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Juneteenth celebrates the ending of slavery in the United States. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. But word of the Proclamation didn’t reach many slaves until much later. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, two months after the Civil War ended, that slaves in Texas learned that they were free. On that day in Galveston, Texas, General Granger of the Union Army stood on the steps of Ashton Villa and read General Order #3, announcing that “all slaves are free.” The crowd of ex-slaves immediately began “leaping, swaying, and whirling in unrehearsed glee.” People sang, laughed, cried, and jumped up and down with joy. A former slave recalled, “We was all walking on golden clouds, Hallelujah!” One mother, upon learning the news, lifted her baby high and told her “Tamar, you’se free! You’se free, Tamar!” “Afterward, she checked her free baby’s face, hands, and feet as though she had just given birth to her.” Official HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF TEXAS GALVESTON, TEXAS, June 19, 1865 General Order #3 The people are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor. The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By order of Major-General Granger F.W. Emery, Maj. & A.A.G. Former slaves and their descendants continued to celebrate the anniversary of their freedom every year on June 19th, which came to be known as “Juneteenth.” As African Americans migrated to other parts of the country, they took the holiday with them. The first documented Juneteenth celebration in Seattle took place in 1890. (Read more about this initial celebration here) Today Juneteenth is celebrated all over America. Traditions vary from place to place but may include parades, all-day baseball games, prayers, songs, dances, and barbecue picnics. Red cake and red pop are served, symbolizing the blood that was shed during the Civil War. The heart of the celebration is the reading of General Order #3 by a community elder. As the words are read, everyone listening can imagine how they sounded on June 19th, 1865 to the black people of Galveston, Texas, who learned that day that they were free. Rainier Valley Celebrates Dora Abney, Director of Twinks Early Childhood Education Center and Preschool in Columbia City, is originally from Marshall, Texas, where her family celebrated Juneteenth. She moved to Seattle in the early 1960s. Here she shares her memories of Juneteenth and explains the importance of the holiday for African Americans — and others — today. This excerpt is from the Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook. Dora Abney: “I says “Juneteenth,” and then to me, everybody blossomed.” What I can remember about Juneteenth is mostly my dad, my dad died when I was about eleven. We used to celebrate it every summer, and to me it was a joyful thing. It was hot. I just remember how my dad used to say, you know, “Juneteenth, that’s a big thing for us,” and by being born in the South, I kinda understood what he was saying. [I saw] what was going on, but didn’t really understand why. I got the idea that it was for freedom, but the history behind it was really really not told, because it’s a sad situation, what had really happened. As I got older it was more explained to me. But he would always go out and shop like it was Christmas, and he would buy food, picnic stuff, and we’d be out — whether it fell on a Sunday or Monday, it was a holiday to us. And everybody in the neighborhood, everybody in the city took off. The whole city was shut down. And we would picnic away. My father, he would always sing, and he would play ball, and he was just excited. All the mens that I could recognize, they played ball. I don’t know how you explain it. Some people say like the Fourth of July, but the Fourth of July was like, it was okay, but I think this was more better. This particular day, it was more exciting for my father, that’s what I‘m saying. But now I recognize why, because from reading, and observing some of the past, [I learned] that was the day they considered [they got their] freedom. I guess it was his dad’s dad’s dad — it was passed down. They understood what it meant, and why that day was so meaningful to them. When we came to Washington State it kind of faded out of the family, people didn’t celebrate it. They said, “What do you mean, Juneteenth, what that’s about?” I was explaining to them that we used to take off, and they said “We don’t celebrate that,” so I figured I’d let it slide. Then about four years ago, when I started at the daycare center, I brought it up again. I said, “We need to celebrate Juneteenth. The kids don’t know what it’s about.” So in 2000 we had a Juneteenth celebration at Twinks, where we blocked off the street, we sold barbecue, and the kids played, and it was exciting. I says “Juneteenth,” and then to me, everybody blossomed. And all of a sudden everybody did know about it. You know, you don’t hear about it and then all of a sudden, “Yeah, I heard about that, what is it about?” So we started digging up information so we could put it out, so people understand what it is. But again, like I said, it’s a thing that my dad did. All I can remember is that we packed up and we went to the baseball field – every year it would be somewhere different. And we would just celebrate. The men and the women would just dance. The kids would look, ‘cause you know, we didn’t know. They explained the basics, but we didn’t know. To them, ‘cause they lived the life, they understood it. So now, I’m trying to feed that little knowledge that I know to the other children — not only just black, everyone — to understand that. It’s freedom. I was explaining to some of my staff members about the Ethiopians and the Somalis, and over in Jerusalem — I’ve been to Jerusalem and Cairo and all those places, and they are fighting. And I said, sooner or later when they say, “The fighting is over with,” you’ll celebrate freedom. Theirs may be called August Tenth, or April Fifth or something like that. But I assume that once people get them wars over with, people celebrates that. All these dates that we do celebrate right now is from the results of something. So Juneteenth is one of the ones that as blacks, we celebrate. And it’s pretty, Juneteenth. Which is June Nineteenth. What kind of foods did you eat at the Juneteenth celebrations? Red represented the blood that was shed during slavery. [We had red pop], red velvet cake, ice cream. Watermelon. And chicken barbecue, barbecued ribs. The blood was really flowing! Everything was fresh because in June it’s at the end of the harvest for the South. So we would have corn on the cob, fresh everything — fresh chicken out of the yard. They got a pig in the ground, cook it all night. They’d put on a fire and the ribs be on bars hanging over the fire, not like what they do now, with a grill. They just hang it. It would cook, they’d roll it over. What the women made was cake and pie. And the rest of it the mens did. We don’t see that now. The Hawaiians does it. The Samoans, they celebrate as a family, mens take over and do, but you don’t see a group of mens, family people, get together a whole community, and cook. You don’t hardly see it any more. The men would do the whole work! JUNETEENTH RECIPE A Juneteenth picnic often includes red cake and red pop, symbolizing the bloodshed during slavery and the Civil War. RED VELVET CAKE, with Cream Cheese Frosting Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 1/2 cup shortening 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp. vanilla 1 tsp. butter flavoring 1 1/2 oz bottle of red color 3 Tbs. cocoa 2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour 1 cup buttermilk 1 tsp. salt 1 Tbs. vinegar 1 tsp. baking soda Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs, vanilla, and butter flavor. Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring and add it to the first mixture. Alternately add flour and buttermilk. Mix baking soda and vinegar in a small bowl; add to batter. Bake in three 9” or 10” pans for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool completely before frosting. Frosting: 6 oz. cream cheese, softened 6 Tbs. butter, softened 1 tsp. vanilla 2 cups sifted powdered sugar Blend all ingredients until smooth. For more information about Juneteenth: Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom, by Charles A. Taylor Juneteenth: Freedom Day, by Muriel Miller Branch Juneteenth website

Rainier Valley’s Connection to the 1936 Olympic Gold Medal Reading the captivating and best selling book Boys in the Boat, inspired us to piece together the Rainier Valley connection to the story. Al Ulbrickson, Johnny White, Johnny Merrill and Royal Brougham, all former Franklin High School students, had a role in the 1936 WA Crew year. With the release of the movie, Boys in the Boat, new fans across the globe share in the enthusiasm for the “against all odds” Olympic Gold Medal win. The following biographical information was compiled from Boys in the Boat, our RVHS collections, Seattle Public School archives, Ancestry.com, Historylink, and the UW Crew archives. ALVIN ULBRICKSON - (1903-1976) UW Coach Franklin High School Class of 1921 Al Ulbrickson, the UW coach who navigated the 1936 charge to the Olympic Games, was born in 1903, in the Latona neighborhood. In the 1910 U.S. Census, the Ulbrickson family was renting a house in Rainier Valley at 4438 39th Ave S, near Rainier Playfield. Al was 7 years old at the time, with 4 siblings, his father 31 years old, listed as a City Park worker and his mother, a homemaker, aged 29. Ten years later, the census showed the Ulbricksons living in the Lakeview District, owning their home on wooded and considered affordable Mercer Island. Al’s dad’s occupation changing from park employee to a farmer. Al was enrolled at Franklin High School in 1917, so it is unclear when exactly they moved to Mercer Island from the valley. The story goes, that Al rowed across Lake Washington from the southeast corner of the island to Rainier Beach to catch the streetcar to Franklin. The rowing distance, approximately 2 miles each way, no doubt paid off by the time he got to the University of Washington. Ulbrickson, a star oarsman for the UW, rowed in the Varsity-8 to the national championships twice and was ranked by the national press, as popular as Babe Ruth. He also excelled in his studies, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key at the UW College of Business. Here’s a segment from our oral history collection between Dr. William Hutchinson and RVHS Founder Buzz Anderson, in 1996, where they talked about the ferry that transported people from Mercer Island, and Kennydale, to Rainier Beach. Bill discusses his dad’s physician practice and how Al rowed to Rainier Beach from Mercer Island. (Dr. Hutchinson was 87 at the time of this interview). Bill: Well you see all those towns had to depend upon either my father or a doctor from Renton and he could get there actually easier than they could because they had to come over land. (My father) would come by Harry Patterson’s boat which was a launch which operated between Mercer Island and Kennydale and Rainier Beach. Buzz: We have a picture of that boat, with him, with the skipper, and -- Bill: It was a famous boat. Now the way they’d get along Mercer Island would be to put up on the dock, where they had the flags, and put up a flag and of course they’d know that they wanted them to stop, which they’d do and pick up whoever was coming into Seattle. Now interestingly enough, a great oarsman at Washington was Al Ulbrickson, as you know - Bill: - and he was not only a great oarsman, but he was a great coach. And he would row across to pick up the street car, the Renton Express, at Rainier Beach, and then would stop there, and so every morning and every night he’d have to row home or row to get somewhere on the train. And so he was a great oarsman before he ever hit University of Washington. But they just couldn’t compete with him. Buzz: I knew of him as a coach, but I didn’t know, I had never thought much about whether he was a good oarsman, but he probably was, that’s why he stayed with it then, as a coach. Bill: And he had two brothers, both of whom made the varsity squad at the University, because they, too, would row a lot. What was interesting, while researching Al’s early life, his student enrollment card at Seattle Public Schools showed his home address not on Mercer Island, but on the corner of Rainier Avenue and 57th, at 9246 57th Ave S in Rainier Beach (today where Jude’s restaurant is). There was a pharmacy and apartments on this corner, just in front of the streetcar stop. Whether Al’s father rented an apartment in Rainier Beach or used a PO Box there to show a Seattle residence for his children to attend FHS, is unknown. Al Ulbrickson was inducted into the Franklin Hall of Fame in 2001. He was just 24 years old when he took over the UW Crew program, transforming it to match the class of back east programs, and led the University of Washington teams to great heights over 31 years. He coached his team to six national titles with his two biggest wins, the 1936 Olympic Gold Medal in Berlin, and defeating the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1958. “He was Seattle’s Man of the Year in 1936, was inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame in 1979, and was named by the Seattle Times as one of Seattle’s top twenty-five coaches of the century” (Franklin Hall of Fame). JOHN (“JOHNNY”) WHITE - (1916-1997) Member of UW Gold Medal 1936 Crew Team Franklin High School Class of 1932 Johnny White grew up in a house above Lake Washington at Pritchard Beach. He attended Dunlap Elementary, then graduated at the young age of 16 from Franklin High School. Johnny and his dad decided if he were to take a couple of years off to save enough money to enroll at the University of Washington, he would also have enough time to physically catch up in size. He found physically demanding jobs at a shipyard on the waterfront wrestling steel and a construction job for the new Grand Coulee Dam, improving his chances at making the UW Crew team. Johnny’s father was a first rate sculler from Pennsylvania before moving out to Seattle. John Sr. spent long hours rowing on Lake Washington and most likely taught his son how to row. When we met the current owner of where the White family lived, we were told that Johnny’s sister sold him the house, and she had shared some of Johnny’s diary with him, the writings that helped shape the book, Boys in the Boat. The home owner also found an old rowboat in the brush... Johnny’s Olympic gold medal is at an auction house with a starting bid of $10,000. He was inducted into the Franklin Hall of Fame in 2001. ROYAL BROUGHAM - (1894-1978) Sportswriter for the Seattle P-I, Franklin HS Hall of Fame Royal Brougham attended Franklin High School from the Dunlap neighborhood until his Junior year, when he took a copy boy job in the sports department for the Seattle P-I. Royal’s passion for covering sporting events for Franklin continued, the 1912-13 Tolos show his articles and title as Editor for Athletics. Despite lacking a formal education, Royal rapidly ascended from an errand boy to a part-time writer, eventually establishing himself as a full-time sports journalist as the P-I’s Managing Editor. As a senior sportswriter, Royal had the honor of covering numerous major sporting events including the 1936 Olympic Games. With Brougham’s support in leading the newspapers’ drive to send the team to Berlin, the UW successfully raised $5,000 to secure their attendance. Unfortunately, none of Royal’s Olympic Games’ reporting was published locally due to a strike at the P-I. Undeterred, Brougham famously attempted an impromptu interview with Hitler, although he was turned away after a brief encounter. Later he described the team, “All were merged into one smoothly working machine, they were in fact a poem in motion, a symphony of swinging blades.” Royal’s impact extended beyond journalism. He befriended many athletes, coaches and managers as he actively engaged in community service, advocating for recreational amenities and fairness in sports. His legacy is underscored by honors such as the “First Citizen,” founder of the Royal Brougham Sports Hall of Fame and Museum; he served on the board of directors of the SeattleKing County American Red Cross; was Washington director for the National Commission of Living War Memorials; and was twice a member of the Olympic Games Press Committee. South Royal Brougham Way, near the stadiums, was named after him in 1979. JOHN MERRILL - (1914-1984) Franklin High School Grad - Rainier Beach resident - UW Crew John Merrill, also known as “Johnny”, graduated from Franklin HS the same year as Johnny White. John didn’t share much about his early years with his family, they knew he lettered in Washington Crew, but not much else until they discovered his scrapbook. John had memorabilia from the ‘36 National Championship sweep on the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, NY. John was a coxswain for the team, perhaps a substitute, and possibly a student manager. Though his name does not show in the program he saved from Poughkeepsie with the coaches, team and George Pocock signatures, he was there. John is mentioned in Boys in the Boat on page 106 as the coxswain navigating the ‘34 freshmen boat, when they nearly collided with a tugboat in Lake Washington. It is likely the other mention in the book was about John as well, in Poughkeepsie the night the Varsity-8 asked coach Ulbrickson if they could journey up river to find the President’s house. Instead of meeting FDR, his son Franklin Roosevelt Jr. answered the door and invited the team in. On page 261, “the boys recruited one of the crew’s student managers as pilot and navigator, and piled into the launch...when they found the cove, they left the manager in charge of the boat.” Merrill’s keepsake in his scrapbook, the Western Union social message from Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., to the team saying “Good luck to you” and an apology for not making it to see them the night before the race. Following the Poughkeepsie National Championship, the UW team traveled to Princeton for the Olympic trials, from there they were off to Berlin to represent the United States in the ‘36 Olympic Games. John did not make it to Berlin, not everyone on the team did due to the budget. 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I was born on March 30, 1947 in Rochester New, York. I came to live in my grandmother’s house, where my dad and uncle grew up. The house was on Whiteford Road and my grandmother, “Nana” lived across the street. There were aunts, uncles, and cousins who also lived on this road. My Nana was born on March 30, 1886, and since we shared a birthday and the fact I was her first grandchild, we loved each other very much. I always felt safe and cared for on this street. My Nana was a widow and for many years she worked as head of nursing in the Rochester State mental hospital. She was a force of nature at 4’11” tall. They called her “Tiny” but I have been told that she was tough and and some of the older folks told me they still shook at the thought of disappointing her. For me, Nana was perfect. At approximately 6 years of age, my family moved to a larger house in Brighton, New York, a suburb of Rochester. I still saw my Nana every week and I learned how to call her on the telephone. Nana was a convert to Catholicism and took great interest in my upcoming Holy Communion. In fact she sat next to me during the ceremony. We shared many whispering words to each other during my first communion. It seemed I was talking too much and she put her finger to her lips to quiet me. The only problem, she had died several months before my big event and I continued to see her for many years to come... I moved to Washington state in the 70s, by the 80s I had a full family of five children. Like my Nana, I had a husband, Tom Neville, who passed away very early. By the late 2000s most of my family was away to work and in college. My house in the Lakewood/Seward Park neighborhood felt too large for me. I considered a condo but realized I didn’t really like sharing very much, so I changed my home into a duplex and had created a small cottage house in the lower part of my historic home. I lived very close to work and I often went home for lunch. (I was still wearing high heels at the time.) In the little house, I had a lovely claw foot tub with a large shelf next to it. I always had flowers and art near the tub. But sometimes I would leave my purse on the shelf. I did forget my purse one day and ran back to the house to get it. I was in quite a rush. I stepped into the tub with my heels on, grabbed my purse and went to get out and fell flat on my face onto the concrete floor... I couldn’t move and still do not know if I was conscious or not. While laying face down on the floor, I heard two people talking and recognized their voices. “What is she doing now?,” Nana said. A low male voice replied, “she is something of a klutz.” That was Tom. I was getting very annoyed with them talking about me, and they said together, “Joan! You need to get up now!” I did get up and saw Nana them clear as day. Tom was sitting up on the ceiling on the left part of the tub and Nana was on the right side. It was like a Mary Poppins tea in the ceiling story but there was no tea. They kept on laughing at me. I got up, called the medics, and ended up in the hospital. My head looked like a pumpkin and my face bruised. The worst part of it for me was they kept laughing. I did know that both of them loved me and I loved each of them very much, but really, their laughing was troublesome. So ends my ghosts in the ceiling story!

Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the U.S. that began with a race between Yale and Harvard Universities in 1852. Years later, in 1903, Washington’s crew program started and reached World Championship ranks by 1936. At the end of WWII, the GI bill drew record enrollment to colleges, so did the enthusiasm and tryouts for crew. Al Ulbrickson, UW Coach with an Olympic gold medal under his belt, was raring to get back at the National Championship stage after a lull in competition during the war. Washington State leaders, alongside the UW Sports Program, rallied for a national Regatta on the new Lake Washington course on the south side of the I-90 Bridge. $50,000 was the price tag. Thanks to the Lake Washington Regatta committee, the reps of the Seattle men and women who put up the money, the event came to fruition on June 28, 1947. The sprint course, 2000m (1.2 miles), started just north of Lakewood Marina heading toward Andrews Bay, finishing at the swim beach in Seward Park. The top 12 teams, Yale and Harvard, Cornell, California, Penn, Syracuse, Princeton, M.I.T., Washington, Wisconsin, Columbia, and U.C.L.A, boarded the new Great Northern Railroad’s Olympian Hiawatha train, following the IRA National Championship in Poughkeepsie, New York. For many of them, it was their first time to the Pacific Northwest. Royal Brougham writes the day before the race, ”Doc, examine my silly head and see what makes me do things like this... through force of habit or the demands of an exacting public, a writer must attempt to tell in advance who will win a race of America’s greatest boats. Ten out of the dozen have a chance. So closely are these crews matched, the width of a baby’s hand may separate the winner.” (Seattle P-I, June 28, 1947). Brougham’s picks were Harvard 1st, Cornell, California, and Washington, 4th. The Seattle P-I reported over 150,000 spectators showed up that day, the largest crowd and greatest sports spectacle in Seattle’s history. The newsreel claimed 200,000 people flooded the shores of Lake Washington. The crowds were there from the start, to see a swimming competition, a log-rolling exhibition, a speedboat race, a Native American canoe race, a water-skiing exhibition, a quad rowing race, and a Seaplane show. All took place before the sprint. Two thousand boats of every kind lined the log boom, “hordes of policemen, patient, cheerful and briefed to the hilt on the special traffic arrangements.” Homes along the boulevard held open houses, lawns crowded with friends, spectators filled windows and porches and every inch of the hills, wherever a view of Andrews Bay could be found. The race was over in less than six minutes. So close was the finish that Royal Brougham’s live KOMO broadcast, from overhead in the blimp, brought the news to the jam-packed shore. Harvard first, followed by Yale and Washington 3rd. Brougham reported the following day in the P-I, “It was a lightning fast race, as the time proved, Harvard did it in 5:49, a new world’s record for the 2000m. Settling a blistering pace down the beautiful Lake Washington course, Coach Tom Bolles’ Varsity-8 carved itself another chunk of glory with its crimson blades winning the championship of America from the finest field in crew history. The perfectly coordinated, expertly trained boat from Cambridge led its ancient rival, Yale, over the finish line by nearly a length. And driving furiously into the roaring maelstrom at the finish came the Cinderella crew from Washington, the glamour boat load of freshmen which only a week ago found itself in the Husky varsity. A fine Washington showing, brought to a close a highly successful year so capably coached by Al Ulbrickson. All in all, it was a day that made American rowing history and more than that, it proved that Seattle has the water, the climate, and the brains with which to stage a regatta unmatched by any rowing event ever held.” (Brougham, Seattle P-I, July 29, 1947). Visiting coaches from all over America were unanimous in their praises for the highly successful regatta and its perfect location. The last intercollegiate regatta on the Lake Washington course was in 1969. It was University of Washington coach Dick Erickson who revamped the crew program in the 1970s, bringing back crew for female students after a 50-year hiatus. He connected the Seattle Yacht Club and Seafirst Bank in combining and sponsoring Opening Day with a regatta. For the past 38 years, Windermere has hosted the annual Windermere Cup/ Opening Day Regatta at the Montlake Cut. This year (2024) was special with invitations to Italy’s and Wisconsin’s crew teams and special guests from the Boys in the Boat acting crew. They celebrated the history-making Varsity-8 from 1936 in the hometown of Conibear Shell House.

Step back in time with us as we dive into the history of the Columbia Branch Library. In June 1909, the Seattle Public Library established a modest branch within the main room of the old Columbia City town hall on Rainier Boulevard (later Rainier Avenue South) at Hudson Street, rent-free. The accommodations were humble, with patrons needing to venture to a nearby furniture store for restroom facilities, crossing the unpaved street and railroad tracks! By 1911, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie's generous donation heralded a new chapter in library development. By 1912, a suitable site for the Columbia Branch was selected and purchased, funded by $2,500 from community contributions and $2,000 from the city. A snapshot from the summer of 1915 captures the library's construction, with the Columbia Branch officially opening its doors on Dec. 30, 1915. Be sure to peruse the newspaper clipping from the grand opening and explore images of the original reading room. A significant renovation in 1931 revitalized the Columbia branch, just prior to budget cuts prompted by the Great Depression. Fast forward to 1998, when Seattle voters endorsed a substantial upgrade through the "Libraries for All" bonds, allocating $196.4 million for improvements. This initiative led to an impressive expansion and renovation project, culminating in its completion in 2004. Take a glimpse into the library's reopening through the photo and excerpt from the RVHS 2004 Summer newsletter. Today, the library remains a vital cornerstone of the Columbia City community, offering a diverse array of events and activities. Share your cherished memories of the library in the comments below! 📖💭 Photo 1: Columbia Library under construction, 1915. RVHS Photo (1996.73.01) Photo 2: Snippet from Columbia Branch Library opening. RVHS Photo: (1993.1.506) Photo 3: Columbia Branch Library, 1927. Courtesy of MOHAI (1983.10.745) Photo 4: Reading room, Columbia Branch, 1915. Courtesy UW Special Collections (1983.10.9205) Photos 5 & 6: Photo and article taken for RVHS Summer 2004 Newsletter Documenting the grand opening of the expanded library. Photo 7: Photo of the library provided by SSF Engineers from their collaboration with Cardwell Architects on the 2004 renovation project.

The one room Lakewood Grade School located at 48th Ave S and Snoqualmie Street taught only 1st and 2nd graders from 1916 to 1927. RVHS Photo Catalog # 01.057.001, Seattle Public Schools Archives The existence of a Lakewood School came to light by a chance remark in a conversation I was having with Charles “Bud” Creevey. That conversation was the last I had with him as he passed away about a year later in February of 2000. Bud was a retired Seattle Firefighter and had worked as part time delivery truck driver for my dad, Art Anderson, who had the Grayson & Brown Hardware and Furniture Co. in Columbia City. He worked there in the early forties during the war. I was in high school during those years and also worked at the store after school and on Saturdays. One of my jobs at the store was to help Bud with the two man deliveries. I got to know him very well and whenever we ran into each other over the years we enjoyed reminiscing about our mutual delivery experiences. During that last conversation I had with Bud, when he mentioned the existence of the Lakewood School, we talked about two specific delivery experiences that we would have liked to forget. We were delivering a bedroom set that had a dresser with a large plate glass mirror. Rather than stand it on edge and tie it like we should have, as we only had a short distance to go, we laid it flat on the bed of the truck. That was a big mistake as there was a chuckhole in the road and the mirror went flying and shattered. We learned a good lesson and were in the dog house with my dad. On another occasion we were delivering a sofa sleeper out in the north end on Aurora Ave. The house was on the other side of the street from us and rather than go around the block, we parked and proceeded to carry it across the arterial street when there was a break in the traffic. We learned something else. Always tie down the spring unit on a sofa-sleeper before moving it. In the middle of Aurora Avenue it sprang open and the cushions and mattress went flying. Bud had told me he had attended the Lakewood school about 1921 as a second grader. I didn’t even know that it existed until Bud asked me if I knew about the school.  He said it was close to 48th Ave. and Snoqualmie St and was a one room school. He also said it was for just the early grades and other students that attended with him were Bill McGinnis. Burke Howard and Bob Kimball. Burke, until recently lived just around the corner from my home which is about two blocks from Snoqualmie Street where the Lakewood school was located. Burke’s wife Mary had worked in the office at Grayson & Brown. Bob Kimball was a nephew of “Beans” Kimball, as he was called, and he owned and operated a small company that produced “Kimball’s Baked Beans” in the early days. They produced the baked beans in a part of their home, as I remember it, and it was located on the west side of Renton Avenue just south of where it joined Empire Way, now Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The cross street just to the north was Waldon. I don’t remember if their baked Beans were just distributed locally or shipped to other areas but they were very popular here in the Valley and they were very tasty. I made frequent deliveries to their home and business. Getting back to the Lakewood School, I tried to find more information about the school without success. I was talking on the phone to Elenor Toews, director of the Seattle School Archives, and I mentioned the possible existence of a Lakewood school to her and she had no knowledge or records of it. After a few weeks went by she called me back and said she had a photo of a one room school and no information as to the name or the location. She suspected it was an annex for a grade school and could it be the Lakewood School that I had asked her about? Could it have been an annex for the nearby Hawthorne grade School? She sent me a copy of the photo and she also mentioned that she was putting the finishing touches on a revised book on the history of the Seattle Schools and she would like to find the name and location of that photo to include in the book. I sent a copy of the photo to Louise Creevey as she had indicated she would show it to Burke and Bob Kimball for possible identification. Her husband , Bud, had passed away. Sure enough, both Burke and Bob said that was the one room school they had attended, and gave the exact location, about two blocks north of my home. As you go west on Snoqualmie street, it crosses 48th Avenue and continues just half a block where it dead ends at a steep bank that drops down to 47th. The school was on the south side at the end of Snoqualmie Street with the entrance facing east. Not only that but they remembered the name of the school’s teacher, Miss Bow. Their classmate McGinnis added some more information. His brother, Daniel McGinnis, was the janitor for the school and they lived next to the school. He would come over every day and do the janitor work. The school was for 1st and 2nd grades only and existed from 1916 to 1927 and it was an annex to Hawthorne. Needless to say, Eleanor was delighted to be able to put a caption on the photo and include it, along with the information, in her new book which should be available soon. The Lakewood School was about on the dividing line between Hawthorne and Whitworth grade schools. Burke went on to Whitworth, Bob to Hawthorne and then both to Franklin High. Bill McGinnis was in the Franklin Class of 1929. Days Gone By - South District Journal 3/13/2003 By Buzz Anderson

Presenting: "The Real Boys in the Boat" - A Daughter Remembers Join us and Judy Rantz Willman, daughter of University of Washington crew member Joe Rantz, in presenting the genesis of the book, “The Boys in The Boat.” Judy discusses each crew member including Rainier Beach’s Johnny White and coach Al Ulbrickson, both Franklin High School grads. See footage of the 1936 Olympic Games of the UW crew team winning the Gold in Berlin! When: Saturday, May 11th, 2024 10:00 am - Annual Meeting with presentation to follow Where: Rainier Beach Community Club 6038 S Pilgrim St, Seattle, WA 98118 5 5 S Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98118 3515 3515 S Alaska St, Seattle, WA 9811

"We decided to make a quilt. It’s cool. It shows all kind of things that happened in history in this neighborhood. We learned to work together. We learned to share and work on each other’s squares and captions. Park and Mikala helped us. We made our sewing skills better. Thank you for letting us display our quilt in the library! "- Sydney, Aden, Jahlil, and Sam, presenting their Rainier Beach History Quilt to the librarian at the Rainier Beach Library. In the spring of 2005, the RVHS presented a slide show of Rainier Beach History to three classes of 2nd graders at the New School, as part of their study of the neighborhood. Out of that study, a number of community projects emerged, including the Rainier Beach History Quilt. The Quilt was designed and made by four 2nd-grade boys. They selected 16 significant moments in Rainier Beach history and drew pictures depicting each one. They transferred the pictures to cloth and sewed borders around the pictures to create colorful panels for the quilt, which was assembled by parent volunteers. The students presented the Quilt to the Rainier Beach Library, where it was displayed for 6 months. It has since been on display at History House in Fremont, at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, and at the New School. Guide to Rainier Beach History Quilt

This project was completed in 2011 and was founded by a special project grant from King County 4Culture. One day in the fall of 1988 bulldozers arrived at the corner of 45th and Dawson, just west of the new Whitworth school building., and began raising seven houses in order to expand the school’s playfield to the west. The old Whitworth building had just been replaced and the school’s footprint had shifted to the west, all but eliminating the already cramped playground. The neighbors had known this was coming for months; indeed, some of them had been fighting it for years. Still, the demolition was shocking. “you know how you have to jump through all these hoops to get a permit for a ‘permanent structures’ on your property?” one neighbor said. “It took them half a day to raze those homes. Nothing is permanent.” The original Whitworth School opened in 1907. The land to the west of the school was empty at that time, though the area—close to burgeoning Columba City and Hillman city- was developing rapidly. Whitworth’s first principal, Emma Hart, was respected and beloved by parents and students alike. On a least one occasion, however, she drew the ire of her bosses: in April 1913, according to School Board Minutes, “the Principal of the Whitworth School closed said school for two days on account of diphtheria, without authority from the office.”[The Board considered docking Miss Hart’s pay as punishment, but in the end they voted “to allow the full salary for the month., the Superintendent to caution against the closing of any schools without proper authority.”] Miss Hart survived her little quarrel with the district and went on to serve another 25 years as principal of Whitworth. By the time she retired in 1938, the lots to the west of the school had houses sitting on them, and the children in them headed into Whitworth School every morning, just like all the other kids in the neighborhood. The principals who followed Miss Hart kept order, supervised teachers, and oversaw the steady growth of the school. One of them also wrote poetry: Frank Henderson’s verses reveal a gentle man with an eye for the long view. The general sentiment seems to be: “Nothing is permanent, and we’ll all be dead in the end, so the best we can do is live each day.” Which is probably the kind of attitude you have to have if you are a school principal—especially if you are a school principal on the eve of a world war. Rivers to the Sea   I’m floating down a river that will take me to the sea; A swift and winding river that will not wait for me. Its banks are steep and rugged, its course beset with woe; I’m launched upon its waters and with them I must go.   You’re launched upon a river that hurries to the sea, The great expansive ocean that will hide both you and me. ‘It’s the home of the forgotten and the home of those to be; So live and drink the sunshine as you travel to the sea. -- Frank Henderson, Whitworth Principal, 1940 The war years were full of tragedy and sacrifice, of course. Whitworth students practiced for air raids, worried about uncles and brothers fighting overseas, and are more than their fill of Victory Garden kale. But the expansion of Seattle’s defense industries during and after the war also brought thousands of jobs—and thousands of people—to the city. South End schools soon overflowed with the children of these new arrivals. The district moved Whithworth’s 7th and 8th graders to Sharples Junior High when it opened in 1952, and in 1957 it opened Graham Hill Elementary in portables a mile south. Still, Whitworth’s enrollment continued to climb, peaking at 853 in 1958. A new wing was added that year, with six classrooms and a gym. In the 1970s the enrollment trend reversed as the “Boeing Bust” plunged the area into a deep recession. White middle-class families moved away, and more African American families moved into the neighborhood. Whitworth’s population went from 89% white to and 1% black in 1964 to 39% white and 45% black in 1975. (Asian enrollment also increased during this period, but only slightly.) Still, Whitworth retained enough white students that it was not included in the district’s desegregation plan in 1978. Any school whose “minority” population exceeded the district’s average by 20% was paired with a mostly white school in the north end for mandatory bussing. This was a fairly straightforward standard in the mostly black Central Area, but in the South End where racial balance hovered closer to the qualifying line, the policy pitted schools against each other in an effort to keep their white populations high enough to avoid bussing. Parents at neighboring schools complained that Whitworth parent used their gifted program to “poach” white kids away from their schools and as a result the “minority” percentage at schools like Graham Hill edged just over the trigger point for bussing. Whether this perception was true or not, the district was quite clear that it was using gifted magnet programs as a tool to attract white kids to “minority” schools: the cynical assumptions behind this desegregation strategy were not lost on the parents of gifted children of color who lived in the Whitworth neighborhood, but were told they would be bussed to magnet programs at schools in the North End where their presence would improve “racial balance.” The principal at Whitworth during this period was Al Cohen, reportedly an idealistic, charismatic leader who led his staff in committing to “go the extra mile and support each other” in improving the school. The desegregation plan allowed parents from all over the city to choose Whitworth, and as Cohen’s vision came to fruition, they did, in droves. By the mid-‘80s, Al Cohen was long gone but the school received an award for excellence from the federal government. It was the first urban school in the nation to receive this honor. There were issues, of course. The PTA had to work to bridge the (real and imagined) socioeconomic gap between the gifted program and the neighborhood families –figuring out, for instance, how to distribute holiday food baskets donated by wealthier parents to the school’s needier families, without causing embarrassment on either side. More general concerns about overcrowding and understaffing surfaced again and again. At the time the district gave all elementary schools the same allotment of administrative staff regardless of the school’s size. Whitworth parents and teachers argued, reasonably enough, that with 647 students, many of whom had intense emotional and social needs, their school should get more support staff than an elementary school with 250 children. Even basic playground supervision was a challenge: at a School Board hearing student Costa Singer testified that, due to budget cuts, “there no longer [were[ teacher aids on the playground to prevent fighting and injuries. When he broke his arm on the playground there was no adult to walk him to the office.” Whitworth parents also worried about the safety of their aging building. In July of 1984, the PI reported that “Whitworth’s overcrowding is exacerbated by its old, outdated building… classrooms are tiny, children must troop downstairs to use the bathroom, and the plumbing and wiring systems are on the kids.” A district study had noted that the building’s masonry would not withstand a major earthquake. “The main building is on the critical list of potentially unsafe structures to be remodeled or replaced if the Sept 18 bond issue is approved,” The PI article continued. This was good news—but many parents balked at the idea of sending their kids to school in an unsafe building every day for another three years, crossing their fingers that the Big One wouldn’t strike before the reconstruction could take place. The 1984 seismic safety report pushed Whitworth parents from frustrated advocacy to focused action, and that summer they threatened a boycott of the school in September, if the district failed to meet with PTSA member Monica Wooten called “non-negotiable demands”: More staff, seismic retrofitting of the existing building, and emergency supplies for every classroom. Parent volunteers polled Whitworth families and found “overwhelming support for taking this action to et the things we felt we needed, to make Whitworth safe this year.” The PTA worked with staff to present a unified front of the district and make new principal John Morefield support their efforts. “Look,’ I said to my boss, ‘I’ve got to side with them, it's my first year here. Besides, you know the district is wrong anyway. There are 700 kids in that building!’” (Morefield, like Emma Hart, knew when to put the needs of his students above his duty to the authorities downtown.) Other parents coordinated a letter writing campaign, provided legal advice, organized pickets, and planned for daycare should the threatened boycott become a reality. School Board hearings were packed with Whitworth staff, parents, and students testifying passionately about the needs of their school. Sixth grader B.J. Santos told the Board that Whitworth students “had presented a talent show which had grossed over $135. That money was used to repaint the boys' lavatories. He said they could not take care of all such problems without help from the School Board.” In August the district proposed a compromise: Whitworth would get a counselor, an additional part-time teacher, and two aides. Money would be allocated to reinforce the building’s masonry, and to provide emergency supplies. The PI reported that the district’s offer was unanimously accepted by an auditorium full of many of the same parents who earlier this summer had vowed to keep their youngsters away from classes.” In September Whitworth teachers and families returned to school in triumph. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the staff additions that were a direct result of our negotiations with the district over the summer,” crowed PTSA presidents Kay Godefroy & Eileen Berlin in the first school newsletter of the ear. “This is the way staffing standards should be. I hope we can convince the School District and the School Board to concentrate more money on teachers and support personnel in the future.: “What a difference a non-boycott can make,” commented principal John Morefield, who masterfully channeled all this energy and excitement into support of the school’s academic and community-building programs. Monica Wooten chided the school board for its failure to respond to ears of polite requests and encouraged the district to adopt a more inclusive process so disruptive confrontations could be avoided in the future. Alas, it was not to be. Whitworth’s active PTA continued to work on facilities concerns after their triumphant non-boycott in the summer of 1984. The school newsletter from the 1984-1985 school year documents the activities of an Overcrowding Committee, a School Size Committee, and an ed Spec Committee, charged with developing a list of criteria for the new school building. The result of all this committee work—“hours and hours and hours and hours of meetings,” according to Kay Godefroy—was a determination by the district that Whitworth needed more space, and a larger playground in particular. A number of options were presented for expanding the site; the district eventually decided to annex land to the west. The plan required the acquisition and demolition of twelve homes. Now, in the case of the threatened boycott, advocacy by Whitworth parents had been fueled by the certain knowledge that they were standing up for what was right—their kids needed a safe building, and adequate adult supervision and support. They must have been aware at some level that the extra resources Whitworth got that year had to come out of some other part of the district’s budget, but they didn’t have to confront the effects of those cuts directly. When it came to the expansion of the school site, however, the people who stood to lose were right there on the other side of the fence, and they were not happy about the sacrifice they were being forced to make. Some of the people living in those houses had attended Whitworth when there were 850 kids there, and they couldn’t see the need to tear down their homes in order to give a mere 650 kids more room to run around. They didn’t trust the district’s public process, which one neighbor referred to as a “dog and pony show” designed to disguise the decision that had already been made. They banded together as CAWSE (Citizens Affected by the Whitworth Site Expansion) and came up with an alternative plan for a new school that did not require the district to tear down their homes. In April of 1986, the organizing group SESCO (South End Seattle Community Organization) held a community forum at Whitworth, where parents and neighbors agreed to a “statement of unity,” challenging the School Board to “forward a plan for a new building that meets educational specifications and city codes, on the existing site.” They urged the district to consider the CAWSE proposal as a starting point. By June this fragile unity ad evaporated. Whitworth parents and staff were not unanimous regarding the need for a larger site, but those advocating for the expansion spoke loudly and eloquently. “Whitworth has been outmoded, outdated, seismically unsafe, too small and generally unacceptable for 25-30 years.” Wrote Kay Godefroy in a letter to the district’s facilities department. “We cannot continue in the present facility.” Godefroy also cautioned against any plan that extended the construction period for longer than 12 months, because an extended sojourn at the temporary school in distant Ballard would “seriously jeopardize the Whitworth program as we know it. Staff, students and parents will not stick it out.” Meanwhile the neighbors were equally articulate in expressing their side. Josephine Baldwin, a 30 year resident of the neighborhood whose house was slated for demolition wrote: “I truly feel like a tree being uprooted and wondering where I am going to put my roots where I can feel just as safe there as I do there.” SESCO member Oscar Hearde lived across the street from the threatened homes; he described the plan as “the most cruel and devastating act any government agency could ever impose on a community of some of the most disadvantaged people of the city of Seattle.” Hearde, the Baldwins, and others were tireless in their efforts to push the School Board to reconsider its decision—which it declined to do. CAWSE finally sued the district to stop the plan from going through. In the end the neighbors suceeded in saving five of the twelve homes under threat, including Josephine Baldwin’s. Seven homes were demolished and replaced with a grass playfield. We Face the Unknown   Today, tomorrow and always we face the unknown; In spite of seers, prophets, and the wise we met it alone; With joy, sadness, jewels, or gold, our lot is the same; We bring nothing and leave nothing, but a shriveling name.   Monuments erected, tombs carved crumble and fall;  Nature loans for our building, and then takes all. The scars we make on earth’s grey and mottled face, The waves of time, undaunted , soon will erase. --Frank Henderson, Whitworth Principal 1940 So Whitworth got its larger site. But the ugly struggle over land acquisition sapped energy and time from the design of the new building. Whether due to budget or space constraints or because angry neighbors had been so outraged by what they perceived as “luxuries” on the Ed Spec Committee’s wish list, the architects stripped the new building of many of the features the school community had requested, such as a PTA meeting room and other common spaces. All available square footage was devoted to classrooms, with hallways and entry areas minimized. The resulting building was so barren and forbidding, some neighbors suspected that the district was trying to punish them by putting the ugliest possible structure in their midst. Others, still furious with the district and its “PTA lackeys” described the structure as “poetic justice.” Even today, a common myth about the building is that it was designed by prison architects (It is true that WMFL Architects did some prison work, by they had also successfully designed schools, libraries, and other public buildings.) Whitworth’s new building opened in 1989 with only 450 kids. This drop in enrollment was probably the result of two years at Monroe School in Ballard; as Kay Godefroy had predicted, it was difficult to maintain the school’s high level of parental involvement with the school so far away. Even after Whitworth returned to its neighborhood, it was difficult to rebuild the community. Many people felt that the new building’s forbidding appearance, along with the awkward entryways, constricted hallways, and death of common space, undermined the school’s tradition of parental participation. Kay Godefroy and Monica Wooten both lamented that “the school never recovered its spirit” after this disruptive period. At least one student who attended Whitworth when the new building first opened reports that it was still a great school then, but acknowledges that by the time her younger brother went there eight years later, things had changed. Many of the talented, committed teachers who had served under Al Cohen and John Morefield moved on in the early ‘90s. Whitworth, like many South End schools, lost nearly all of its white kids in the wake of the district's 1995 “Choice” assignment plan, which essentially ended the proactive desegregation policy. By 2001 the school had 370 students, and only 5% were white. (the presence of white kids is not necessarily an indicator of a school’s success or failure, of course. But in this instance it shows that the neighborhood, which was 50% white in 2000, had largely abandoned the school.) Changes in the gifted program, attractive options at nearby schools, and the evolution of the neighborhood itself also played a role in Whitworth’s decline. The school was closed in 2007, and the building has since become home to Orca K-8, an alternative school. Note: In 2010, a group of Orca middle school students researched the history of the seven hours that were torn down in 1988, and resurrected them on the playfield for an evening. For more information about the “No Place Like Home” project, winner of the 2011 Heritage Education Award from the Association of King County Heritage Organizations, visit. www.sevenhouses.blogspt.com.

The Rainier Valley’s Italian community has long been a focus of interest and curiosity. In 1915 sociology graduate student Nellie Roe made Garlic Gulch a focus of her master’s thesis “The Italian Immigrant in Seattle.” Her approach was clearly that of the anthropologist studying an arcane culture. The UW Social Sciences student describes the Italian families she visited as “like children in their simplicity, ignorance, and optimism.” A product of the Progressive Era, Ms. Roe can’t help but wish these families would accept help and instruction from charitable agencies, such as the Charity Organization Society, in order to assimilate into the dominant culture. Notably, Ms. Roe did not use the term “Garlic Gulch,” although she did remark negatively on the smell of garlic and cabbage pervading the homes. Nearly a century later, another UW student, Richard Gilbert made the community the focus of his 2004 master’s thesis “Garlic Gulch: Interpreting the History of Seattle’s Rainier/Atlantic Neighborhood, 1903-2003. An urban planning student, Gilbert honed in on the negative transforming effects of highway planning on the community. Along the way, he picked up some revealing anecdotes from residents past and present, such as this possible explanation for the name Garlic Gulch from Al Bianchi. "In the 30s, there was a big gully that started a little south of Jackson Street, and went all the way to Atlantic Street. Now by big gully, I means that was about two blocks wide and I’d say, over 100 feet deep. I think that’s where we derived the name Garlic Gulch, I’m not sure….But the city decided to make a dump out of that area. And that really disturbed the people. But we were told, ‘You’re standing in the way of progress; we have to have a dump somewhere, and we’ve chosen this spot.’ But you can’t believe how that was. The smell, the rats, the seagulls….The rats were as big as cats.” Meanwhile, Eric Scigliano wrote “Italian Seattle: Good-by, Garlic Gulch,” an in-depth, illustrated account of the rise and fall of the community which was published in the Weekly in 1987. And Wenda Reed offered a series of articles in the Beacon Hill News/South District Journal in 1980 entitled “The Italians,” based largely on interviews with diehard Italian businessmen such as Art Oberto, Tony LaSalle, John Patricelli, and Nick Paolella, Jr. The City of Seattle explored the influence of this community in its 2004 North Rainier Context Statement and, more recently, in the Southeast Seattle Community History Project, a series of web-based articles and resources, including an in-depth piece on Garlic Gulch by historian Mikala Woodward. So what more is there to say? We know now that Garlic Gulch as a cohesive community is not coming back. Yet there are remnants still. And there is still a generation or two of folks who grew up in or near the community. Our own project, Remembering Garlic Gulch, is an effort to collect the memories and images of Garlic Gulch for the use of current and future researchers. And, perhaps, along the way we will uncover new insights into the role the community played in the Rainier Valley and the city.

Join retired Head Gardener Don Brooks as he gives us a virtual tour of Kubota Garden. This was recorded for our 2020 Annual Meeting.

" On the afternoon of July 26, 1970, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) headlines a concert at Seattle's venerable outdoor ballpark, Sicks' Stadium. The all-day festival is billed as a "Concert on the Ground," but the ground itself is muddy because of rain, a Seattle hazard even in late July. Writes The Seattle Times the next day, "The outfield grass was a soggy mat and the infield dirt a giant mud pie. Yet a fair-sized crowd braved Seattle's fickle precipitation and huddled on the field and in the puddled stands to watch Jim Hendrix perform" ("Wet Crowd Catches ..."). Hendrix died less than two months later. " - Peter Blecha (HistoryLink.org Essay 21126)