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Note: ing in the central Alaska wilderness from the 1940s into the 1960s. She was fond of fishing, hunting, and gardening, and was proud of the onions, potatoes, peas, lettuce, and nasturtiums she was able to grow in that climate. She said her family had been very poor. They had to gather coal along the railroad tracks and often had nothing but corn meal to eat. After her mother died, Lil left school in the sixth grade to help care for her younger siblings. When her father remarried, Lil did not care for her new stepmother and she married Wright Rahl too hastily, and they were soon divorced. She would not say why, and all she would say about Wright is that he was very handsome. She left him, and taking her young daughter as well as her younger sister and brother, ran away to Arizona and from there to California. We find them in the 1920 Census for Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ as follows: Lillie Rahl, 23, divorced, head of house, rents, no occupation. Ethel Hale, sister, 18, stenographer, state Evan Hale, brother, 14, no occ. Lillie, daughter, 3 11/12 [note: this is Bonnie Lillie Rahl] Crugar? Colen boarder age 12 Lil said she was employed as a cook in the mining camps of AZ and the construction camps of CA. Life was hard during the depression. She sent her daughter Bonnie to live with her sister Ethel who had married. Lil ultimately met Dale Johnson in CA and married him. He was from Oklahoma and had a fourth grade education. They moved to Alaska in 1946. Dale was employed building the road between Anchorage and Fairbanks. This was diffucult work due to the harsh climate, but it paid well. They often lived in crude shelters 100 miles from the nearest town, and her grandson remembers living with them near the village of Moose Pass in 1953, where he was the only child in the second grade who was not an Indian, and the only student who spoke English at home. Soon after Dale Johnson's death, Lil married his best friend, Hillary Kling, who was a widower, and they retired to Oroville, CA where they both died.
Note: Lil was a cheerful and optimistic person. She was resourceful and adventurous, and loved liv
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