A South County resident for more than 50 years, LaRhee Nichols
celebrated her 102nd birthday on Easter Sunday with a party in her
Gilroy home. LaRhee recalls that when she was born on April 11,
1902, in what was then Indian territory.
A South County resident for more than 50 years, LaRhee Nichols celebrated her 102nd birthday on Easter Sunday with a party in her Gilroy home. LaRhee recalls that when she was born on April 11, 1902, in what was then Indian territory. Not many homes in America had an indoor bathtub; most folks had to pump water from a well, carry it in buckets to be heated over a fire, and repeat this process until it added up to a full tub of precious water.
Her family only took baths once a week, starting with her youngest sibling, Merle, and as the eldest, LaRhee had to wait until Elsie, Maisy, and Carroll were done with theirs, so by the time it was her turn, it meant that LaRhee always got stuck with the dirty bath water at the end. Always the storyteller, she recalls covered wagon rides and starving Indians who came to the back door to beg for food in the days before Arizona became a state. Her mother never sent them away empty-handed.
LaRhee first met her future husband Elton one day at the auto shop he and her father operated in Buckeye Valley. It was 1921 and 19-year-old LaRhee was wearing a pink organdy dress and a huge pink homemade hat she had designed herself. As Elton was down on the floor grease-monkey style, working on a car, he happened to glance up and catch sight of this gorgeous vision known as LaRhee.
”That’s the girl I’m going to marry!” he said – and as it turned out, his prediction came true. They had a happy marriage that lasted for more than 75 years, and Elton lived to be just shy of 102 years old.
LaRhee has always been proud of her five children: Doris, Amy, Elton Jr., Paul and LaRhee, and her many grandchildren, but LaRhee’s legacy lives on in more than just her own biological offspring. In the 1940’s, LaRhee and her husband were the first people in their area to openly accept Japanese families as they returned home after being held in internment camps during WWII. Very active in their church, LaRhee and her husband welcomed the returning Japanese people who had been displaced by the U.S. Government. While others shunned the returning Japanese Americans, LaRhee and her husband had the courage to meet them at their trains, find housing for them, arrange health care, try to find them jobs and work to secure the return of their property.
”We battled,” LaRhee says, ”We tried to locate their old homes, but many times they had been ransacked and vandalized while standing empty. Many of them were burned to the ground while the family was interned.”
Many had lost everything. LaRhee immediately invited these Japanese Americans to her church where they felt very warmly welcomed into the activities there.
When several of them returned to visit her in Gilroy years later, they spoke movingly of what she had meant to them and how they have never forgotten her kindness. Each one praised her for helping them to start their lives over again: ”I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
”I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.”
”I needed clothes and you clothed me.”
”I was sick and you looked after me,” they said with tears in their eyes.
She has received Christmas cards from some of these grateful Americans for more than 55 years. This is the legacy of one Gilroy woman who will not be forgotten, a woman who made a better future possible for those she helped.
