“Telling Our Westside Stories”
“Telling Our Westside Stories” is wrapping up as youth interview adults about their early West Seattle and White Center memories. The Southwest Seattle Historical Society received a Department of Neighborhoods grant for young students to interview adults at Madison Middle School, and South Park and Delridge Community Centers. Interviews began Oct. 24.
"We reached out to different community groups for suggestions of people for the youth to interview," said Judy Bentley, former Society president. "The interviews focus on three themes, land, water, and home." She said the Log House Museum will offer an exhibit when the interviews are assembled, and there will be an interactive exhibit traveling to community centers and libraries.
On Nov. 17 about a half-dozen area citizens were interviewed by Madison Middle School 7th graders, each by two or three students armed with two tape recorders per session, just in case.
Participating were former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, long-time Alaska Junction and White Center resident, Peggy Sample, CPA Ralph Elder, and Alki resident,
Murl Barker, Alki, a Fulbright Scholar, Yale PhD, who taught Russian at Rutgers University.
Similar questions were asked of each participant, for about half an hour.
Greg Nickels
Interviewers for Mayor Nickels were Alex Halverson and Alyx Hastings.
Mayor Nickels was asked why his family moved to Seattle.
"I was born in Chicago and at about 6 months old we moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. My dad was a lawyer, but went into business working for Kaiser Aluminum there. He was laid off and Boeing recruited him. He started a non-profit law firm, SCRAP (The Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons) exclusively focusing on juveniles who got into trouble. He loved that. It was a passion of his. My mom was a registered nurse. With six kids she didn't work full time. She worked for Swedish Hospital and then the King County Juvenile Detention Center Infirmary, then volunteered at Harbor View.
What Jobs did he have as a kid?
"I had a paper route for the Seattle Times. Also, to work off my tuition at Seattle Prep I worked in the faculty residence dining room. I caddied at Broadmoor during summers and weekends when my family lived on Capitol Hill. My first real job was at Bonney-Watson Funeral Home across the street from Seattle Central Community College. I cleaned (their) the cars and gassed them up and delivered flowers and got death certificates signed.
Favorite Seafair activities?
"The hydroplanes were the big thing. Back then they were much more dangerous. Every year someone would get into a terrible accident and often the driver was killed and these were drivers you knew by their names, their history. They were also a lot louder then, old airplane engines and you could probably hear them in West Seattle from Lake Washington. We used to make little model hydroplanes out of wood and ride our bicycles towing them behind us."
Over the years what do you feel when you see how Seattle has changed?
"I actually feel good because I feel change is a good thing. Cities need to grow, change, and adapt to be healthy. They are almost like living things. I see more people living right around the Junction being able to walk to a nice restaurant or to shop rather than driving to a mall. It is important that you balance it by saving some of the important things. The buildings that I mentioned that we lost are a shame. (Granada Theatre, Jefferson School, Lloyds boathouse by Westcrest Park) It would be nice if they were still here. The lesson we can learn is that if someone looks to do away with something historically significant we should question is it necessary. For instance Madison Middle School, a great little building from the 1920's, could have been torn down and replaced, but the school board decided to save and renovate it. Same thing with West Seattle High School (...) It's a challenge to balance.
What caused you to move into the house you live now?
"Bob Greive was a state senator who represented West Seattle for 28 years. He was Majority Leader in the Senate for 18 years and then lost a race, then ran for County Council. In 1986 I decided to run against him. We lived in a house above Fauntleroy Ferry. He was leading the county effort to redistrict, to draw new lines for the council districts, and he drew a line that went around my house so that I was no longer in his district. So we gave up that house we loved. Because I wanted to run for the county council we moved in the house where we live now, on 47th Av."
Nickels presented the boys with a copy of the Robinson News book "West Side Story", edited by former Herald editor and local historian, Clay Eals.
Amy Do and Leah Zuckerman interviewed Peggy Sample
Do you have special memories of school as a child?
Special school memories?
I attended Lafayette, Madison (then called) Junior High, and West Seattle High School. (Class of 1943). The Lafayette School that I went to fell down in an earthquake (April 13, 1949). I didn't have any trouble getting along in school. I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't belong to any of the things that the popular ones belonged to. But I had enough, all the friends I wanted."
Did you do chores around the house as a kid?
Choirs around the house as kid?
"When I was in high school it was in WWII. It was entirely different than what you did before. Of course I washed dishes and made my own bed and that sort of thing like I did before the war. But once WWII came along my mom and dad worked nights at Boeing, and my sister worked at Boeing days. We had a man who lived with us because that's what you did during WWII. We even had a little apartment in the back of our house where a married couple lived. When I came home I had to fix dinner for the ones who lived with us, sometimes wash their clothes. It was entirely different once the war was declared."
How did you get to school?
"I walked to school. there were no school buses. You took public buses. They had special tokens you'd buy in high school, two for a nickel. We could use the tokens in the pay phone. Calls costed a nickel so we could make two calls instead of just one.
"They had street cars first, then electric trolleys. We'd run up on the street car over a wooden trestle to the Spokane Street Bridge where there was a little community called Riverside at the time, long since gone. It would stop on Harbor Island, and we'd walk down a bunch of steps, where the shipyards were.
Boys would get in the back of this street car and wave it back and forth when we were going over this trestle and scare you to death.
"The Granada Theatre. Oh when we lost that I hated that. There was the West Seattle Hospital on Avalon (near) California Ave. The second story up I had my appendix taken out when I was 16 there."
Anything you don't like about Southwest Seattle?
"The bad name that White Center has. I have lived in White Center since 1945 and am very protective of it."
Did you have a career?
"I wanted to be a nurse. I ended up being one, I guess, with five kids."
Loren Peterson, Kaib Cropley, and Valarian Gardner interviewed Ralph Elder, CPA at KPMG
What did you like to do as a kid?
"I lived near Lafayette School. We gathered up the other kids and play baseball, basketball, football. Kind of the same things you guys do now. Fishing and swimming. We'd take our fishing polls on our bicycles to Alki, fish, and then have our parents pick us up in their pickup truck.
"I had a summer pass to play golf at the West Seattle golf course for two summers in middle school. That was pretty memorable, to play all summer long."
What were businesses like in the Admiral Junction?
"Barnecut's (Admiral Way Service). My father and Mr. Barnecut were friends in high school. Huling Brothers was around then selling cars. We had a JC Penny in the Junction where we'd buy our clothes when getting ready to go out on a big date. Husky Deli's had, and still has, the best ice cream."
Jobs when you were younger?
"In high School I worked for Herr Lumber. After I graduated I worked at a fast food restaurant called Sambo's where Rite Aid is, six weeks as dish washer. Then they said 'we need a cook', so I worked 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Then after college (at Brigham Young) I worked at the public accounting firm here, Arthur Anderson. That company no longer exists due to the Enron debacle."
Any regrets about living in West Seattle?
"Yes. I have one sad memory here. When I was 12, I bought a sled. It didn't snow again until I was 18. It doesn't snow enough here."
