Gramps raised his friend’s three surviving children, along with
Rose Frederick and Billy, at Frank’s Landing. Image-Nisqually Tribal Archives
At home, Billy’s mother, Angeline Tobin Frank, taught him to respect women. She was a disciplinarian.“That’s the way them old folks grew up,” says Billy’s son, Sugar. “You had to show respect or the women would let you know.”
“She always talked to me about women, how important women are,” Billy says. “Women are the most important thing in our life, in our communities, because they survive.”
Angeline was a survivor. She grew up at Mud Bay and was raised by an oyster baron, James Tobin, and her mother, Louisa Kettle, a renowned basket weaver. Her grandfather was Sitkum Kettle, leader of the band that formed the Squaxin Island Tribe, and an appointed minister known for his genial disposition. Angeline was widowed young and had lost three children before Billy was born in 1931. Angie endured a strained marriage with her first husband that never met her mother’s approval. “. . . ew he liked to drink!” Angie recalled once to an oral historian. “He wasn’t mean or anything, but you don’t like a drunk person. You get sick of it. And so I left him.” Angie’s second husband was Andrew McCloud, a Puyallup Indian who used to go out fishing with Willie. “They were very close,” says Billy’s sister Maiselle. “They did everything together. They fished together here on the river, but they also were fish buyers for a white company. They went together down to the Columbia River and bought fish from the Indian fishermen there.”
In the summer of 1927, cancer took McCloud’s life and Willie saw to it that his friend’s family would survive. “[Willie] thought he should take care of Mom, and her and my dad’s kids—Rose, Andrew, Don, and me,” Maiselle says. Willie was already separated from Angie’s younger sister, Ida. He ended that relationship and married Angie.
With the exception of boarding school, Billy’s upbringing was not unlike his father’s. He learned the old ways surrounded by several generations of family. Billy’s childhood scrapbooks prominently feature oldest sister Rose Frederick and the McCloud children— Andrew, Maiselle, and Don. “They all raised me,” Billy says. “But it was easy raising; it was a different time.”
Billy called Rose “Fritz.” She was twenty years his senior, with an open face and dark hair that fell to the base of her neck. He can still hear Rose speaking Lushootseed, the indigenous language of Salish tribes. When Billy was a kid, Rose raised six children at the Landing in hard times. Her daughter Mary often depended on Billy. “My Uncle Billy—he’s the main one that always helps me,” Mary used to say. On school mornings, Billy roused Mary and Rose’s other kids out of bed. The small army passed the home of Mrs. Wallace, the delightful neighbor with delicious chocolate chip cookies. Mrs. Wallace also raised obnoxious geese, however, that waddled after the children, feathers flying. “Oh Jesus! Geese are crazy . . . they got their neck out after you. We’re all hanging onto each other and we’re little guys. You know? We laugh about that now. But it was very serious,” Billy recalls.
Billy smiles when he thinks of his late brother Andrew, whom everyone called Sonny. When he was seven or eight, Sonny marched off the family homestead at Mud Bay, where he had been living with his maternal grandparents. He hoofed it more than twenty miles to the Landing and made a bold announcement to Willie:
“I ran away! I ran away!”
“You don’t ever have to go back there anymore,” Willie told him. “This is your home, you stay here. You don’t have to go back . . . if you don’t like it.”
