Cat 204 _ Women in Business

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 • The Islands’ Sounder WWW.ISLANDSSOUNDER.COM 1

Women in BusinessA special advertising section honoring Orcas Island’s business women and their contributions to the community

by COLLEEN S. ARMSTRONGEditor

C indy Morgan comes from several gen-erations of green thumbs.

Growing up, she admired the skill of her mom and grandmothers, all of whom kept gardens. Now Morgan runs her own success-ful flower shop, Nest, in Eastsound.

“I made an arrangement on Valentine’s Day that reminded me of something my grandmother would

have done,” Morgan said. “Even in the winter, my mom would send us outside to go get something for the centerpiece.”

This is Morgan’s third year in her current loca-tion underneath the Windermere offices. Her former space, the small side shop at Tres Fabu, had no heat, running water, or insulation.

“My life is much more sane now,” she said.

Morgan’s store is a play-ground of greenery and

scent. She offers flowers for any occasion, including small gatherings, memo-rial services, weddings, and just because. She also car-ries house plants, local art, lamps, vases, jewelry, and candles.

Morgan moved to Orcas in 1980 and worked in the hospitality industry for years. For a time, she was an auditor for Marriott hotels across the globe, leaving the island for several months at a time. Morgan has been with her partner, Dave Page, since 1989. He owns a landscaping business.

“Dave says I was born to be doing this,” Morgan said. “I really love the flow-ers. I also enjoy tending to the plants. They are living beings. And I like finding merchandise for the store – things that are unique and

Blooms, baubles, and beeswax

Cindy Morgan offers flower arrangements and unique gifts at her store “Nest, Flights of Fancy” in Eastsound

Colleen Smith Armstrong/staff photoCindy Morgan, owner of Nest in Eastsound, with some of her house plants. She also offers flower arrangements, local art, jewelry, candles, vases, and lamps.

SEE CINDY, PAGE 15

WWW.ISLANDSSOUNDER.COM Wednesday, February 23, 2011 • The Islands’ Sounder

by MEREDITH M. GRIFFITHSta� reporter

A recent day for quick-fingered local seamstress Beth Baker

included fitting slipcovers for a tugboat, making pat-terns for a barbecue cover, hemming pants, fixing a shoe – and the next morn-ing, meeting with a bride-to-be about a dress altera-tion.

“I love my job because it’s just so varied; you never know what is coming down the road,” she said.

In her early business days, a man walked into her shop (behind where Poppies is now) with a huge iguana draped over his shoulder, wanting Baker to sew it a harness.

“I’m not fitting your iguana!” she told the man. “Reptiles aren’t my thing.” She did offer hands-off instructions, helping him create digs for the lizard.

Baker has been sewing professionally since 1982, beginning as a tailor and pattern-maker for profes-sional theatre. She came to Orcas in 1994, starting up Sew Like the Wind the next year. Baker does custom sewing for people and their homes, patching, altering, hemming and creating fur-niture slipcovers for clients on Orcas, Shaw, Lopez, Seattle and even Hawaii.

“It’s funny how the island provides,” she said. “Every time I think, wow, I’d bet-ter get a part-time job, the phone rings. I’m so grateful for the support I’ve had on this island.”

The Sounder asked Baker how she got into sewing.

“Well, I was an obses-sive little Girl Scout,” she laughed. “I had to have all the badges, and there was a sewing badge.”

Her mom helped her with her first project, a jumper, and the custom seamstress living next door provided further inspiration.

Baker said that sometime in her late 20s, she realized with a shock that she wasn’t going to become a profes-sional actress.

“That’s all I ever thought I would do,” she said.

Reading a copy of the guidance book “What Color is Your Parachute,” she real-ized she was happiest when sewing.

Sizzling seamstress

Meredith M. Griffith/staff photoBeth Baker, owner and operator of Sew like the Wind.

SEE BETH, PAGE 17

Beth Baker whips up dazzling pieces with Sew Like The Wind

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 • The Islands’ Sounder WWW.ISLANDSSOUNDER.COM Page 13

by COLLEEN S. ARMSTRONGEditor

G ail Koher can see it all from her home atop Double Hill Road, overlooking

Eastsound. “I see the planes com-

ing in and the boats in the harbor,” Koher said. “I like to watch eagles soar in the wind.”

Her serene spot is also a premier bed and breakfast, with journalists, couples, and families traveling from around the world to visit Orcas Island and stay in her home.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘how can you have so many people in your house?’ But it’s fun,” Koher said. “One hundred percent of them are very nice.”

Koher moved to Orcas in 1969 with her husband Dennis and their young son, Kelly. They started Sea Island Sand and Gravel with several partners. Koher worked in the office. After leaving the com-pany, she worked at Deer Harbor Post Office, Richard

Exton Real Estate, Coldwell Banker Orcas Associates and Dr. William Bradshaw’s Office. Then she made a life

change.“I wanted to be around

people,” Koher said. “I enjoyed it so much that I

decided to open my home as a bed and breakfast for

Top of the world: Double Mountain Bed and Breakfast

SEE GAIL, PAGE 22

Colleen Smith Armstrong/staff photoGail Koher is celebrating her 20th year as owner and operator of Double Mountain B&B.


appeal to the locals.”Morgan’s favorite flower

changes all the time, but her current prized blossom is the “wildcat orchid,” a deep tangerine and burgundy cut flower. She buys her flower stock from a company in Seattle, and Kenmore Air flies it to Orcas.

Her garden at home has mixed vegetables and flowers, and Page recently refenced the area.

“We battle raccoons, rab-bits, and deer like everyone else,” she said.

Morgan says the island

community sustains her shop.

“The local clientele is extremely supportive,” she said. “Some come in once a week for a bouquet, and others come in once a month.”

How to reach Cindy Morgan at Nest

Call 376-4580 or email [email protected]. Her website is http://www.nestflowers.com/.

CINDY FROM 11

WHERE CAN YOU FIND

Local News, Sports &

Entertainment on the web? You’ll find it at:

www.IslandsSounder.com


An actors’ theatre hired her, and every six weeks she produced a new set of costumes (sometimes hun-dreds of them) from a dif-ferent period out of history. After 12 years of sometimes 60- to 80-hour weeks, she was ready to move on, and ended up on Orcas, mov-ing here with then-husband John Baker for his job at Rosario.

Baker said her profes-sion is surprisingly social – “There are people in and out of here all day,” she laughed – but when she’s really ready to party she returns to the theatre. “Acting gives me my social fix,” she said.

Baker has most recently graced the Orcas Center stage as “Rose” in “Gypsy” and as “Mrs. Potts” in “Beauty and the Beast.” She also sings as the vocalist for the swing band, Orcatrazz, and sang for a few years in the Choral Society.

While she normally works full time, nine to five, she enjoys the flexibility of having control over those hours, as well as the ability to meet her own high stan-dards for her work.

“There’s a real joy in see-ing the look on someone’s face when they’re happy with what I’ve done,” said Baker. “Because I’m doing what rocks my world, what I really love, it gives me enormous pleasure to give people a quality product.”

How to reach Beth Baker

Call Beth Baker at 376-4567.

BETH FROM 12

March is national Women’s History month. The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying trib-ute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society.

March is Women’s History month


Thank you to all the

wonderful women in business

who made this section

possible.– Islands’

Sounder newspaper


by MEREDITH M. GRIFFITHSta� reporter

Barbara Humes recently published her first book, entitled “Judy, First Essene High Priestess,” but she’s been writing for most of her life.

“My writing for public reading started with writ-ing a monthly column for the Islands’ Sounder many, many years ago,” said Humes. “I called it the gossip column, about what people on the island were doing, where they’d been and so on.”

Barbara and her husband Bill moved to Orcas in May of 1962. After her gossip column, Barbara wrote for Organic Gardening maga-zine, printing 19 articles in the publication and 60 articles in other publica-tions.

She became fascinat-ed with Judy, said to be the first high priestess of the Essenes, while studying the mystical order of Rosicrucianism in recent years.

“[Her par-ents] were told to dedicate this child before its birth to the temple, and they did. They pre-sumed it would be a boy, because girls were not in the priest-hood, and when she was born a female it kind of caused consternation,” she said. “But they took her in, and she became the first Essene high priestess in the area there north of Jerusalem, and it certainly intrigued me.”

She said Bill took her to a book-writing conference, and then she practiced by writing two other books before beginning on “Judy.”

The two oth-ers are nearly ready for publication; one is enti-tled “Mush, You Huskies, Mush!” about the Humes’ days home-steading on Alaska’s Kenai P e n i n s u l a around 1945; the other is a

book of Greek children’s stories told to her by some native Greek friends.

“I just enjoy writing,” she said. Asked if it feels good to be finished with “Judy,” “Heavens yes!” she laughed, saying, “I think my writing days are finished.”

The couple’s son, Larry

Humes, who lives in Bellingham, has helped Barbara with the legwork of book-making, including sending emails and digital information.

“You get to be 90 and you find things change a bit,” Barbara said.

The book is on sale at Darvill’s Bookstore in Eastsound.

Barbara led the island’s 4H group for many years with Bill, taking groups of children to the county fair to learn and exhibit. The couple also took part in the fair’s Sheep to Shawl competitions.

“Bob Nutt was the only male I ever taught to spin,” Barbara remembers. Bill worked as an electrical and plumbing contractor on Orcas, and also led the boy scout troop for a few years.

Islander Barbara Humes publishes first book

contributed photoBarbara Humes, who is 90, has published her first book.

Women who shaped Orcas Island history

by TOM WELCH Orcas Island Historical Museum

Sarah Jane FryTolerance and welcoming acceptance are

natural traits of pioneer women, and in the early days of white settlement on Orcas Island in no one was this more true than in the person of Sarah Jane Fry. Born in New York in 1837, Sarah first came to the island in 1870 when she and her husband, John N. Fry, built a log cabin and settled on a home-stead in Eastsound. One of the first white women on Orcas Island, Sarah became well known for her hospitality, her willingness to help others, her invaluable service as a mid-wife, and her dedication to Temperance.

In those days there was no dock or other landing site at Eastsound, so all new arrivals had to disembark at the Langdon lime kiln dock some four miles from the head of the bay. Orcas Island was virtually roadless at that time, so the newcomers had to lug their belongings over a rough trail to Eastsound and find a place to stay. Fortunately for them, there was always a warm welcome awaiting them at the Fry homestead, which Sarah ran somewhat along the lines of a boarding house. So much so, in fact, that in later years the Fry home was locally referred to as the ‘Old Hotel’.

John and Sarah Fry had seven children: two sons and five daughters. One daugh-ter was “defective” and required special care. Another daughter married E.V. Von Gohren, who was later the central figure in the development of the hugely successful orchard business on Orcas Island. John Fry became Justice of the Peace at Eastsound, which position no doubt proved helpful some years later when Sarah joined forces with ‘Reverend’ Sydney R.S. Grey to con-vince a man busily engaged in building what was to become the first saloon in Eastsound that such an enterprise was not welcome on Orcas Island. It is a testament to her strong belief in Temperance that the saloon-builder soon decamped for other shores.

Sarah Jane Fry passed away on May 24, 1900, at her home in Eastsound, and is interred at Mt. Baker cemetery. We cannot know the intensely personal details of a

person’s life in those early settlement days and can only make imperfect judgments from the testimony of others, but it is per-haps very telling that Sarah Fry’s obituary noted that “... she was beloved by all for her motherly kindness and unbroken patience through many trials and tribulations which few could have borne as long as she did.” We can only imagine.

Jane Willis Barfoot-HoddeJane Willis Barfoot-Hodde turned 97

years old on Dec. 8, 2010. A longtime bene-factor and volunteer at The Orcas Island Historical Society and Museum, Jane also donated the funds that paid for the new Entrance Gallery at the museum. When the museum decided to honor those special people who have made significant contri-butions to Orcas Island history, Jane was unanimously chosen to be the first recipient of the Historian of the Year Award.

Jane Willis was born on December 8, 1913, at the Willis family homestead near Obstruction Pass on Orcas Island. The Willis family farm was founded in 1868, and is one of the few family farms in Washington State that has been in con-tinuous operation for more than 100 years. They have also been honored and recog-nized by the National Weather Service for their longstanding operation of an official Weather Station at their farm.

The youngest child in her family, Jane received her elementary education at the Olga schoolhouse. Education has always been an important part of the Willis fam-ily tradition – Jane’s mother taught at the Newhall school in the days before Rosario was established at Cascade Bay.

Jane worked for many years at the school in Eastsound, and later operated a very popular Secondhand Store at Barfoot’s Blockhouse in Olga. Jane also enjoys a very prominent reputation at the Washington State Grange, where she has been a member for the past 75 years.

The Orcas Island community has ben-efited greatly by her contributions to our island society, her love for our history, and her exemplary service as a role model for each of us.

photo courtesy of the Orcas Island Historical MuseumThe women of the Fry family, who homesteaded on Orcas Island in the 1870s.

“My writing for public reading started with writing a monthly gossip column for the Sounder.”

— Barbara HumesOrcas author

FISHIN’ FOR

CUSTOMERS?Hook into

The Islands’ Sounder 376-4500

Novel portrays Judy, first high priestess of the Essenes


visitors.”She is now celebrat-

ing her 20th anniversary of operating the Double Mountain Bed & Breakfast in the home she and Dennis built in 1983. The house is 3800 square feet, has two floors, two decks and sits on five acres. Rooms have names like “Sunrise Vista,” “Serenity Room” and “Eagle’s View Suite.”

Koher cooks breakfast for all her guests and her most popular items are

Dutch Babies and oatmeal buttermilk pancakes. She says quite a few writers stay at her B&B, includ-ing travel journalists and screen writers from Los Angeles. She’s had guests from Japan, Germany, Africa, Australia, Norway, Belgium and Ireland. Koher has a Japanese couple who travel to Orcas every year. A Minnesota couple is hold-ing their wedding at her house in September. The guests will stay at the B&B and Koher will cook for them.

“I have a lot of returns,”

she said. “I have so many people, sometimes I can-not remember their faces until they walk through my door.”

Her busiest time is spring and summer, so in the winter she travels. Koher has been to England, the Panama Canal, Alaska, Ireland, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. In 2012 she will tour Italy.

Her favorite spot is still Orcas Island, which had l,000 people when she moved here.

From her sweeping view of the islands, she has seen

numerous changes in 42 years.

“I used to be able to count the lights on Buck Mountain – but not any-more,” she said. “There’s just too many to count.”

How to reach Gail Koher at Double Mountain Bed and Breakfast

Visit www.doublemoun-tainbandb.com, call 376-4570 or email [email protected].

Jim Sullivan/staff photoThe women of the Islands’ Sounder. From left to right: circulation manager Gail Anderson-Toombs, sales rep Cathi Brewer, staff reporter Meredith Griffith, editor Colleen Smith Armstrong, and office manager Kathy Everett. Not pic-tured: publisher Elyse Van den Bosch.

Women of the Islands’ Sounder

GAILW FROM 13

Cat 204 _ Women in Business

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