles Rippe is our godson. Today (2020) he is an internal medicine physician in practice in Manhattan, New York City, NY |
Mr. and Mrs. Piippo welcomed us to stay in their home in Richland anytime. Likewise, whenever she or they would be traveling, they would come and stay at our house in the Tacoma area.
Charles and I were delighted to have them as our houseguests. It was an honor and our privilege. I don't drink wine, but wine was one of Laurel's passions and great pleasures in life. She got such a kick out of it when she would be at our house. We don't even own proper wine glasses. But we have crystal stemware water glasses. I would pour her a 'glass' of wine -- full to the brim. I didn't know that that wasn't how it was done. But she was happy to be treated to the extra measure. No complaints.
Charles and I would chauffeur the two of them around to visit local wineries such as the Baron Manfred von Vierthaler Winery in Sumner, a taste of Bavaria locally, with a view of the Puyallup Valley. Happy memories of sightseeing right here without having to travel halfway around the world!
Laurel loved a bargain and would bring back tiny treasures from her travels -- always something she could negotiate a great price on or she wouldn't be happy with it or even purchase it at all. She relished referring to herself as "Cheapo Piippo." She savored getting a bargain and was as frugal as could be. She made her teacher's salary stretch over the years and she certainly didn't waste her savings in her retirement years either.
At other times when they would be flying out of the Seattle area, they would stay at the SeaTac Marriott hotel. With her frequent business and as a travel agent she would always have dining comps. She thoroughly enjoyed treating us to Sunday brunch (especially for free with her comps) at the Marriott. Even though she was always thin, the would take multiple return trips through the buffet referring to herself as "Miss Piggy." What a hoot!
We shared so much love and countless laughs throughout the years.
I could write a book! Hmm... Maybe I should.
And we lived happily ever after...
(But, oh, how we miss her, and this is not quite)
THE END
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