gotohealth's Blog

I’m being asked:

1. What is the message that you hope to convey to the next generation through Sam's comics and his story? 

2. What does this award mean to you? Your family? The community?

 

I was at a meeting where about 30 of us were gathered from various Japanese Community Organizations, I think at St Peter’s Church, during planning stages of developing the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW) around 2002. We were asked to break up into pairs and come up with our purposes. 

 

Here’s what I shared, "When our first daughter was born, my husband and I stared at her morning, noon and night saying: 'Last year she was a nothing.' It occurs to us that we needed to be good parents and might see great grandchildren in our lives. Therefore, I want to be of influence with our Japanese Heritage Values to see great-grandchildren that are honest, kind, responsible, courageous and contributors to community."

 

Sam was the one who talked me in to taking the part time job in 1970 to help start the Japanese Collection at the U of WA Suzzallo Library Archives. In 2012, it dawned on me that his love of comics could benefit the North Am Post (NAP) and also pay for JCCCW ads. We decided to use Shig Osawa, who was considered the first Nisei born in the Seattle area in 1891 and whom I had interviewed in 1970, as the protagonist. Sam made sure he had 6 months of comic strips ready before they started weekly in the NAP from September of 2012 to the end of 2017 when Sam died. There were a few left that lasted through 2018 when the NAP became bi-monthly.

 

We have had tremendous response from as far away as New York City, saying how much they are resonating with Sam's cartoon strip stories. I am proud that our daughter is able to share her skills with design and story telling. So far, our five grandchildren are pleased to have Japanese Heritage. 

 

The Japanese were the largest ethnic community in Washington during the 1900s. Current literature and science suggest that Asian influence balances the Western philosophy of left brain thinking with right brain input that balances human existence. The Japanese had the Edo Period where the arts and culture were brought to a PhD level. Therefore, we are excited to share our Japanese In America stories that benefit the greater community.

"Lloyd Nordstrom, representing a group of Seattle business leaders, awarded the franchise to start the Seattle Seahawks football team", was part of the BIG news in 1974. Sam came home one day that week and said, “Lloyd Nordstrom was in Dr. Sproule’s office today and he told us about creating the team.” 

 

Sam was Dr. Sproule’s lab man from 1958 to 1969, when Sam created his own Goto Dental Lab. He still did all of Sproule’s lab work but all the patients were sent to Sam’s Lab to take the shades and Dr. Sproule and Sam consulted each other, in person, regularly.

 

One of our baby sitters when we lived on Capitol Hill married Ron Howard, one of the original team members. Of course, we bought some season tickets, but they were in the end zone of the King Dome and we decided not to keep them because it didn’t fit our budget. We have followed the team through the years. An added coincidence was that we had built a house on Mercer Island the year before in 1973 and were living a couple houses away from a Nordstrom residence.

 

We were excited to follow the Seahawks during the Coach Pete Carroll years, especially because Pete named Lou Tice as one of his mentors. Our daughter, Kelly, was hired to do the calligraphy for all the graduates of the Tice personal growth seminars at one time. Plus, Tice’s seminar tapes were the first such seminars that became part of our success with our In-home Nutrition and Family Counseling business, which still survives the 50 years since we started in 1976.

 

Today, January 2026, I am excited to embrace the Seahawks as they go the Super Bowl this year! I am excited about the philosophy of how all the management, coaching and players, in all the interviews, first talk about how they all “stay in the moment”, “do their job” and “work as a team”. It is an example of my own resolution to name “CONNECTIONS”, expressing gratitude in overcoming hardships and finding my own skills to contribute to our community. 

A classic example for Goal Setting is the “Star of Bethlehem” in the Christmas story and is an example used by Professor Arthur Brooks at Harvard when he teaches his class on Happiness. The star is the guide to the manger or the purpose of my life, according to his analogy? Therefore, I am analyzing my daily practices that represent “THE STAR”. 

 

I am on number 466 since I started blogging 8 years ago in May of 2017. I am in my 34th year of monthly OMOIDE meetings producing 500 word articles of our Japanese In America Experience stories about our Japanese heritage values. We are getting ready to publish OMOIDE VI this year; hopefully in time for the Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival’s 50th anniversary in April 2026.

 

More importantly, I need to make this weekly exercise personal and to keep me on my personal life path of “human learning” and serving others.  One of my memories is of when our first daughter, Lynette, was born in 1964. Sam and I stared at the new life, when she was both awake and sleeping, saying, “Last year she was nothing!” Then we realized we might see great grandchildren in our life? 

 

That’s when Sam and I set a goal, "To pass on our heritage values", to help those potential great grandchildren embrace core values of honesty, kindness, responsibility, and contributors to their community. Today, I might add,  "Practice learning your own human path and purpose".

 

I shared this “birth of our first child” story in 2000, when we had a meeting at the St. Peter’s Japanese Episcopal Church to organize for creating our current Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW) at the Japanese Language School 2003. 

 

The Seattle Japanese Language School building was built in 1913 and I have made the statement from the beginning that I want us to be on the Seattle Visitor’s Tour 100 years from now, sharing our strong heritage values for the benefit of our community!

 My husband, Sam, always talked about his mentor, Coach Gil. Sam was a defensive line backer on the high school football team, Weiser Idaho Woverines, for the 1948 & 1949 football seasons. 

 

Part of the conference Weiser played against was the Ontario Oregon High School Tiger’s football team across the Snake River there on border between Idaho and Oregon, not far from Boise, Idaho. One of the players on the Vale Oregon team in that conference, Dave Wilcox from that era, went on to be a pro on the 49ers.

 

Sam told me that Coach Gil took him to the Ontario Rotary Club lunch one time to receive the honor of the Ontario football team naming Sam as their most formidable opponent.

 

Sam told me often about Coach Gil, and would explain, “Gil was the one who changed my life. He was strict about practicing my physical skills, but more importantly he taught me to develop my thinking. I learned to get in ‘the zone’. Time slowed down to when I could see what was about to happen.”

 

This past 2025 year and 2026 has become a focal point for me with Seattle Sports. All of our married years Sam and I had our kitchen radio on with a Seattle sports station. Sam always left the radio on and would say, “That way, if we have an intruder, they will think someone is home.” 

 

More importantly, because of Sam’s mentorship with me, for the 56 years we were married, I am able to weekly, get in “the zone”, if I sit and start to finger in words on my computer keyboard. I love U-Tube Podcasts with conversations about the SeaHawks right now. I daily scribble notes that I like that might be subjects for my weekly blog and OMOIDE STORIES on a blank unlined 8”x11” empty notebook that sits on my desk next to my computer screen, with a yellow pencil. I never use the eraser. I scribble the words with different angles so I can more easily find them when I flip back through the pages. I think about one of the notes I’ve highlighted, with a heart drawing, on this scratchpad. I “get the bloody word down on the bloody paper” as our coach Janine suggests. Then all week, I edit, edit, edit. Somehow, I don’t consider myself a writer, but I don’t mind going over what I have written, over and over, and edit!

 

Then, I love taking it to the OMOIDE WRITING SESSIONS, that has met monthly, for 30 years and edit some more.

 

SEAHAWKS did win their playoff game big because they know how to get "IN THE ZONE!"

 As I face my ninth year since my partner of 56 years has been gone, it’s comfortable to look at this list for progress on my new path of life.  

 

For sure, finding my own path and knowing more about my soul-self has been the benefit of Sam’s death. I have written stories about crying myself out as a five or six year old, so tears have not been part of the equation. I still feel an inner tightness, but my tears now are of touching and happy incidents within stories and connections.

 

I need another page or two to start to list the constraints that are leading to decisions. But the decisions with us now being a three-generation household are gratifying.  I do not need to sell, and remodeling the house that Sam and I built with love, 53 years ago, is rewarding. 

 

One of my skills is persistence. I finish what I start. I’m on my 464th blog post since starting almost 9 years ago. When I went to college, nursing was one way I could afford school. I ended up hating the nurses training and my grandpa offered to help me change to teaching, but I had no trouble deciding to complete what I started. I was excited to be a stay-at-home Mom and love the heritage research and writing that I started in 1970. 

 

Now, I am a stay-in-my-room grandma that loves to listen to all the podcasts that are inspiring me to be a better, more loving me!

I think what Brooks means with #7,  choosing a new tree, doesn’t refer to heritage. It was a story about a child who had a goal to get to the top of this one tree. That was a metaphor for branching out in life and doing things like sky diving or bungie jumping. 

 

My new tree started last summer when I realized it was still easy for me to travel alone and to keep driving. Day before yesterday, my new tree was reinforced by a U-Tube interview I heard with Dr. John Scharffenberg; who is 100-years-old, traveling abroad to lecture about his good health and still driving!