Elder Speak 2023: Elisabeth Saunders accepting life’s challenges as a gift
Elisabeth Saunders of Leavenworth has learned the art of embracing the challenges and setbacks she has encountered in life. As a participant in the Elder Speak program put on by the Ripple Foundation, Saunders has been excavating her past for wisdom to share with the community in an event at Snowy Owl Theater Sept. 10 and at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center Oct. 12. For more details, see theripplefoundation.org.
Saunders was a long-time operator of Haus Laurelie Bed and Breakfast in the Bavarian city, an avid local volunteer, long-time Rotarian and a devoted mother. She’s firmly grounded in her Christian faith and meets regularly with others to deepen their understanding.
Saunders’ rather remarkable journey started during World War II in Kiel, Germany. Her father was part of the Nazi party, ran an elevator manufacturing company. As a father, he was a strict authoritarian, she remembered. The kids responded by becoming strong willed and resilient, Saunders recalled.
The deprivations of war still linger in her memory, with night-time bombing raids that sent her family into the basement of their home and her mother growing and gathering food for the family as food supplies became hard to come by. “We had no idea what the war meant” in the years of her youth, she said.
As a 16-year-old girl working in the family garden, she was enchanted by a National Geographic magazine article about mountains in America and decided that’s where she wanted to live.
After the war, and without her father’s knowledge, she was one of many young German women who emigrated to the United States to become a nanny. She filled out the paperwork and was placed with a prominent family in Chicago, leaving Germany while her parents were away on vacation.
When she arrived in America, Saunders spoke little English and didn’t have a driver’s license. She looked after the daughter of the couple, learned to drive and adapted to her new surroundings. She was obligated to work for a year for the family, then pulled up stakes and headed to California. Other nannies from Germany she knew also moved to California. There she met Dick Saunders, a hospital administrator and a graduate of UCLA. “He was tall, good looking, fun, easy going and very entertaining,” she remembered.
Dick Saunders went with Elisabeth to her hometown to meet her family, including her brother Rudy Prey, the long-time Leavenworth orchardist and operator of Prey’s Fruit Stand.
While on a family vacation after their first child was born, they visited Leavenworth and got acquainted with Ted Price, a key architect of turning the railroad town into a Bavarian theme town. They later adopted four other kids to complete the family.
Ultimately, they moved to Leavenworth and bought a seven-bedroom house. Dick had a habit of inviting friends over for dinner and to spend the night.
“Raising kids was actually fun for me,” Saunders said, because she incorporated the kids into the work that needed to be done. Saunders is a born organizer.
Life took an unexpected turn when Dick asked Elisabeth for a divorce in the late 1980s. After getting over the shock and surprise, she decided to turn the home into Haus Laurelei Bed and Breakfast. She never looked back but kept moving forward.
In 2002, Saunders approached Harriet Bullitt about buying Haus Laurelei with the hope that the philanthropist would continue operating it as a bed and breakfast. Bullitt had other ideas and Haus Laurelei became Barn Beach Reserve and ultimately the home for the Wenatchee River Institute.
Saunders has slowed down her volunteer activities in recent years as she adjusts to getting older. She hastens to add that her “faith in Jesus Christ never grows old.” . As she puts it, “God’s word is amazing food every day.”
When it comes right down to it, Elisabeth Saunders believes that “life is a gift and we have an opportunity to take each day with the expectation and readiness to serve,” What a wonderful formula for making the most of each day.
