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Anne's Personal Home Page

Personal Interests:

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

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.

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 and Xlibris -- and available at major bookstores.

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 Hush . . . Listen! a read aloud storybook, cover art by Western and Wildlife Artist Kenneth J. Hurley. Grimmly Once is a compilation of essays, and Anything Goes, fantasy/science fiction short stories.

With more books in the planning in 2010 and thereafter.

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.

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. 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 websites 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.

Intent on turning manuscripts produced over many years and on file into published books, only the one regularly produced emailed newsletter remaining by mid-2007 was Grimmly Reflecting, a 600 word column/newsletter with Friday release date free to subscribers on an international basis, readers currently scattered over four continents. Begun as a sold-to-newspapers column, the 600 word essay Grimmly Reflecting became as newspapers turned to more distant syndicated material laying off local writers, free by email distributed weekly.

A new and older neighbor, Wilma Pundars, with the same month winter birthday, moved into the apartment across the hall of the Raymond Manor. In 2008 at 95 years old, she was a delight to visit with and soon Anne learned this activist had found a cause. Wilma used a wheeled walker and thirteen minutes away from the apartment building the historic register Raymond Post Office was inaccessible to the disabled. That was not acceptable! What could Anne do to help? Publicity of course. Wilma used an electric typewriter, the US Mail and telephone -- mostly long distance from the remote, rural, southwestern corner of the state, and had no wish to waste time learning to use a computer. This called for teamwork, and conveniently Wilma agreed to serve with Willapa Chapter DAWN as activist/advisor. An organization that could back her too. More than a year without success in 2009 the two old women were united in a cause worthy of their best efforts. And they were having fun with it too, enlisting other residents at Raymond Manor and well beyond. In 2009 success was announced, a ramp to be installed by mid-October.

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. She belongs to the Friends of the Raymond Library, another historic register building, celebrating 80 years in July 2009 as the only split-level Tudor library in the United States. Anne is a director of the W.A.S.H. Board -- Women Against Sexual Harassment -- and is once again a member of the Panama Canal Society of Florida, and a member of the Panama Canal Museum some of both organizations 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.

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.

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.