Woman, 90, Unruffled by Wave Buffeting
from the Honolulu Star Bulletin, 1957?
Mrs. Viola Vanderburgh, 90 year old globe trotter, refers to herself playfully as a "harbinger of catastrophes."
Her latest clinch with calamity was the tidal wave which swept her away from the breakfast table at the Wailupe home of her daughter, Mrs. Antonio Perry.
Calm in the face of danger, but feted through the house and out towards the sea by the swirling waters, Mrs. Vanderburgh uttered no cry of terror.
"I've lived a long life," she said calmly. "I hardly expect to die in bed, after the events I've lived through."
Mrs. Vanderburgh's calamities started with Indian attacks on the Oregon village in which she lived, and the constant fear of scalpings she and her family lived under until law and order was finally established in the northwest.
Moving to San Francisco to start out anew, Mrs. Vanderburgh arrived just in time for the San Francisco fire and earthquake in 1906.
With the advent of the horseless carriage, Mrs. Vanderburgh managed to get into two automobile wrecks and come out unscathed.
Deciding to visit her sister six years ago, she arrived in Honolulu as bombs were dropping over Pearl Harbor.
On her last trip to Hawaii a month ago, Mrs. Vanderburgh decided to fly.
"I've ridden everything from a stage coach to the new fluid drive automobiles, and I've been aboard all sorts of ships from clippers to the latest luxury liners, so I decided to try the airplane!" she said, with a grin.
"We left on the 13th of the month and of course, we developed engine trouble half way across the Pacific and had to turn back! Then I arrived for the tidal wave. There ought to be a warning out every time I change my residence!"
Mrs. Vanderburgh, still active and alert, spends her time at the hospital recuperating from minor bruises sustained during the tidal wave, reading Time magazine and detective stories.
Vanderburgh Page