Week 42: Proud (Voter)

Here we are at the end of October, 2020, still fighting COVID 19, and awaiting Election Day.  Results of the election will probably be delayed as so many ballots are being mailed in.  Here in Washington state, all ballots are mailed in or put in a county lockbox.  We dropped our ballots off this afternoon and then went out to lunch to celebrate.  

Week 42's topic is "Proud" and I'll admit as we've moved through this challenge, I'm finding it harder to find people to talk about!  But, my Grandma Belknap (Grace Ethel McDuff Belknap) makes me proud.  She was born in 1895 in or around Olympia, Washington and lived in that area of Washington nearly all of her life, with some time in the eastern part of the state as a young woman teaching in a one-room schoolhouse.  She married Melvin Belknap after only about a year of teaching.  They stayed in eastern Washington at least long enough for my Uncle Dwight to be born, but by 1921 they were definitely back in Olympia where my mother was born.  Melvin was killed in an accident at work in 1936, leaving Grace a widow for the rest of her life (she died in 1969). Yes, kind of depressing.  But...my grandmother was absolutely adamant about voting and politics for the rest of her life.  She paid a lot of attention to elections--remember, she lived in the state capital--and voting.  Women in Washington state got the vote in 1910 when Grandma was 15 and it seems that she started voting the moment she was eligible.  She served as an election judge for years  and only stopped when her health began to decline in her 60s.   

So, I'm proud of my grandmother who embraced the right to vote and made an active contribution to helping elections run smoothly.  I cannot imagine what she would have made of 2020's voting issues but I'm absolutely certain she would have had an opinion.