100 years ago in Spokane: Local nurses go to war

Well-wishers with a “full quota of flowers and candy” gathered at the Northern Pacific depot to say farewell to 16 Spokane nurses heading off to war.

“Everybody was cheerful until the crowd grouped itself about the steps of the Pullman (rail car), and then in the dim station lights, the tears began to flow,” said a reporter on the scene.

The assembled throng began to sing, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” but soon trailed off into tears and silence, since “they were not up to more than one verse.”

One young well-wisher, a girl in dark blue carrying an American flag, “came in with a wistful look of, ‘Oh! If I were only going tonight.’ ”

There was a final goodbye, and one of the nurses said, “I’ll be all right, mother.”

The train swept slowly away, and the women “put their arms about each other’s shoulders and cried softly in the dark.”

From the fire beat: Disaster was narrowly averted when a fire threatened 17 sleeping orphans at the Washington Home Finding Society building.

The fire started at 4 a.m. in a clothes room, just a few feet away from the boys’ sleeping room. The matron tried to put the blaze out with a fire extinguisher but then gave up and marched the children out of the burning building.

No one was hurt, but the building was heavily damaged. A new home was being sought.