After Ingwer and Richard graduated from high school, she knew she couldn’t stay in the country without their help, so she got a ride to Tacoma with a neighbor to find a house to rent. Instead she found a house to buy for $1,100. She sold the cow for $100, for a down payment, and moved all the children into town. Lois and Ellen rejoined them.

In 1940, too ill to care for her youngest daughter, who had Down's Syndrom, she had to put Mary Louise into a home for the mentally disabled, in Soap Lake.

Gram worked at various jobs—housecleaning, mending at a dry cleaners, clerking in Rhodes department store during Christmas holidays, doing home care for the elderly.

In 1956 she returned to school, for the first time since the sixth grade. She earned a practical nurse license when she was 65 and continued to work until she was more than 80.