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(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 30, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on May 3, 2020)

Jefferson school days echo in the May memories of its students

By Clay Eals

In our coronaviral days of school closures and social distancing and with May Day here, this week’s “Then” image might be poignant. It depicts 130 people posing for a group photo at West Seattle’s Jefferson Elementary School on Saturday, June 1, 1985, just 17 days before it fell victim to the wrecking ball.

As editor of the West Seattle Herald, I organized the gathering to document the passing of a building in which thousands of students spent formative years, from its opening in 1911 until 1979, when plummeting enrollment and soaring renovation costs sealed its fate.

The former Jefferson students and staff who turned out faced 42nd Avenue while our fearless photographer, Brad Garrison, perched atop an 8-foot wooden stepladder to capture the scene. The print’s upper edge is irregular because, for effect, the photo ran large on the front page, extending up into the newspaper’s nameplate.

The school, named for our third president, designed by Edgar Blair and built one block east of West Seattle’s Junction business district, had an enduring effect of its own – on its students.

“We bleed Jefferson,” says Lisa McCandless Bernardez, who attended in the mid-1970s. Every five years since, she has reunited with her best friend, Jefferson classmate Sue Haynie Craig, at the salad bar inside the Safeway anchoring the full-block complex that replaced the school and opened in August 1987.

“It was a great, mysterious, humongous school,” Bernardez says. “When they tore it down, it broke our hearts.”

Some recall the edifice’s crowded baby-boom classrooms (nearly 1,000 students in 1953-1954), wooden desks and worn stairs, along with the “old smell you never forget.” Others cite civil defense (atomic bomb) drills and sneaking into the basement to discover long-abandoned rations and body tags.

Students also exploited the neighborhood’s business milieu to create meandering walking routes. Wayne Hagler, who attended in the late 1960s, says, “We’d go through the showroom of Gene Fiedler Chevrolet, then Lucky’s grocery, then the auto-parts store to get STP stickers, so a 20-minute walk home took 45 minutes.”

Most wish Jefferson could have been preserved and repurposed as were schools in Queen Anne, Wallingford and elsewhere. But the latter-day impact of its 33-year-old substitute, Jefferson Square, is undeniable. The five-level structure serves thousands of customers, workers and residents via retail storefronts (80,000 square feet), offices (67,000 square feet) and residential space (78 apartments).

Nevertheless, lingering today in the memories of Myra Bowen Skubitz, who attended in the mid-1940s, and Karen Arthur White who attended 10 years later, is Jefferson’s annual spring jamboree. It brought every student in the school to its enormous asphalt playground for dancing with streamers around a maypole and other fun. One can still imagine.

WEB EXTRAS

Below are two more memories of former Jefferson Elementary School students, 11 Jefferson-related photos and 16 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

At the bottom is an official three-page history of the school from Seattle Public Schools Archives.

Also, here is where you can find the Facebook page for Jefferson Elementary School alumni.

Robert Terrana. uncle of Lisa McCandless Bernardez who attended in the 1940s during World War II, recalls air-raid drills. ” We had to go down to the basement floor under the first floor. We had to stay there until they rang the bells when it was safe to go upstairs.” He also recalls the “nice, big, wide playground.” He recalls walking to school in the snow. “We had some big snowstorms, more than we have now. Winter used to be winter.” A lifelong West Seattleite, he will be 85 in August. “I used to be in some of the little skits they used to put on for the children in the auditorium. … When they had the March of Dimes campaign in January, they had those tables at California Avenue and Alaska, and I used to volunteer with that, helping with the announcing: ‘Give to March of Dimes. Put your dimes on the table.’ That was probably in sixth grade.”

John Carlson, longtime talk-show host for KVI, attended kindergarten and first grade in the 1960s. “I brought my copy of the album ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ to Show and Tell, but (kindergarten teacher) Mrs. Price said it was inappropriate. The following week I brought my collection of troll-sized Beatles dolls, pointing out that they were dolls, not Beatles toys. Mrs. Price was not impressed with my logic and said that if I brought any more Beatles memorabilia to class, it would be confiscated. Loved those days.”

 

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 23, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on April 26, 2020)

Yacht club’s 1926 Montlake reception had a crowning touch

By Clay Eals

Royalty fueled the roar of the 1920s in Seattle on Nov. 4, 1926. That day, the city welcomed a woman whom The Seattle Times called the “most beautiful and gracious of all Europe’s feminine monarchs,” Queen Marie.

For the 51-year-old regal representative of Romania (then spelled Rumania), Seattle was but one destination on a cross-country tour. Accompanied in an open touring car by our first female mayor, Bertha Landes, the queen zipped through an afternoon of stops initially intended for a full day.

She drew record crowds, and the city delighted her: “In all the towns I have visited, I have found none so beautiful as your Seattle. In each corner today, I have found a place where I should like to live.”

The fitting finale was the home of the Seattle Yacht Club. Its clubhouse, perched on Portage Bay, south of the University of Washington and north of today’s Highway 520, had opened six years earlier, on May 1, 1920. For a reception put on by “club women of the city” to honor the queen, the building burst with autumn blooms, its veranda rails draped in dahlias.

Only 200 of the 1,500 assembled women could greet Marie, however, because what was to be a one-hour stay lasted “scarcely more than 15 minutes.” This did not prevent 60 women – bonneted, like the queen – from posing outside with three youngsters, as our “Then” photo shows.

It’s no accident that a lighthouse-shaped cupola topped the clubhouse, which The Times called “the finest on the Coast and one of the finest in the United States.” Famed architect John Graham, Sr., certainly intended for the Colonial Revival/Shingle Style structure to complement the recently opened Lake Washington Ship Canal, including nearby Montlake Cut, which connected Portage Bay to the lake.

The parcel, formerly marshland and a landfill for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at the UW campus, became available for the club’s purchase after a casino proposed for the site fizzled. The club deemed the calm, freshwater setting a buoyant change from the rough weather, railroad noise, oil dumping and swells of passing steamboats that its boaters and craft had endured at saltwater bases on Elliott Bay and along the West Seattle shore since its founding in 1892.

Today, with 2,800 member families and myriad programs for all ages, Seattle Yacht Club is the oldest and largest such local organization.

The coronavirus scuttled its traditionally sponsored early-May merriment for Opening Day, but the club optimistically has rescheduled an elaborate celebration of its clubhouse centennial for Sept. 26. Sailing and motor vessels from the 1920s are to be on display, including one that participated on Opening Day in 1920.

One might envision the pending party as fit for a queen.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column, when it is posted!

Below are a “Now” identifier photo and two other photos as well as 11 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

And at the bottom, see a book excerpt relating to Queen Marie’s visit to the Seattle Yacht Club clubhouse on Nov. 4, 1926, plus a 1954 club menu!

 

(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 16, 2020)

Discovering a healing heart for nature at Kubota Garden

By Clay Eals

With Earth Day now seemingly every day, symbolism abounds in Kubota Garden. This 20-acre park near Seattle’s southern city limits showcases a calming mix of greenery, stone and water, all buoyed by an early enhancement, the Heart Bridge. And in this uncertain era, more than ever we need heart.

Soon after officials invoked social distancing to slow the coronavirus, I wandered the garden’s vast and meandering paths. Beckoning with bright red railings was the diminutive bridge.

The garden’s founder, Fujitaro Kubota (1880-1973), who left Japan for America in 1907, installed the span a few years after acquiring the tract’s first five acres in 1927. It bolsters the entire park’s role as a refuge for contemplation, healing and renewal.

Its range of trees, pools and meadows is complemented by a bronze entry gate, ornamental wall, hanging bell, stone lantern and interlaced waterfalls, blending Japanese and American styles of landscaping. One can instantly internalize the careful combination of art and nature.

The peace it engenders was no effortless ethos to create, given that Kubota, with thousands of other stateside Japanese during World War II, was shunted into three years of incarceration at Minidoka, Idaho. There, the headstrong horticulturalist coped by leading the camp’s beautification. Post-war, he wept for hours when encountering his overgrown Seattle garden and struggled with back taxes, but he pushed on.

Naturalized in 1955, Kubota shaped public spaces of the Rainier Club, Seattle University and Bainbridge Island’s Bloedel Preserve as well as the grounds of countless residences.

The garden in South Seattle, however, was Kubota’s magnum opus. He didn’t live to see its splendor triumph over a 480-unit condo development scheme to become an official city landmark (1980) and city park (1987). But he maintained vision and a desire to share.

“Every rock and every key plant have a meaning,” he told The Seattle Times in imperfect English at age 82 in 1962. “I wish to leave in this ‘beautiful’ and ‘artistic.’ ”

That’s evident in a new, 230-page coffee-table book, “Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden,” with evocative essays and photos from 20 contributors. Infused with earthly humanity, the book is a stirring backgrounder for experienced visitors. For the uninitiated, it’s a lavish entree to Kubota’s story.

As expressed by Linda Kubota Byrd in a companion documentary, her grandfather embodied “an overarching spirit and a testament to the power of holding an intention.” In the same film, Bellevue landscape architect Don Shimono says Kubota devoted himself to working with nature, not against it.

“It seems like this whole planet is man trying to conquer nature,” Shimono adds, “and there’s no way nature is going to be conquered. Nature is going to have the last word.”

WEB EXTRAS

Seattle’s Jim Rupp, of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild, observes that in our “Then” photo, “The fellow standing next to the seated woman (presumably his wife) is Dr. Henry Gowen, longtime UW professor for whom Gowen Hall is named.” That this is Gowen is bolstered by a photo of Gowen from the Museum of History and Industry, Rupp says.

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are the cover of “Spirited Stone,” a map of Kubota Garden and 18 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

 

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Published in the Seattle Times online on April 9, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on April 12, 2020

Creating a new neighborhood with an old name: High Point

By Clay Eals

Seattle’s most elevated vista is not well-known Queen Anne, Magnolia or Capitol Hill. At 512 feet, it’s West Seattle’s High Point. The name bespeaks lofty aspirations.

It surfaced in the April 11, 1926, Seattle Times: “High Point, so named because of the commanding position it occupies, will be the next fine residence addition to go on the market here … and will be one of the most sightly subdivisions in that part of West Seattle.”

Indeed, the potential was high for the mid-peninsula plats just north of the “summit.” But ravages of the Great Depression soon intervened.

Prompted by late-1930s New Deal money, the state created the Seattle Housing Authority, which snapped up big parcels, including High Point, to aid the downtrodden. It wasn’t easy, as the agency’s charge drew flak from those viewing public housing and integration as “socialism.”

With war looming, however, the feds redirected funds to bolster defense, so the barracks-style housing built in 1942 at High Point became home to a surge of Boeing and shipyard workers.

High Point reverted to the original mission in 1953 and for the next 50 years served 15,000 racially diverse low-income families.

By the 1990s, wracked by civic inattention and growing crime, the deteriorated units merited federal help aimed at “severely distressed” areas, and in 2004 razing began on the High Point of old.

Rising in its place over the last 15 years has been a novel neighborhood. Its kaleidoscope of green features includes an unusual park, a bee garden and a large pond to go with a new library branch, health clinic, senior complex and community center. Moreover, the project intersperses 854 market-rate dwellings with 675 low-income rentals.

The transformation was so profound that Tom Phillips wrote a book. Phillips, who spent his childhood in Mount Baker, shepherded the redevelopment for the housing authority – a “dream job” after Peace Corps and VISTA stints and work in urban planning and community organizing,

“I was given 120 acres – to plan it and build it,” he says. “It’s a lifetime opportunity that nobody ever gets, and it’s not out in the suburbs. It’s in the city I grew up in.”

His book, “High Point: The Inside Story of Seattle’s First Green, Mixed-Income Neighborhood,” reveals the project’s sometimes bumpy ride to fruition, including missteps that cost the “food desert” of nearby 35th Avenue a supermarket. But it also celebrates renewed life and an invigorated reputation for a district whose name has proclaimed optimism for the past century.

WEB EXTRAS

Our automotive informant Bob Carney identifies 15 of the 21 vehicles in our “Then” photo: (from left) 1940 GMC panel truck, 1933-34 Plymouth, 1930-31 Ford Model A, 1937 Ford sedan, unknown, 1939 Chevrolet; in cluster of five: in back on right 1928-29 Ford Model A, in foreground 1941 Dodge sedan, the other three unknown; 1938-39 Ford pickup, 1936 Hudson, 1941 light-colored Ford coupe, 1928 Chevrolet, 1939 light-colored Plymouth sedan, the next three unknown, in foreground 1936-37 Hudson sedan.

Below are a book cover, an additional photo and two vintage maps, all relating to this week’s column.

Also, you will find 18 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 2, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on April 5, 2020)

A deadly flu kept Seattle indoors and in masks in 1918

By Jean Sherrard

“I had a little bird and its name was Enza.
I opened the window and in-flew-Enza.”

In the fall of 1918, this was not just a nursery rhyme. The worldwide influenza pandemic was quite real – and lethal.

It blew into Washington state on a perfect storm. Percolating in the wet, filthy trenches of World War 1, this mutated H1N1 strain infected weary soldiers, and in the war’s waning months, it circled the globe. At U.S. military bases, deaths from pneumonia multiplied, alarmingly within days, even hours, of the onset of symptoms. Unlike past flus, the most vulnerable were young and healthy.

In mid-September, Camp (now Fort) Lewis and Bremerton’s naval facilities reported their first cases of flu. So on Oct. 5, Seattle’s mayor, Ole Hanson, and commissioner of health, Dr. J. S. McBride, ordered the immediate closure of schools, churches, theaters, dance halls and “every place of indoor public assemblage … to check the spread of disease.”

Frank Cooper, school superintendent, pronounced the closures “hysterical” and “senseless,” while children applauded the unexpected vacation. Outside City Hall, a young boy demanded of Hanson, “Are you the guy that closed the schools?” Hanson admitted that he was. “Well,” said the lad, “I’m for you!”

To many, the closures seemed draconian. Deprived of entertainment, recreation and indoor religion (although St. James Cathedral and First Presbyterian Church held open-air services throughout rainy October), Seattleites derided the closures. “An awful day for husbands and wives,” the Post-Intelligencer huffed. “Both had to either remain at home or walk the streets.”

Druggists peddled a plethora of snake-oil cures, from Coronoleum and Septol Spray to Bark-la’s Gargle and Gude’s Pepto-Mangan (“the Red Blood Builder”).

The Red Cross distributed 250,000 six-ply linen masks, and public transit became off-limits to the open-faced. (“Wear the mask or walk,” proclaimed Hanson.) Taking advantage of the anonymity, a few masked crooks staged stickups and burglaries.

As contagion swelled, public complaints evaporated as newspapers listed sobering daily death tolls of men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

On Nov. 11, Armistice Day, “perfectly sunny weather” was forecast. After five weeks of gloom and isolation, Seattle was primed for a celebration. “In [an] ecstasy of joy at ending the world’s worst war,” reported The Seattle Times, “it grew from nothing into cheering thousands.” Masks were shucked and “instead of handkerchiefs … waved from windows and doorways by cheering spectators.”

The next day, the closures were revoked. “All places of public assembly” reopened, though masks were still de rigueur.

Before the virus ran its course in 1919, a third of the world’s population had been infected, resulting in 50-100 million deaths, including nearly 5,000 Washingtonians.

By springtime, it could be said, out flew Enza.