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MacDonald was born in 1907 in Colorado, but moved to Montana in her early years of her life. In 1918, MacDonald and her family moved to Seattle, where she graduated from Roosevelt High School. She married Robert Heskett and moved to Chimacum where she based her book The Egg and I. MacDonald was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was put in a sanitarium. In 1942, she divorced and re-married Donald MacDonald and moved to Vashon Island to get fresh air and relax.
“When Betty moved to the island, Betty hadn’t written a book before. Her sister Mary knew agents, called Betty up, and told her that publishers were coming to see her work. Betty sat on the top of her deck with a typewriter, looked out on the beach and wrote her first novel The Egg and I. She then gave it to these agents. They thought nothing was going to come of her new book, but in the first week she was the author of a best selling book at number one. In the first year, she had sold over a million copies,” said Lawrence.
At the time The Egg and I was published, this type of book was unique. It was 1945, World War II had just ended with the
Nazis and many people feared talking about the war. If affected normal life activities, but MacDonald didn’t let this stop her. She was a humorous author, who gave people, especially women, a role model.
Today MacDonald’s books are published in 36 different languages; there are 700,000 copies in Czechoslovakia alone. People travel or write letters to Lawrence from all over the world showing their love for MacDonald. She truly inspired many people and gave them hope throughout tough times.
“Little women in Australia, who read her books, write me, because these books gave them strength. People read her books and wanted to touch her, they wanted to go where she had gone before. There are people coming from all over world who want to come to Vashon. They want to smell the air, they want to walk the trails, they want to know what made Betty strong, because they want it, ” said Lawrence.
In 1942, when MacDonald moved to the Island, she lived right below where the main barn is today. At the time, the only way she could get supplies and appliances to her house was by a private boat. She decided to build the farm so she could make a road to access her house. According to Lawrence, the MacDonalds had bulls, cows and 4,000 chickens, even though Betty hated them. They sold their eggs to local people on the Island and also to the Pike Place Market.
The MacDonalds lived happily on their farm because Betty loved working out in the yard and playing with her two children. Betty published Onions in the Stew, just three years before her death. She based her story on her experiences on of Vashon. The Island today is not unlike the one she describes in her book.
“The town of Vashon, quite a typical western crossroads settlement, is small, flourishing, friendly, adequate and tacky. It has a bank, library, bakery (that bakes the most delicious bread in the world), two restaurants, shoe store, movie theatre, ice cream store, television shop, radio shop, state liquor store, and bowling alley…,” wrote MacDonald. 
16 years after her death, Lawrence bought the farm from Betty’s husband Donald MacDonald. The farm had been completely empty for those 16 years.
“When I bought the farm, there were blackberries, beer bottles, broken TVs, and it had been a dead end street. There were roof leaks, there wasn’t one window in the barn, it was full of trash, and the freezers had food in them for the last 20 years,” said Lawrence.
Now, after about 30 years, Lawrence has completely fixed up the place and turned it into a nice bed and breakfast. There are Asian pears, walnut trees, raspberries, apples, daffodils, sunflowers and much other vegetation planted on the Betty MacDonald Farm today.
“I love to look out to the sea; I love looking out on the water. I always wanted to live to be able to pick the apples from the trees I grow, so that’s why I have planted so many things. I have also learned from living on this farm, that no matter what gets thrown in your trail, it’s how you get over it. It isn’t what happens to you, but it’s what you do with it. Do you get depressed? Do you turn it into something positive? Or do you get energy from it?” said Lawrence.
Like many others, Lawrence has had some tough times in her lifetime, and MacDonald gave her strength.
“When things got hard, I read this quote from Betty herself,” said Lawrence.
“Nobody wants a saddo around. When you start to feel sorry for yourself and everybody does at one time or another, do something! Work in the garden, wash the windows, bake a pie, write a letter, do something. You can’t be busy and sorry for yourself at the same time.”

Boyer said she will mostly miss, “the fact that he would always try to help you, whether it was personal or school related.” If it was fixing her pencil sharpener or repairing the windshield of her car, he would do all that he could.
Senior Beth Albertson recalled his kindness. “He rescued my beanie baby from the gutter after mean kids threw it up there,” said Albertson.
Stanley has enjoyed his job as well as watching the kids at school grow up over the years. He wishes all of them the best of luck in the future.

Unfortunately, for the athletes of the school, the gym was closed for four days in order to appropriately clean it to insure that the infection doesn’t spread further.
Also, the wrestling match which was supposed to be on Thursday, December 7, was cancelled because the opposing team, Steilacoom, did not want
­­­to wrestle their athletes due to the number of outbreaks on the Pirate wrestling team.
“I don’t care that they didn’t come, I was going to tell them anyways and I would have held our guys out. We still would have beaten them even without two of our guys. That’s fine that they didn’t come. We’re going to reschedule and we’re going to be better. If we would have wrestled them they would have had a chance, but I don’t know if they have a chance now,” Blomgren said.
“I think that people’s reaction to it is probably blown out of proportion, but I think that education will help people realize that staph isn’t a big deal and that everyone carries it in them. It’s just through open sores and high stress, after finals and after starting a very tough sport like wrestling it’s easy for something like that to come up,” Blomgren said.
Symptoms of staph are boils, or abscess within the skin, swelling, and redness. If you suspect you may have a staph infection, it is important that you see a doctor to have it diagnosed.