Music education in Ekalaka in the 1940s and 50s

During the dry Depression years, my parents, Lee and Mildred Coons Lavell, traveled all over Montana, Idaho and Washington looking for work for my dad. The only thing predictable about our lives was another brown-eyed-baby born every two years. Finally, early in 1944, when I was 7, they bought a house at Ekalaka. It was the 34th move in their 11-year marriage.

The house had three small rooms and was built into the side of a hill across from the cemetery. The day we moved in, we children burst in to explore, of course, and there, in the living room, was a reed organ! I could not leave it alone...