The Life of Leah, Part I

Leah on Barber ranch

Five Duff siblings

Andrew Duff and Marie Smith

Leah Hole was born in Shoshone, Idaho, on Dec. 2, 1917.
Leah was the daughter of Andrew Duff and Marie Smith Duff. There were eight children born to the marriage, but only five survived childhood: Alan, Rachel, Jean, Leah, and Sheila.
Both parents taught school in and around the Shoshone area; they moved to Twin Falls, then to Kimberly, back to Twin Falls, and evetually to Barber, a small town east of Boise. The family bought a dry-land farm which Andrew tended while Marie taught school . She stayed in Boise to work and in between jobs worked as a domestic, cooking and cleaning for families and construction crews.
The marriage began to fail so Marie took Leah and Sheila to Gooding, Idaho, where she taught school. The girls would return to the ranch during summers.
Marie returned in Boise in 1925 to continue teaching and she and Andrew were divorced in 1928. Because divorced women were deemed not suitable to teach school , the divorce was kept secret. However, for a while Marie could not teach in the Boise area.
Marie took Sheila to Round Valley so she could teach for a year, leaving Rachel, Jean, and Leah to board in Boise for school, returning to the ranch on weekends. By 16 years of age Rachel was the head of household, working in a box mill to help support the family while she was also in school. Eventually Marie secured a job in Boise that lasted until 1930. Rachel went to nursing school, Alan joined the Navy and Jean and Leah remained at the ranch. Marie found work in Lewiston, Idaho, and took Sheila with her.
For the next several years Marie moved around as jobs became available, with Leah and Sheila in tow. A list of towns, many ghost towns, were home for a short while: Sam (near Grand Coulee dam), Baird (near Coulee city), Withrow, Crosby (near Holly, where Leah met William), and finally Kelly Lake (in Pierce County). Leah actually graduated from high school twice: in 1936 from correspondence school and in 1939 as valedictorian of Withrow High School.