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Anne

Personal Interests:

Willapa Chapter DAWN non-profit organization
Tiptoe Literary Service and POD publishing
Eleanor Roosevelt Day committment
Family, Ancestry
Amateur Radio

Beginnings

Anna Louise was born in Pacific County, first child of George J Grimm and Anna Marie Richter -- who had been born in Ohio and Germany, and married in Pacific County. Her late brother George Frederick was their parents' second child and she has a younger sister, Rose Marie, living in Alaska. Anna was baptized at the Menlo Methodist Church and faithfully attended Sunday School as a child. She graduated from Willapa Valley High School and immediately changed her name to Anne. Her further education in the next quarter century included private shorthand and bookkeeping classes from Hulda Mae Giesy Buell in Menlo, office machine classes at Broadway Edison Technical School in Seattle, art classes at Clark College in Vancouver, Panama Canal College, (at Cristobal High School) Florida State University, (extension, at Fort Davis, Panama) the US military School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama and various other specialized classes, seminars and workshops. Anne co-directed two writer conferences in Colon, Panama, and conducted writer workshops at Fort Davis Library.

More recently

She has attended classes at Gray's Harbor and Lower Columbia community colleges in Washington and Clatsop Community College in Oregon. She has taken local and correspondence courses in disaster preparation and career advancing classes. Since return to the United States, she has directed a successful writer conference in Gray's River, at which each author participant made sales. She attended the Fall Camp [writer conference] of J.A.W.S. ... Journalism And Women's Symposium of the University of Missouri, at Port Ludlow in the year 2000 and in 2002 attended the Write at the Beach conference at Ocean Shores, becoming a member of the Ocean Shores chapter of the Apostrophe Protection Society, founded by John Richards of Boston, England. At the 2003 Write on the Beach conference, she was one of the speakers. Anne holds membership in the NSNC National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
NSNC logo

The Years Between

Anne and the man she married were introduced at the home of her parents in Menlo, to his friend by her late brother, George ... on a visit home to Pacific County when they were each living in Seattle, Anne sharing an apartment in the University District with her sister Rose.

With marriage license from the South Bend courthouse in hand, she was married on a snowy March 9 in Seattle by Rev. Jack Mitchell of New Covenant Baptist Church, and that day moved to Portland, Oregon. There Anne continued to work for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, no longer as a service representative in the business office as in Seattle, but at drafting, supporting her husband while he attended a diesel training course and during his first subsequent job when her salary was larger than his.

Her first child, Alfred Charles, was born February 27 the following year, by which time his mother was freelance writing while staying home to raise the family. Allan George was born June 10, four months after his brother was three, and daughter Anne Marie another two years and four months later, on October 23.

Expatriate

When the children were in high school, junior high and elementary, the family moved from Portland to the Republic of Panama, where after each sibling finished school they in turn left their family home and foreign country. The family of five had traveled by ship and later, plane. After the children had left home, their parents drove between the Pacific Northwest and Panama -- by as many alternate routes as possible, through Mexico and Central America -- five times. Anne has driven in every Central American country except Belize, which unfortunately was just a bit too far out of the way for the limited time available. Once the trip was made with daughter and first grandchild Michael along, (before he was school age.) Anne Marie and Michael had made a special trip south by air, just to make the extended highway trip back. The summer before her husband's retirement, oldest son Alfred, his wife Robin and their children David and Cheri flew to Panama for a visit too. Each member of the family -- parents, children and later, grandchildren -- studied Spanish and have varying amounts of proficiency, as well as all early being computer literate.

Writer with a Camera

While her husband worked at the Panama Canal, Anne wrote a regular column ...Of Shoes and Ships... and occasional articles Grimm Reaper for the English-language daily Star & Herald of Panama. During these more than 17 years overseas she also sold articles along with color 35mm slides, and black and white prints from her darkroom -- usually using a name in the form editors would not automatically refuse as the work of a female, or offer a lower payment for the material. Anne sold to the Army/Navy/Air Force Times, and various radio, van and 4 wheel drive magazines in the United States -- until the Panama Canal Treaties forced her husband's early retirement. (Panamanian citizens might be employed to any age, but US citizens working at the canal could not, even before the year 2000 with treaties in full effect, stayed after age 62.)


Don't buy this book

Borrow it from your library instead

The first Panama contract her husband signed, she chronicled as a full-length manuscript, copyright 2006 as Intimate Reflections, Two years at the Panama Canal ISBN 978-1-4208-9269-X -- Print-On-Demand from AuthorHouse.com -- and available at major bookstores and Amazon.com.

In 2006 there were three more books published, Something Fishy, At the Panama Canal . . . Terralimbo, Out of Time and Fletter Cove, Romance and Relationships

Then in 2007 a second of the series, Intimate Reflections, Tales Told Out of School . . . with to follow, Nonprofit Organization, How We Established Ours and a read aloud storybook next with more books in the planning for 2008 and thereafter.


Community Involvement

Even more so after the children had left home, Anne was involved in many after-hours activities both in the canal community and elsewhere in the country of Panama ... tailoring what she did to her husband's many shift changes. She was member of the VFW Auxiliary, Legion Auxiliary, Canal Breakers CB Radio Club -- holding Citizens Band licenses for both the Canal Community and the Republic of Panama -- and the Canal Kickers Square Dance Club. She danced (and attended square dance jamborees) with the Square-in-a-Circle and Sunday Swingers Clubs. She and her husband were first guests of the Coffee Pickin' Squares in Costa Rica. Repatriated, she danced with the square dance club meeting in unincorporated Chinook, in a building behind the Chinook Tribal Headquarters, and joined the Peppy Pacers, in Raymond, remaining in that club until it closed. Anne belonged in the early 1980s to computer user groups on both the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts of Panama, using early Bulletin Boards with a 300 baud modem. She also published with her first computer, word-processed, printed and internationally distributed newsletters by mail. She had immediately previously edited and produced for one year the Gatun townsite mimeographed newsletter. In years following her learning to use a computer, each of the children and grandchildren in turn became computer literate. The family--including sister Rose and her children/grandchilden--from Alaska to Florida, stays in touch by email.

Anne filled her expatriate days beyond the part-time self-employment of writing and photography, with ceramics, painting (including entering international juried art shows in the Panamanian city of Colon) and besides giving writing workshops of her own, attended classes, other workshops, symposiums and seminars given by the canal company and on the US military bases. She employed the usual means by which married women living in foreign countries --unable to receive an equitable payment for their skills with the employment available-- have managed to keep themselves sane. She studied and passed the Novice amateur radio license examination for the United States (KA7TON) and qualified for a Panamanian clase B radioaficionado (HP2) license ... in Spanish. Others taking the clase B license --men and women alike of whatever citizenship-- did so at that testing session each in their own language as was permitted.

Cross Country

January 5, 1985, having spent three months driving from Miami, Florida to Maine, through Ohio, Iowa, Southern California and Seattle, visiting relatives and friends, the couple relocated in South Pacific County, where Anne started immediately her state-licensed publishing business on the dinette table of the motorhome in a trailer park ... until a house, including electricity, septic system, water, telephone and TV cable were installed on previously bought property. She had previously completed all the research necessary. For 18 months she produced CANDLE, A Working Person's Ragazine, progressing nicely until newly passed Washington State and Federal laws cut profits to local businesses and it seemed futile to continue trying to sell any more advertising. She turned to writing, producing and selling 12-page Keys to Success pamphlets instead . . . which sold across the county and in Eastern Canada. She also produced a number of small books over the next few years, from manuscripts on hand.

Single Again

Somewhat more than a decade later, Anne was divorced. By the time she had lived eight relieved and happy years alone in an apartment in Raymond, using the name Anne Louise Grimm as she had after graduation from high school, she had written and self-published the book NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION, Setting Up a Charitable Foundation, in 2007 out-of-print and in 2008 Print-On-Demand published by AuthorHouse.com. She founded a non-profit organization in May 2002, and as Information Coordinator was listed as the Incorporator in the state of Washington of Willapa Chapter DAWN, Domestic Abuse Women's Net by the Secretary of State. Called Willapa DAWN or simply DAWN, the non-profit organization in the southwest corner of Washington state soon including other women as directors, was begun in a time of poor economy with the state of Washington at 7.4% unemployment, worst in the country.

Well over a year later with a growing list of small business clients, Willapa Chapter DAWN had for a first time celebrated the Eleanor Roosevelt Day August weekend -- along with Willapa Valley Grange. This was nine years after the State and then National Grange at conventions passed a resolution naming the date. The date continues to be celebrated locally, annually, with support of Raymond Branch of the Timberland Regional Library. And for two years with the 2008 repeat program scheduled to follow, co-sponsorship -- of Storyteller Debbie Dimitre as Eleanor Roosevelt -- with Northwest Carriage Museum in Raymond

With loaner computer equipment in the hands of Willapa Chapter DAWN clients, new and successful Web sites were up and running. Other clients were in various stages of starting or building their small businesses and as these have grown, subscribed to the PROSPECT the Willapa DAWN Small Business monthly newsletter. (One of a number of newsletters being produced over a period of time after the business was begun on repatriation.) Founded by women members to rescue families from abusive situations, there is no restriction by gender to Small Business assistance ... nor need any abusive situation have occurred. In 2005 Eleanor Roosevelt Day Committed went online as Willapa DAWN sponsored.

Anne has become a life member of the Auxiliary of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 968 where both her father and brother were veteran members. Also she once again belongs to the Panama Canal Society of Florida, some of whose members across the country and around the world will remember her column Of Shoes and Ships which was published in the historic English language daily STAR and HERALD ... available on microfiche at the Library of Congress.

Those Gone Before

Anne's uncles, aunts and cousins, two grandparents and later her parents and younger brother, are included among the over 7000 buried at the Menlo Fern Hill Cemetery. Her grandparents, immigrants Friedrich Traugott Richter and Marie Louise Thiemig Richter, are there. Immigrant John Baptist Grimm was buried in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he died earlier in the century after his boys had left home. (US-born Grandmother Elizabeth Zurlohe Grimm had been buried in Oldenburg, Indiana, where she had died when her second son, George, was ten.) George's sister was buried later in Ohio, his brother Edward in California, brother John in the state of Washington -- two other sisters years earlier, as also two Richter brothers, elsewhere. The World War I Honor Roll inside the front door of the Pacific County Courthouse at South Bend, (on the National Historic Register) contains the names of Anne's father George Grimm and his older brother John. The oldest siblings, Grimm brothers John and George, were in the Army, with basic training in the Philippines. Their younger brother Edward, enlisted in the Army during World War II. George had been in the 31st Infantry, John in an Engineer Battalion, and they served in the AEF-Asia, in Siberia. More information about the older brothers is available at the Maritime Museum in Raymond.

Amateur Radio

Anne has held the amateur call sign KA7TON since licensed as Novice overseas in 1984, later resident in Pacific County upgraded to Technician plus. Once single, in mid-year 1999 she attained General Class and in June 2002, previously certified as a Volunteer Examiner by the ARRL, (American Radio Relay League) she passed the Extra Class license test--as high as anyone can go in Amateur Radio--at the SeaPac Amateur Radio convention in Seaside, Oregon. Anne has served as one of the volunteer examiners during SeaPac conventions held in Seaside, Oregon. She is a member of YLRL, the Young Ladies Radio League -- an international group of women of all ages -- and in August 2000 was assigned the license KD7KAJ as trustee of WARC, the Willapa Amateur Radio Club, where as Communications Officer she edited the SPARKS emailed newsletter until 2007.
Intent on turning manuscripts produced over many years and on file into published books, the only regularly produced emailed newsletter remaining by mid-2007 was Grimmly Reflecting, a weekly 600 word column/newsletter with Friday release date free to subscribers on an international basis, readers currently scattered over four continents.

Coordinates: 46 degrees, 40 minutes, 54 seconds North
123 degrees, 44 minutes, 11 seconds West
Grid: CN86dq

URL: http://www.willapabay.org/~anne/annepers.htm

E-mail Anne

Anne Louise Grimm
434 - 6th Street # 206
Raymond WA 98577-1804, USA

State Business License 600 560 787
SAN: 659-7971
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