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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 27, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 30, 2025

A 36-second thrill ride immerses us in a 1973 route to Seattle

By Clay Eals

Homemade time capsules can be uniquely evocative. This I know from the creativity of a long-ago best friend.

Seattle native Mark Tyrrell, a buddy starting when we both were 5 and growing up on Mercer Island, had an offbeat and entertaining affection for our regional milieu, revealing it in unexpected ways.

In the early 1950s, the vortex of the baby boom and long before seemingly everything was digital, our fathers purchased home-movie cameras, captured soundless 8mm vignettes of family events and regularly screened them for us.

At age 22, as shown in this video and in “then” screen grabs (below), Mark took this pastime to the next level.

With his dad’s two-lens Ampro Eight 350 camera — and its “Accurator” viewfinder, with adjustments for light and frames per second — he fashioned a fast-motion film in 1973 that documented the west end of U.S. Highway 10 before completion of its successor, Interstate 90.

In an impossibly swift 36 seconds for a real-time 9-minute journey, his rollicking, windshield’s-eye footage covered 7.2 miles, from Mercer Island’s forested Gallagher Hill Road to the James Street exit of Interstate 5. It’s a westbound thrill ride both startling and smile-inducing, especially for those of us who recall the route.

Therein, coming alive on grainy, color celluloid are many sights that evaporated decades ago, including:

• The thoroughfare at ground level, instead of elevated, sunken in a trench or covered by a concrete “lid.”
• The prominent TraveLodge motel in the Mercer Island business district. (During childhood, I’m embarrassed to say that I took its sign too literally and mistakenly called it the “Trave Lodge.”)
• The Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge, just two lanes each way. Built in 1940 across Lake Washington with a 40 mph speed limit, it featured a midway water pocket for large-boat openings but also a dangerous “bulge” for cars and trucks to navigate.
• The bridge’s equally perilous reversible lanes, with red “X” and green arrow markers that switched during rush hours. Unsafe as well: abrupt pre-tunnel entry and exit turns.
• A pullout lane near Rainier Avenue for crossing against full-tilt traffic (!) to a ramped shortcut to Beacon Hill. (My brother, Doug, recalls a similarly dangerous cross-traffic turn opportunity to reach the upper Shorewood apartments on Mercer Island.)
• A come-to-a-halt stoplight at Dearborn, near Goodwill, on the way to Interstate 5.
• The isolation of downtown’s then-tallest tower, the 1969 Seafirst Building (now Safeco Plaza), “the box the Space Needle came in.”

Sadly, Mark died way too early, at age 46, of myelodysplasia after a dozen years of multiple sclerosis. But his breathtaking mini-travelogue and other filmed and written pieces survive for us to ponder and enjoy.

Today, what Seattle sites do our smartphones and dash-cams record that soon will vanish?

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Howard Lev for his invaluable chauffeuring assistance with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect through an automotive sunroof 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 also will find 6 “Then” and “Now” comparisons from the route, a high-school paper on Interstate 90, and a children’s book illustration of the infamous floating-bridge “bulge.”

You can see many other vintage Washington state highway videos at this YouTube channel.

Also below, look for another fast-motion video by Mark Tyrrell from 1972 (of him changing the readerboard at Look’s Pharmacy on Mercer Island) and a booklet of Mark’s writings, prepared by Clay for a gathering of friends following Mark’s death in 1997.

COMPARISON 1

COMPARISON 2

COMPARISON 3

COMPARISON 4

COMPARISON 5

COMPARISON 6

AN APPRECIATION OF MARK TYRRELL:

 

 

 

 

 

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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 20, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 23, 2025

113-year-old Roosevelt District jewel houses tiny shops ‘of hope’

By Jean Sherrard

What do storybook characters Ferdinand the Bull, the Little Engine That Could and the subject of today’s column have in common? All are plucky, dignified survivors in a seemingly indifferent universe.

“It’s like a reverse ‘Up’ house,” says Ryan Donaldson, adding to the trope and referencing an unassuming two-story structure anchoring the corner of 65th and 16th in the Roosevelt district.

His grandmother, Lucille Moreau Mrozcek, lived and

worked here beginning in 1980. Built in 1912, the combined house and shop, once Jewel Grocery, today stands isolated in what resembles a war zone, strewn with graffiti-covered broken concrete foundations.

“For years, my grandmother refused to sell,” Donaldson says. “This place was her home, full of family history, and she wanted to preserve it.”

“Mom’s my idol,” adds daughter Barbara Donaldson. “She never let up.”

In the early 1960s, Lucille and then-husband Conrad Mrozcek opened an artists’ supply shop on “The Ave,” serving university art students and professionals. Within several years, they opened a complementary business, Seattle Auction Palace, dealing largely in art and antiques.

Following their divorce in 1968, Lucille continued working full time while raising seven children. Buying the corner house and shop near Roosevelt High School made juggling life as a working single mother tenable. For nearly 40 years, she helmed Silhouette Antiques downstairs while nurturing children and grandchildren above.

“She had a signature saying,” Barbara recalls. “ ‘You do what you’ve got to do.’ Simple as that.”

Even as investors snapped up nearby properties, Lucille was adamant, refusing to move out. “She was definitely a thorn in their side,” Ryan says.

After her death in 2020, hoping to preserve the

existing structures, her family sought a sympathetic buyer. “We put up a for-sale sign,” Barbara says, “and in walked a young couple who lived just up the street.”

The two, Jenny Gerstorff and Josh Frickberg, were thrilled at the idea of opening a business in a location with neighborhood history. After many months of DIY renovation, repair and re-use, their shared vision bore fruit.

Ravenna Rocks, featuring crystals, gemstones and a host of geologic marvels, is housed in the Silhouette Antiques space, while just upstairs, Ravenna Refills offers organic shampoos, soaps and lotions in reusable containers.

For Lucille’s offspring, the preserved place provides the perfect coda. “We get to come and visit whenever we want,” Barbara says. “It’s like adding another branch to the family.”

“With so much bad news these days,” Gerstorff says, “we’re really happy to be good news for the community.”

Ravenna Refills partner Robin Dreisbach agrees: “We’re like a little shop of hope.”

WEB EXTRAS

Ravenna Refills will be having its official grand opening celebration on Saturday, March 29th, 3-6pm. We’ll be on hand to document the event!

Click right here to watch our narrated 360 degree video of this column.

Scroll down for more photos telling this fascinating story.

And here’s an interesting coincidence, discovered by Josh Frickberg’s dad. The Pingreys – Albert and Kittie – (pictured below) who also once owned the structure and ran a grocery there, are Josh’s 7th cousins, 3 generations removed.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 13, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 16, 2025

Librarian hears 20 years later how ‘her kids’ felt they belonged

By Clay Eals

In some pursuits, you have to trust that you’re having an effect that lasts. Teaching is like that. Journalism, too. So is being a children’s librarian. The kids you engage may never again pass your way.

Not so, however, for Laura Meyer. An educator/entertainer of kids for Seattle Public Library for 35 years, mostly in Lake City, Meyer was known for puppet shows and employing X-ray vision (actually a keen memory) to tell stories while facing a book forward for all to see. She retired at age 58 in 2005. Two years later, she and her husband moved south to Vancouver.

She made periodic trips to Seattle to see relatives. But years passed, and the youths she captivated became adults. Do they remember her?

Enter Casey McNerthney. An ex-newsie who is the spokesperson for the King County prosecutor, he recently pondered his mid-1980s affection for Meyer.

As a tot, he asked Meyer for the in-demand book “A Chair for My Mother.” When it came available, she telephoned him at home.

“I thought it was so cool that she called specifically for me,” he says. “She said she would save it for me. It was like having Taylor Swift play the song you requested.”

A father himself, McNerthney absorbed Meyer’s lesson: “She was the first person I remember meeting, outside of my family, who conveyed to children that they mattered.”

Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if she could reconnect with “her kids,” whose ages would now be roughly 20 to 65?

He organized a Lake City reunion, spreading word via social media. On the day-of, two-dozen people streamed through the branch door. Scores more sent well-wishes from across the country, even Ireland.

The branch had been renovated twice since she last worked there, but Meyer, it seemed, was no different. Same broad, crinkly-eyed grin. Same bold, expressive voice. Same flower in her hair.

It was Story Time again. Only this time, the grown-ups told as many as did Meyer.

“She was the kindest, most caring person you’d ever want to meet,” said John Desgrosellier. “I still remember a couple of books she shared with us when we were younger — ‘The Boxcar Children’ and ‘The Iron Giant’.”

“She always made me feel like I belonged here,” said Kristine dos Remedios Edens, who brought her daughter Avery to meet Meyer and to convey thanks. “It’s important to tell people like that,” she added. “Usually, you don’t get to tell them the impact that they’ve made.”

Meyer’s response: Tears, smiles and, of course, more stories! Mission accomplished, Casey.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Laura Meyer, Casey McNerthney and “Mrs. Meyer’s kids” for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360-degree video this time, but below you will find:

• A half-hour video of the Laura Meyer reunion on Feb. 1, 2025.
• A downloadable pdf of transcripts of 1998 and 2025 interviews of Meyer.
• A selection of 8 additional photos.
• And 7 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 9, 2025

At this 1938 Seattle cathedral’s blue domes, ‘heaven and earth meet’

By Jean Sherrard

For a first-time visitor, Sunday services at St. Spiridon evoke elaborate ritual.

After the ringing of eight bells mounted on the church’s side porch and tower, worshipers of all ages assemble in the square nave, most standing throughout the hour-long liturgy.

Priests perform a complex choreography before the altar, featuring arrivals and departures through multiple doorways, curtains that open and close, and mesmerizing recitations accompanied by a choir. Throughout, the delicate musk of frankincense wafts through the cathedral.

“We believe in the literal power of the sacred,” says John Cox, the church’s official zvonar, or bellringer. Cox relinquished Episcopal roots to join the Russian orthodox congregation in 1998. “For us, faith is not just a metaphor.”

This includes the physical church itself, which presides half-hidden amid high-rises on a slope just west of Interstate 5 in South Lake Union. For orthodox believers, Cox says, it is “a place where heaven and earth meet.”

St. Spiridon was founded in 1895 by Russian, Ukrainian, Greek and Serbian immigrants working in Seattle’s lumber and fishing industries. The congregation initially erected a wooden New England-style meeting house at the foot of Capitol Hill.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, great

numbers fled the new Soviet Union, and St. Spiridon’s congregation swelled to accommodate the new arrivals. The Bolshevik government, however, while shuttering churches across Russia, also sent out “church” representatives who attempted to seize ecclesiastical properties worldwide.

In 1924, ignoring the protests of church members, Seattle courts ordered that the building be ceded to the Soviet emissaries. In the dead of night, irate parishioners broke into their sanctuary and stripped it bare, removing icons, altars and religious art.

For 12 years, St. Spiridon met in rooms donated by the sympathetic Episcopalian archdiocese nearby. By 1936, members had raised enough capital to purchase another plot of land and erect a traditional Russian parish church.

They hired Russian-born architect Ivan Palmaw (1896-1979), also noted for designing Capitol Hill’s St. Nicholas Cathedral and the art deco Renton Fire Hall (now the Renton History Museum). Palmaw had fled post-revolution Russia, eventually landing in Seattle to attend the University of Washington School of Architecture.

“Orthodox churches are not built this way just because it looks cool,” Cox says. “Every aspect holds meaning.”

St. Spiridon’s nine domes — all robin’s egg blue —

represent the nine orders of angels and archangels. Their onion-like design is significant. “They are shaped,” he says, “like the tongues of fire that appeared over the apostles’ heads on Pentecost.”

On a blustery Sunday, he adds a wryly practical, if secular note: “They also shed snow really easily.”

WEB EXTRAS

A cool photo collage from St. Spiridon’s basement foyer illustrating significant moments in construction.

And to view our 360 degree video of the column, please wander over here.

For a short video of the Sunday service complete with choir and bells, click on the YouTube below:

And here’s a video treasure bell ringer John Cox just alerted me to:

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 27, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 2, 2025

Unassuming for generations, a Seattle site zigzags to the heavens

By Clay Eals

Each day is a steppingstone to something next. Take, for example, a corner just north of Denny Way at Dexter Avenue and Thomas Street. Circled by Seattle Center, today’s Amazonia and downtown, the parcel was rather unassuming for generations.

Two floors high with a brick façade, the structure was built in 1933. Over the decades, it housed a trade market, auto-repair and tire-retread shop,  bus headquarters, plate-glass company, wallpaper store, rentable warehouse and storefronts ranging from computer to legal services.

A notable notch in its lineage arrived in the 1990s. Sleepy-looking on the outside, the building exploded on the inside with the chords of grunge and other contemporary sounds. Among Seattle’s 80-odd music studios, it became one of the city’s four largest as it morphed into a haven called Stepping Stone Recording.

“The whole idea,” says founder Mike Foss, “was helping artists move their game up and get into the scene a little bit better by giving them better recordings, better productions.”

Key to that was advanced equipment and a supportive, hands-off approach. “It was about ‘Come and enjoy the studio, and if you want to talk to me, talk to me,’ but anytime you get involved and insert yourself in their creative process, it can usually be a negative. You want to let them walk in and own the place. I think that’s why we did so well, because I understood that.”

Proof lies in the studio’s track record of luring prominent bands, including the Posies, Rockinghams, Presidents of the United States of America and Quiet Riot, and individuals Paul Rodgers (Bad Company), Chris Cornell (Soundgarden), Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam) and Ann and Nancy Wilson (Heart).

Working 12- to 18-hour days, Foss paid $3,000 monthly rent for 7,000 square feet, spending 10 years in the building, sometimes climbing to its roof. “I could see for a long ways,” he says. “We’d look at the Space Needle, watch the fireworks, see the water out there. It was amazing.”

In the building’s place today is Skyglass, a 31-floor complex finished in 2023. Its first six stories resemble the old brick façade, but the upper 25 shoot a reflective zigzag to the heavens. Its 388 luxury apartments rent for an astounding $3,700-$6,800 per month. Goldman Sachs recently bought it for $175 million from its Chinese developer.

Foss eye-rolls at the transformation. “It’s a bizarre feeling,” he says. “This used to be a quiet street. It felt like a little place. It had a really cool vibe to it.”

Change seems inexorable. What, we may wonder, will be the next steppingstone?

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Mike Foss and especially Tom Heuser 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 also will find a video interview of Foss, 10 additional photos and 16 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Here are 10 additional photos kindly provided by Mike Foss:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here, in reverse chronology, are 16 news clips about previous businesses in the building:

 

 

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb.20, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 23, 2025

Seattle Ski Park of 1934 (at Snoqualmie Pass) was ‘close to heaven’

By Jean Sherrard

Every Saturday morning during bleak winter months in the late 1960s, when weather cooperated, my parents would drop me off at the parking lot of Bellevue Junior High School to catch a yellow school bus bound for Snoqualmie Pass and a day of skiing.

In the mountains, I joined hundreds of other students, learning to negotiate rope tows, chair lifts and snowy slopes until some measure of prowess and confidence bloomed. Though not a natural athlete, I discovered I was a passable skier.

By late afternoon, aching and weary, all of us student skiers boarded the buses home. We could hardly wait for the next Saturday.

I only recently discovered the early origins of the exuberant civic spirit that championed school and community participation on the ski slopes.

“In 1934, the Seattle Parks Department opened the first municipally owned ski facility in the country,” says   ski historian John Lundin, author of “Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass.”

“Efforts were led by Seattle Mayor John F. Dore, a skier who envisioned the project as one that could lift his city’s spirits during the midst of the Great Depression.”

Ten acres of forest were cleared of trees by laborers provided by the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps, who also added a “warming hut” for chilled skiers.

To prepare Seattleites for this unfamiliar recreation, Parks offered lessons to neophytes in the old Westlake Ice Rink. “The indoor school,” reported The Seattle Times, “is an innovation in ski training.”

The Seattle Ski Park opened Jan. 21, 1934. Though it was a drizzly Sunday, newly minted skiers, however, were scarcely discouraged. More than 1,000 turned up

to celebrate opening day, which featured the North End Community Band and Dore himself, who awarded a prize for the day’s best skier.

“This park is yours,” the mayor proclaimed. “We hope to expand it … and give you a ski instructor so that your children may learn to ski.”

Hardy enthusiasm saved the day. Because the park’s snowy incline had no rope tows or lifts (the first wouldn’t be installed until 1938), every skier made the long climb up Municipal Hill on foot, rewarded with thrilling if brief downhill glides.

City Council skeptics questioned creating a city-run park 60 miles from Seattle limits. Most councilors pronounced “ski” with a long “I.” Commented a wag, “ ‘Sky’ Park is rather descriptive when you consider how close Snoqualmie Pass is to heaven.”

Parks relinquished the ski park in 1940, but not before instilling an enduring love of snow sports in Seattle devotees.

WEB EXTRAS

For a 360 degree narrated video of this column, please join us on the snowy slopes!

Click here for historian John Lundin’s delightful HistoryLink essay. Much more of John’s work can be found at his personal website.

 

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 13, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 16, 2025

Walks throughout Seattle can expand the mind and charm the soul

By Clay Eals

Mass transit always makes massive news. Well, what if the masses transported themselves more often by foot?

That’s a question implicitly raised by David B. Williams’ newly expanded second edition of “Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City” (University of Washington Press).

Filled with colorful maps and photos, tips, trivia and bygone context, the 304-page pocket guide, revised since its original printing in 2017, reaches all corners of the city. The sequel allowed Williams “to rethink my interaction with the landscape” while providing updates and additional walks in three neighborhoods that he identifies as humming with historical diversity:

• The Central District, with deep roots in the Black, Jewish, Asian and Catholic communities.
• South Lake Union, with an archival mix of nationalities and industries.
• And Georgetown, with working-class ambience based on the Rainier brewery that once dominated the district, paired with what Williams calls a “dark” vibe stemming from an infamous legacy of drinking, gambling and prostitution.

Viewing any neighborhood from a pedestrian’s eyes, of course, can reveal striking alterations. “Even if you’ve gone someplace over and over again, you always find something new,” says the author, best known for “Too High and Too Steep” (2015), about Seattle’s transformative regrades. “The city is always changing, whether it’s different weather, different people, different plant life or different animals you might encounter.”

Or different building uses. For instance, Georgetown, a city from 1904 until its 1910 annexation to Seattle, erected a stately, second city hall in 1909. Its classic clock tower presides in both our “Then” and “Now” photos. (The steeple was pruned by a storm and kept that way  to avoid low-flying aircraft.) Today the landmark serves as a Neighborcare Health dental clinic for low-income and uninsured people.

Throughout Seattle, Williams has charted routes meant to expand the mind and charm the soul, not to mention bolster the body. They range from 1.3 to 7 miles, flat where possible, and mostly on pavement, enabling explorations via wheelchair.

Along each path, Williams repeatedly finds validation for his long-held love of walking.

“It puts you at that slow level that allows you to pay attention to what’s around you,” he says. “It also allows you to stop and actually look at things. We never stop in our cars, or when we’re biking. It lets you interact with people and with the place that’s around you. You never know who you’re going to meet. For me, it’s really the best way to get to know a city or a neighborhood.”

We all probably can agree to toe that line.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to David Williams and Molly Woolbright 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 also will find a video interview of Williams, 6 additional photos and 1 historical clip from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

 

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 9, 2025

This 12,500-year-old fossil found on Valentine’s Day 1961 got heart’s pounding

By Jean Sherrard

Without doubt, today’s “Then” photo is of the oldest — and largest — pelvis ever featured in this column.

Its original owner is a giant ground sloth that lived during the early Holocene era, soon after the retreat of the 3,000-foot-thick Cordilleran ice sheet. Its Puget Lobe, extending from Canada to just south of Olympia, left behind glacier-carved inland seas, lakes and rivers that still define this region’s topography.

As the ice melted, abundant life returned to the ’hood. Lowland bogs and swamps, including ample flora, supplied megafauna from mastodons to giant sloths with full larders.

Skip forward 12,500 years to Valentine’s Day 1961. Preparing to pour a concrete foundation for a Sea-Tac Airport expansion project, construction workers encountered an obstacle. Lean and compact, pile driver Gordon “Gordy” Simmons lowered himself into a 14-foot-deep hole to investigate.

“We were about 500 feet from the end of the runway,”

he recounted in a 2021 interview, “making these landing towers to guide planes in.”

At the bottom of the pit, Simmons saw what appeared to be a giant skunk cabbage, covered with rounded veins. But it crumbled away to the touch, exposing a huge hip bone. “I thought, ‘Gee, that must be an old cow or something.’ ” But it was buried too deep to be a cow.

He shouted up to a co-worker. “I got a dinosaur down here. Better call the university!”

And the paleontologists came running.

Construction was suspended while University of Washington scientists from the Burke Museum sifted through mounds of wet, unstable soil. What they unearthed was astounding.

“The Sea-Tac sloth provided the first evidence of these animals in the state,” notes David B. Williams, co-author of “Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State.” Just as thrilling, “it illustrated that interesting stories of natural history are everywhere, even in the heart of cities.”

The determined team recovered nearly 60% of the fossil’s remains, transferring them to the Burke Museum for further evaluation, inspiring years of rewarding research.

For Simmons, who continued working in construction until his retirement in the mid-1990s, the story of his find became a well-burnished family chestnut. Not until 2014, however, did he re-unite with his prehistoric pal, by then a featured exhibit.

In February 2022, daughter Dianna Johnson contacted the Burke with a request. Would it consider naming the giant sloth after her ailing father, then in his final weeks? Museum staff enthusiastically agreed.

Today, 11-foot tall “Gordy” welcomes visitors to the Burke Museum’s third-floor paleontology exhibit, its nickname invoking a serendipitous discovery and its intrepid discoverer.

WEB EXTRAS

First off, thanks are in order. Devlin Donnelly of the Port of Seattle greased the skids – as well as transporting the entire Simmons clan in a Port van making multiple trips to the photo site.

For a superb Port of Seattle video featuring Gordon and the sloth story, follow this link.

Here are a few more of Devlin’s photos:

Also deserving thanks and kudos, Patrick Webb, journalist for the Chinook Observer, who was first contacted by Dianna Johnson. Patrick wrote a moving account of Gordon’s fossil discovery, published shortly before his death in March, 2022.

And for a magisterial history of the Port of Seattle – which includes Gordy’s story – check out ‘Rising Tides and Tailwinds: The Story of the Port of Seattle‘ by Casey McNerthney, Kit Oldham and Peter Blecha.

More miscellany to share:

Finally, for our narrated 360 degree video, captured on on location, click right here.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 30, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 2, 2025

Compassion bolsters winter fishing for 90-year-old Tengu Club

By Clay Eals

Up, down, up, down.

Over and over.

Perseverance, patience, peace.

This approach has buoyed a little-known organization that has plied the waters of Elliott Bay off West Seattle most every winter for nine decades.

The all-volunteer Tengu Club, an aggregation of Seattle-area Japanese Americans and others, has forged a hearty culture and tradition of yearly fishing derbies.

Early on, Tengu became the club’s name based on reddish-faced supernatural beings in Japanese folklore with long noses that grow as they tell lie after lie — much as those who fish are prone to do.

Tengu Club’s durability, however, is no exaggeration. It stems partly from a fishing method members developed long ago called “mooching” — constantly moving a herring-baited line up and down, imitating the flutter of a wounded fish to entice bigger ones to bite.

The club’s venerated historian, Mas Tahara, 89, of northeast Seattle, also sees significance beyond its fishing. The underlying point, he says, is kizuna, a Japanese word that means enduring bonds.

“Tengu is people,” he says. “”It’s very, very important for anyone. It makes people alive.”

Summoning that spirit was a challenge when the club began in the mid-1930s. Though well-publicized spring and summer fishing derbies proliferated throughout Puget Sound, Japanese people weren’t invited to participate.

Ostensibly this was due to the success of mooching, as noted in the Sept. 16, 1940, edition of Time magazine. Describing the Sound’s 25 established salmon derbies, the article stated, “Japanese are barred (because they are too skillful).” But Tahara and other Tengu Club members assert that discrimination also was a factor.

To provide an alternative, Tahara says, Tengu Club set its derbies in the winter, a relatively unpalatable time for local fishing. The weather is bracing, and the fish typically available then are juvenile blackmouth salmon, smaller than their fair-weather adult counterparts.

Tengu Club’s contests ceased after Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Post-war, in December 1946, Tengu derbies resumed, lasting days and even weeks, and continue today.

Derby data starting in 1946, kept by Doug Hanada, longtime president, show 100-190 annual members through the mid-1990s, dropping to 20-35 in more recent years. Still, they’re a hardy crew.

Tahara emphasizes a pair of longtime Tengu Club philosophies: maintaining dignity and momentum in the face of unavoidable hardships, and extending goodwill by opening derbies to non-Japanese.

“We always try to see things with compassion,” Tahara says, “and we are always interdependent.”

The resulting camaraderie in the cold and wet, he says, is precious.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Mas Tahara, Doug Tanada, Nancy Ishii and Linda Ishii 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 also will find a video interview of Mas Tahara and Doug Hanada, a dissertation (at the end), 85 additional photos and 18 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

 

Following are 40 historical thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of Tengu Club events (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 17 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the Jan. 8-9, 2022, Tengu Club Cracker Derby (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 20 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the March 25, 2022, Tengu Club Banquet (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 3 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the April 29, 2022, Tengu Club Fish Fry at the home of member Dan Hicks (click once or twice to enlarge):