By: Gordon Williams, American Red Cross Volunteer

The American Red Cross has a rich and storied history, dating back to its founding in 1881 by Civil War nurse Clara Barton. Now some relics of that history, dating back to the Second World War, have been displayed in the Red Cross office in Sequim, Washington.

We turned to Red Cross volunteer Denise Nielsen of Sequim for the story of how those relics made the long journey from war-torn Europe to a remote corner of Washington State.

Among the objects on display are a Red Cross uniform, complete with insignia, shoes and hat dating back to the war years. There is also a birthday card signed by the late Ronald Reagan, president of the United States from 1981 to 1990. All were collected by a woman who was born in Germany but later moved to the U.S. Though her son died in the war, she felt that keeping the souvenirs had helped keep his memory alive.

In her last years, the woman lived in the Sequim area. There she became friends with a woman named Mary Berryhill. In time the woman passed the wartime relics on to Berryhill, who kept them safely secured in a box. It is at that point that Nielsen enters the picture.

The two women met while volunteering in a local church group. During their time together, Berryhill told Nielsen about the box filled with Red Cross memorabilia. Berryhill herself was approaching her 90s and she was looking for someone to assume the task of caring for the relics.

Nielsen felt she was the right person for the task.

“I knew it was something I wanted to do,” Nielsen said. “It felt like something I was meant to do.”

Nielsen took the box home and opened it.

“I was astounded at what I found,” she said.

She took everything, spent her own money to put it in frames, and put it on display in the Sequim office where it remains for all to see.

Granted, Sequim is off the beaten path. It is part of the South Puget Sound and Olympics Chapter of the Red Cross Northwest Region, but far away from the chapter headquarters near Tacoma. It is a territory filled with forests and mountains. Red Cross responders from Sequim may have to drive an hour or more to reach an incident in a remote corner of Clallam County.

For all her devotion to the Sequim office, Nielsen is a relative newcomer to the area. She and her husband are fairly recent transplants from the Los Angeles area where he spent 33 years as a member of the LA police department. Before that, the avid fisherman was stationed at the Naval Reserve in Bremerton, which is how he was introduced to the waters near Sequim.

As retirement approached, the couple agreed to resettle there. Nielson joined the local Red Cross chapter where she now holds multiple roles, including with Service to the Armed Forces (SAF), supporting active and retired members of the military.

By assuming custody of the box of relics and putting them on display, Nielsen took on another role — that of chapter historian and archivist — taking a once hidden bit of Red Cross history and making it visible in order to continue keeping the memories alive.