On August 1, 1989, a column by a 91-year-old man with Coke-bottle glasses appeared in the Bellingham Herald. The column’s preamble described the author, George Hunsby, as an “oral historian” with a lifetime of stories about Whatcom County life.
That first column would lead to more than five years of nostalgia for Hunsby and his readers, serving as a coda to decades of written and verbal storytelling about his life in Whatcom County.
Whatcom Museum Archivist Jeff Jewell, who knew Hunsby through both his writings and personal interaction, says Hunsby was a local celebrity by his twilight years. While there are a handful of notable local historians, Hunsby stood out by providing valuable firsthand knowledge of local history in writing down his own experiences.
“Local history’s a lot of minutia,” Jewell says. “And a lot of it doesn’t make the radar, the paper, or anything like that. He fulfilled a role that’s unique these days, and that is being an elder. It’s unusual that people stay in the same community for their entire lives.”
Humble Hunsby
George Hunsby was born on June 6, 1898, the second son of Norwegian immigrants. His brother didn’t survive long past birth, but George was joined by a sister, Marie, in 1900. His father came to the United States in 1884, settling first in Michigan before working his way to Whatcom County in 1889.
According to Aaron Joy’s 2021 Hunsby biography, “Let George Do It,” his first years were spent in log cabins. The first was along what’s now Putnam Road, just east of Nugent’s Corner off the Mount Baker Highway. Years later, Hunsby served as an engineering aide for the creation of the highway.
At a time when child labor laws were few, Hunsby began working in his father’s timber mill at age 9, handling whatever tasks his father assigned him. The mill closed by the time he was 12, and his father became a government-employed timber assessor in Alaska.
Before departing north, Hunsby’s father relocated the family to a home in Fairhaven’s Happy Valley neighborhood, and Hunsby began a pattern of job diversity he’d continue into adulthood. Growing up, he worked as a paperboy, did lawn work, and delivered supplies for the Fairhaven Pharmacy. Hunsby also briefly worked as a wrestler at a movie theater, offering diversions between film reels. As he entered his teens, he spent several summers working in local logging camps and sawmills.
After finishing at Larrabee Grammar School, Hunsby attended Bellingham Normal Training School, now known as Western Washington University. Here, he received his education from professional teachers-to-be. After 8th grade, Hunsby ended his formal schooling by becoming a machinist’s apprentice.
Hunsby, Home and Abroad
One day in September 1919, Hunsby and a friend decided to summit Mount Shuksan simply because they had nothing better to do. The following year, 22-year-old Hunsby met his 18-year-old wife, Ruth, and they married in 1921. Their first home wasn’t much: a fenced-in, 12-by-14-foot tent lacking water, electricity, or phone service. Hunsby took a streetcar to his mill job – 5 cents each way – but eventually acquired a Ford Model T as their living situation improved.
Like many, Hunsby met joblessness when the Great Depression hit. He bounced between temp jobs, including as a holiday window dresser. He also once worked as a gardener for Ella Higginson, Washington’s first Poet Laureate.
But at the end of 1930, Hunsby began one of his most interesting jobs: that of a federal treasury agent tasked with enforcing the Volstead Act (better known as Prohibition). He worked in Montana, Idaho, North Dakota and Canada. Ruth joined him in Montana, but she was deeply unhappy there. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Hunsby briefly became an immigration inspector before quitting so the couple could return to Bellingham.
World War II brought Hunsby a second round of military service. After being rejected from the Navy at age 18 due to colorblindness, Hunsby spent the end of World War I serving stateside in the Army National Guard.
In 1942, at age 44, Hunsby reenlisted in the Army and joined the 99th Infantry Battalion. During training, he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt; it was the second president he’d seen in person after William Howard Taft’s 1911 Bellingham visit.
Ultimately, Hunsby traveled to Europe and served as an infantryman, mechanic and medic during World War II. In the latter job, he came ashore at Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion, which took place on his birthday.
Hunsby was never wounded but suffered shell shock from explosions. He suffered one particularly close call when a doctor standing next to him was hit and killed by a shell burst. After being honorably discharged, Hunsby went on to become a member of nearly every veteran-related organization one could join, including Bellingham’s American Legion Post No. 7.
His efforts with veterans’ organizations were recognized formally on March 1, 1974, when county commissioners declared the date “George Hunsby Day.”
Hunsby and History
After the war, George Hunsby worked various jobs for the rest of his life. They include forest fire spotter, excavator, boilermaker, insurance agent, notary public, and gravedigger. Hunsby ran for public office twice, seeking Bellingham’s District 1 City Commissioner position, but lost both times. His first election in 1950 featured the campaign slogan “Let George Do It.”
Hunsby’s attention turned to writing in the 1970s. It began with work on a memoir, ultimately unpublished, about growing up in Fairhaven. From 1972 to 73, Hunsby wrote a bi-monthly historical column in the short-lived Bellingham Metropolitan. Two self-published history books on Fairhaven followed in 1975 and 76. Original copies are hard to find, but the two were reproduced as a single book in 2009 by Chuckanut Editions.
Hunsby kept writing and eventually penned shorter books on subjects he had personal experience with, like World War II and logging. In 1979, his wife Ruth died unexpectedly. The couple never had children. Devastated, Hunsby sold their home and moved into a retirement apartment not far from his sister’s house.
Hunsby also appeared as an extra in the 1982 train robbery movie “The Grey Fox,” but his scene was cut from the film’s final version. From 1988 to 89, Hunsby wrote a historical column for the Bellingham Times, another short-lived publication. In August 1989, his Bellingham Herald nostalgia column began. Hunsby reminisced about all manner of his early life and also espoused his views on modern society.
He averaged writing two columns a week, working from mostly manual typewriters. Even though his column wasn’t syndicated, clippings made their way across the country, leading to frequent reader letters. Hunsby once quipped that he spent more money on postage to answer his letters than he was initially paid to write the column to which people responded.
After Hunsby’s sister died in 1990, Hunsby moved into the retirement community at the Hotel Leopold. He often sat in the lobby and was always quick to spin a yarn. In 1993, he was honored with a Bellingham Mayor’s Arts Award for preserving community history and folklore.
Hunsby’s final column was published on February 1, 1995. Mounting health issues – and a lack of typewriter ribbons – led to his retirement. Shortly after his 98th birthday, Hunsby died at the Bellingham Health Care Center on June 18, 1996. His graveside ceremony at Bayview Cemetery came with full military honors.
George Hunsby wrote for the same reason that many of us write: not for financial riches but for the sake of curiosity, memory and connection.
“I wrote about things that were of interest to me,” Hunsby once wrote. “If I have been able to give someone a joyful moment or perhaps a laugh by my writings, then I have been fully compensated.”
