Stories That Live In Us

Washington: Replanted Roots Now Evergreen (with Cyndi Ingle) | Episode 77

• Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist • Season 2 • Episode 77

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Cyndi Ingle:

So one of the last times I saw my aunt Ellen, she says well, you know, warnie lost his clothes. My dad was Warren, they all called him Warnie. He didn't like that either. But she says he lost it. I said what do you mean? He lost his clothes. And she said well, daddy had strapped his little suitcase to the running board or whatever on the outside of the car and apparently at some point in the trip it fell off.

Crista Cowan:

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of Amerifeth Tales of immigration, migration, courage and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us. If you are brand new to family history, you might not know my guest today, but if you've been around for a minute, you certainly do.

Crista Cowan:

Back when I was a baby genealogist and the internet was brand new, one of my favorite resources, before even Ancestrycom came along, was Cyndi's List. My guest today is Cyndi Ingle, and she is the founder and still runs and maintains Cyndi's List as a one-woman show. And when I found out that she and I were genealogy colleagues, when I finally reached the status of professional or at least felt like I could call myself that, I was so starstruck. When I first met her, I realized she is a real person. Not only is she a real person. She's a real funny person and a real storyteller. Because she's a real storyteller, as I have followed her around the internet and interacted with her all these years.

Crista Cowan:

There's been a running joke about her dad and that he might have built a significant structure in the state of Washington, and I kind of always thought it was a joke. Today, we're going to get to the bottom of that family story. Enjoy my conversation with my guest, Cyndi Ingle. Well, Cyndi, I'm so excited to see you. I feel like I haven't seen you in person forever much less online.

Cyndi Ingle:

Yeah, we haven't seen each other. It's been a long time.

Crista Cowan:

Well, you and I have been colleagues in the genealogy space for a long time, but I don't think I have ever had a personal conversation with you about your family history. So I'm really excited and thank you for joining.

Cyndi Ingle:

Oh, I'm happy to be here. I was excited that you invited me.

Crista Cowan:

So, Cyndi, a lot of people know you because of Cindy's List. Certainly I know for myself and a lot of our colleagues here at Ancestry that was some of our first introduction to family history was because Cyndi's List. What year did that go online?

Cyndi Ingle:

I started it was in the summer of 95, I had got a new computer with a 9600 baud modem. It was streaming fast and came pre-loaded with AOL software and I can remember going out into the AOL genealogy community that was there, and then there were links out to this thing called the internet. So outside of that environment, I remember going and looking and finding things and being fascinated. Again, from Washington State I couldn't travel, couldn't go see things and be around where my own people had come from. So all of a sudden I started being able to see things I hadn't seen before and it was exciting the idea of sharing across the airwaves or whatever they were at the time, phone lines. So that summer I did that and I'm a member of the Tacoma Pierce County Genealogical Society and we've got a show and tell that happens every September. You know what'd you do over the summer? And so I took in, I printed up a whole page of everything I could find online for genealogy and I made 10 copies. And I thought you just say a whole page, a whole page, just the one. One piece of paper, one, one whole page was full. And I, I made 10 copies and I had no idea because I thought I was being a little computer geeky and like you know how would they take this. But I got up to because I remember, you know, that other people doing the show and tell they'd gone on family trips, they'd gone to cemeteries and they found, you know, nan brought this beautiful genealogy quilt she made. I could still picture it and me thinking, oh, I've got this lame thing of one page of links. So anyway, I got up there and shared. They jumped on me like a pack of ravenous wolves and they were like, can we have more copies? I ran out of my 10 copies. I had to go upstairs to the library lady and get 10 more, whatever 20 more copies to share with everybody. And this is what you do in a genealogy society meeting.

Cyndi Ingle:

When you see the quarterly editor walking towards you, you should run, because when you don't, you get a new job. And Nancy said to me Cyndi, do you think you could turn that into a bigger article for the quarterly? And I was like, sure, but I'd probably have to categorize them and make it, you know, because this was just a big, one long list at that point. So in the fall of 95, there's a five page article, five or six page article in the Tacoma Pierce County Journal that had all the links I could find for genealogy, which I can't remember how many they were.

Cyndi Ingle:

But the following January I taught myself HTML and I was putting up a website for my personal genealogy and I thought you know I've got that list of links. I wonder if I could add that to my personal genealogy site. So it was, you Cyndi's Genealogy and I was like well, Cyndi's List of genealogy sources on the internet, whatever the hell. It was a long name and it has now just Cyndi's List List, but I put that up in. It was March 4th of 96, it went online live.

Crista Cowan:

So you went from one page of links to do you know how many links you have now?

Cyndi Ingle:

318,000 and over 200 categories plus a whole bunch of subcategories. Back then we didn't have great search engines and so finding things was hard and I was trying to make it. And I'd heard this quote early, early on, about the internet that it's like a great big room with all its books strewn on the floor, and so I was trying to pick up all the genealogy books and make sense of them, make a little card catalog for us. So that's where it started, and then it just grew and grew as people kept asking for things and giving me ideas of what to do.

Crista Cowan:

Well, you have certainly given a gift to the entire genealogy community, because you've never charged for this, you've just done it, and I have heard stories and tales of you spending late night hours and the headaches of broken links.

Cyndi Ingle:

Broken links are the bane of my existence, that's for sure.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, tell me a little bit about just family stories you heard growing up. Is there like one that sticks out to you, or was it just kind of a lifetime of family storytelling for you?

Cyndi Ingle:

Well, I can tell you, when I was born in Seattle, washington, and my grandparents lived here and most of my aunts on my dad's side all lived in Washington, and I can remember as a little girl I wanted to hang out with the old people in the room more than I wanted to hang out with the kids, Like I wanted to hang out and listen to the stories and listen, especially at the holidays, you know. So I've got really good memories of having my dad's side. They had five kids and each of them had, you know, three or four kids, and so there was a lot of cousins around and aunts and uncles and all that. And I just remember being fascinated with trying to figure out how everybody was related.

Crista Cowan:

So you were born and raised in Seattle, but your dad was not.

Cyndi Ingle:

Yeah, no, my dad was not. My dad was born in North Dakota and mom was born in California. So my brother and I are first generation Washingtonians. You know, there are some people here in Washington that go back to the homesteaders, and early, but most people tend to be people that have migrated here and so we go back to. So the picture on the wall behind me, that's my second great grandmother, Mary Eleanor Sanderlyn Cartwright. She married Francis Irvin Cartwright and they were well at least she was I don't know about Francis but Church of the Brethren, Dunkerts in northern Indiana.

Cyndi Ingle:

And in 1896, well, there was a lot of newspaper articles and a lot of broadsides and things put out about homesteading in the Dakota Territory and going to homestead in the Dakotas. And so there was a Reverend Amos Peters from the Church of the Brethren that says to his people there in Indiana hey, I want to go build a church at Zion in North Dakota, let's go. And he gets Francis and Mary Eleanor and then their oldest daughter is my great grandmother, Arvilla, and she married David Henry Engel, and so David and Arvilla and Mary Eleanor and Francis all headed to North Dakota to Homestead, so in Towner County, which is the middle of North Dakota, right on the Canadian border way up there. There's nothing there, it's flat, there's not a lot of trees, and so I've got a really bad photocopy of a picture of the sod house they had my grandparents had, and then that was in 1896. And he gets this whole church, all these members of his church, to go move there and they settled Zion Township, they start the church there and that's where my grandpa Ingle was born.

Cyndi Ingle:

So he was born in Kandu. His future wife, my grandma, came from Virginia, but the same thing, Church of the Brethren, and came up to Homestead in the neighboring county. So you fast forward a little bit. And the same Reverend Amos Peters says, and I'm studying him right now, I'm doing a little bit on the Ingle side right now, but he he says you know what, we're heading to Eastern Washington. I don't know what drew him there, but he started church in Walla, Walla and in Wenatchee, which is where my dad and his family ended up. So my, my grandpa and his two of his siblings at least two of them came, and then several cousins came out to Eastern Washington. So I live in Western Washington, on the, you know, closer to the ocean, I live in the green part. Heavy trees and all that here in Washington, Eastern Washington, and actually where my dad grew up, is orchards and farms and that sort of thing and then grain and stuff in further eastern Washington.

Crista Cowan:

It's almost like a whole different place it is.

Cyndi Ingle:

It's like two different environments and it's like there's a lot of Germans from Russia in eastern Washington. It's like the plains, it's like Nebraska or something in eastern Washington Anyhow. So this minister is drawing people to move and to start churches, and my family follows my dad's side follows that path, and there's times when I really want to know more about how much they did with that church and going.

Crista Cowan:

Tell me a little bit about that faith. I don't know anything about the Church of the Brethren.

Cyndi Ingle:

I don't know much either. My dad was raised in that and my grandma was kind of devout and she was extremely devout, this one behind me. So they believe in pacifism. They're kind of an offshoot of Mennonites and Amish Pacifism. They are full immersion baptism. The nickname for Church of the Brethren was Dunkards or Dunkards.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, Was this religious leader? Was he like the leader for the whole faith or just for this particular congregation?

Cyndi Ingle:

Just in that particular congregation and he was like let's go, and he kept buying into it and encouraging members of the church to keep moving in Homestead. And I'm sure you know when I was growing up it was like they came from North Dakota. They farmed there. They farmed in Indiana. We did a farming course last year for GRIP and I thought I'm going to use Adam Engel in Indiana and then his sons to show how we are farmers and I completely disproved that there was any farming going on.

Crista Cowan:

So what were they doing?

Cyndi Ingle:

Well, completely disproved that there was any farming going on. So what were they doing? Well, that's what's funny when I think about it now. So I'm getting the story. As I'm writing these lectures to teach people, I'm actually getting a newer, better story for my family there. So you know, adam Engel, who was my second great grandfather, was in Indiana and he went and worked on the railroad in Wisconsin when a couple of kids were and then he continued going and doing that, and then his son, my great-grandfather, David Henry Engel. When I've been looking in North Dakota again, it's in the middle of nowhere. There's not a lot going on if you're not a really successful farmer. I was doing a lot of newspaper research on him and found he was constantly looking for work and he offered carpentry skills and house painting and at some point later on he did wallpaper and stuff and he was going out and getting a bounty wolf, bounty wolf skin and other things.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, a whole lot of stuff super resourceful.

Cyndi Ingle:

I don't think he yeah, so then his son, my grandpa, I've such. My grandpa died, uh, when I was just six years old, so my memories of my grandpa angle are very, um, soft and very far away. But I remember he would lay on the couch and I would wash, wash his and then I would brush it. I can remember standing there for hours and brushing his silver, beautiful white hair and him talking to me. I don't know what he talked to me about because it's a soft memory. That's way back there. But I heard from my uncle and my dad and I watched my dad. My dad had an extremely good work ethic and I listened to my uncle. My uncle told me a lot of stories about his dad. So my grandpa worked his tail off his whole life. He worked really hard and when they were in North Dakota when he grew up, so he meets my grandma at church, apparently, grandma chased him at church and got him. So that's how that story was told by grandma at church and got him. So that's how that story was told by grandma. Yeah, like well, I think it was actually my aunt that told that story, I'm not sure, maybe grandma's sisters, but she chased him and she got him and I just got their marriage record not too long ago and I've got a wedding picture. Because grandpa's wearing this suit that's way too big for him, he borrowed it. I was told that and they're 19 and 20 years old, getting married in 1916.

Cyndi Ingle:

My four aunts and uncles, my Aunt Ellen, my Aunt Viola and my and it's funny because Aunt Viola, oh my gosh, she's so funny Her middle name was Zion after the township where the church was established. She hated that so much she hated that middle name. So my two aunts and then grandma had twins, my Aunt Daisy and my Uncle David, and they were all born in North Dakota. So they're in North Dakota, they're trying to make a go of it and we hit, you know, the depression, we get World War One, we get the depression and all of the encouragement in all those broadsides and newspaper articles.

Cyndi Ingle:

To go to North Dakota is like now you need to leave, everybody needs to go. Well, because it just became really hard. It was a hard life. Imagine 1937, the highways there's no major highways, roads and everything. And there's a car and it's my grandma and my grandpa. My Aunt Ellen is the oldest and she just literally is a newlywed, she and her husband, uncle Ted in the car. So there's four adults and then my Aunt, viola, daisy and David three teenagers and my dad, who's a two-year-old, in that car from North Dakota to Washington. It took them two weeks.

Crista Cowan:

Did they have any stuff? Like you think all those people, but then they have to have suitcases or boxes exactly and what did they leave behind?

Cyndi Ingle:

So it this story comes across in bits and pieces through the years and now I've got a more complete picture. But they, they had a trailer and they put all their worldly goods in this trailer and somewhere in Montana that they had had a flat tire over and over and over again on this trailer and so finally they had to pay to put their stuff on a train and have it sent the rest of the way, and I can imagine that must have been really pricey really pricey to do that.

Cyndi Ingle:

So one of the last times I saw my aunt Ellen, she says Well, you know, warnie lost his clothes. My dad was Warren, they all called him Warnie, he didn't like that either, but she says he lost it. I said what do you mean? He lost his clothes. And she said well, daddy had strapped his little suitcase to the running board or whatever on the outside of the car and apparently at some point in the trip it fell off. Oh no, she said you know, mama wasn't happy with daddy because when they left a lot of people owed him money. So as a plumber in North Dakota she says he worked, daddy worked so hard getting down under houses, in in for frozen pipes in January, north Dakota, and you're getting under the house and you're fixing things and whatever. He worked hard and people paid him in chickens or eggs or other things that they can trade him services and that kind of stuff. But she said when they left a lot of people owed him and they weren't going to see that money and so that apparently was a point of contention.

Cyndi Ingle:

So you know they come out on this trip. It took them two weeks. Today I think it would be like maybe a three-day drive today on the highways. But two weeks so, after my aunt died, my cousin, her daughter, gave me this little notebook that my aunt it was, and I didn't even know it existed, but it was a little journal. She was writing down what they were doing each day, oh my goodness, and I got tears reading it. It was one of those where she was describing you know what it looked like in the country and what city they stopped in and stayed in, and what they ate. And she got worse at the journaling as it went on. She was really good at the beginning and then it sort of dwindled.

Crista Cowan:

Do you ever wonder if it was like something her mother gave her to do to keep her busy?

Cyndi Ingle:

It might have been Well. She was a newlywed and she was sitting on her husband's lap quite a bit in the car. I heard that too. I just can't imagine the car could not have had shock absorbers. I don't think they were even invented yet.

Cyndi Ingle:

And all these people and I said well. And I asked her. I said Well, what did? Where did dad sit? You know he said she goes, oh, he just took turns on everybody's lap. He went around the car, you know, apparently they entertained him.

Cyndi Ingle:

He doesn't, of course, remember North Dakota because he was so young when they left, but uh, so this little journal, I I transcribed it and read it and I can see things in there that, um, because I knew these people, and this is part of the nice part of it. When you study the people you knew, um, sometimes it's hard I can't put some of their death dates in my database yet, you know, but seeing this little story unfold of that, that particular trip, because I'd heard it for so long, and she talks about how many they got flat tires so many times on that trip and Grandpa out there changing it, and then they went into town. He and Uncle David went into town and they came back with a treat. They got hamburgers and fries and milkshakes and came back and she describes them walking proudly with these things to coming back to feed them and stuff so it just was this sort of sweet glimpse into the story with more detail that I didn't realize was there Anyway.

Cyndi Ingle:

So they come out. Grandpa gets a job at a hardware store doing plumbing work again.

Crista Cowan:

And they in Wenatchee. Wenatchee is beautiful.

Cyndi Ingle:

Yeah, actually I went to high school in Yakima, so okay, we used to go to Wenatchee for competitions and yeah, well school in Yakima, so we used to go up to Wenatchee for competitions.

Cyndi Ingle:

Well, and Yakima is beautiful those two areas. So yeah, he grew up there. My dad went to Wenatchee High School graduated in 1953. My grandpa they owned a candy business at one point in Wenatchee where they delivered candy to things like gas stations and you know places where they were selling candy. I always was kind of jealous that my other cousins got to know them when they had the candy business because I assumed they got a lot of free candy from grandpa. And I heard that from a couple cousins yeah, grandpa would slip them in a candy bar and stuff and the other.

Cyndi Ingle:

Then they also had a little mini, a little mom and pop grocery store in Wenatchee and that's when my dad was in high school and they they lived behind it and then, um, so you know, all the rest of his siblings are much older than him, they're married and doing their thing, but dad and grandma and grandpa live there. They had a soft serve machine, a soft serve ice cream machine, and when kids came in so it was like ten dollars for a cone or ten cents for a cone. Grandpa would make the cone and then he'd go and he would keep going and keep going for the kids. My grandpa loved kids and my grandma would say that's an art, that's enough. You know he was always super generous with the ice cream.

Cyndi Ingle:

And then I hear the stories from the cousins, super generous with the free candy bars. And then when I get told the story about how he was super generous with people in North Dakota, letting you know doing plumbing work and not taking money for it, and some of that I come across, even though I've got this fuzzy, soft picture of my grandpa. My mom says he was the nicest man she'd ever met and so I I've got this picture of him that's almost more whole now because of researching some of the stuff like what made them leave and what made them go and that particular trip and such. So it makes me happy to learn about him more that way and to know also they worked their butts off, yeah it sounds like it.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, wow, that's amazing, and how lovely that you do have some soft memories of him, right, like that you got to know him a little bit, but that you have this picture of him now that you've gathered from other people, I love that I think it because I was so young when he died and I just it's nice Again.

Cyndi Ingle:

I did this my whole life. I would sit at every holiday, even as an adult. I had my uncle and aunt come for dinner at Christmas or Christmas Eve and I would bring out old photos and I would ask him questions and he would just start telling me things and I hope I've remembered them all the best that I can. But the interesting part of it is we get those stories and then when we go do some research and we see the solidified thing, like look, here they are in the census, here they are in land records, and I know these people and here's what they're doing, and so I don't know. It just makes them more real. It's something more tangible. Even though they're gone, they feel tangible. Do you feel like you know our ancestors? I do.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, absolutely yeah. Yeah, my grandpa died when my mom was 17. So I never knew him, so all I ever had were the stories. But you would walk into my grandma's house and she had a painted portrait of him like just right on the wall, right inside the front door, and I loved that.

Crista Cowan:

I loved feeling like he was still a part of our lives and even now, like my mom's getting older and, you know, every once in a while I can coax her into sharing more stories or telling the story again and, like you said, a piece of it comes out that you hadn't heard before.

Crista Cowan:

Or you know, like she was just talking to me about his World War II service a while ago and she talked about how he would sit in the chair after work and like rub his leg and every once in a while a little piece of shrapnel would come up to the surface and pop out of his leg and he just was like he had served in World War II and had done some damage and for years afterwards little pieces of shrapnel would just work their way out of his skin. But she talked about, you know, and I thought like that gives me such a picture of who he was and what he endured, and kind of adds to the wholeness of that picture, and that wholeness then helps me feel like I know him better. Yeah, yeah, okay. I do have to ask, though, because your family went from North Dakota and Minnesota eventually ends up in Washington and your last name it is spelled I-N-G-L-E. But did you ever? Were there ever? Laura Ingalls jokes.

Cyndi Ingle:

Oh, my entire life, it was Laura Ingalls. Yes, it's not spelled and I think it's not spelled the same, but you know her books. You know I read those in fourth grade.

Crista Cowan:

So how did your mom's family end up in Washington? Well, it wasn't them.

Cyndi Ingle:

It's just mom. So, okay, it's in it, the things that maybe we don't ask a lot of questions when we're young. When we start getting older and start wondering where we come from, people start asking the questions. That's when a lot of people get involved in genealogy. But so my dad went in the Navy. When he got out of the Navy he was looking for work and his sister, my Aunt Daisy who, by the way, she's my genealogy buddy she's the one she and I started on this together in 1980. She's gone now, but she was also very interested in the family and she got me a lot of these stories and pictures and all that. But anyhow, dad was looking for work and Aunt Daisy knew a guy and got my dad a job at non-destructive testing. Okay, it's a unique job.

Cyndi Ingle:

My dad became an expert in his field and pretty well respected and all that. So non-destructive testing is like taking x-rays of metal pieces and parts and looking. In other words, it's non-destructive. They just take an x-ray, they don't have to cut it open to see. So they're looking for cracks and air bubbles and sand inclusions in things like castings. So he took this job. So he worked on dams, he worked on pipelines. He worked on all kinds of things that would use big metal parts and then, as time went on and the industry that he's in grew it's like they did ultrasound and they did. He had at one point a linear accelerator in Tacoma when he worked at the foundry all kinds of fancy stuff that I know about, but it's an interesting thing anyhow.

Cyndi Ingle:

So he, that was his expertise and and daisy got him the job and they sent him to oakland, california, and he was working out of their shop they're driving a work truck and he worked a shift. This is on january 10th of 1961. He worked a shift and then another shift, two back-to-back shifts, and then his co-worker says why don't you come over for dinner? So he goes to his house for dinner. So he's been up for almost 24 hours and he's driving home across the Oakland Bridge and he hit a bus head-on. Oh no, oh yeah, and it was a brand-new bus too. It was a brand-new fleet of buses that had just been released and he crunch, he totaled the truck, he broke his ribs and had a big scar here and at the end of his time Anyway, it was a, it was a big deal.

Cyndi Ingle:

And they sent him to the local hospital for x-rays and you know treating him. He ended up having plastic surgery and stuff. Anyway, there was a cute student nurse and that was my mom.

Cyndi Ingle:

And she took care of him and such. And I've got a letter that he wrote home to Aunt Daisy and said I met this cute girl and he describes mom he doesn't name her in there, but he's talking about she's a nurse and how cute she is and that sort of thing. So that's how they met in January of 61. They were married July of 61. And then they came back to Washington because he came to work for the same company he was already working for at that time, Whose parents can say they met because he hit a bus.

Cyndi Ingle:

Because he hit a bus head on and he was a little drugged up and loopy when he first met her and she thought, ooh.

Crista Cowan:

Oh no.

Cyndi Ingle:

Anyway, but that's how they met and so he brought her to Washington. She's lived here ever since she grew up in Auburn, california, but she loved it here and she described coming when they drove up they drove up to my uncle's house all over and him showing off his state to her, you know, going over the mountains, going to visit his sister in Wenatchee and so on. But yeah that. What's interesting to me is the job, and I think I don't know how to prove it yet I got to figure that.

Cyndi Ingle:

But the reason, one of the reasons they came from Wenatchee to or from North Dakota to Wenatchee was my aunt. My, my grandpa's sister got him a job at the hardware store, said there's a job waiting for you, and then my aunt gets my dad a job, and these things that people do in our ancestors' lives lead them to be who they are. And so if my dad didn't, if my aunt hadn't gotten him that job, he never would have met my mom. And I think about those things a lot, about those little decisions made, or those little things that lead people to to make the choices they do in life. You know.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, I call them switch points Like there. You can mark moments where people make a decision that leads them down an entirely different path than what the, what the you know road would have taken them to otherwise yeah, because I can't imagine my grandparents leaving north dakota what they always knew and and coming into an area that they had no idea they'd never been out here.

Cyndi Ingle:

I mean, obviously it did well for them, but that would be scary any of the immigrants, that that immigrated or migrated across the, how much they were putting on the line and saying, well, we're hoping it's going to be better there.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, yeah. Well, and even you think about, like you know, now if we want to move, it's expensive and it's a hassle, and you know one of life's biggest stressors moving. But then you add on top of that, when you get there, you know there's no Walmart or Target to like, stock your house, there's no utilities, like in some of those cases, like yeah, they were getting there and that was just the beginning of the adventure, not the end.

Cyndi Ingle:

Yeah, exactly. So grandma and grandpa finally ended up on when they retired. They ended up in Western Washington, moved from Wenatchee on over and at some point my one aunt and uncle came over during World War II and they worked. You know, fort Lewis is in Tacoma and I think they worked on anytime there was jobs. They were looking for jobs and getting jobs and such, but they had ended up back in Wenatchee. So the rest of us are over here. So I grew up here, grew up with my dad's family, my mom's in California still, so we would go visit them when we could. But my dad, so you're going to want that story next probably.

Crista Cowan:

Well, let me tell you this next story that I think is coming. Like, I've known you for years like what? 20 years now, yeah, and you know, of course, we follow each other on Facebook and every once in a while I will see people tease you or you'll drop this little thing about your dad building the Space Needle.

Crista Cowan:

I swear for the longest time. I thought it was a joke. I just thought it was some inside joke that I was not privy to and I needed, and so now I'm like I think it's really true. At some point I was like I think that might be true.

Cyndi Ingle:

So I need the story.

Cyndi Ingle:

Well, so he worked for like as a non destructive testing person and he worked for this company and they there was all these different. I actually started looking at some of the stuff that the World's Fair was in Seattle in 1962. So mom and dad mom dad, mary's mom brings her back to Washington in August of 61 and immediately was put to work on the Space Needle. So they were, they were building it and when he started working on it it was a hundred. At the hundred foot level, which is the first thing that you look at, there's a little building there, it's like a restaurant convention thing on it now, but anyway, a hundred foot level. And he started working on that. But it was like 24 hour a day work being done on this thing. So, yeah, no, he did work on the Space Needle and he would go, they would work on it during the day and then he would go and do x rays. They had portable x ray machines. They would climb up in it and x ray the welds and the parts going together and making sure that all the metal pieces were doing what they were supposed to do.

Cyndi Ingle:

So when I was a kid growing up, I told everybody my dad built the Space Needle. I just it was because I believed it, like I in, and dad didn't dispute that, that story you know. So I would just tell everybody my dad built the Space Needle and I can remember we moved after we moved away from Seattle, we moved here where we are now in 72 in Puyallup, washington. So we're south of Seattle, just outside of Tacoma, I can. We went on a fourth grade field trip to the Science Center and as we're pulling in I'm I can remember being on that bus and telling every kid on that bus that my dad built a space nail and I believed it with every particle of my soul. That he did, you know. And so the joke on Facebook that you're talking about is I would say you know my dad built the Space Nail and people, oh really. And then did I ever tell you the story about how my dad built the Space Nail? It's just an ongoing joke. That's partially real.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, because, as you're this fourth grader on that bus, did kids believe you or did they make fun of you?

Cyndi Ingle:

I think probably they were doing both. I can just remember being so proud and telling everybody that he built it. You know, and you know he would just chuckle. He would just let me he's got a sense of humor like I did. He would just let me tell that story over and over again. So I told it clear up until I finally realized that he didn't actually build it. But okay, but mom said that it made her. She went down once or twice to watch and it made her really nervous. I mean, they were harnessed in and they were doing some of this, but he's out there at night. Most of his work they build during the day. And then the non-destructive testing team. He was in charge of that. He did lead the non-destructive testing team that made sure that that thing was gonna stand up.

Crista Cowan:

And guess what, krista?

Cyndi Ingle:

it's still there, yeah right, right, because of my dad. So I'm going to take credit for that. But I've been up the needle several times and taken friends when they come to visit and you know, go and look at it, but it just has every time. I see it, I'm proud of it and it's like from that little childhood thing and belief in my head. I think it's still there, like when you think your dad could do anything and he was like Superman and stuff. I think that's still there when I see it and I've got a variety of little space needle things around the house.

Cyndi Ingle:

Then when I was an adult, when dad worked at Boeing, he did work on well, he worked in the government secret stuff he couldn't tell us about for years. And then we could finally tell us he was working on the stealth bomber and so you know the big. So this is in the eighties, the big flat one that you fly, nobody can see it on radar and all that. He worked on that for several years. The second he was able to talk about that we all ended up getting stealth bomber magnets for our fridges and t-shirts and sweatshirts and the cups, the coffee cup where you put the hot drink in and the plane disappears and then it comes back when it gets anyway. So I get to say, my dad built the Space Needle and the B-2 stealth bomber.

Crista Cowan:

That's crazy.

Cyndi Ingle:

And I'm sticking to it.

Crista Cowan:

You should stick to it, that's amazing.

Cyndi Ingle:

That kind of work would never have come to him in North Dakota. That kind of job and that kind of what he ended up doing was amazing. I think he was self-taught. It was an industry where they were self-taught. He had several different certifications in it by the time he retired. It makes me proud and it makes me proud to know I hope I have his work ethic. I know my brother does. We do everything we can to do the best job that we can. And where I always thought that was from my dad, I now think it's probably from his dad and his dad and his dad, as I'm going back and seeing what it took for them to to live their life and move us on out here.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, well, and how wonderful that Washington provided your dad with the opportunity to grow in that way and to contribute in that way. That's amazing. Your dad with the opportunity to grow in that way and to contribute in that way, that's amazing. So, as you think about what it means to you to be a Washingtonian, is that the right word? Yeah, it is.

Cyndi Ingle:

What does that mean to you? A lot of the people in Washington, because we're relatively new, we became a state in 1889. They're obviously they're Native American people that were here first and there was early immigrants and pioneers that came out and did some homesteading. But a lot of the people that ended up in Washington came from the you know, wisconsin and Minnesota and the Dakotas. There's kind of a migration pattern. That's natural right across the northern part of the United States.

Cyndi Ingle:

When in the Great Lakes, when they logged that entire thing bare and didn't have any more trees, you've got like the Weyerhaeuser family and some of those that are coming out and starting in the Pacific Northwest. I can remember when I was a kid too, asking my dad about it. When you drive through western Washington and you drive through there's a lot of national forests. I live not far from Mount Rainier. I mean it's all gorgeous and beautiful and we do protect our national forests, but then in the areas that were privately owned a lot of it being Weyerhaeuser they would, you know there'd be an area of land that had been felled. So it's blank, the trees are all gone and then there's a sign next showing that Weyerhaeuser's planted.

Cyndi Ingle:

This forest was planted in 1962. You go a little further. This one was planted in 1974. What they learned after you know doing such carnage in the Great Lakes area with the trees, by the time they get out here they start learning we need to actually plant trees if we want to continue to have trees. And so some of the environment became important and the learning and the industry of taking care of our environment happened a lot here with that sort of thing. So I remember being proud of that, like, oh, we learned our lesson and we're not taking without giving back. I live in this just a beautiful area here.

Crista Cowan:

We moved to the Pacific Northwest when I was 13, lived in Portland and then up in Yakima. My parents moved back to Portland after I graduated. But, yes, my best friend lives in Renton. I love the Pacific Northwest and it does breed, I think, in you an appreciation for all things, nature, and that we preserve those things. And that, for me, was what living there did for me, and I hear that those echoes of that from you as well.

Cyndi Ingle:

I tie everything back together to the ancestors. I don't know if I'm obsessed that way. I think you're obsessed that way. Yeah, you know. But my dad, the technical job that he had and being self-taught and doing all of that it was. I always admired that in him and then when he started working at Boeing, he started the other. My mom's told me this recently.

Cyndi Ingle:

The young people there were using computers and he was worried that he was going to fall behind. So he bought a computer, brought home, he was programming things, he was doing all kinds of stuff. So I had a. He bought me in 1988, a DOS version of Family Tree Maker and put it on his computer. So I would go over after work, I'd go over to his house and I would sit and enter all these people. In 1980, my Aunt Daisy, his sister who got him the job originally she had gone back and visited cousins and she came back with stacks and stacks of family group sheets and pedigree charts and so I had this basis from my aunt and my dad giving me computer time. That all led to where I am today too, in my job as well. So there's all those things that we tie into everybody and they all lead me to be who I am today.

Crista Cowan:

I love that you see the patterns there is and that reflects in your work, because essentially that's Cyndi's List is it's just making patterns, making sense out of sometimes what feels a little bit like chaos.

Cyndi Ingle:

Yeah, I'm working on something the other day and I said I'm just going to check it one more time. And I'm going to check it, and mom says, oh, you're just like your dad. And I'm like, yes, that's good, that's a good thing. You made me cry. I'm trying really hard not to cry at this end, because I wish I knew things that I know now. I would love to go back and have a conversation with my grandparents. All of my grandparents were gone by the time I was 17. So my memories are, you know, 17,. That was about 10 years ago, right, right, yeah, and so I. But I wish I could ask them questions, the things about why do you do this, or why did you do that, or you know, how did you feel about leaving and moving and setting out on your own, and that kind of thing.

Crista Cowan:

But we keep digging and sometimes we find the answers. Yep, yep. Thank you so much for sharing your family's story with us and for sharing your dad with us and your grandpa. I think it sounds like you've got a legacy that not only is rich, but also that you keep discovering, which is amazing. Thank you, friends, I appreciate you.

Cyndi Ingle:

Oh, I appreciate you too. This was so much fun. Let's talk all day long.

Crista Cowan:

I know right, we should. We should talk more for sure. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.

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Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist

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