Investigation of Communist Activities in Seattle, Wash., Area, Hearings, Part 1United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities
History
Investigation of Communist Activities in Seattle, Wash., Area, Hearings, Part 1
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities
Communism -- Washington (State) -- Seattle
Mr. TAVENNER. During the course of the hearing in June 1954
you were asked a number of questions regarding your background. But the
present chairman of the subcommittee was not present with the committee
on that occasion, and I think it would be well to begin as if we had
taken no testimony whatever.
Will you tell the committee, please, when and where you were born?
Mr. DENNETT. I was born in Revere, Mass., April 26, 1908.
Mr. TAVENNER. Where do you now reside?
Mr. DENNETT. 7324 34th Avenue SW., Seattle 6, Wash.
Mr. TAVENNER. When did you move to the general area of
Seattle, or may I say to the State of Washington?
Mr. DENNETT. In 1932.
Mr. TAVENNER. Will you give the committee, please, a brief
outline of your formal educational training?
Mr. DENNETT. I graduated from high school in Rickreall, Oreg.
I was out of school a year, unable to raise the finances to go on to
college. The second year I made arrangements to finance going to normal
school by carrying a paper route.
I graduated from the Oregon Normal School in 1928, and started teaching
school. That was a 2-year college at that time, or 2-year normal
school. It has since been changed to a college of education, and it is
a 4-year school now. That was at Monmouth, Oreg.
After receiving my teaching certificate and starting to teach, I
carried on extension work with the University of Oregon, and later,
at a later year, I took a couple more quarters of advanced work at
the University of Oregon in the School of Education, Sociology, and
Philosophy. I did not graduate.
Mr. TAVENNER. When did you complete your work at the
university?
Mr. DENNETT. Well, the work that I took, which was not
sufficient for a degree or graduation, ended in 1931.
Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee, please, briefly,
what your employment record has been since that time.
Mr. DENNETT. Well, after I left teaching I was unemployed for
quite a long period of time. The great depression had started, and I
became active in the unemployed work.
Later on when the CCC’s were organized, that is, the Civilian
Conservation Corps, since I was in a soup line here in Seattle and saw
an announcement that it was possible for us to leave the soup line and
go out in the woods in the CCC’s, I chose to do so, and spent a year
there, about 15 months, in fact.
When I came out of the CCC’s one of the fellows whom I had worked
with in the CCC shanghaied me onto a boat here in the sound. And,
unbelievable as it may sound, I actually was shanghaied to work on
the waterfront, working on one of the Puget Sound freight boats. I
didn’t know a thing about it. And that is how I got started, a fellow
just shoved me on and fed me, and the boat pulled away from the dock
without my knowing what was going on. Then I got started working in the
waterfront work and continued.
Mr. TAVENNER. What year was that?
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