“The first time I was in Carpenter’s grocery store, we needed a cooler for the week we would be here,” Audrey Stenvall Swanson said of a 1950s visit to Lopez Island. “Mr. Carpenter had the store where the Fudge Factory is now. It was just a tiny little place. They didn’t have any coolers but the one other customer said, ‘I’ve got one at home, you can borrow that.’ She didn’t ask our names or anything. ’Just bring it back and put it in the barn.’ We did.”

“My maternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants who had a homestead about 100 miles from Calgary. My grandmother, first white woman, was alone on that barren prairie with four children while my grandfather was away building grain elevators. They finally moved to Calgary.” Her mother met her father, a Swedish immigrant, in Canada where they were married in 1929, just as the depression began.

Born January 1, 1935, in Calgary, Swanson moved with her family to Vancouver, B.C. five years later. They lived in a rooming house with 33 children, the only place that took families. Eventually, her dad built a house, 12 by 14 feet, on a small lot where they lived while he worked on a larger home, about twice the size. “At first, we had no running water, an outhouse, and light from a coal oil lantern that hung from a hook,” said Swanson. “We were happy,” she said as laugh lines deepened and blue eyes enlivened her open friendly face. “We went to school in starched dresses and my dad always polished our shoes.”

An uncle sponsored Swanson’s family when she was 12 and they moved to a south Seattle acreage. She had enough credits to work half days at Sears Warehouse sorting packages during her junior and senior years. Annoyed at the pay scale, Swanson asked her supervisor, “Why do the boys get 45 cents more an hour than we do?” They were doing the same work. “That’s just the way it is,” said the supervisor.

After graduation, Swanson worked in a one-person office. She was married at 19 when her first boy friend returned from service In Korea. She had saved the down payment for their first home, total cost, $8,950. Ten years later, Swanson was divorced with two small children and found a position as secretary to the Treasurer of Renton Boeing.

Those difficult single parent years ended when she met John Swanson on a blind date for New Year’s Eve. He had the same Swedish background as she, maternal grandparents and father as immigrants. “We kind of took a liking to each other,” Swanson said. They were married at Thanksgiving and her new husband adopted the children.

John Swanson’s work with Peter Kiewitt Sons construction as a civil engineer necessitated a move to Canada and then to California. The couple worked continually for seven years on an unfinished home they found in Walnut Creek. Shortly after they put in air conditioning, land they were interested in on Lopez Island became available. Moving to the island thirty-five years ago, the couple built their own home. Rock had to be blasted away to position it with a water view. Swanson recalls using equipment to swing huge beams into place as her husband teetered on a forty-foot ladder to place them. “I don’t remember the name of the machine but I was afraid I would knock him off with one false move.”

She kept the books for her husband’s contracting business.

Aud’s Ends, her antique business, had its beginnings in California. She had a shop in three different places on Lopez, exhibited at shows and had spaces in various antique malls. While her late husband never wanted to leave the island, she traveled to shows as far as Salt Lake City by dealing in small items that packed tightly in her car. A cancer survivor, she closed her business seven years ago.

Swanson enjoyed a foray into real estate working for both Washington House and Lopez Realty. “I really liked real estate. The thing I didn’t like was competing with friends and neighbors to sell. Back then, we sold mostly property. Some of it, you had to carve a trail to find.”

Swanson’s sister, Vivian Burt, lives next door but her brother, Clifford, has moved away. “I think family is one of the most important, if not the most important, thing. We had cousins, aunts and uncles around. Everybody would help each other. Afternoon we’d all play baseball, adults and kids. Basically, it’s not what you have. Kids don’t know the difference. They’re happy if you’re happy.”

Senior Advisory Board Secretary, member of the quilt club, selling for the Thrift Shop, Swanson keeps active. “I plan to go to Sweden and meet all the family. I have a couple Swedish courses I plan to take before I go.”