Ellen Elma Ingrid “Lil” Rajala (Tamppari) was born to Finnish immigrant parents George and Fanny Tamppari on February 12, 1926 in Ishpeming, Michigan. Lil’s father apprenticed as a tailor in Finland and immigrated to the USA in about 1914. For a few years, he worked as a tailor in Wooster, Massachusetts. In about 1916, he became an iron miner at Ishpeming, Michigan because the wages were substantially higher. He sent travel money to Fanny Vainionpää, still in Finland and she came to Ishpeming where they married in 1917. They eventually had six children.
Lil had 5 siblings: Older siblings; Irma – now deceased; Inga – celebrating her 100th birthday this July (2019); George – now deceased; and younger siblings, Raymond – living in Arizona; and Laurie – now deceased.
Finnish was Lil’s first language growing up in Ishpeming, Michigan, primarily a mining town with a large Finnish community. She graduated from Ishpeming High School in the class of 1944. After graduating high school she worked at the Gossard factory in Ishpeming, a luxury lingerie manufacturer. Gossard is a British company and is still in business although the Ishpeming factory has closed.
On July 2, 1947 Lil married Clifford A. Rajala. Cliff, also the child of Finnish immigrants, grew up in Ishpeming and Lil and Cliff’s families were well acquainted with each other. Cliff served in the US Navy during World War II and returned to Ishpeming in 1946.
After their marriage, Lil and Cliff moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where Cliff earned his Master’s degree at the University of Michigan. During this period, three sons were born, Alex (1948), Jake (1949) and Fred (1950).
After graduation, Cliff joined the US State Department and the family moved to the Washington DC area. Sons Dave (1952) and Eric (1955) were born there.
In 1956, the family moved to Tabriz, Iran when Cliff was appointed Vice Council at the American Consulate by President Eisenhower, with the consent of Congress. The last of their six sons, Robert (1957) was born in Iran. Much of Cliff’s work was intelligence gathering. As a spouse, Lil also received State Department training and helped Cliff in his work.
In August 1958, Cliff left the US State Department and accepted a position as a professor of Geography at Eastern Washington University (then Eastern Washington College of Education) in Cheney, Washington.
Lil and Cliff lived in Cheney until Cliff’s retirement in 1982. After retirement they built a home about ten miles east of Sequim, Washington. The home was surrounded by their 15 acres of treed land. They enjoyed many family gatherings. She has 9 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.
Cliff died in 2000 but Lil continued to live at their Sequim home until 2013, at which time the home was sold and she moved in with son, Fred and daughter-in-law, Janet, in Spokane, Washington.
Lil’s hobbies included: Gardening (she as a Master Gardener), cooking, sewing, decorating (she liked to have lots of little trinkets around her), music (she played the piano, organ and accordion) and playing slot machines at the casino. She also enjoyed communicating with relatives in Finland and around the United States.
Lil is immortalized in Poetry
Lil’s daughter-in-law, Sheryl Noethe, is a published poet and former poet laureate of Montana. Sheryl wrote the following poem about Lil in her book entitled, “As Is,” published by Lost Horse Press, Sandpoint, ID, 2009, pg. 55:
My Mother-In-Law, Lil
worked with her husband for the CIA off and on for thirty years
drank vodka with Russian spies, the KGB, and the dismantling
of the Shah’s regime. Ordered to Mexico City where her sons
crept barefoot on all fours to the top of cement barriers imbedded
with broken glass and watched packs of dogs fight to the death.
After our wedding
I asked if she’d have to kill me if she told me secrets of nations.
A white haired grandmother, who tats lace, grows gardens, weaves
rugs
and stands in rubber waders in the ocean,
a homemade pole with a basket tied on the end of it.
She hums gently beneath her breath
unaware. She smiled at me and leaned in, “only if I answer.”
I send her regular shipments
of bunny slippers. She could install listening devices.
She could plant a wire snare across an entire county.
She was taught to blow up cars. She bore six strapping blonde
wrestling
champions and she partied with the supreme court judge who loved
dirty limericks.
She never told her sons what she did during the days as an
operative.
She could bug a room, climb undetected
in and out of buildings (instinctively turning her face away from the
camera)
She ran fast as a man and fought like two. She dismantled bombs
and
alarms
and, in those pink slippers could knock your head off like a melon.
She could
code and decode, toss a room for data. Riding beneath the belly of
her horse she could shoot sideways, upside down.
She crept barefoot in the snow, knife
clenched between her teeth, cheek bones blackened, dressed all in
white she
slit the throats of sleeping Russian soldiers. How did she feel, in the
middle
of canning summers harvest, when the phone rang late in the night
and a dead
serious voice called her by a number. She sighed, child on hip, and
walked over
to the gun cabinet.
Sometimes her babies were born
in other countries and have unusual middle names. My husband
first spoke Farsi
and then Finnish. He remains a conscript for life in the Iranian army.
We can never
vacation there. She keeps all her secrets, rocks the new babies, hums.
I look
for the dangerous edge of her, for the young woman she was,
so blonde, so soft
in her features, a cotton scarf and gloves, and I see she has been
debriefed.
They had a perfectly normal family life, mostly.
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