Clifford Ellsworth Rappe

When he was a child, his family moved from place to place around Oregon as work was available for his father. He lived for a while in Silverton as his father worked at the lumber mill there, later in Klamath Falls for a while, at times in tents when his father took on temporary logging jobs, and in a number of cites around Oregon. By the time he was in eighth grade, he had attended ten different schools in Oregon. He described his childhood as very unhappy. Most of the time, his family lived in town. As a boy, he took on various odd jobs such as selling papers and delivering moonshine for the bootleggers. He said the police officers in that day carried billy clubs, and when as the kids were delivering buckets of pure distilled alcohol, the police would sometimes question them about what they had in the buckets. The bootleggers told them to say "moonshine", which they did, and the police would look inside, stir their billy clubs around inside it, and say "yeah right". The alcohol had not been colored yet, and looked rather like water. It wasn't clear whether the police didn't believe them, or if they were in cahoots with the bootleggers, but it was probably the former. Cliff and Norman got into their share of trouble making as well. In those days, an ice man would come by each day selling ice for the icebox. The kids figured out that they could go down to the ice house and collect chips of ice that were laying around, but they eventually found they could just steal entire blocks of ice just as easily. One time, Cliff and a group of friends found a big barrell of gasoline sitting in the back of a factory in town. One of the boys suggested they set it on fire, just out of pure mischief, and they did so, causing an explosion as they successfully ran for cover. Nobody was hurt, but it was probably one of the more extreme pranks he got involved in. As a kid, Cliff used to sell papers. He would often enter a saloon shouting "extra extra, read all about it", and someone inside would ask him how many papers he had left and buy the rest from him and tell him "now, shut up and get lost". There was one particular shop owner near the end of his route that would almost always buy whatever he had left from him at the end of the day. One day, after selling his remaining papers, as he grabbed a candy bar from the shelf the shop owner was peeking at him from a peekhole in the back of the store. Cliff didn't know why he grabbed it, but he felt real bad after he got caught, especially since the shop owner had helped him out so much. Seven days before he died, while describing his childhood and the above stories to his grandson Lonnie Chrisman (the author of this biography), he described him and Norm as "slick crooks". Then, after thinking for a moment, he looked up and said, "you know, us kids then were sure worse than they are today!" Seeing that this was exactly the opposite of what we always hear old people say, it was amazingly hilarious and everyone present broke out laughing. Cliff and Norman were extremely close as brothers. They did almost everything together, school, work, and even the mischief. When Norman died of appendicitis just after graduating from the eighth grade, Cliff really took it hard. It is not clear that he ever recovered from it. Cliff attended school only through the eighth grade. From that point, he worked, mostly along side his father, taking jobs including falling timber, removing stumps, picking fruits, and other short jobs. One spring he worked for $.15 per hour, the next hear for $.20, then $.25, and then $.30. As a young adult, he took a liking to Boxing. He boxed for a while himself, as did Norman, and they had big plans to pursue boxing together as a career. With Norman's death, these plans were shattered, but he continued to follow the professional sport intimately throughout his adult life. He always had gloves, punching bags, and boxing photos plastered around the house. It was one of his pleasures. Soon after getting married, he entered World War II in the Navy. He was trained in Minnesota, and his family came out from Oregon to visit him while he was there. He then entered the Pacific Fleet and saw more combat then anyone should have to endure. He fought in ground combat in many famous battles, and experienced the horrors of war to its full extent. During the war, he went through two typhoons at sea, which he described as extremely horrifying. He fought in several battles where close to one-half of his own troops were killed in action. And he fought at the what was probably the most famous battle of World War II, the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. At Iwo Jima, he was on an amphibious landing boat, a small barge-like boat that probably held less than 20 people. They landed at the shore just in front of Mt. Suribachi, and in the first half mile between the shore and Mt. Suribachi (an area now occupied by a military cemetery) his party alone lost between 50 and 60 men. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the war with over 20,000 U.S. casualties. Less than 300 Japanese, all taken prisoner, remained of the original 30,000 or so that were dug into the caves on the island. The battle was immortalized by the famous picture of four men raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi. In fact, he was right there, along with a fairly small group of men, when the picture was taken. The now famous photographer was somewhat nervous about the whole event, so Cliff broke the end off a bottle of Saki, held it about his head, and poured it down the photographer's throat. They didn't realize at the time that this photo would become the famous photo seen everywhere to represent the courage of those who fought in the war. He said the actual event was very casual, and who was actually in the picture wasn't prearranged. They sat around for a while asking "who wants to be in the picture", and the men present passed the buck awhile saying "I don't care, you do it". Had he wanted to, he could have probably been in the picture, but of course at that time no one had any idea how significant that picture would be. He did not get in the picture, but he stood there and watched the picture taken. World War II was clearly the most significant event in Cliff's life. It stayed with him daily until the day he died, 48 years after it was over. His life was plagued by deep depression, mental breakdowns, and other mental illness. He almost surely suffered from what is now called Post Tramatic Stress Disorder, but was never really treated for that after the war since it was not recognized as a disorder at that time and because they didn't become very evident until his fifties or so. Despite his mental and emotional problems, he and his wife Lucille did manage to do quite well. After the war he started his own business fixing car radios and eventually the business grew into a record selling franchise under RCA, Columbia, and others. In addition, he began doing repairs on home radios and did housecalls. When the television finally reached Oregon, he became interested in it and expanded into black and white television repair. He did very well, and they achieved a very comfortable financial security. In this day he was very interested in all the new electronic devices that were starting to appear, and was the first in town to own a television, phonographic wire-recorder, perhaps the first to own a movie camera, and so on. While the kids were growing up, the family was very close with the grandparents. This tightness was amplified by the fact that both Cliff and his sister married Mortensen cousins, so nearly every outing, family event, or holiday saw a Mortensen/Rappe family reunion. Sometime in the 1950's, Cliff and Lucille decided to build a new house for themselves. Together, they constructed the house that now stands at 1050 S. Pacific Highway, exactly 1 mile south of the Woodburn town limits. They also built him a shop along side the highway in the front yard where he ran his television repair business. Also in the 1960's, they built a house on the south edge of Woodburn which they rented out. They also made a large profit on the sale of two of their homes. These investments considerably added to their financial security. While business prospered, with the 1960's came the popularization of the color television. Since he had not received any former training, and had only an eighth grade education, he found his skills being surpassed by the advancement of technology. This appears to have been a major source of stress for him, for he experienced his first complete mental breakdown in the late 1960's. One day something just suddenly snapped, and he went crazy. They hauled him into a mental hospital in Roseburg, Oregon, and had a heck of a time restraining him. Having been a boxer when he was younger, he was very strong and it took eight doctors to hold him down. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and spent a full year at the hospital at Roseburg. Technology finally passed him, and he had to retire from his business a few years later. By that time, however, they had acquired enough money to live off interest and pension payments quite comfortably. In early 1974, just after her mother had died from Cancer, his wife Lucille was diagnosed with Liver cancer. His father Frank, who was then living with them at home, voluntarily asked to be placed in a rest home in order to "be with his wife", but really it was to avoid being a burden during the coming hard times. Three awful years ensued, filled with sickness and suffering from the cancer, until finally in 1976 she lost the battle. He began drinking heavily and became an alcoholic. Several years in the 1980's were dominated by this illness. It lead to another mental breakdown, in which he spent more time in the hospital at Roseburg. He finally joined Alcoholics Anonymous and succeeded in stopping drinking, which was a very positive achievement. He never remarried after Lucille died. He did have a few female friends, the most notable being Vi Weber, who lived with him a while, and who he took sightseeing to every county in Oregon. However, as they were getting old, she decided that she should spend her old age with her family in New York state, and left. They remained good friends. His mental illness problems continued, this time with severe depression. He tried a wide variety of drugs, but was never able to find anything that worked. At one point he became addicted to one of the drugs, Xanex, and in January 1993 admited himself to a detox center and kicked the habit. By this time it was becoming clear that he had reached the spot where he could no longer be safe caring for himself living alone at home. His doctor said, however, that he would probably be okay if he lived next door to a relative, so his daughter helped him sell his home and move everything to her Ranch in Oroville, California. His depression continued, and he seldom got out of bed during this time. Finally, on Thursday, June 17, 1993, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. His son-in-law, Jack Chambers, heard the shot and ran into his trailer, where he found him on the bed. He died a few minutes later in a helicopter in route to the hospital in Chico. The above biography was written by Lonnie Dale Chrisman on June 17, 1993. Most of the childhood stories came from an interview with on June 10, 1993 while Lonnie was visiting him in Oroville.