One of the most vivid and meaningful stories about the couple who founded Centralia, George and Mary Jane Washington, started early one morning in the early 1880s as the couple and their son were sitting down to a delicious homemade breakfast.
Mary Jane Washington was getting ready to serve up a big pan of hot biscuits when a neighbor, Sanford Allred, walked up, nearly in tears.
He was a failure and he knew it.
His family was hungry, barefoot, barely hanging on. They’d finished the last of their flour the afternoon before. They had nothing. Sanford, known around town as shiftless and unable to handle a dollar, was at the end of his rope.
George was concerned. His wife was furious: “Madder than I’d ever seen her — the only time I’ve ever seen her mad since she professed Christianity,” her son Stacey Cooness later recalled.
“Why did you let things go so long when you knew you could always come to us?” she admonished him.
She packed up her family’s entire breakfast — bacon, eggs, mashed potatoes and those fresh biscuits — and sent Allred to walk the 3/4 of a mile to drop them off for his wife, Clara, and their children, then come back for his own meal.
By the time he got back, she had a second round of breakfast ready. They fed him — then George started in on what we might call manhood training.
He sent him home to begin chopping wood for his family and said he’d find work for him and pay him in advance so he could properly care for them.
“Saw a few cuts and split it up and have it handy so she and the children can get it,” Washington said. “Come back at one o’clock, and we’ll line up your work and I’ll pay you the same as if you’d worked for me the whole day.”
“But Sanford,” he added, “I’ll not pay you a cent in money, for you don’t know how to make a dollar go.”
Instead, in the weeks and months ahead he paid the money to Sanford’s long-suffering wife for her husband’s work.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane visited her and asked if she knew how to cut and sew clothes for her family.
“I can sew a bit, but I’m not much good at cutting,” Clara admitted.
Mary Jane told her to lay out lunch for the children to eat, then to come up to the Washington home.
“Bring your needle and thimble,” Mary Jane said. “I’ll show you how to cut and make some clothes.”
Clara was barefoot, so Mary Jane sent her husband to the store to buy some quality calf leather shoes. While he was there, George bought the family food, from flour and bacon to butter, syrup and even some expensive Japanese green tea.
He sent the food home with Sanford, then put him to work.
“He was a shiftless man and no one else would give him a day’s work,” Stacey said many years later. “He was discouraged and had lost all heart. My stepfather could make him work and manage him when no one else could.”
For a year and a half, the Washingtons helped the Sanfords find a more solid footing.
“Mother ... fixed them up quite respectable,” Stacey said. “My stepfather really made a man of him, watching over him, encouraging him, and restoring his self-respect in the eyes of his family and the neighborhood.”
There’s more to the story (it’s in chapter nine of “George Washington of Centralia”), but the bottom line of hands-on help to build a better life is inspiring.
We need a lot more of that these days — helping people with immediate needs while teaching them skills and holding them accountable to do their part to pay back the help.
That’s a tough combination in the modern era. We need a lot more of the practical wisdom and tough love shown by George and Mary Jane Washington.
They’re gone, so it’s up to us.
Perhaps you could begin that work in their spirit and in their honor.
In preparation for this year’s Centralia Founder’s Day celebration (Monday, Aug 31, 12:30-2 p.m. at George Washington Park), the Centralia Downtown Association (CDA) has launched a new project.
“We’re honoring George Washington’s legacy of generosity by putting together one hundred Founders’ Pantry Bags for local families,” said CDA Executive Director MacKenzie McGee. “Our goal is to have businesses, organizations and community members sponsor or donate items to help fill the bags.”
A $25 donation fills one complete bag. They’re also reaching out to local grocers to see if they’d be willing to donate specific pantry items like flour, sugar, cake mix, pasta, canned goods and other shelf-stable essentials.
“If you know of anyone who might be interested in supporting the project or if you’re willing to share it with your network, we’d be incredibly grateful,” McGee said. “I think it’s a meaningful way to celebrate our founder while giving back to the community.”
It is a great project — whole food to strengthen whole families.
Beyond that is a great need for old-fashioned solid, person-to-person connection to help people grow into self-sustaining adulthood. For George Washington, who had known Sanford Allred since he was a boy, the foundation for mentorship was already there.
Do you know anyone you can help teach to be a little more successful? If you’re struggling, is there anyone you can ask? Can we regain the unique mix of “I’ll help you stand on your own two feet” community-minded self-reliance that built us up in the settler era?
If anyone can do it, Lewis County can. Let’s do it. Together.
Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
