Morda V. Coleman Slauson, playwright, author, and columnist, traveled West as a single woman in her mid-twenties from Iowa to Walla Walla, Washington. Born in 1896, she graduated from Iowa State University in journalism. She worked as a writer for the Walla Walla Union Bulletin newspaper from 1922 to 1924, and helped to promote the production of How the West Was Won: A Pioneer Pageant written by Whitman College President, Stephen Penrose. Morda married Howard L. Slauson and moved to Renton, WA in 1927. In 1938, her award-winning play, A Union of Motherhood, was performed by the Washington State Federation of Women’s Clubs convention. Her book on the history of Renton, One Hundred Years on the Cedar was published in 1968. Morda Slauson died in 1977.