Mabel Thomas gave birth to 20 healthy children from 1917 to 1944.
None of them were twins.
Mabel, husband Edward Thomas and their children lived in Marysville and Everett. Eighteen of their children grew to be adults. Doris was hit and killed by a car at age 8, and Allen drowned in a south Everett peat bog when he was 11 or 12.
Maryann West, number 9, remembers carefree days in their Marysville orchard near railroad tracks.
“When we lived in Marysville, we had a long driveway,” West said. “Dad would come home, always swinging his lunchbox.”
The kids would run and tackle him, and their dad always left a bite of his meal for them to share.
Their mother played the piano. Dad sang “Red River Valley,” smoked and cuddled Maryann West as they listened to Seattle Rainier baseball games on the radio.
West, who lives in Marysville, said the family had enough kids to fill their own baseball team rosters around vacant lots in Everett.
Carol Perry, 92, the second oldest Thomas child, said there were two or three beds in each bedroom. They slept two to a bed, depending on the size of the child. The family dined together.
“We had a big round table with leaves,” Perry said. “We always left in the leaves.”
Perry said they always had food on the table. Their mother kept a huge garden. They had clothes, some made by Mabel Thomas from feed sacks. Like others at the time, they put cardboard in their shoes when the soles wore thin.
Keeping clean clothing was an ongoing project.
“Laundry?” Perry said. “That was a chore.”
Heavy washing was done on Saturdays.
“Sundays were spent ironing,” she said. “All those little dresses.”
The children went to Sunday school.
“We were Baptists,” Perry said. “But when Dad’s dad came over, we were Methodists.”
The longest trip Perry remembers was a drive to Spokane.
There was discipline in the house.
“Mom would say ‘Wait until your father gets home,’ ” Perry said. “We got spanked, but very seldom.”
Edward Thomas supported his family by working as a plumber and doing odd jobs. He broke his back in a fall off a roof and received a government pension. Mabel Thomas worked dispatching taxi cabs in Everett.
“Dad hated to think of his wife with a job,” West said. “He didn’t think women should go out and work.”
Older Thomas children helped rear the younger ones, West said. She said Carol and Mildred practically raised her.
Perry, who said their mother was heavyset and never looked pregnant, remembers always being late to school. She couldn’t leave until the younger kids were dressed, fed and ushered out the door.
“We didn’t have a real system,” West said. “We did what we had to do.”
The family is historically famous for more than having 20 children.
Son Edward Jr. died when the USS Juneau was destroyed by Japanese torpedoes in World War II.
Sixty eight years ago this week, Edward Thomas went down with shipmates including Albert, Francis, George, Joseph and Madison Sullivan. The men are know as the five Sullivan brothers, who all died while serving on the same Navy ship.
If you haven’t seen the film called “The Fighting Sullivans,” you’re missing a good cry.
Before Edward shipped out, West remembers him getting off a train in Everett wearing his Navy uniform.
“The younger kids mobbed him,” she said. “We were laughing and clapping.”
West said the family has his letters from World War II in which he mentions the Sullivans.
Perry said their mother, who died at age 92, never stopped mourning the deaths of Allen and Edward.
“Her boys were the precious ones,” Perry said. “The girls did all the work.”
The last time the family got together was in 1977, when all the cousins and relatives gathered at Forest Park in Everett. There was no way all the families could get together at holidays.
Only a few of the 20 Thomas children went on to have more than four kids.
There are seven daughters and one son still living.
West said she was told that Mildred asked her mother one time to stop having babies because everyone was talking about the family.
Arlene, the baby, complained that her friends all had their own bedrooms.
West said growing up she hesitated to tell others about her many siblings. West and Perry agreed the size of the family was not well accepted.
“People thought it was terrible,” Perry said. “But Dad thought each and every one of us was a miracle.”
Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451; oharran@heraldnet.com.
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