Lifetime Members Anthony & Betty Emmanuel – In Memoriam
- RHSociety
- 39 minutes ago
- 4 min read
By Paige Norman
Anthony Mathew Emmanuel was born June 6, 1924, in Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Mary Emmanuel, their fourth son and seventh child. By 1930, the family had moved to California. After serving on an aircraft carrier during World War II, Tony returned to California and married Betty (Wing) in 1954, moving to Washington in the 1960s. He was a field representative and store designer for Bel-Square Equipment Company in Seattle, and worked with Duane Isackson at Duane B Stevens Construction.
Betty was a bookkeeper at Redmond Office Supply and volunteered in the PTAs at both Redmond Elementary and Redmond Jr. High. She was also involved in Girl Scout Troop 1447.
Tony enjoyed writing, including an article on the Happy Valley Bridge, and another titled “The Rare Breed,” recounting his memories of The Redmond Silhouette Dance Club.
Click Here to read Tony's writing on the Happy Valley Bridge
October 2006
Tony Emmanuel alerted us to the fact that the Happy Valley bridge just east of the Old Brick Road and connecting to Highway 202 is being replaced. He also shared these memories:
I called it the “Happy Valley Narrows.” This was a dangerous, deadly bridge. Allowing a 55 mile an hour speed through a bridge this narrow was asking for trouble.
Rob Klamser, who I believe was a City of Redmond engineer, was driving home from Ames Lake about 1970. He failed to make it through the narrow bridge and was killed. A few years later, another person rolled over while trying to squeeze through the narrow passage, and ended up in the mud at the swampy roadside. After rolling several times, and destroying his sports car, he crawled through the weeds with just scrapes and bruises.
Numerous other scrapes and scratches occurred that went unreported. How many, we might never know.
Click here to read "The Rare Breed" by Tony Emmanuel
November, 2006
The Redmond Silhouette Dance Club was a grand institution, whose heyday was in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Many older couples started to miss dates in the late 1970s and especially in the 1980s. We hanger-ons would bring back some of the original members once or twice each dancing season (as we did with Dr. and Alice Way), and even found new members who were enthusiastic enough to keep things going.
Originally, the members were Depression babies and World War II participants who knew how to have fun even if we had to invent it. There is nothing wrong with our children, but they are a little different. Our fun is deep-seated, strong-bonding, true-search, and love-of-life kind of thing. We did the jitterbug, waltz, samba, tango, two-step, polka, fox trot, and even partook of a little bit of cow stomping western/square dancing if we drank enough.
Almost every member, at one time or another, would be chair persons of the dance committee, meaning that the people in the committee would meet at the chair person’s house. After our decorating, costume, food, and other business was finished, we would be entertained for the rest of the evening. Cards, piano playing, singing, general bull sessions, eating, or even a boat ride on the lake. At any rate, the hosts would think of something.
Our dances would end at 1:00 a.m. Some of us would go out to eat and whoop it up until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. If Grandmom or sitters were with the kids, we would do it up when we had the chance. I know that a lot of us didn’t go to church the next day after dance night. The kids approved of this, but Grandma thought we were bad.
After 20 years of this, we were eating more and drinking and dancing less. The food committee had an easy job in the early years. As time went on, the food became most important. The heavier and slower we got, the more we would argue about the food. I’ll tell you, eventually the food on dance night was the best meal we all had that month. Even the women admitted that.
Could clubs like ours exist any more? Of course not! We all got too busy with growing kids turning into teenagers. Incomes increased, allowing us to expand family activities…everything seemed to change. I don’t think our club could ever be repeated. We were a rare breed, bred in a time in history that is gone forever.
One day there will be one Hope Diamond and one Star of India Sapphire and none of us. We are rare, indeed.
The Emmanuels purchased the “Cook” house, formerly owned by Karl and Tress Cook, and were neighbors to Dr. and Mrs. Way on Weber Point on Lake Sammamish —site of the old Weber shingle mill. Tony attended his first meeting in June of 2002, joining as a Lifetime Member in 2012. Betty began attending in September 2004, and became a Lifetime Member in 2016.
Read our founder Naomi Hardy's 2002 interview with Tony Emmanuel:
Betty Emmanuel passed away in 2024 at 103, with Tony following her in June of 2025 at the age of 101. Redmond Historical Society extends our heartfelt sorrow and appreciation for their commitment to local history, to the Society, and to the Redmond community.
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