What do the building that houses Shortt Supply, Reed College, Cats, the corner of 9th and State Street, and Eliot Drive all have in common?
Each Monday a group of half a dozen volunteers meet at the Hood River County History Museum to do research. Our major task for the past six months has been to catalog the written files that exist in the museum about different individuals who were significant in the history of this county. Our goal is to create a computerized record so that anyone who wishes to search these files will have a user-friendly system to make searching efficient.
Recently, we computerized a file titled “Franz, George and Pauline.” There was nothing in the file about either of those individuals. Instead, we found an entry about the Jubitz family who were described as the owners of a hardware store, after the original owner, E.A. Franz, sold the business. There also was a description of a historic property in Hood River that was built to house the Franz hardware store. The builder was listed as T.L. Eliot. In the description of the building, the following sentence appeared: “T.L. Eliot’s brother was T.S. Eliot, the famous writer, who often visited his brother on his Hood River property.”
“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”
— From The Naming of Cats by T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
The museum file on T.L. Eliot said that Thomas Lamb Eliot was one of the early leaders of the Unitarian church in Portland, Ore. T.L. Eliot’s father was William Greenleaf Eliot, who was Unitarian leader and who was a co-founder of Washington University in St. Louis. T.L. Eliot liked Hood River and often spent his summers here. He built a house near where Indian Creek and the Hood River meet. Eliot Glacier was named for T.L. Eliot. He built a small Unitarian church on the corner of 9th and State Street. T.L. Eliot served as chair of the trustees for Reed College.
Intrigued, our research team then attempted to substantiate the claim that T.S. Eliot was T.L. Eliot’s brother and that T.S. Eliot often came to Hood River. Both clauses appear to be incorrect. T.L. Eliot was T.S. Eliot’s uncle, not his brother. T.S. Eliot did grow up in St. Louis, Mo. But, after attending Harvard, T.S. Eliot moved to England, became an English citizen, renounced his membership in the Unitarian church and became Anglican.
In December 2014 issue of the Reed College magazine, there was a picture of the grandchildren of T.L. Eliot when they were visiting the Eliot house near Indian Creek. Included was a grandson named Ted Eliot (Theodore Sessinghaus Eliot). So T.S. Eliot did visit Hood River, but it was not the T.S. Eliot who won the Nobel Prize.
Research is both a boring and an exciting process. What researchers learn is that often the most interesting discoveries occur through serendipity.
SERENDIPITY — The apparently accidental discovery of important objects when searching for something else.
The word “serendipity” was coined from an old Persian story about the three princes of Serendip. According to the fable, the three princes were traveling and came across a man looking for a camel. They asked the man if the camel was blind in the right eye and was lame. The man was surprised. How did the princes know that about his camel? They pointed to the grass and how the grass on the left side of the road was eaten, even though the grass on the right side was more tender. Hence, they decided that the camel was blind in its right eye. Also, the footprints of the camel showed that the back right hoof was dragging so they inferred that the camel had an accident which injured the camel’s right eye and right leg.
What do the building that houses Shortt Supply, Reed College, the musical named Cats, the corner of 9th and State Street, and Eliot Drive all have in common? Answer: T.L. Eliot
The History Museum is open on Monday through Saturday from 11 to 4. The public is invited to visit and make its own serendipitous discoveries.
Roger Blashfield is a retired psychology professor with century-plus family roots in Hood River.
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