Click each headline or photo to see the complete Postscript!
Click each headline or photo to see the complete Postscript!
(Click and click again to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 11, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 14, 2025
Some things must be seen to be believed. The transformation of mild-mannered Russell Long into Santa Claus is one.
Emerging from a basement changing room beneath
the Space Needle, snowy-bearded Santa Russ encounters wreaths of smiles and spontaneous delight.
“Santa, you’re back!” exclaim Needle staffers with childlike glee. In the gift shop, visitors clamor for ussies with Saint Nick as others point and wave.
While we ride the elevator to the observation deck for our photo shoot, I ask what draws people, young and old alike. He twinkles, then takes my breath away.
“Unconditional love,” he says gently but firmly.
Long’s metamorphosis began nearly 30 years ago when, facing early retirement from Microsoft, he felt adrift. A pastor at his church made an offhand suggestion: with his rotund figure, full beard, and kindly demeanor, why not play Santa for the season?
He joined Arthur & Associates, the Seattle company that has supplied Santas for many decades. In 1943, its founder, Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Art French, watched crowds visiting the Frederick & Nelson Santa through his office window and thought, “We should be taking pictures of that.” The following year, French opened a photo studio in the department store and began snapping shots of tots on Santa’s lap. He made over $10,000 in a single month, several times his annual P-I salary. His idea spread nationwide, becoming a holiday tradition that endures eight decades later.
Long dove in. Dyeing his blonde hair and beard white was, he recalls, torturous. “The bleach was so strong, I had to breathe through a hose for half an hour.” A local tailor hand-sewed his first velveteen red suit.
By 1998, Santa Russ was greeting families at Bellevue Square. Later generations followed him from mall to Needle, bringing children and grandchildren to perch on his lap.
The work isn’t without strain. “My cheeks hurt those first few days,” he says. “You don’t realize how much smiling it takes. And you have to train your mustache to curl up — it makes the smile bigger.”
Each appearance begins with a quiet ritual of transformation. “White gloves first, then gold spectacles, then the robe,” he says. “By the time I’ve finished dressing, Santa has arrived.”
The enduring moments aren’t about presents. “One boy, around nine, told me what he wanted most was for his dad to quit smoking,” Long says. “I turned to the father and said, ‘Did you hear that? He wants you to stick around.’ That’s when you realize Santa can touch a whole family.”
He also recalls parents arriving from Seattle Children’s Hospital, bringing fragile children for what might be final photos. “You never forget those visits,” he says softly.
So what’s Santa’s secret? He sparkles. “We all need to give our gifts,” he says. “Everyone has something: time, kindness, love. It does us good when we give it.”
For Santa Russ, the gift is presence itself. “I know how to listen,” he says. “Being heard and accepted — that’s the true spirit of Christmas.”
First, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Join me for the 18th annual Rogue’s Christmas, this Sunday at Seattle’s Town Hall!
Now back to our regular programming! To watch a narrated 360 degree video of the Santa Russ column recorded atop the Space Needle, click right here.
Also, check out a few extras from Santa Russ himself beginning with 18 sequential annual photos of Isabel Brownlow.
Afterward, you’ll find a half-dozen Seattle Post-Intelligencer news clips detailing the origin of Santa photos here at Frederick & Nelson by P-I photographer Art French in the mid-1940s.
Plus, there’s video of a Dec. 20, 2017, “Eric’s Heroes” story from KOMO-TV, courtesy archivist Joe Wren, covering the Frederick & Nelson Santa-photo story.
In addition, here’s a column from four years ago about Seattle’s 1968-1976 giant Westlake Santa.
And from my column partner Clay Eals, scroll down further to see several more Santa-related extras!
First is a charming take-off on a classic holiday poem, “T’was the Plight Before Christmas,” by West Seattleite Sue Barry. It makes for a delightful, read-aloud piece, perhaps best-timed for Christmas Eve. You might call it a union tale, but the message goes much further. To download it, just click the Santa-hat image here:
Next is a repeat from five years ago from this blog — but actually from 40 years ago when it first was published!
I offer this “Black Santa” story of mine that appeared Christmas Day 1985 on the front page of the West Seattle Herald, for which I served as editor. The fine photos were by Herald photographer Brad Garrison. This is posted with the permission of Robinson Newspapers.
I have tried searching online for Tracy Bennett, the subject of this story, who would be 62 today. Alas, I have turned up nothing.
Still, this story about Tracy and his view on the Santa milieu remains timely, powerful and inspiring — at least, that’s my hope.
At the time I wrote it, the story resonated quite personally, From 1985 to 1993, I volunteered more than 100 times to play Santa for children and adults at parties and in schools, community halls and private homes throughout Puget Sound as part of the American Heart Association’s “Santa with a Heart” fundraising program. As any Santa will tell you, it was a uniquely heartwarming and unforgettable experience. (See clippings at bottom.)
Please click any of the images once or twice to enlarge them for easy reading. And if you want to read the transcribed Black Santa text instead of reading directly from the images, scroll down.
Merry merry, and ho, ho, ho!
West Seattle Herald, Dec. 25, 1985
Santa Claus, known as Tracy Bennett in the “off”-season, walks into a class of busy fifth- and sixth-graders at Hughes Elementary School in West Seattle.
“Hi, boys and girls,” says Santa.
“Oh, hi Santa Claus!” the students respond, almost in unison.
“Howya doin’?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. I thought I’d drop in and visit you for a minute.”
“Yeah,” say a couple of students. “You changed colors.”
“Yeah,” answers Santa, “I sure did, didn’t I?”
By CLAY EALS
When most of those who are opening packages under the Christmas tree this morning think about “the man with all the toys,” their vision probably doesn’t look like Tracy Bennett.
That’s because Bennett is Black, while nearly all of the Santas in the world — at least in the United States — seem to be as white as the North Pole’s year-round snow.
Bennett isn’t bothered, however. He keeps an upbeat, optimistic attitude about the seasonal craft he’s practiced for the past 12 years. He says he’s encountered subtle prejudice from adults and skepticism from kids, but he boasts of being able to win over most of the doubters.
Exposure is what Bennett says he needs most. And so do the other Black Santas in America, he says.
Bennett got some of the exposure he desired last week when he walked the halls of both Hughes and Van Asselt elementary schools, the latter of which is attended by some students who live in southern West Seattle and the city side of White Center.
He roamed the halls at Hughes and, with the assistance of teacher Willa Williams, peeked into classrooms and dropped off sacks of candy canes, occasionally stopping for a few minutes to talk to kids on his lap. Bearing a staccato, smile-inducing “ho, ho, ho,” he almost resembled a politician, repeatedly extending his hand for a shake and greeting children with a steady stream of “Howyadoin’? … Howyadoin’, guy? … Hiya guys. Workin’ hard?”
The racially mixed classes responded in a generally positive way. Although one sixth-grader was heard to say, “I thought Santa Claus was white, because I saw a white Santa Claus at The Bon,” for the most part any negative comments centered on whether he was “real,” not on his skin color.
“He’s nice, but his hair’s made out of cotton. Weird,” said fourth-grader Jessica Canfield. “And he has clothes under his other clothes.”
“He’s fine, and I like him,” said fellow fourth-grader Johnny Cassanova. “He said that he would visit me, and he would try to get everything that I want for Christmas and to get good grades.”
Was he the “real” Santa? “Yeah,” said Johnny, “to me he is.”
“It went real good,” Bennett said afterward. “They were very polite. They weren’t skeptical. Mostly loving, you can tell.”
Bennett, who at 22 is unemployed and intends to go to school so that he can get a job either as a police officer or working with handicapped kids, began his Santa “career” at the young age of 10. “I started as a little dwarf and moved my way up,” the Rainier Valley resident said with a laugh.
Over the years, Bennett said, he’s been Santa at private gatherings and community centers in Seattle’s south end, and he’s pieced together a costume he thinks is unimposing. The key part, he said, is his beard, which is a rather flat affair.
“The big Santa Claus beards and hairs are so flocky, so thick, that it scares some children,” Bennett said. “His color of his suit and his beard is so bright already, along with the brightness of his face.
“A Black Santa Claus with a white beard seems to bring out an older look, and the color of my skin makes it look like a normal Black man wearing a suit.”
Consequently, he said, kids warm up to him rather quickly. “Apparently I work out pretty good,” he said.
Children, both white and minority, raise the racial question fairly often, Bennett said. They usually just say, “Santa Claus is white,” expecting a response, he said.
“But I really don’t say nothing. I just look at ’em and smile, or I say ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ and they usually don’t ask anymore,” he said. “I’m used to it, so it’s no problem.”
Bennett does look forward to a day when more Black Santas are around to break the racial ice at Christmastime.
“I’m not the only one, but I never see ’em in stores,” he said. If just one major downtown store would feature a Black Santa, “that would mean the 12 years that I’ve been working on it has started to come through,” he said. “It would be a breakthrough. I want it to happen.”
He also would like to see children exposed to Santas of a variety of races. “If we bring the children Black Santa Clauses, Korean Santa Clauses, Japanese Santa Clauses, the kids will like it after a while,” he said.
For that to happen, however, some prejudices will have to be broken down gradually. “You can feel it’s there,” he said. “You try to believe it’s not there, but you can see it in people’s eyes.”
Like any Santa Claus, Bennett finds it a “thrill” to portray Saint Nick to children. “When kids are happy, I’m happy. When they’re sad, I feel for ’em. I’d like to give ’em more than I can.”
He insists, however, that it’s important not to insist that he’s the “real” Santa when kids challenge him. He tells children, “You don’t have to believe in me. But I’m doing this just for you.”
“Why ruin a kid’s mind and say, ‘I’m real, believe me’?” he said. “He (Santa) is a beautiful man, OK? No one can take that away from him. But we have to tell what’s real from not. We have to tell our kids we play Santa Claus because we love children.”
Bennett also said it’s important not to push the religious aspects of Christmas as Santa. “When we talk about religion, we have to let kids do what they want, do not force them.”
Williams, the teacher, took the same approach in deciding to invite Bennett, a friend of hers, to visit Hughes. While Christmas “is a fun time and should be a time for joy,” she said she’s well aware of the Seattle School District’s policy that’s intended to separate religion from school activity.
Bringing Santa to the classroom — and a Black Santa at that — was an attempt to get students to “understand each other’s differences,” she said.
“When I told them Santa Claus might visit, one student told me, ‘I don’t believe in Santa Claus.’ Another said, ‘Santa Claus is my mom and dad,’ and another said, ‘Santa Claus is Jesus’,” Williams said. “It was just the idea of general thought and letting them express themselves and learning to accept each and every person and their differences as long as there isn’t any harm.”
For Bennett, the delight of being Santa is that “guy is just a giving person, you know?
“He gives away things to make people happy. If a child’s sick in bed, he sees Santa Claus, he’s going to try to smile as much as he can because he’s happy. When they say, ‘Santa Claus, you didn’t give me so-and-so,’ I say, ‘Well, maybe next year, OK?’
“I don’t tell them I’m going to get this (particular item) for them and get their hopes up. I tell them that maybe somebody will get it for them very soon.
“One guy said he wanted to go to college, and I said, ‘Maybe next Christmas or a few Christmases from now, you’ll be going to college and be saying you got your wish.’ ”
Bennett clearly is hooked on his annual role: “As long as I live and as long as I stay healthy, I’ll always be Santa Claus.”
As promised above, here are tidbits from my eight-year volunteer Santa Claus “career” for the American Heart Association: two clippings in which I demonstrate for other Santas the best way to don the uniform, plus a sketch I created to provide step-by-step guidance. Click once or twice on the images to enlarge them. —Clay
Just for fun and to keep with the theme, I also am including a Santa article I wrote that appeared on Christmas Eve 1980 in The Oregonian near the end of my eight-year stint as a reporter and photographer for that newspaper. Again, click once or twice on the image to enlarge it for easy readability. Enjoy! —Clay
(Click and click again to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 4, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 7, 2025
To soar, sometimes you’ve first gotta float.
The 22.5-acre Museum of Flight near Boeing Field south of Seattle is no secret. The world’s largest independent, nonprofit aerospace museum — home to 175 aircraft and spacecraft, thousands of artifacts, millions of photos and dozens of exhibits — is bedrock here. But few know of the spectacle that set its course.
Fifty years ago, on a foggy Tuesday, Dec. 16, 1975, a battered, two-story, 1909 building eased off Port of Seattle property along the Duwamish River in West Seattle. Once a boat shop and Boeing’s original airplane factory, the edifice had been long abandoned. That day, its 150-by-65-foot frame, weighing 325 tons, began a two-mile barge journey upriver, arriving at the Duwamish’s east bank. The next day, it rolled across East Marginal Way to its eventual home base.
Bright red, with distinctive white lettering, the building was Seattle’s beloved Red Barn.
On the eve of the nation’s bicentennial, the move became what the first executive director, Howard Lovering, calls the museum’s “fulcrum” — the pivotal moment turning civic nostalgia into collective action.
The move, following the shortest route from points A to B, was a nail-biter. “The industrial canal was a wonderful way to do it,” says Lovering, 88, “but it wasn’t easy. The structure was in such bad shape that it was going to fall apart if you tried to move it. It had to be secured.”
The bigger challenge was an electricians’ strike. “We had to cross East Marginal Way, and the high-tension wires there carried an awful lot of power,” Lovering says. “Facilities people said we needed a three- to four-foot rise, and there was no crew to do it. They said, ‘If you cross the street, this wood structure with its wrought-iron fire exits, you’d have the world’s largest toaster.’
“It scared the heck out of all of us. I ended up in the union hall saying, ‘Is there some way we can get those raised?’ They cared enough about this building to say, ‘No, we can’t do that, but we know a non-union firm that might.’ And those wires were raised just adequately for us to pass under. When we got across, everybody breathed a sigh of relief, and we headed for the taverns.”
And the museum’s new home began to soar.
A 1976 open house drew 20,000. The restored Red Barn opened in 1983. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush headlined the 1987 opening of the next-door Great Gallery. Today, the much-expanded museum lures a half-million visitors and serves 140,000 students each year.
Lovering still marvels: “I’m not sure all of that would have happened without the move.”
Big thanks to Ted Huetter, Alison Bailey, Peder Nelson, Cody Othoudt, Jeff McCord and especially Howard Lovering for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find a video of the 1975 Red Barn move, a present-day video interview of Howard Lovering, 7 additional photos and 9 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
See this 2020 article on Howard Lovering at MarketingNW and listen to Lovering being interviewed earlier this fall by Feliks Banel on Cascade of History.
(click to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 27, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 30, 2025
It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4- and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in pint-sized mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.
Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the
musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the comfort of belonging.
Seven decades later, Lau stands before the same brick façade, joined by several former classmates. They reminisce about games, songs and afternoon naps, recalling how the church provided a place of warmth and community in post-war Seattle.
Founded in 1892, the Chinese Baptist Church served generations of families who made their homes and livelihoods in the surrounding neighborhood. Originally an outreach mission of Seattle First Baptist Church, it combined prayer services with English lessons for Chinese immigrants.
With no permanent home, early congregants first gathered in private homes and leased halls in old Chinatown. In 1902, they built a modest structure at Maynard Avenue South and South Washington Street. Two decades later, in 1922, the growing congregation purchased property at 10th Avenue South and South King Street.
By the early 1950s, Chinese Baptist served as a
spiritual center and anchor for young children whose parents worked long hours nearby. Its nursery school offered early education, socialization and — perhaps most important — a sense of place and welcome.
Lau recalls her teachers’ patient voices, one in English and one in Chinese, and the joy of receiving her diploma, which she kept for years. “I was very shy in public, but nursery school felt normal, like being in a bigger family,” she says with a smile. “I didn’t know the word ‘community’ yet, but that’s what it was.”
In the decades since, the church building has changed hands, and the neighborhood around it has evolved. Yet for Lau and her classmates, returning to that spot rekindles vivid memories of friendship, faith and beginnings.
Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau sees clear lines between that early experience and her lifelong devotion to education and youth activities.
“Understanding where we come from,” she says, “gives students confidence and connection. Those who feel seen and supported thrive and carry that forward.”
The basement classroom may be long gone, but its lessons endure. Each reminiscence shared among Lau and her classmates summons cherished childhood scenes of caps and gowns — and parental pride — from a June day more than 70 years ago, when the future felt as bright as a diploma freshly handed to a 5-year-old.
For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click through here.
Just to make trouble, I’m appending the initial draft of the column I submitted to The Times. In a Now & Then first, our editors summarily rejected it. It took a complete rewrite to ease it into print.
Here’s the original version that was, said the Times, not ready for prime time:
Chinatown longtimers shun ‘international’ label: ‘We are Americans’
It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4 and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in tiny mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.
Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the thrill of belonging.
Seven decades later, Lau stands at that same brick façade, surrounded by former classmates and recalling with a smile how the church offered sanctuary in a city that had long drawn invisible lines denoting where Chinese families could and couldn’t live. Those borders, she says, still define a struggle for identity in Seattle’s Chinatown.
It was a pattern etched long before her time.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made Chinese immigrants the first group in U.S. history barred by race and nationality. In Seattle, exclusion persisted through property covenants, housing codes and loan denials that confined Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Black residents to a few downtown blocks.
Redlining maps from the 1930s shaded Chinatown bright pink — “hazardous”— a warning to banks not to invest.
This was coupled by what was labeled progress.
In 1928, the street called the Second Avenue Extension sliced through the second Chinatown, forcing re-location to King Street. The Interstate 5 corridor carved away another section in the 1960s. Construction of the Kingdome in the 1970s further impacted the neighborhood.
Each project promised renewal. Each time, Chinatown’s footprint shrank.
In 1951, a year before Lau’s nursery-school graduation, Mayor William Devin renamed Chinatown by proclamation, calling it the International Center. For the Chinese community, it felt like erasure.
Restaurateur Ruby Chow, who became the first Asian American elected to the King County Council — and become Lau’s mentor — bristled. The city of Seattle, she believed, had created a “reservation.”
“International,” son Brien Chow argues, implies Asian Americans are perpetual outsiders when they are Americans.
The linguistic sleight-of-hand eventually became civic policy, morphing into “International District,” then, as mandated by a 1999 city ordinance, “Chinatown International District” – the collective name of Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon.
Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau says identity is essential to belonging.
“Understanding place and heritage,” she says, “gives students pride and connection. Those who are secure in their self-identity thrive and strengthen community.”
As former classmates gather with her at the church’s entrance, Lau eyes the neighborhood that raised them. Whatever any signs may read, for her it always will remain Chinatown.
So what do you think, gentle readers, on this rainy Thanksgiving? Interested to hear your opinions…
(Click and click again to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 20, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 23, 2025
At age 19, many of us dream of rising above it all. In 1950, Nancy Knox did just that — literally — by climbing onto the brand-new southern roof of University of Washington Stadium.
This was no sanctioned visit. Nor was it entirely safe. Newspapers had reported two weeks earlier that a steelworker had fallen from the cantilevered construction site to his death.
But for Nancy, a Roosevelt High graduate and incoming freshman who aimed for a job in teaching or librarianship, it was merely a sneaky transgression with her new boyfriend and future husband Charley Lennstrom.
“There was no way I should have been up on the roof,” the 94-year-old Normandy Park resident says, “but there was no way to stop us. When stuff is under construction, sometimes they don’t have all the barriers in place. So it wasn’t hard to get up. There were stairs that took you to the upper level of the ceiling, right? And then we were on the back side, outside of it, and went on up.”
Proof lies in 11 black-and-white snapshots taken by the pair with Charley’s camera during a late-summer caper just 12 days before the expanded stadium opened Sept. 23, 1950, for UW Husky football.
The images show the pair in various rooftop spots, along with impressive vistas. Long before drones and Google Earth, the soaring, 210-foot-tall roof — atop a distinctive zigzag grandstand and twin spiral walkways — provided glimpses never before seen from that vantage because until then, the 30-year-old stadium had resembled a flattened bowl.
Long known as Husky Stadium, the gridiron shrine in 1987 gained a twin north grandstand that famously collapsed during construction when support cables were prematurely removed. Repairs were completed in time for fall ball.
From Nancy’s and Charley’s trespass in 1950 grew a shared lifetime, which began at her family’s U District rooming house. The quieter Charley was a UW engineering student who later worked for Boeing. Outgoing Nancy, after they had four children, finished her degree in 1974 and worked at the Highline Community College library.
Over the years, they followed the Huskies, even attending the Rose Bowl in 1964. Charley died in 2007. Today, Nancy fondly recalls their rooftop rendezvous.
“It was an afternoon adventure, and there’s always the call to look at the view,” she says. “You could see all around to the north part of Lake Washington, around to the east and quite a bit to the south, the Montlake Bridge, all this stuff from above. You know how kids are. They like to explore. And it was our university.”
Big thanks to Kathleen Lennstrom Bogue, Diane Lennstrom and especially Nancy Knox Lennstrom, as well as UW information officers Victor Balta, Dan Erickson, Kurt Svoboda Chip Lydum and Jeff Bechthold for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find 4 additional photos and 10 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
Also, click here to download the 2010 Seattle nomination report for Husky Stadium.
(click to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 13, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 16, 2025
Blink and you might miss it. Nestled in a University District alley just off The Ave, Café Allegro is an unassuming temple to coffee — and community.
For the past 50 years, its caffeinated regulars, many from the UW campus one block east, have gathered to study, create, reflect and converse in a locale that seeded ideas and conventions that forever transformed how the world sees and drinks coffee.
The café’s first owner, Dave Olsen, had no grand ambitions when he first opened its doors. After serving as an Army air-defense officer in Seattle, followed by two years as a carpenter, he rode his bicycle to San Francisco in search of direction.
North Beach’s legendary Caffè Trieste, often cited as
the first espresso coffeehouse on the West Coast, offered a roadmap.
“I was completely smitten,” he says, “by the taste and aroma of coffee, the whole vibe of a café.”
Olsen returned to Seattle in pursuit of a dream. In December 1974, he signed the lease for an improbable location — the alley garage of a former U-District mortuary — and, with $17,000 in cash and buckets of sweat equity, he opened Café Allegro in May 1975. He had assembled all the essentials: an Italian espresso machine, fresh-roasted beans, recipes and techniques.
Then the first customer strolled in.
“He walks up to the counter and orders a cappuccino,” Olsen says. “I did the best I could, slid it across the counter, and took his money.”
They made eye contact, and Olsen had a lightbulb moment.
“I suddenly realized it’s all about connecting with people and taking care of them,” he says. “That has served me ever since.”
After 11 years at Allegro, Olsen accepted a job under a
rising young executive at Starbucks named Howard Schultz.
“We really hit it off,” Olsen says. “Howard was the creative force with business acumen and ambition. I was sleeves-rolled-up behind the counter, roasting coffee and training people.”
Schultz bought Starbucks’ original six Seattle storefronts and within a decade expanded to more than 1,000 shops. Olsen served as the chain’s first green-coffee buyer, scouring the world in search of beans.
In 1990, Olsen sold Café Allegro to then-managers Nathaniel Jackson and Chris Peterson, who continue the traditions Olsen established. Peterson juggles his day job as a lawyer with managing
the café and takes pride in roasting Allegro’s signature coffees.
“Our focus has always been the coffee and the community,” Peterson says. “We encourage people to hang out all day — to socialize and connect. And we’ve always been that way.”
For our narrated 360-degree video featuring the Allegro and environs, click here.
Also, check out a video of Clay Eals’ Steve Goodman biography event held in the cafe’s upstairs room on Oct. 3, 2008. Clay’s book, Steve Goodman: Facing the Music, is now in its updated 6th printing!
Finally, a selection of photos from photographer Bill Kuhns, who’s documented Allegro life and times for decades.
(Click and click again to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 30, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 2, 2025
Modeled on Grecian nymphs, two French-cast statues of dancing maidens have welcomed visitors at downtown Tacoma’s showcase Wright Park for an astounding 133 years.
Their pale patina glows against the rich green of the 27-acre park’s abundant woods. Yet the maidens also hide, says Chris Staudinger, within the persistent persona of a city of 228,000 that’s shadowed by its Space Needled northern neighbor.
Tacoma, dubbed the City of Destiny when it was named the Northern Pacific Railroad’s western terminus in 1873, is “close to my heart,” says the 40-year-old ex-journalist. In the past nine years, Staudinger’s guided-tour business, Pretty Gritty Tours, has grown to 26 employees who mount a busy slate of excursions around the state, especially in Tacoma.
“It is such an incredibly important and historically rich city that gets passed over by a modern lens all the time,” he says. “There’s so many firsts or huge achievements that took place here. But the City of Destiny is still better known as the ‘Tacoma aroma.’ And I aim to fix that.”
In his 190-page book, “Secret Tacoma: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure” (2025, Reedy Press), Staudinger transforms the odiferous paper-mill/smelter reputation into a fragrant, fun collection of 94 unique, quirky spots that anyone would want to visit or revisit.
Notably, they include Tacoma’s oldest existing building, the 1873 Old St. Peter’s Church, which still operates in the city’s Old Town, and, not far away, the 1907 Engine House No. 9, now a pub.
Back at Wright Park, the maiden statues, like many of Staudinger’s entries, bear a colorful backstory. They arrived with Clinton P. Ferry (1830-1909), a booster known as the “Duke of Tacoma.” Ferry acquired them and other pieces, intending them for a new marital home, during a late-1880s European trip with his second wife.
One day on that trip, as recounted in Murray Morgan’s Tacoma-centered tome “Puget’s Sound,” Ferry returned early to their Parisian suite and caught his wife and her French tutor in flagrante delicto. Heartbroken, Ferry ended the marriage and gave his collected art to the city of Tacoma.
Over the years, the sculptures acquired nicknames — “Annie” (for her Annie Wright Seminary, now Schools, and for the wife of park donor Charles Wright) and “Fannie” (for nearby Fannie C. Paddock Memorial Hospital, now Tacoma General Hospital) — as well as a few bruises. Fannie’s right hand once reached her chin but now crosses her midsection. And today her right foot is missing.
Each mini-chapter in “Secret Tacoma” ends with a “Pro Tip.” The one for the maidens is “Be good to your loved ones.”
Short and, yes, sweet.
Big thanks to Boo Billstein and Chris Staudinger for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find a video interview, 2 documents, 4 additional photos and 5 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 23, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 26, 2025
Just east of Port Townsend, Marrowstone Island — so dubbed by Capt. George Vancouver on May 8, 1792, the same day he affixed “Mount Rainier” to a conical volcano southeast — harbors a bucolic sanctuary.
With a population of just under 1,000 that swells with
vacationers each summer, the island’s unincorporated town of Nordland was founded by Norwegian immigrant Peter Nordby (1862-1919) who bought and platted its 187 acres in 1892.
Four years later, in 1896, Congress approved construction of Fort Flagler, a U.S. Army coastal artillery post at the island’s north end.
For more than a century, the Nordland General Store, built circa 1922, has stood at the island’s heart, selling groceries and supplies to locals and visitors alike.
Early records also illustrate a flip side to the business — its centrality to the community as a gathering place. The annual Strawberry Festival, first held a century ago, continues to draw celebrants peninsula-wide.
In recent decades, a lively Tractor Days parade has drawn farmers and lawn jockeys, rumbling their heavy machinery past the store every Memorial Day weekend. Other festivities include a pumpkin-weight guessing contest held before Halloween, a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in which Santa arrives by boat, and a Polar Bear Dip at noon on New Year’s Day.
In the early hours of Nov. 5, 2020, the store was sustained major damage from an electrical fire. The building was declared a total loss. “A little piece of
Marrowstone Island died when the Nordland Store was destroyed by fire,” reported the Peninsula Daily News.
Then-owners Tom and Sue Rose, nearing retirement, made the painful decision to put the business on hold. Townsfolk were unnerved, faced with the prospect of losing the island’s soul.
Longtime Marrowstoner Barcy Fisher and a more recent arrival, Patti Buckland, friends for more than 30
years, collaborated on an audacious business plan. To save this touchstone, why not convert the store to community ownership?
Cue huzzahs and applause. Inspired investors stepped up with nearly $400,000. 592 neighbors and friends chipped in $250 each for lifetime memberships to the co-op. What’s more, dozens of volunteers stepped up to help rebuild. Within 10 months, on May 25, 2024, the Nordland General Store staged its grand reopening. Rain notwithstanding, Buckland says, the event was attended by hundreds of exuberant neighbors.
“At the end of the day,” she says, “what we’re all about is serving our community. It’s not just about groceries. It’s about connection. That’s our secret sauce.”
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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 9, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 12, 2025
Explosive legacy underlies Rainier Valley’s serene hilltop park
By Clay Eals
In this age of political pyrotechnics, what could be more welcome than a compact, peaceful park with a trail that winds through tall trees and native plants?
Inside this blufftop preserve we find no evidence, other than its namesake, that it once hosted an anything-but-tranquil fireworks factory that produced flares and explosions seen, heard and renowned the world over.
We are in the Columbia City neighborhood at Hitt’s Hill Park, named for Thomas Gabriel (T.G.) Hitt (1874-1958). An immigrant chemist from London by way of Victoria, B.C., he parlayed a childhood fascination for things that go boom into an international business based atop Rainier Valley’s highest slope.
In 1905, two years before Columbia City joined Seattle, Hitt Fireworks Co. took shape in what became 26 tarpapered shacks, each hand-numbered in red on galvanized grey signs, and spaced several yards from each other to prevent manufacturing accidents from obliterating the whole lot.
A frequent overseas traveler to negotiate deals, Hitt employed up to 200 people on his hill.
Products ranged from panoramic set pieces for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and other prominent fetes around the country to extra-loud “Flashcrackas” and other novelties that fit in the palm of a hand.
His craftsmanship also bolstered Oscar-winning Hollywood films, in the war scenes of “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930) and the burning-of-Atlanta sequence of “Gone with the Wind” (1939).
Not all was safe and sane, however.
Fiery onsite calamities occasionally made banner news, especially when on May 8, 1922, exploding powder killed 17-year-old employee Nora Bailey. One day later, the suicide of a same-aged female friend was attributed to her demise. Angry locals demanded the plant be banned from the city, but the city resisted, providing that Hitt obey fire-marshal regulations.
The heyday of Hitt, also a perfumer and inkmaker, started fading after his accidental arsenic poisoning in the 1930s, says great-grandson Ray Akers, but family continued the enterprise past his death into the 1970s. The company’s arc paralleled society’s love-hate relationship with fireworks, eventually resulting in Seattle banning their manufacture (and, later, their private use) and business moving abroad.
By century’s end, invasive ivy, blackberries and rats flourished onsite. Locals including Akers fought back plans for dozens of houses to be built on the 3.2-acre parcel. Open-space advocates successfully lobbied the city to make it a park and volunteered muscle and money to transform it into a natural refuge.
Today, the only major noise in the sanctuary comes from periodic jet overflights. The uninitiated would never suspect it once had been home to big bangs and fabricated flash.
Big thanks to Katie McClure and John Bennett for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find 6 additional photos and 30 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 2, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 5, 2025
Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” may recall a scene featuring youthful protagonist Bilbo Baggins exchanging riddles with the gruesome, elder Gollum who threatens to eat him if he fails to answer.
The historical questions we pose here may be playful and seemingly of local import only. But I would argue the stakes are high. Every place matters, every story counts, especially when history itself is on the line.
In its century and a half, Woodinville — just east of the north end of I-405 — contains more than a whiff of rural wizardry. Bounded by gentle rivers and lakes, and now a town known for dozens of picturesque wineries, its earliest brain-teasers are well worth exploring.
“Why was it named Woodinville?” asks a smiling Cherry Jarvis, co-founder of the Woodinville Heritage Society, celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“So much timber maybe?” co-founder Phyllis Keller answers with a chuckle.
For those who don’t know the forest from the trees, the giveaway: Ira and Susan Woodin fled “urban” Seattle in 1871 and rowed up Sammamish Slough in search of new beginnings.
OK, that was easy. But the next sticklers may require attending an event. For details, read on.
Those following the Woodins found work in the village’s surrounding forest and farmland. They included lumber magnate Frederick Stimson, who built a baronial mansion in 1911 and opened a prize-winning dairy. He named it Hollywood Farm. Why? Were holly bushes abundant? Did Charlie Chaplin pay a visit?
A Woodinville blacksmith, born Johann Koch in Germany’s Baden-Baden, set up shop near the town cemetery. Why did he change his name to John Cook?
Tools of Cook/Koch’s trade (anvil, forge, hammer and tongs) pose even more mysteries. Why does his anvil anchor his grave?
Popular Norm’s Resort on bucolic Cottage Lake became nationally famous. Was owner Norm Fragner an early PR genius?
When one of our state’s largest wineries, Chateau Ste. Michelle, sought land to fulfill world-class aspirations, why did Woodinville stand out?
Such queries are enough to create enduring ties that bind.
“When we founded the heritage society in 1975,” recalls co-founder Jarvis, “Woodinville was small enough that we all knew each other.” Today, the town population approaches 14,000. “Together, we can honor the past,” says Kevin Stadler, the society’s president, “while inspiring connections for generations to come.”
Want to catch the inspiration?
Join “Now & Then” co-columnist Clay Eals and me at 10:50 a.m. (doors open at 10:15 a.m.) Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025, at Brightwater Environmental Community Center, where Woodinville Heritage Society will host a gathering of passionate, crackerjack history buffs who will supply “pocketses” of answers to all these riddles, and much more.
So we return after a delightful program featuring the Woodinville Heritage Society historians to answer a few of the questions posed in the column.
A video of the hour-long program should be forthcoming with further solutions – we’ll post it as soon as it becomes available.
When the video presentation is completed, we’ll post it here with some fanfare. Congrats again to the Heritage Society on its 50th anniversary!