Lombardo passed away back in November 1977 at age 75, which means you probably have to be around 50 years old or older to remember seeing him on TV with his band, The Royal Canadians. They were the stars of the big show every year, playing “Auld Lang Syne” as the ball came down in New York City each December 31. Lombardo made his final appearance in 1976.

One person who remembers those long-ago TV New Year’s Eves is David Williams. Williams is the executive director of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum in Kent.

“Guy Lombardo was sort of the guy for my parent’s generation,” Williams said earlier this week. “We had two TVs in the house. My brother and sisters and I would have it on Dick Clark listening to rock and roll, and my parents and my grandparents would have it on some other channel listening to Guy Lombardo.”

Lombardo’s niche musical genre was famous for its “sweetness,” with arrangements that were light on the drums, and rich with woodwinds and not-so-brassy brass.

“His music was coined at the time, ‘The Sweetest Sounds This Side of Heaven,’” Williams said, “and it was very mellow and sweet . . . not (like) even the hard rocking, big band stuff like a Glenn Miller, but just a very kind of sweet dance music.”

And so it might come as a surprise that not only was Lombardo a New Year’s Eve icon and a very successful recording artist, but he was also a serious and competitive racing boat and hydroplane driver based out of Detroit.

“He was a big force in the sport in the 1940s,” Williams said. “He won the Gold Cup in 1946. He went to number of national championships throughout the early 1950s” and remained active as an owner into the 1960s, says Williams. Lombardo got hooked on boat racing in Detroit around 1940, Williams says, when that city was a hotbed of boat racing in the eastern United States, and the successful bandleader had the funds necessary to buy a competitive boat.

Since that era is now more than 60 years ago, “unless you’re talking to your grandpa about racing or unless you have a really good memory, you probably wouldn’t know much about that Guy Lombardo was a racer,” Williams said.

This story of the racing bandleader is no secret, of course, and it was well-known back in the day when hydroplane racing was the subject of polite conversation in nearly all socio-economic circles of the Pacific Northwest. Lombardo’s star has faded, of course, since his death, though the London, Ontario native was the subject of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV documentary back in the 1990s that featured some old newsreel clips.

“A terrific pace is set by the bandmaster as he roars around,” the 1940s newsreel narrator says. “Past the checkered flag across the finish line, TEMPO VI is the winner.” In a later clip, perhaps from the 1950s, a different narrator jokes, “One of his crew hands him a screwdriver. Guy uses a baton to tune up his band and a screwdriver to tune up his motor, and does very well with either instrument.”

Williams says that Lombardo never actually raced in Seattle; he was more of an East Coast guy. But old newspaper clippings show that Lombardo did at least threaten to race in Seattle.

When local boat Slo-Mo-Shun IV broke the speed record and won the Gold Cup in Detroit in 1950, that meant the race came to Seattle and Lake Washington in 1951. In many ways, socially and culturally, that summer was when postwar Seattle came of age, and it’s hard to overstate the impact of that Gold Cup race on local culture.

Lombardo and his TEMPO VI, in spite of his stated intentions to compete, were no-shows here during that watershed summer. The same thing happened again in 1952, when Seattle boat Slo-Mo-Shun V captured its second of what ultimately were five straight local Gold Cup wins for Seattle boats.

Meanwhile, by the mid 1950s, some say at the urging of record company executives who were worried about their cash cow, Lombardo stepped back from driving. He still owned a boat that ran the circuit and that did race in Seattle, TEMPO VII, but Lombardo didn’t ever actually drive in a boat race here.

In spite of Seattle missing from his career stats, Lombardo would keep waving his baton in front of The Royal Canadians, and would go on to make at least two significant impacts on the sport and on the Northwest.

Around 1960, Lombardo commissioned a special four-seater hydroplane so that he could take people out on the water for high speed “demonstration” rides. David Williams says that four-seater boat was featured in an episode of the old early 1960s TV program “Route 66” that was set in Florida.

“While he was filming that, a local car dealer in Florida saw the boat and thought it was amazing and bought it from Guy,” Williams said. “The car dealer was named Bernie Little. Bernie Little went on to become the winningest owner in the history of the sport. He secured the Budweiser sponsorship and he brought Budweiser into motorsports and for over 40 years, totally dominated the sport running the Miss Budweiser. And his very first boat came from Guy Lombardo.”

Lombardo also played a part in getting the great driver Bill Muncey – of Miss Thriftway and Atlas Van Lines fame – into the sport. David Williams says that Muncey was from Detroit and was a teenage saxophone player in Gene Krupa’s band when Krupa got arrested for marijuana possession. The whole band got hauled downtown to the police station and had to get bailed out; Muncey had to phone his dad to come and get him.

David William says that on the ride home, Muncey took the opportunity to attempt to alter his son’s path.

“His dad says, ‘You know, we need to get you involved in something that’s a little bit more stable, that’s not going to be around all these jazz musicians smoking pot,’” Williams said.

According to Williams, the elder Muncey asked, ”’What are you interested in?’ And Bill goes, ‘Well, I kind of think those race boats are cool.’ So his dad contacted Guy Lombardo and said, ’Hey, I’ve got a son who’s a jazz musician who wants to learn about hydroplane racing.’ They ended up buying a boat from Guy Lombardo. That was Bill Muncey’s first boat, and [he] went on to become the winningest driver in the history of the sport,“ Williams said.

Elements of the Guy Lombardo legacy are in the collection of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum is Kent. David Williams says they have restored 18 hydroplanes to running condition – including Lombardo’s old boat TEMPO VI – and they stage an exhibition heat with old boats during the Seafair race on Lake Washington. They’ve also run vintage boats as far east as Buffalo, and as far west as Hawaii.

One group inspired by what Williams and his colleagues have done in Kent is based in London, Ontario. Randall Milligan is club director for the Canadian Boating Federation, and is aiming to restore Lombardo’s TEMPO VII boat.

“We’re working with the City of London to, hopefully in the next year or so, get that boat up to our facility, get it restored and then back to them,” Milligan said Monday. TEMPO VII was in a city-owned warehouse for many years, but is now on display at the Jet Aircraft Museum, also in London, Ontario.

Milligan is hoping to generate renewed interest in boat racing history in Canada. He led recent efforts, which culminated last month, to induct Guy Lombardo into the Canadian Boating Federation’s Hall of Fame.

“Guy Lombardo made a great contribution to the sport in North America, not just Canada” Milligan said. “We developed the Hall of Fame to recognize all these people,” from Canada who have made a difference in boat racing, he said. “Guy was always Canadian. His band was called The Royal Canadians. His boats always flew under the Canadian flag.”

Meanwhile, as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve 2019, recordings of Guy Lombardo are likely to be featured in every time zone in North America. And, until recently, a band licensed by Lombardo’s estate was also likely to be playing “Auld Lang Syne” somewhere in the United States or Canada.

But not this 95th anniversary year.

“Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians do still perform and they are led by Al Pierson . . . he has been leading the band since 1988,” wrote Jeff Bush of Phoenix Talent Agency, who books the band, via email. “To my knowledge, they are not working this upcoming New Year’s Eve.”

Thank goodness there’s still Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

This was originally published on December 31, 2019. It has been updated and republished since then.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks.

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Carter, who served just one term in office, died after a long illness on Dec. 29, 2024. He was 100 years old.

While the 39th Commander-in-Chief first entered hospice in 2023, it seemed like a good reason to look back to when Carter visited Washington and Oregon a few days after the 1980 eruption and a great excuse to listen to vintage audio clips from the somewhat unusual presidential visit to the Pacific Northwest.

Air Force One landed at the Air National Guard Base at Portland International Airport on the evening of Wednesday, May 21, 1980. The entourage traveled by motorcade to a briefing at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest headquarters in Vancouver, Washington, and then to the Marriott Hotel in Portland, Oregon, for the night.

The next morning, Carter, Washington Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, and other officials (and the news media) took off from the air base in a fleet of seven helicopters. For the next hour or so, they viewed mud and debris from the eruption clogging the Columbia River (near the mouth of the Cowlitz, which was also clogged) and blocking freight traffic in the busy corridor; flooding near Longview; homes in the Toutle Valley and other areas damaged by mudflows coming down the Toutle River; and the unimaginable devastation in the immediate vicinity of the volcano.

After the tour, the helicopters landed at Kelso Airport and then went by motorcade a few miles to Cascade Middle School in Longview (home since 1961, as everyone knows, to the mighty Cavaliers.)

School in the Longview/Kelso area had been canceled all week because of the eruption, but the gymnasium at Cascade had been converted into a Red Cross shelter for people who lost their homes or whose homes were now threatened. Carter met many of the 40 or so people staying at the shelter, listened to their stories, and offered words of support.

Longtime Sen. Warren Magnuson of Washington was also on the tour with Carter that day, and at one point, newspaper accounts say, he and Governor Ray tussled verbally over state versus federal funding required to aid in disaster recovery – Ray wanted federal dollars, Magnuson said the feds were broke.

This was 1980, after all, and the country was deep in an economic downturn, mired in the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, and on the brink of the United States’ boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow (in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).

As it turned out, three of the highest-ranking elected officials who toured the volcano that day – Carter, Gov. Ray, and Sen. Magnuson – would lose their reelection bids later that year as the “Reagan landslide” radically changed Evergreen State politics (though Ray would lose earlier in the primary to Jim McDermott.)

But, those elections were still months away when, at the Kelso Airport, Carter made one of his most memorable comments about the devastation he’d witnessed from the helicopter.

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before,” Carter told the gathered members of the media. “Somebody said it looked like a moonscape. The moon looks like a golf course compared to what’s out there.

“It is a horrible-looking sight.” Carter said.

More from Feliks Banel: How Seattle observed VE Day in 1945

Leaving Kelso, the entourage then headed back to Portland and the Marriott Hotel for a news conference. The president’s remarks made it very clear that what he had seen with his own eyes had made a deep impression.

“The absolute and total devastation of a region . . . encompasses about 150 (square) miles,” Carter said. “It’s the worst thing I have ever seen. It is literally indescribable, and it’s devastating.

“There is no way to prepare oneself for the sight that we beheld this morning,” the president continued. “I don’t know that … in recorded history in our nation, there has ever been a more formidable explosion.”

And even just four days after the deadly disaster which took the lives of 57 people, Carter was already looking ahead somewhat presciently, if sheepishly, to what would eventually become the reality of Mount St. Helens once the eruptive activity subsided.

“When safe places are fixed for tourists and others and scientists to come in and observe it,” the president said, “I would say there would be, if you’ll excuse the expression, a tourist attraction that would equal the Grand Canyon or something.”

“It’s an unbelievable sight,” he said.

Air Force One departed from Portland and headed back east. The jet touched down briefly in Spokane so the president could see the ash damage in Eastern Washington and meet with officials there before getting back on the plane and returning to Washington, D.C.

Editors’ note: This piece originally was published on May 18, 2023. It has been updated and republished since then. 

Feliks Banel has served as KIRO Newsradio’s Resident Historian since 2015, and was originally hired by the radio station in 1991. Read more from Feliks here; subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here; and subscribe to Feliks’ Unsolved Histories podcast here. Feliks frequently posts about Northwest history on his Facebook page; follow him there for previews and updates. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks.

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Merchant’s Cafe is simply closing for renovations, where they will be upgrading bathrooms, piping and electrical. They hope to reopen by March 1.

ORIGINAL STORY

Merchant’s Café in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood is reportedly closing on New Year’s Eve, according to information the history group Vanishing Seattle posted late Friday on Facebook.

The building, at 109 Yesler Way, dates to around 1890 – after the Great Seattle Fire – and is believed to be the longest continuously operated restaurant and watering hole in the city. What remains unclear is whether the building itself is threatened, or if another operator might take over the space and resume similar operations.

Merchant’s Café is saturated with Seattle history. It was in that same spot, in an earlier structure which stood on the site, where the one and only photograph of Chief Seattle was created by Edward Sammis in 1865.

Stories of what has taken place inside the current three-story building over the past 130 years are a big part of its charm, and play a significant role in how current operator Darcy Hanson promotes the restaurant and bar, as well as the rooms for rent upstairs. Those upstairs rooms reportedly housed sex workers for decades in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

“A lot of stuff in here is original,” Hanson told KIRO Newsradio on a tour of the second floor in January. Hanson pointed out dull brass hardware attached to the side of the door frame which still opens and closes the transom window above the door.

“It’s original, a lot of this, in all these apartments,” Hanson said.

While the structure is not designated as an official City of Seattle landmark, it is located within the Pioneer Square Preservation District, which offers some regulatory protection should the building’s owner seek to make significant changes, up to and including demolition.

Merchant Café’s historic significance is well documented by the City of Seattle. However, as recent decisions by the City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board about Memorial Stadium and by the City of Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections about the old Mama’s Mexican Kitchen have shown, historic significance in Seattle often results in only a readily dispatched minor regulatory nuisance for a building’s owner, and what amounts to a performative delay in demolition proceedings.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Feliks Banel has served as KIRO Newsradio’s Resident Historian since 2015, and was originally hired by the radio station in 1991. Read more from Feliks here; subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here; and subscribe to Feliks’ Unsolved Histories podcast here. Feliks frequently posts about Northwest history on his Facebook page; follow him there for previews and updates. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks.

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The Sears at Southcenter Mall in Tukwila opened in 1994 in what had been home, perhaps ironically, to the old Frederick & Nelson space. That still-beloved local department store went through its own death throes in the middle of the George H.W. Bush administration; the once-grand downtown location in Seattle is now the Nordstrom flagship.

As of this moment on Friday morning, the Southcenter Sears is one of just nine Sears locations open for business in the United States. When 6:00 p.m. rolls around on Sunday, that number will officially drop to eight. This is also the last Sears still standing in Washington, after the Valley Mall location in Yakima closed earlier this year.

Though they weren’t all giant mall anchor stores like the one at Southcenter – some were much smaller rural storefronts – it’s staggering to consider that as recently as 2012, Sears claimed 4,000 locations in the United States.

But, here we are, living through history in real-time as all those changes everyone keeps talking about – wrought by shifting consumer habits and the growing dominance of online commerce – are brought home to the retail landscape, and especially to the many employees who will lose their jobs after this weekend. Sears would not respond to KIRO Newsradio’s inquiries, but a good guess is that somewhere between 20 and 30 positions will be eliminated with the Southcenter store closure

One of those employees with 30 years of retail experience – and lifetime of also being a Sears customer – told KIRO Newsradio that the Southcenter closure is more than just a store shutting down.

“For me, Sears is the end of an icon . .  it’s just an era,” the employee said (we are not using the employee’s name because they were not authorized to speak with media). “You went to Sears when you were little, you were bored to death, but then there’s the popcorn stand,” the employee continued. “And, you know, you bought everything (there) – you could trust the American-made Craftsman and Kenmore product.”

The Sears at Southcenter is selling off its fixtures and the store, the last Sears in Washington, will close on Sunday, December 15. (Feliks Banel/KIRO Newsradio)

Craftsman was a Sears-owned brand of tools, while the Kenmore name was applied to things like stoves and vacuum cleaners.

KIRO Newsradio also spoke to customers who were poking around the hollowed-out main floor of the Southcenter location, where store fixtures were the main things left and thus the most popular items being sold on Thursday.

More Feliks Banel: Seattleites looked to Patrick MacDonald for musical cues for decades

A mother and her 50-something daughter said they had shopped at Sears for decades. The mother said that in her day, she shopped at Sears because it was affordable. Her daughter said that, for her, it was more about loyalty to the brand.

“I think I came to Sears more so because of the name ‘Sears,’” the daughter said, “buying household appliances, things like a washer and dryer.”

“And because we had the Sears catalog, too, growing up,” the mother added. “The Sears book was always there every Christmas.”

Every American of a certain age remembers the Sears book or catalog. In retrospect, the Sears Christmas Wish Book with its head-spinning variety and hundreds of pages seems now to be the closest that any print material ever came to simulating online shopping before that option existed.

MyNorthwest History: Seattle Parks expects to restore historic Camp Long lodge, but questions remain

On a video tour of the doomed Sears created by KIRO Newsradio posted to Facebook, several commenters pointed out that Sears seemed to have all the ingredients – especially the catalog, “bricks and mortar” locations and brand loyalty among its millions of customers – to have become Amazon before Amazon became Amazon.

Not everyone is so sure about that. For instance, some of Sears’ products just were not cool enough to ever be viral hits – such as Free Spirit bicycles and, especially, Toughskins Jeans.

Sears’ entry into the denim wars must have been treated with some kind of powerful industrial chemical. They didn’t fade and simply never wore out, which was the opposite of what most kids wanted in a pair of jeans. And the fabric never softened up and thus never developed that comfortable, lived-in feel. One can only imagine that Sears never held a focus group with kids about what they wanted, and instead aimed these destructible pants squarely at the hearts and wallets of thrifty parents.

The Sears at Valley Mall in Yakima, Wash. closed earlier this year. (Courtesy of Ken Zick)

The Sears employee we talked to earlier reported a similar experience. As a teenager, they tried to tell their mom that Toughskins just weren’t very comfortable.

“’They’re crunchy, look mom, you can’t even bend your knees,’” the employee reported telling her mother many decades ago. “And so I loved-hated Sears, but I would never put my kid through the torture of Toughskins jeans.”

“For the value,” the employee admitted, “it was a great pair of jeans back then.”

It’s hard to predict how much longer the shrinking retail giant that once supplied Toughskins to every corner of the United States can hang on. Sears, it seems, has proven to be far less durable than their unpopular jeans.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien, read more from him here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks here.

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KIRO Newsradio reached out to the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation (SPR) Wednesday for an update on clean-up work taking place in the wake of the fire and, more specifically, about efforts to repair the damaged structures. Along with the main lodge, a number of smaller cabins were also damaged by vandals as part of the same incident.

SPR officials declined an interview request, and provided a written statement instead.

“We are optimistic that we will be able to restore and retain the lodge building. However, the full extent of the damage is still unknown. Because the stairs were destroyed, for example, we haven’t been able to access and assess the second floor. As we gain more access to the building and begin the stabilization work, we will learn more about the damage and restoration needs.

Our team will assess the damage and develop options with cost estimates for restoration or other alternatives. We plan to have a preliminary scope and estimate by the end of Quarter 1, 2025. Given the time associated with design, permitting and public works, construction would likely take place in 2027 or 2028.

The stabilization work is focused on maintaining the lodge structure and preventing any further damage until a long-term project can be scoped, designed, and completed. The scope of the stabilization work will include selective demolition of the damaged parts of roof, assessment and shoring of walls that need support, carting-out of debris, and ventilating the building to dry it out.

The stabilization work will also provide an opportunity for our team to better understand the extent of the damage caused by the fire.

We aim to begin stabilization work as soon as possible. It will likely begin before the end of 2024 and go well into the first half of 2025.

To date we have:

• Hired a contractor to board up windows and tarp over open holes in the roof of the lodge and damaged cabins;
• Documented the damage to structures, met with insurance representatives and initiated an insurance claim;
• Replaced the windows to one of the damaged cabins;
• Began working with an architect to outline a scope of stabilization work to the lodge; and
• Initiated an Emergency Public Works process to hire a contractor to perform stabilization work.

The park is currently open for use, and there are port-a-potties on site. We are working on a plan to see if we can still offer environmental education programs without the use of the building. Start date on programs is still TBD.”

KIRO Newsradio reached out to the Seattle Police Department for the latest on the arson investigation but we have not yet heard back. In the meantime, KIRO Newsradio will continue to reach out to Seattle Parks & Recreation for updates and will share what we learn as work at Camp Long progresses.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on “Seattle’s Morning News” with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

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“MacDonald was a groundbreaker in his field as one of the very early daily news rock music writers in the United States,” Reiff wrote in his Times story covering MacDonald’s life and career. “He was someone who kept his ear to the ground and was eager to herald rising local artists.”

In the glory days of live music from the 1970s to the 2000s, as rock and roll became rock, and punk and new wave crested and morphed into “alternative,” MacDonald was one of the few trusted authorities on what was good and what was bad, sonically-speaking and performance wise.

For decades, countless aficionados of live concerts held at bars, theatres and arenas looked to MacDonald’s review in the next day’s paper before they knew for sure that what they had seen and heard was worth, or not worth, the price of admission.

Before the web and social media — and before everyone became a critic with a platform –Patrick MacDonald was a trusted observer of the local and national scene whose columns gave even those who rarely ventured out some idea of what was happening in smoky barrooms and acoustically challenging venues like the Kingdome and what was then the Seattle Center Coliseum.

Patrick MacDonald was 79 years old.

Jimi Hendrix, shown performing at Sicks Stadium in 1970, was one of the local artists who Patrick MacDonald wrote about during his long career with The Seattle Times. (Photo courtesy of MOHAI via Feliks Banel.)

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

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One of the kids whose letter was read on the old 1950 recording I had found – with help from John Jenkins of Bellingham’s SPARK Museum – was 7-year-old Jim Hudson, who asked for presents for himself, as well as for his brother, who was serving in the Korean War.

“And here’s a nice letter from, let’s see, this is from Chehalis or Centralia. It’s from Jim Hudson,” says Santa on the scratchy old recording. “He wants a sailboat, a Red Ryder BB gun, a basketball, and he says, ‘Bring my big brother Eugene something, too. I think he might be home for Christmas. He is in Korea. And please bring something for my two big sisters, Edna and Temple, and maybe some perfume or hair lotion.’”

As I wrote in 2018: “The Korean War had just begun that summer of 1950, and big brother Eugene Hudson was, apparently, already in the thick of it. How I’d love to know how Eugene fared in that tour of duty.”

Spoiler alert: Eugene made it back and lived to the ripe old age of 90 before passing away in 2021; Jim’s younger brother Tim – “Timmy” on the old recording – also died in recent years.

Jim Hudson of Tumwater didn’t hear KIRO Radio’s original broadcast in December 2018, but he heard the rebroadcast. Back in 2021, I spoke with the then 78-year-old Jim Hudson, who had no idea the old recording existed or that the “Magic Radio Santa” was a fixture in Centralia for decades.

A lot has changed for Jim Hudson and his family since 1950 – and even in the past few years – but I’m grateful to him for sharing photos and memories – and plenty of laughs – about his siblings and the “Magic Radio Santa” experience of more than 70 years ago.

Special thanks to Steve Richert for his assistance with the original story and to Chris McCord for helping connect KIRO Radio with Jim Hudson.

Editors’ note: This piece originally was published in December 2023. It has been updated and republished since then.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

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Though that corner of Queen Anne – as well as that part of the horizon – will remain dark for December 2024, the holiday-lighting news coming from Seattle’s oldest TV station isn’t all bad.

KING 5 President and General Manager Christy Moreno confirmed for KIRO Newsradio Thursday morning that the lights will not be illuminated this year. Moreno says the long strings of colored bulbs are inadvertently AWOL because of a months-long painting and maintenance project for the tower that wrapped up later than expected.

“We actually just finished a massive painting and refurbishing project on the tower,” Moreno explained. “So, obviously, not very exciting, but we ended up having to pass on the lights this year.”

That’s the bad news. The good news?

“Never fear,” Moreno continued, “the lights will return next year.”

With the outcry on social media (and from at least one radio historian), does Moreno regret not letting the public know in advance that the lights would not be glowing atop Queen Anne Hill this year?

“We talked about it internally,” Moreno said. “But it wasn’t something that I put out to the public, and I have just been answering the messages as they come in.”

And, Moreno adds, getting those worried calls and emails had what might be called a silver lining.

“It’s been nice to connect with people,” Moreno said. Calls and emails came “mostly from Queen Anne residents, but we haven’t had a lot outside of that area. It’s a really cool tradition, and we do love it very much, so I absolutely get it why people are talking about it.”

“I was happy to answer them and let them know what was going on and that they were coming back next year, and not to worry,” Moreno said, and also pointed out that the tower is not likely to need similar maintenance and painting for as long as few decades from now.

“I’m happy that people care about it like we do, and that it’s an important part of their holiday tradition,” Moreno continued. “I think that’s reassuring in this day and age to know that people hold the same traditions that we do special.”

Editors’ note: This story was first published on Wednesday, Dec. 4. It has been updated and republished multiple times since then.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

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That’s what then-UK prime minister Tony Blair said at a gathering in Switzerland in January 2000. The remarks came in Davos, just a few months after things had gone so badly in the Emerald City during an event called the 1999 WTO Third Ministerial.

A quarter-century after it happened, a new exhibit at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle is a reminder of what the WTO was about, and how it made its infamous mark on local and world history. The exhibit, “Teamsters, Turtles, and Beyond: The Legacy of the Seattle WTO Protests,” opened Friday, and will be on display in the museum at Lake Union Park through the end of April 2025.

Anyone who lived in the Northwest 25 years ago will never forget the event that was held in Seattle over five days in late November and early December 1999 by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in partnership with a local event organizing committee.

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Earlier that year, world leaders and trade officials from dozens of countries picked Seattle as the place to hold their third conference or “ministerial.” When Seattle was selected, it was a feather in the city’s cap; Seattle and the State of Washington have always been highly dependent on foreign trade, going back as far as the 19^th century. Hopes were high for a big economic boost from all the visitors, and for lots of free publicity around the world showing off the beautiful city by Puget Sound.

Of course, it all went terribly wrong. Months before the event was scheduled to kick off, activists from around the United States began organizing to not only protest by exercising their right to free speech, but with the specific goal of shutting the whole thing down. While there were many non-violent events, including demonstrations and marches, the WTO in Seattle is remembered most for the blocked streets, the tear gas, the failure of the WTO members to reach any agreements, as well as the damage to downtown businesses – and to civic pride.

Along with Tony Blair’s international swipe, the WTO left a bad taste in Seattle’s collective mouth, and was a black eye to then-Mayor Paul Schell. Schell was ultimately beaten by Greg Nickels in the mayoral election of 2001, in part because of how he and Seattle Police Department Chief Norm Stamper were perceived to have handled to turmoil. Trivia buffs will remember that a fictionalized version of the late Paul Schell was depicted in the 2007 Hollywood film “Battle in Seattle” by the late Ray Liotta, whose character was called Mayor Jim Tobin.

All Over The Map: Early 20th century artifact plucked from Lake Washington

The new exhibit at MOHAI is curated by Dr. James Gregory, a history professor at the UW who studies labor movements and radicalism, both of which have been present in the Northwest nearly as long as the region’s dependence on foreign trade. Mikala Woodward, MOHAI’s curator of community engagement, led the museum’s project team.

During a preview earlier this week, Woodward explained that the second word in the exhibit title – “Teamsters Turtles and Beyond” – reflects one of the most iconic artifacts of the WTO in Seattle: colorful cardboard turtle costumes worn by marchers to call attention to the environmental detriments of unregulated world trade.

Further, Woodward says, the word “Teamsters” partially reflects the unlikely coalition of groups who opposed the WTO. One of the most interesting things in the MOHAI exhibit is a chart on the wall resembling a Venn diagram which shows how the assortment of groups participating in opposition to the WTO was incredibly diverse, ranging from mainstream labor groups such as the Teamsters, to radical environmentalists who typically wouldn’t have anything in common with a huge labor union.

Aside from the colorful turtle costumes and dolphin silhouette protest signs, one of the most compelling sights in the MOHAI exhibit appears, at first, to be a graphic prepared specially for the museum display. However, as Mikala Woodward explained, it’s actually a genuine artifact collected by the University of Washington.

The group organizing demonstrations and protests against the WTO event in Seattle, Woodward says, was called Direct Action Network (DAN). In November 1999, DAN established what they called their “Convergence Center” – essentially, a command post – on Capitol Hill in an old building at the corner of Denny Way and Olive.

Woodward told KIRO Newsradio that someone from DAN took a Kroll map of downtown Seattle and enlarged it, and then had it printed out on giant paper, creating a map roughly six-feet high 12-feet across. At the MOHAI exhibit, the vintage map is displayed behind Plexiglas, so visitors can walk right up to it and see the original markings, and see how MOHAI has annotated it with additional context and history.

“It is so cool, and it’s really fun to just look and see what was here in 1999,” Woodward told KIRO Newsradio, as she pointed out long-gone landmarks including the Kingdome.

“But also it shows the route of the marches,” Woodward continued. “I think there’s notes on here, like here, ‘We’re gonna start at 7:00 a.m.’ . . . ‘Here’s where the labor rally is happening, this is the route it’s gonna come down.’”

A walk through “Teamsters Turtles and Beyond” brings the WTO memories flooding back, of course, but it also stirs up deeper thoughts about how much the world has changed since November 1999.

Back then, the web was a thing, but there were no smartphones or social media, and legacy media – newspapers and TV and radio – were mostly driving the stories (along with a growing number of blogs). The feared Y2K and potential collapse of civilization was a month away. President Bill Clinton (who visited Seattle for the WTO and ended up stuck in his hotel for security reasons) was late in his second term. The internet-fueled economy was on fire everywhere and booming especially in Seattle. Cellphones were still just for talking. The bizarre presidential election of Gore v. Bush in November 2000 was less than a year away, and 9/11 was just over the horizon.

If you personally remember the WTO in Seattle or any of those old realities, “Teamster Turtles and Beyond” brings it all back and gives you much to think about. If it’s all new to you, there’s no better way to understand what happened and why, and to imagine the role Seattle played then – and still plays now in a much different world – beyond serving as a stage for peaceful demonstrations and violent clashes.

Who knows? A visit to MOHAI’s new exhibit might even change Tony Blair’s assessment.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

If there’s one takeaway from all the stories about the past that we try to tell on KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest, it’s that history is complicated, and is often full of subtleties and nuance.

With Thanksgiving here, it’s worth thinking about the over-simplified way that Americans once observed the holiday and celebrated its history with well-meaning pageants featuring brave pilgrims and stoic Indians feasting in gratitude in New England. Looking back even just a few decades to what many remember from their childhood, subtlety and nuance aren’t exactly the words that come to mind.

Much closer to home, Fort Vancouver was an incredible crossroads of commerce, religion, morality, and politics, as well as a clash between Indigenous cultures and European and American colonial aims. It’s a place where so many threads of Pacific Northwest history cross and tangle and get all twisted up; it’s about regional history, to be sure, but with international ramifications as far as where the international boundary would be set, and how far Great Britain and the United States would go to achieve their territorial goals.

More Feliks Banel: History of big windstorms in the Northwest

When the centennial for Fort Vancouver was celebrated in 1925, it was truly “celebrated” – not “observed” or “commemorated” the way we might say today. A hundred years ago, it was a festive occasion about what was considered an American triumph, with a commemorative coin and even a pageant called “The Coming of the White Man.”

It’s not 1925 anymore when it comes to Fort Vancouver, and it’s not the old days of pilgrim and Indian pageants when it comes to Thanksgiving. The way that many museums, college professors, and even cable TV channels depict history is much more sophisticated. The “black and white,” or “good guys versus bad guys” approach is mostly gone, including for the upcoming Fort Vancouver bicentennial.

Meagan Huff is curator for the National Park Service at Fort Vancouver.  She agrees that standards for history are just higher nowadays.

“People are less tolerant of only getting that side or any one side of a story,” Huff told KIRO Newsradio. “And I think that’s kind of fabulous. I think we shouldn’t be satisfied with just a simplified version of the story. We should always want to dig a little deeper and learn a little more.”

All Over The Map: Early 20th century artifact plucked from Lake Washington

Huff says Fort Vancouver National Historic Site has been operated by the National Park Service since 1947. It’s east of I-5 just north of the Columbia River. The centerpiece is a re-construction of the 1820s wooden fort, which was built about 50 years ago.

March 19, 2025 will mark the actual bicentennial of the official dedication of Fort Vancouver 200 years ago.

In 1825, what’s now Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia was jointly occupied by the British and the Americans under a treaty signed in 1818. The big wooden fort was a foothold not just for the British-chartered fur company, but also for staking claim to possession of the territory. This was during a time when the British thought they would ultimately get sole control of the land north of the Columbia River – which is why the Hudson’s Bay Company moved operations from what’s now Astoria (on the south side of the river) to what they named Fort Vancouver (in honor of the British explorer) on the north side.

Meagan Huff says that many of the events in 2025 will be centered around the re-constructed fort structure – including lecture programs and new exhibits – but she clarified that the original fort in 1825 was actually built in a slightly different location.

“The original Fort Vancouver, the first Fort Vancouver, was actually built starting around this time of year in 1824 ,up on a bluff to the northeast of where you see the reconstruction today,” Huff explained. “They originally built it up on that bluff because they thought the view was very majestic and this would be a good position or area for a fort.”

That turned out to be a mistake, Huff says, because “it was very difficult for them to bring in goods and supplies from the river.” Thus, a new fort was built in 1829 on a camas prairie nearer to the Columbia where the reconstructed fort now stands.

When the boundary was settled by treaty at the 49^th parallel in 1846, Hudson’s Bay moved most of their operations to Victoria on Vancouver Island. However, Meagan Huff says the British stayed on at Fort Vancouver for more than a decade after 1846. Eventually, the U.S. Army moved in, and then the old fort burned down under mysterious circumstances in the 1860s.

Huff says that much of what’s known about Fort Vancouver comes from archaeological research done there on-site going back to 1947. The initial focus of excavations was on the big wooden fort because it was the easy-to-understand, giant artifact. That research helped do the reconstruction in the 1960s.

But, says National Park Service curator Meagan Huff, the archaeology evolved to look beyond the structure to take in the bigger picture of the entire community.

“The focus was on the Fort Vancouver village, which was an employee village located to the west of the fort, where most everyone lived in the 1830s and 40s,” Huff said. “This is where the working class lived, where women and families lived, so being able to locate where village houses were, being able to see the kinds of things that people threw away, the kinds of things that people used, was extremely helpful.”

Information gleaned from those archaeological studies has been informing exhibits and programming at Fort Vancouver for decades, and will do the same for the 2025 bicentennial.

However, even though the way the history is told has evolved to encompass the larger and broader story of everyone in and around Fort Vancouver, it’s still important to understand the role of at least one of the larger-than-life characters there.

John McLoughlin is the individual most associated with site selection for Fort Vancouver, and for overseeing Hudson’s Bay operations there for decades.

McLoughlin was French-Canadian. He was tall with long white hair, and some Indigenous people called him the “Great White Eagle.” McLoughlin was in charge of Fort Vancouver for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and in that role he met all the important Americans who shaped or who tried to shape Oregon Country history from the 1820s to the 1840s. Part of his likely unspoken job description was to be a physical presence to help the British assert claim to land north of the Columbia River. But he was also generous to Americans, too – for which he was sometimes criticized by other Hudson’s Bay officials.

It’s not that simple, of course, says Meagan Huff. For example, John McLoughlin’s treatment of Indigenous people was complex. He married a Native woman, and encouraged the Hudson’s Bay employees who worked for him to do the same.

However, says Huff, “there were times in his time at Fort Vancouver where he was ordering attacks on Clatsop villages because he believed that they had done harm to a company ship.”

“So there were times where, you know, looking back, we’re like, ‘my goodness, that seems unjust and bad,’” Huff continued. “But there were also ways in which he really saw indigenous leaders in the area as people to be esteemed and respected.”

McLoughlin ultimately left Hudson’s Bay Company and settled in Oregon City, in what had become Oregon Territory, officially part of the United States. He’s been known for more than a century as the “Father of Oregon.”

Meagan Huff says observances will kick off officially in March 2025, and that more details will be coming in January. But she says there’s no need to wait for the bicentennial to officially begin to pay a visit.

“We certainly welcome the public to come to Fort Vancouver in the bicentennial year,” Huff said, “but at any time beyond this as well, because the story will continue, and our understanding of it will continue to change and be shaped. And we’re always looking for new perspectives.”

“That’s kind of how I see my job,” Huff continued. “Doing my research and then asking, ‘But what about that? But what about that?’ And trying to find more and more stories and bring those forward.”

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

 Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

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More from All Over The Map: Camp Long history mystery

Franklin Landing is a tiny street-end park on the west side of Mercer Island, essentially opposite Seward Park over on the Seattle side of Lake Washington. A dock at this location was a key piece of the “Mosquito Fleet” transportation infrastructure from the late 19th century to 1940, when the first Lake Washington Floating Bridge (which crossed Mercer Island) opened to vehicle traffic.

KIRO Newsradio was joined early Friday by Matt McCauley. He’s known to many as “Mr. Lake Washington History;” McCauley is an author, historian, underwater explorer and a good friend of Seattle’s Morning News.

Earlier this week, McCauley told KIRO Newsradio that a lot of history is hidden beneath the water just off this little-known spot, including ancient clay ledges and 1,200-year-old intact trees from an ancient forest.

All of that, of course, sounds pretty cool. However, what we invited McCauley to Franklin Landing to tell us about is a more recent artifact from the early 20th century which he and a friend plucked from the lake bottom on a recent dive.

More from Feliks Banel: How Seattle reacted to JFK assassination 61 years ago

Feliks Banel: “So Matt, for the radio listeners, give us a picture, kind of a physical description, paint a word picture of what this artifact is that’s in your hand right now.”

Matt McCauley: “Yes, this is an old-style glass milk bottle. It is clear. It is embossed with the name “Kristoferson’s” on the upper half. And the neck of the bottle is bulbous. It has a collection area for cream. So the milk would be in the bottom main reservoir of the bottle, and then in the very top, the cream would collect. And this was a pretty common design in the first half of the 20th century.”

Banel: “So that’s called a cream top bottle. It’s a gorgeous piece of glass workmanship from the early part of the 20th century. So why would it be here off Franklin Landing on Mercer Island, of all places?”

McCauley: “Well, this was a steamer landing called Franklin Landing. It connected a foot-passenger steamer between Mercer Island and Leschi. And going back to the 1890s, there had been a dairy on Mercer Island called Kristoferson’s Dairy that later expanded so by the 1920s and 30s, people would bring their coffee, plates and breakfast down to wait at the steamer landing for the boat to come by. And what probably happened is, after they drained their milk bottle, somebody just tossed it into the lake.”

Banel: “And so it’s been out there for probably 80, 90 years. You’ve dived on this place since the late 70s. Why is Lake Washington sometimes stingy with its treasures, yet, all of a sudden, gives it up on a random day in November 2024?”

McCauley: “The visibility down there is kind of limited, so it’s really easy to swim past stuff and not having seen it. There also a lot of the areas where the bottom is softer, the bottles will sort of hide down below the sediment. So you kind of have to develop a knack of seeing odd little bumps and bulges and knowing to reach down into it with your hand and feel around. And then sometimes you’ll find something down there and, ‘Aha, there’s a bottle that’s been sitting there for 100 years or more.'”

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Banel: “That’s really cool. So the basic premise is here, the thesis is, local history is everywhere. It’s underfoot, it’s underwater, it’s out here on Mercer Island. Thanks Matt McCauley for joining us live at Franklin Landing on Mercer Island.”

Matt McCauley said Kristoferson’s Dairy began on Mercer Island, and then expanded into Seattle with construction of a bottling plant on Rainier Avenue in the 1920s. The company, which dated to the 1890s, was ultimately acquired by the larger Foremost Dairy sometime in the 1950s.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

Friday, November 22, 1963, was chilly and damp in Seattle, where the temperature had dipped to 39 degrees that morning. As elsewhere in the rest of the country, housewives (as they were unabashedly called then) were making preparations for Thanksgiving, now less than a week away. The Huskies and the Cougars were set to compete in their annual cross-state face-off, first dubbed “The Apple Cup” that year, at Husky Stadium the next day.

As the clock ticked toward 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time and JFK’s Lincoln came into sight of a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository, a young Bryan Johnson got ready to deliver the news on KOMO Radio, local deejay Mike Phillips held forth on music powerhouse KJR-AM, while dimming star Arthur Godfrey – who had first come to national attention describing FDR’s funeral procession 18 years earlier on radio – strummed his aging ukulele via CBS over on KIRO-AM.

On television, it was “Movietime” on KOMO (actual movie now forgotten), the final moments of the game show “Concentration” on KING, a rerun of the old sitcom “The McCoys” on KIRO, and over on KCTS, eerily, something called “Julius Caesar, Part IV,” about another leader assassinated long before anyone had heard of Jack Kennedy.

JFK was no stranger to Seattle. He’d visited as a candidate in September 1960, giving a rousing speech at the old Civic Auditorium (since remodeled into the World’s Fair Opera House and now McCaw Hall) as Governor Albert Rosellini and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson looked on. In spite of the state’s Democratic governor and senators, Republican candidate Richard Nixon carried Washington state that year by a few percentage points.

More from Feliks Banel: Streamline ferry Kalakala rolls on in song

As president, Kennedy took part in the UW Centennial in November 1961, and was due to return to Seattle for the closing ceremonies of the World’s Fair in October 1962. He had made it as far west as Chicago on that trip, before heading back to the White House to nurse what his aides called a “bad cold” – which turned out to be more like a bad Cold War. The sneezes were a cover, so that JFK could prepare to address the nation regarding Soviet missiles in Cuba. JFK may have sneezed, but it was Khrushchev who ultimately blinked.

Less than two months before his final trip to Dallas, Kennedy returned to the Northwest for the last time. He spoke at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation east of the mountains, and gave what The Seattle Times described as a “plea for the preservation of public recreation areas in a speech before 20,000 persons, many of them wildly enthusiastic students” at Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium.

News of the shooting in Dallas spread rapidly throughout the Pacific Northwest, as first radio reports and then marathon TV coverage brought up-to-the-minute information to homes, businesses, and offices.

At City Hall, Acting Mayor Floyd C. Miller (Mayor Gordon Clinton was en route from a trade mission to Japan) ordered flags lowered to half-staff at 11:37 a.m., as soon as the president’s death was confirmed. Similar actions were taken at local schools, post offices, and other government buildings. A few blocks up the hill from City Hall at St. James Cathedral, the bells were rung for the president – the only Catholic to hold the office – as mourners gathered for an impromptu memorial.

In Olympia, Governor Rosellini immediately proclaimed a period of mourning, while State Patrol Chief Roy Betlach put his entire force on alert and assigned guards to protect the governor and his wife. “We don’t know what to expect,” Betlach told The Seattle Times.

As the afternoon wore on, more and more programs and events were canceled. The University of Washington closed two hours early at 3 p.m., while UW President Charles Odegaard postponed the Apple Cup until the following Saturday and all Homecoming activities were suspended. The Ingraham-Franklin High School football game at Memorial Stadium was postponed. KCTS canceled all programming and went dark for the evening. The annual Chief Seattle Council’s Cub Scout “Clamorama” — set to begin Friday night at Seattle Center — was postponed to midweek.

Kennedy was a decorated World War II Navy vet, and that branch of the service, well represented on Puget Sound, made elaborate tributes. On Saturday, as Kennedy lay in state in the White House, single-gun salutes were fired every half hour at Pier 91 downtown, Sand Point Naval Air Station (now Magnuson Park) on Lake Washington, and at the Bremerton Navy Yard. The Army cannon near Fort Lawton’s flagpole also was fired every 30 minutes for the deceased commander-in-chief. A Seattle Youth Symphony concert went ahead as planned on Saturday night at the same Opera House where Kennedy had spoken three years earlier, with Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” dedicated to the slain president.

More from All Over the Map: Camp Long history mystery

Like the rest of the nation, Seattleites watched Sunday’s proceedings in Washington, D.C., and Dallas – the procession of Kennedy’s casket to Congress, Oswald’s mortal wounding by Jack Ruby – on television, leaving deserted the streets and few establishments that remained open that weekend. Those who ventured out did so mostly to attend the masses and memorials held at St. James Cathedral, Seattle University, Bikur Cholim Synagogue, University Presbyterian, St. Mark’s Cathedral, Plymouth Congregational Church and Greek Orthodox Church, among others.

On Monday, declared a National Day of Mourning by President Johnson, schools and government offices and most businesses closed for the day, as Kennedy’s procession and funeral were shown on television. One exception was Boeing, where 60,000 workers paused only during the burial at Arlington National Cemetery, but then returned to their work, deemed vital to America’s defense. A memorial service was held downtown in the Veteran’s Memorial Plaza of the old Public Safety Building, and six F-102 fighters in a cross formation flew over a ceremony at Paine Field.

As Tuesday, Nov. 26, dawned, Seattle and the nation began the long slow process of getting back to normal. The following Saturday, the Huskies did their small part — since not only history and politics, but sports is local, too — by beating the Cougars 16-0 in Montlake to take the 1963 Apple Cup.

A slightly different version of this article originally appeared on Crosscut.com, a daily news site dedicated to Northwest political, business and cultural issues.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien, read more from him here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea, please email Feliks here.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

So wrote Seattle pioneer Arthur Armstrong Denny in his 1908 memoir, “Pioneer Days on Puget Sound.”

Denny headed west from Illinois in April 1851. He arrived during a November rainstorm at what’s now Seattle later that year, and witnessed much of the city’s growth, and much of the region’s weather, over the next several decades.

In his book, Denny also provides what might be the first account of a windstorm in Seattle:

The heaviest wind storm since the settlement of the country was on the night of November 16, 1875. This was simply a strong gale which threw down considerable timber and overturned light structures, such as sheds and out buildings.

As unusual as “The Bomb Cyclone of November 2024” seems (and, yes, that’s the name that’s most likely to stick), big windstorms are of course nothing new in the Pacific Northwest. While the Hannukah Eve Storm of 2006, the Inaugural Day Storm of 1993 and Columbus Day Storm of 1962 stand out in the living memory of most Pacific Northwesterners, here’s a quick overview of some other big windstorms going back to the late 19th century

The Great Gale of January 9, 1880
In 1924, historian and judge Cornelius H. Hanford wrote:

The second week of January, 1880, gave a surprise in the form of a freak snow storm. Elisha P. Ferry, governor of Washington Territory, had just previously forwarded to the Department of the Interior at Washington, D.C., his annual report in which he extolled the mildness of the Puget Sound climate, especially remarking upon the infrequency of snow in the winter seasons.

This “freak snow storm” was preceded by a huge windstorm that hit Oregon and southwest Washington the hardest, with winds estimated at 138 mph along the Oregon Coast. The storm generally left Seattle untouched (other than by depositing two feet of snow, on top of several feet already on the ground).

Windstorm of December 3, 1901
During this long-ago storm, winds were estimated at 115 mph along the Oregon and Washington Coasts.

Great Olympic Blowdown of January 29, 1921
This winter windstorm included sustained winds of 113 mph with gusts to 150 mph at North Head, Washington near Cape Disappointment. Gusts in Seattle were estimated around 60 mph. The storm blew down thousands of board feet of timber throughout the region. National Weather Service meteorologist Ted Buehner says evidence of the “blowdown” is visible just a short hike from Lake Quinault Lodge on the Olympic Peninsula.

Windstorm of October 21, 1934
The United States was deep in the Great Depression when this storm struck 82 years ago. There were reports of 59 mph gusts in downtown Seattle; 70 mph gusts at Boeing Field; and 90 mph on the Washington coast. Newspaper headlines called it “THE WORST GALE IN HISTORY,” and reported at least 17 had died, including five fisherman who went down in the purse seiner Agnes off of Port Townsend. Other deaths were caused by falling trees, downed electrical wires, and the collapse of a wall in a downtown Seattle hotel. Dozens of passengers on the famous steamer Virginia V escaped injury when that vessel struck the dock at Ollala during the storm.

The Intense Cyclone of November 3, 1958
The wind gusted to an unbelievable 161 mph at an exposed Cold War radar site atop Naselle Ridge near the mouth of the Columbia River, and gusted to 59 mph at Sea-Tac Airport. Damage during “The Intense Cyclone” included downed trees and power lines. A farmer died near Roy in Pierce County, and an 18-year old student at what was then Pacific Lutheran College was killed when a branch knocked a power line down onto her outside the Student Union Building.

Columbus Day Storm of October 12, 1962
The Pacific Northwest’s most infamous storm did about $2 billion in damage (in 2016 dollars) from Northern California to British Columbia, and 46 people were killed. Like the storm expected Saturday evening, the Columbus Day Storm had roots in a typhoon in the Western Pacific, with a low-pressure cell tracking close to the coast.

Hood Canal Bridge Storm of February 13, 1979
Winds gusted to 60 mph at Sea-Tac Airport and damaged the original 1963 Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, but the brunt of this storm hit Kitsap County, with wind gusts higher than 70 mph that sunk the west half of the Hood Canal Floating Bridge. One man died when a tree fell on his vehicle near Cosmopolis in Grays Harbor County. The aftermath wreaked havoc for travelers and commerce, and ferry service across Hood Canal was started up again until the bridge could be replaced.

Friday the 13th and Sunday the 15th Double Storms of November 1981
At least two storms (beginning on Friday the 13th) were responsible for a total of 12 deaths in Oregon and Washington, including a man on Maury Island electrocuted during the first storm by a downed power line. More than 400,000 were without power along the I-5 corridor in Western Washington in the wake of the storms. Winds gusted over 70 mph, shutting down both the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. Another casualty of the storm was a historic round barn north of the town of Skamokawa on the lower Columbia River. On Monday, November 16, with the blustery weather continuing outside, the Seahawks beat the San Diego Chargers inside the Kingdome on Monday Night Football, 44-23.

Thanksgiving Day Storm of November 24, 1983
Many people still remember this poorly-timed storm that knocked out electricity to 270,000 homes around Puget Sound around midday on Thanksgiving 1983, and ruined countless turkey dinners. No injuries or deaths were reported.

Inauguration Day Storm of January 20, 1993
The era of President William Jefferson Clinton was ushered into Washington with this brutal storm that hit around mid-morning on Inauguration Day with 88 mph gusts. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge was closed, and cars “trapped” on the span had to do U-turns to get off the bridge. One made died from a fallen tree in Maple Valley, and no one was injured when a taxiing floatplane flipped on Lake Washington. Eastside suburbs were hit particularly hard by long-lasting power outages, and a cold snap after the windstorm meant days of shivering in the dark for thousands.

Sinatra Day Storm of December 12, 1995
Winds gusted to 119 mph at the Sea Lion Caves on the Oregon Coast, and winds around Puget Sound hit the 50 and 60 mph range. The “Sinatra Day Storm” name (which was suggested by Gregg Hersholt because December 12, 1995 was Frank Sinatra’s 80th birthday), was probably only used by KIRO Radio.

Hanukkah Eve Storm of December 14, 2006
The Hanukkah Eve Storm brought heavy rain and devastating winds to Western Washington, killing a woman in a basement flood in Seattle, and leading to the deaths of 14 people from carbon monoxide poisoning trying to keep warm in the aftermath.

This story was originally published on October 14, 2016. It has been updated and republished since then.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. 

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

The story of the vessel’s unlikely resurrection in November 1998 went downhill from there, of course, and the Kalakala was ultimately scrapped.

However, thanks to two Seattle men, the spirit of the beloved streamlined vessel now lives on in song. Those men gathered at Colman Dock early Wednesday in the aftermath of The Bomb Cyclone of November 2024 to share a new version of their joint creation with KIRO Newsradio listeners.

All Over the Map: Camp Long history mystery

From a public viewpoint at the southwest corner of Colman Dock, overlooking Elliott Bay near the water taxi terminal, Jack Broom and Jon Pontrello told KIRO Newsradio how the song came to be 26 years ago, and how it has come back to life.

Jack Broom retired in 2016 after nearly 40 years at the Seattle Times. In 1998, when the Kalakala made its triumphant comeback, Broom witnessed its return and wrote the lyrics to a song called “Roll On, Kalakala” – sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “Roll On, Columbia.” Broom had earlier written lyrical tributes to the ferry Cathlamet and other Northwest icons like the razor clam.

“I grew up in Seattle and remember seeing it out on the water looking like a floating Airstream trailer,” Broom told KIRO Newsradio, describing what some have nicknamed “The Silver Slug” for its color scheme and, perhaps, for its top speed.

“While all the other ferries look like white and green boxes, it was Art Deco,” Broom said. “It was fun to see, it was just something special.”

“It went to Alaska for 30 years,” Broom continued. “And they brought it back in 1998 with the hopes of restoring it, but it didn’t quite work out.”

A version of “Roll On, Kalakala” was recorded not long after it was written, Broom explained, and was available via a rudimentary audio-sharing platform hosted by The Seattle Times and accessible via touchtone phone. Unfortunately, that version was not preserved, and no copies can be found.

Jon Pontrello is a Seattle musician who has written and performed songs about Pacific Northwest shipwrecks and about the late Peter Bevis, the man who led the charge to bring the Kalakala ferry home from Alaska in the 1990s. He stumbled across Broom’s creation while doing research into local songs.

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“Jack’s song, I just I love the lyrics, and he originally wrote it in 1998 when the Kalakala returned,” Pontrello told KIRO Newsradio. “And it kind of had this theme like ‘following your dreams’ and stuff like that. But when the Kalakala was demolished in 2015, he revised the last verse to reflect the final chapter in the Kalakala story.”

“Some of the lines in that last verse I really loved, and felt like there was a bigger story there connected to a universal truth about loss,” Pontrello continued. “And that really inspired me to want to record this song.”

With that, Pontrello performed “Roll On, Kalakala” for KIRO Newsradio listeners, with Jack Broom joining in on the chorus.

Meanwhile, a timeless transportation ballet was unfolding in the darkness below the overlook.

Immediately to the south, foot passengers disembarked from the Vashon and Bremerton water taxis. To the north, the big Washington car ferries came and went at the terminal on Colman Dock, just like Kalakala had done from the 1930s to the 1960s.

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To quote the lyrics of the immortal Jack Broom, “Roll on, Kalakala, roll on!”

Jon Pontrello will formally release the studio version of “Roll On, Kalakala” on December 19, 2024.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

Damaged in the fire was the main structure at Camp Long. It’s referred to by Seattle Parks and Recreation as the “lodge,” but it’s also been called the “administration building” at the 68-acre, summer-camp-in-the-city for more than 80 years. Whatever it’s known as now, the building is a beloved landmark and icon for West Seattleites and for generations of people from all over the city who went to Camp Long as kids for the many summer camps held there.

The mysteries, or perhaps only confusion, about the building’s history include the date it was constructed, origin of the materials used, and one important detail about its dedication event.

Some media reports Tuesday morning about the fire were murky regarding the construction date, and the histories of Camp Long available online don’t exactly make it very clear. Some reports on Tuesday said the structure dated to 1937, which is when the park that was later named Camp Long first opened to the public. KIRO Newsradio’s pedantic historian insisted that 1941 was the construction date. Meanwhile, seasoned journalists simply rolled their eyes, told audiences that the structure was more than 80 years old, and then focused on the more important aspects of the story.

The best source for Seattle Parks history is the late Don Sherwood, a parks staffer whose research, in the form of short hand-written and hand-illustrated histories of nearly every Seattle park, are available online as downloadable PDFs from the Seattle Municipal Archives.

Sherwood’s report about Camp Long is clear on the details of the park’s origin as part of a broader plan to create a recreation area on former timber company land in West Seattle and it is clear that the park first opened to the public in 1937. Sherwood is not as specific on the building’s construction date but offers this tantalizing detail, written in his impeccable handwriting alongside where the structure appears on the hand-drawn map: “Administration Bldg. built with cobblestones from the roadbed of Madison St. cable car.”

All Over The Map: Forgotten Seattle origins of the JanSport school backpack

This detail is tantalizing, because who doesn’t love the idea of relics of an archaic form of transportation – actual cable cars, just like the kind they still have in San Francisco, where a moving cable beneath the street must be gripped by a mechanical device in order for the cable car to move up the hill – being repurposed to build a beloved public landmark?

If true, this detail also offers a clue, because it helps narrow down the construction date. The Madison Street cable car shut down for good in April 1940 after 50 years of operation. Thus, when the tracks and cobblestones were ripped up sometime not long after that, the stone would theoretically have been available to use in construction of the lodge at Camp Long after that time. So, that would mean the 1937 construction date was too early for the lodge, because at that point, the Madison Street cable car was still wheezing and creaking along.

Newspaper clippings consulted online via the Seattle Public Library late Monday and early Tuesday also support the 1941 construction date, as both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer provide details about a dedication event held November 8, 1941. At that time, the park was officially named Camp Long, in honor of juvenile court Judge William G. Long, who was key in the city’s effort to purchase the land to create the youth camp.

Still, these bits and pieces of information lack the heft necessary to support the claim Don Sherwood makes about the origin of the building materials. We simply need more evidence.

The newspaper archives only go so far and can often provide only so much detail; and no mention has so far been found of what actually happened to the Madison Street cable car roadbed, when it happened, or what became of the cobblestones. There are related stories, to be sure, such as an item in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from May 10, 1942 with a headline that reads “CONCRETE REPLACES COBBLESTONE” for a story about ripping up stretches of the old Yesler Street cable car (which lived on a bit longer than the line on Madison Street).

All Over The Map: Is Umpqua pronounced UMP-kwuh or UMP-kwah?

One could extrapolate and say that this headline suggests the cobblestones, too, at Madison were also replaced by concrete – thereby freeing up the cobblestones for other uses, such as construction – but it isn’t exactly proof.

David B. Williams is a Seattle historian and author of many books, including “Too High and Too Steep,” about the regrades, and “Homewaters,” about Puget Sound. He’s a geologist by training, and a good friend of Seattle’s Morning News and the first person consulted whenever there are questions about historic rocks.

Williams is familiar with Camp Long, but acknowledges he hasn’t spent much time there since he was in 4th grade. He told KIRO Newsradio that cobblestones came into fashion as building materials in Seattle in the 1890s. The stone to create paving materials (as well as material for building construction) came from nearby quarries, and is usually sandstone, but sometimes granite.

The term “cobblestones” is not quite accurate, Williams also said. The accurate name is “sett,” but Williams says nobody calls them that with a straight face.

KIRO Newsradio asked David B. Williams the big question on everyone’s mind this week: If we can’t find further written evidence about the Camp Long cobblestones, is there any scientific or geologic means of proving or disproving their origins and history?

“Let’s just toss out a hypothetical,” Williams posited. The stones used to build the lodge at Camp Long “look the same as the cobblestones found in other streets. Does that mean it came from Madison? Who knows?”

“I mean, it could have come directly from the quarry,” Williams continued. “We don’t have any evidence – there’s nothing that’s going to say looking at it, that it had any origin any place else.”

All Over The Map: Searching for ghostly local myths at Fire Trail Road and Fort Casey

“So, no,” Williams concluded. “I can’t really think of anything that would give you any geological information that would answer your question.”

One more mystery remains about the paper trail emerging in the aftermath of the fire, and geology likely won’t be able to help much with this one, either.

Historic survey documents available online via the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods include at least one more tantalizing detail about that November 1941 dedication event at Camp Long. The same information is contained in documents available from the Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.

“Camp Long was officially dedicated in November 1941,” the document reads, “with Eleanor Roosevelt in attendance with her daughter, Mrs. Anna R. Boettiger, a resident of Seattle.”

In November 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt was First Lady of the United States, of course, because she was married to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The First Lady often did travel to Seattle in the 1930s and 1940s because the couple’s daughter did live here with her husband and children. FDR visited the Northwest multiple times as president, too.

However, local newspaper accounts from November 1941 make no mention of the First Lady’s attendance. Further, Eleanor Roosevelt’s daily newspaper column, My Day, is datelined on Saturday, November 8, 1941  – the day of the dedication event at Camp Long – from Washington, DC, and she describes social and civic events she attended until late in the evening the day before in the nation’s capital. Her next column, which was published on November 10, describes a day of activities in Washington, DC on Sunday, November 9. So it seems unlikely that Eleanor Roosevelt was at the dedication of Camp Long, and the source of this likely erroneous information is unclear.

A little more than a month later, after the United States had entered World War II, the First Lady did actually visit Seattle. Her column for December 15 is datelined “Seattle,” and she describes war-related activities as well as multi-day visit with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.

As the First Lady wrote in her column on November 8, “I am anxious that we should all get together and know each other, and that we should from time to time, have an opportunity to hear things from other people which will give us all a better understanding of the reasons why we are all at work.”

Though Eleanor Roosevelt was referring to the Office of Civilian Defense on the precipice of war, the same sentiments might be expressed exactly 83 years later as the City of Seattle and those who love Camp Long must reckon with the near-destruction of beloved public place, and the efforts required to bring it back to life for future generations to continue to enjoy.

KIRO Newsradio reached out to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office Friday morning for comment, and his staff provided this statement:

“Mayor Harrell understands just how treasured Camp Long is to the West Seattle community and the entire city. It is a truly unique, historic asset and is greatly cherished – the mayor himself has many fond memories of visiting Camp Long as a child.

SFD and SPD are still completing their investigations, and we would need to defer to them for any updates. Our office is working closely with Seattle Parks & Recreation as we assess the damage and determine the path forward. We are committed to restoring Camp Long and hopeful it can be rebuilt so current and future generations of Seattleites can continue to benefit from this incredible place in our city.”

KIRO Newsradio also learned Friday that all of Camp Long is closed to the public and will likely remain so throughout the weekend.

Seattle City Council member Rob Saka, whose council district includes Camp Long, also shared a statement. Council member Saka wrote, in part, “. . . Executive Departments are still very much in the initial fact-gathering stage. While further development of the investigation, insurance and cost estimates will take time, me and my Office stand ready to support ways to restore this treasured facility.”

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

In the final episode, the families and friends left behind gathered on the 60th anniversary of the tragic event. For the very first time, as a group united by shared loss, the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandsons and granddaughters commemorated their loved ones and pledge to keep seeking answers about Flight 293, and to be formally acknowledged by the Department of Defense.

When Private Bruce Barrowman boarded Flight 293, he was just 17 years old. Bruce’s loss has haunted his younger brother Greg for decades. At times, Greg has struggled to make sense of what happened, and to find some way to commemorate Bruce and the other 100 passengers and crew who were lost.

Through years of grief and sometimes anger and frustration, Greg repeatedly asked the military to search for the wreckage to find for answers to the big questions about what went wrong and why the DC-7C went down in the Gulf of Alaska. At the same time, the Barrowmans also did what they could to memorialize Bruce and never forget his sacrifice – and theirs, too.

Episode 1 of ‘Unsolved Histories’ is called ‘Brothers:’ Flight 293 never arrived at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska

Episode 2 is called ‘The Wreckage:’ Finding a haunting memento after the 1963 plane crash

Personal monuments to hidden grief

As Greg began connecting with other Flight 293 families, he learned that many have been trying to do exactly the same thing. Like the Barrowmans, many families felt abandoned by the US government. They hunted online for information about the flight, and some also built private monuments to their lost loved ones alongside their family homes, complete with plaques and flagpoles.

With help from many of those Flight 293 families and from an informal network of aviation and military historians and others simply interested righting a decades-old wrong, Greg Barrowman led an effort to publicly commemorate the loss of those aboard, and to finally dedicate a permanent monument to the tragedy.

Episode 3 is called ‘Best Friends:’ ‘Jody has always stayed with me’ after 1963 crash

Episode 4 is called ‘Scuttlebutt:’ One theory is friendly fire brought down Flight 293

‘Unsolved Histories’ Episode 8: Creating a permanent memorial

On June 3, 2023, many Flight 293 families gathered near Seattle for a public ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the crash. The gathering formally memorialized the six-member civilian crew from Northwest Airlines, and the 95 active duty military, dependents and federal employees who were aboard the plane.

Among the more than 100 people who came from around the United States to pay their respects and to share their stories was Cherie Pipkin-Gardner, Bruce Barrowman’s high-school girlfriend.

The monument to Flight 293 was paid for with private funds raised by Greg Barrowman, and dedicated at Tahoma National Cemetery on June 3, 2023 – the 60th anniversary of the crash. (Photo: Feliks Banel)

“I am so proud to be here, and I’m so grateful,” Pipkin-Gardner, who traveled from Arizona, said. “I think the things that Greg and the rest of his family have done are phenomenal. It’s helped so many people.”

Once the privately funded monument had been formally dedicated at Tahoma National Cemetery south of Seattle, the Flight 293 families gathered for a picnic at Greg Barrowman’s nearby home.

Episode 5 is called ‘The Ditching:’ Another Flight 293 nearly suffered a similar disaster

Episode 6 is called ‘The Crew:’ Meeting the lost crew and examining sinister crash theories

As close as our language can come

“I don’t know if you really have closure,” Pipkin-Gardner said, as she shared stories about Bruce and about her lifelong bond with the Barrowman family.

“I don’t know if closure is the right word, but I think it’s as close as our language can come,” she added.

Episode 7 is called ‘Leave No One Behind:’ Flight 293 families question that major promise

List of passengers and crew of Flight 293

The U.S. Department of Defense listed the passengers aboard Flight 293 and distributed to the press. (Image courtesy of Feliks Banel)

More from Feliks Banel: The historian’s most recent stories for KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest

Special thanks

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

This comes two months after the owner claimed the building at 2234 Second Avenue in downtown Seattle was too dangerous to leave standing, following the Seattle Fire Department declaring the structure a “public nuisance.”

DCI Director Nate Torgelson then took the highly unusual step of overriding the structure’s City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board landmark designation in order to expedite the demolition permit process. It’s not clear why that process took two months, or if that amount of time is unusual for a building declared to be a public nuisance.

The timeline for razing the building has not yet been announced.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

KIRO Newsradio interviewed Ken Workman early Wednesday beside the founder’s monument at Alki. Workman’s great-great-great-great grandfather is Chief Seattle, the city’s namesake.

More on Chief Seattle: The origins of the only photo ever taken of Chief Seattle

A quick internet check reveals that November 13, 1851 was a Thursday, meaning the Denny Party arrived at the beach just in time for the weekend.

The occasion of Founders’ Day used to be celebrated more regularly by the City of Seattle and by local institutions such as the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI). Special events and big newspaper stories about the early years were especially common in the 1950s, after a festive marking of the city’s centennial in 1951 and the debut of the original MOHAI in Montlake in early 1952. The city was coming of age, and looking back a hundred years was meaningful to a lot of people.

But the celebrations in those years, in keeping with those times, were simplistic or focused mostly on the heroic settlers or pioneers, with little about anyone else. Over the past few decades, with the exception of the sesquicentennial year of 2001, the celebrations (or, really, any observance of the day) have fallen from favor as interpretation of history has evolved and changed. History nowadays is often presented in more complex and thoughtful ways and is rarely about trumpeting the arrival of white people in what had been native land for thousands of years.

Still, it would be nice to think the community could mark this day and remember what happened here 173 years ago, and also do it in a way that takes all the history into account, including the people who were already here.

More on that in a moment.

First, the Denny Party was a group of settlers from Illinois led by 29-year-old Arthur Denny. The family members came west not looking for farmland, but with the specific intention of founding a metropolis. These men, women, children and even and infant or two were city-builders, through and through.

The group left Cherry Grove, Illinois in April 1851 and came west by covered wagon on The Oregon Trail as far as The Dalles, which was then an obstruction to vessel traffic on the Columbia River. They then went by boat down the Columbia – starting downriver from The Dalles, of course – and eventually went up the Willamette River to Portland, arriving in late August.

Arthur Denny originally set his sights on settling in the Willamette Valley. On the way, he was told by a mystery man named Brock that all the good land there was already taken, but that there was still plenty of opportunity to find suitable locations on Puget Sound.

In Portland, many members of the Denny Party came down with an illness called the ague – which is described as a “malarial fever” — and so they rested in the Rose City for several weeks.

Meanwhile, Arthur’s younger brother, David Denny, was feeling fine. He was sent north to scout out a good location. David Denny chose a spot along what’s now Alki in late September and tried to build a cabin, but only got as far as erecting the walls. Thus, when Arthur and a few dozen other people arrived by boat on a rainy Nov. 13 morning, it has always been said that all of the women cried when they saw there was no roof to seek cover under to get out of the Puget Sound rain.

Of course, what’s now Seattle was not some desolate and deserted place in 1851. Duwamish and other Indigenous peoples had lived here for thousands of years.

So, when Arthur Denny and the others came ashore, one of the people who was there 173 years ago was Chief Seattle.

More on Seattle-based Native Americans: Native Americans greeted pioneers to Seattle 173 years ago

Chief Seattle descendant Ken Workman spoke with KIRO Newsradio at the rainy and windy spot where it all happened to help us more properly, thoughtfully and contextually mark the occasion.

The following are lightly edited excerpts from the conversation

Feliks Banel: “What does Seattle Founders’ Day mean to you, and is it right to observe or commemorate this day?”

Ken Workman: “It’s sort of a sorrowful day in that our world has changed. For thousands and thousands of years, we’ve lived alongside nature, and then these newcomers came at the invitation of my grandfather, Seattle. And so, as far as Founders’ Day in Seattle, this place is so new, it’s a wonderful thing, but it’s also kind of a sad thing.

Banel: “Are there things that people like me – (call us) well-intentioned historians, contextual fanatics – do (that means) we still get it wrong about Founders’ Day, and what it means to the city, as far as modern history is concerned?”

Workman: “No, you’ve got all of that stuff right. But what about the people that were here before? And what about all the change? What about these new people coming in and just taking this place that was ours? We don’t have ownership of property like they do today.”

Banel: “Part of the story is that Chief Seattle was very welcoming because the Denny party, who arrived from Illinois, they weren’t prepared for this weather. They weren’t prepared for the deprivation of being far away from the stuff they’d grown up with. Is it true that Chief Seattle was welcoming and made it possible for them to survive that first winter?”

Workman: “He was. As a matter of fact, he was the one who invited people to come up here to the Seattle area. He recognized the power of these new people. And so when the Denny family was struggling, the Duwamish people provided them with clam nectar and things to make it through the winter. Of course, you realize we’ve been living in the environment forever and ever, and so this rain is just like sunshine to us.”

Banel: “I think it’s really hard to imagine. I’m the son of immigrants. My parents came (to Seattle) from Europe 65 years ago. It’s hard to imagine being somewhere for so long and having a bunch of strangers just show up and start taking measurements and building buildings and things like that. It must have been like the arrival of people landing from outer space, I’ll bet.”

Workman: “Well, yes, we certainly recognized that these strangers had many powers, and so it’s always a good thing to be friends with more powerful people. And so that’s what my grandfather did.”

Banel: “Let’s talk a bit about that more challenging part of the story: The treatment of Indigenous people by incoming white settlers. I know there were good relationships, particularly between David Denny and some of the Indigenous people, like your great-grandfather. But how do we talk about the land that was once Duwamish homeland, but then had this European style of property ownership overlay (imposed), and a written culture over the oral culture? Can we reconcile that? Do we reconcile that? What do we do here in 2024 about what happened all those years ago?”

Workman: “We can reconcile it. And I would say that the first step is to make an apology. There are all kinds of things that people talk about, but an apology is always a good way to start. The land is very important to us because we recognize that through nature, our people are actually in the trees. They’re in the roots of the system, so they’re in the berries that we eat, in our food. And so we say ‘Thank you, grandma and grandpa, that we see you in the food, that we see you in the trees, and that we’re part of the place.’ And so our message is, ‘Native people, to even the people of today, take better care of the planet. Your grandma is in that tree.'”

More from Feliks Banel: Camp Long lodge in Seattle was vandalized before fire

Banel: “I know the Duwamish tribe is still not recognized by the federal government. Is there any progress on that, or is that going to happen anytime soon?”

Workman: “We are still in the courts. Our attorneys are fighting on our behalf. We filed suits. So yes, as far as Indian Wars, I guess in modern times, this is what it looks like. The Duwamish Tribe is not federally recognized, and we’re using all the tools at our disposal to make that happen.”

KIRO Newsradio host Dave Ross: “I’d like to ask Ken a question. I’ve been to countries, specifically in Niger, where there are Indigenous people who are living much the same as they lived 2,000 years ago. They’re surrounded, of course, by a more developed culture. But they get by. They raise kids, they educate kids. They are happy, they are sad. They have and they live sustainable lives. Is it your sense that if the white settlers had never come, this would still be essentially a thriving tribal culture?”

Workman: “Yes, it would have, and that’s because we’ve been living the same way since the Ice Age retreated. And so it’s only 173 years, as Feliks pointed out. And for us, that’s barely a minute. So the time scale is wrong.”

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

In Episode 7, Feliks untangles the bureaucracy behind what many families feel is an empty promise to “Leave No One Behind.”

The U.S. military promises that no wounded or killed service member will be left behind in the theater of war, and every reasonable effort will be made to bring home the remains of those who don’t survive. It’s a comforting promise made to family members of those who serve, and it’s a foundational pledge which dates back to the earliest days of the United States.

“It was coined during the Revolutionary War with the Ranger Battalion that was there at the time,” said Dr. Timothy McMahon of the Defense Department’s Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. “And it’s kind of transitioned into all of our military … that we leave no member behind.”

Episode 1 of ‘Unsolved Histories’ is called ‘Brothers:’ Flight 293 never arrived at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska

Episode 2 is called ‘The Wreckage:’ Finding a haunting memento after the 1963 plane crash

“And I think it goes more so because we’re a fully volunteer armed services,” McMahon continued. “We have young men and women who are taking the oath to stand watch and protect the citizens of the United States.”

“Knowing that your government is going to have your back at all times,” McMahon said, “is a very big key and essential part of our military service.”

The Defense Department spends millions of dollars every year searching battlefields and crash sites in former combat areas looking for remains of service members missing in action. When remains of loved ones are discovered and identified decades later, fulfillment of this promise is priceless to family members left behind.

Episode 3 is called ‘Best Friends:’ ‘Jody has always stayed with me’ after 1963 crash

Episode 4 is called ‘Scuttlebutt:’ One theory is friendly fire brought down Flight 293

‘I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home’

When he was researching a wartime crash that had been lost for decades in the mountains of California, author and historian Peter Stekel actually came across remains of an aviator who had been missing for decades.

“It made me cry, I still get really, really torn up by the whole thing,” Stekel said. “It was humbling. It was amazing. It was wonderful, because I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home.”

However, for some reason, this promise to leave no one behind doesn’t apply to the male and female service members aboard Flight 293. It doesn’t apply to dozens of other flights carrying hundreds of American men and women who went missing while in service to their country.

One of those other flights disappeared in Alaska in 1952, and one of the 52 men on board who went missing was the grandfather of Tonja Anderson-Dell.

Episode 5 is called ‘The Ditching:’ Another Flight 293 nearly suffered a similar disaster

Episode 6 is called ‘The Crew:’ Meeting the lost crew and examining sinister crash theories

Missing, but not missing in action

“I was six or seven years old the first time I heard about it,” said Tonja Anderson-Dell. “Because I seen a picture of my grandfather, but hadn’t seen him around my grandmother’s house. And then when I got a little bit older, I became nosy and wanted to know what really happened to him and why no one’s ever found him.”

While she was still a teenager, Tonja set out to find answers about why her grandfather’s plane had disappeared, and why the U.S. military had given up trying to find it.

“My first letter I wrote to pretty much everybody – senators, the Navy, the Air Force, anyone I could think of that could help me,” Tonja said. “ The Air Force was like, ‘No, we’re not doing it, but how about you reach out to the Army?’ The Army said ‘Reach out to the Navy,’ the Navy said ‘Reach out to the Marines.’”

“So it’s pretty much everybody’s saying no, but just sending me in that circle,” Tonja said.

More from Feliks Banel: The historian’s most recent stories for KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest

Search and recovery operations at Colony Glacier, where Isaac Anderson’s Air Force C-124 Globemaster crashed in 1952. (Photo courtesy of Tonja Anderson-Dell)

‘Unsolved Histories’ Episode 7: Fighting for recognition for ‘Operational Loss’

But Tonja Anderson-Dell didn’t give up. She became a crusader for the families of service members who disappeared in what she calls “operational losses” – crashes of aircraft traveling between bases or on training flights or otherwise lost in non-combat situations. These are aircraft that the military has given up on ever trying to find.

“I just felt that when they said they never, never leave our fallen behind, that he was part of that group,” Tonja said of her grandfather. “And to find out that they were not part of that group, I couldn’t wrap my head around, I couldn’t grasp.”

“Because when he raised his hand, he swore the same words that a gentleman who was missing in action had sworn,” Tonja said.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.

Follow @https://twitter.com/feliksbanel

In Episode 6, Feliks introduces the crew and listeners will learn how those they left behind have tried to cope with their loss and to move on with their lives. The episode also examines the origins of the more sinister theories for why the DC-7C went down, and tries to get closer to the truth about what could have possibly gone wrong.

The DC-7C that crashed into the Gulf of Alaska in June 1963 was the workplace for a crew of six professionals from Northwest Airlines, and we met pilot Albert Olsen – with help from his son and daughter –earlier in the series. The early 1960s was a different time, when female flight attendants were called “stewardesses” and weren’t allowed to be married, and the cockpit was the domain of only male aviators.

One of the two stewardesses aboard Flight 293 was a woman in her late 20s named Patricia Moran.

“I’d go up front, and she’d be sitting there, everybody’s sleeping,” said Darlene Jevne. She also was a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years and ago and who considered “Patti” Moran a friend.

Episode 1 of ‘Unsolved Histories’ is called ‘Brothers:’ Flight 293 never arrived at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska

Episode 2 is called ‘The Wreckage:’ Finding a haunting memento after the 1963 plane crash

“And she’d be scribbling and writing down wonderful things,” Darlene said, because Patti was a poet who published a collection of poems in 1962. “You know, when you look outside of the aircraft when you’re flying,” Darlene continued, “and all the stars in beautiful scenery and the clouds?”

“She put that all to poetry,” Darlene said.

Along with being a poet, Darlene says her friend Patti was already married and pregnant by the time she died aboard Flight 203, and was keeping both a secret from the airline so she could continue working.

Irene Johnson was also a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years ago. She was in the same training class as Patti Moran, but Irene left airline work behind in 1961. She got married earlier that year and then became pregnant, but she worked as long as she could physically still do the job before calling it quits.

Since the “no marriage” rules didn’t apply to Irene’s husband Don Schaap, he kept his job as a steward, what they called male flight attendants in those days, for Northwest Airlines. Don was assigned to work Flight 293.

“There was a knock at the door and it was a colleague of my husband’s and a personal friend, our cabin services supervisor, and he said ‘Irene, can we come in?,’” Irene Johnson said, describing the moment at home with her infant daughter when she first learned that something had gone wrong on Don Schaap’s flight to Anchorage.

“And they said that they’ve ‘lost radio contact with the plane, we want you to know about that,'” Irene continued.

At first, Irene wasn’t overly concerned. She believed in Northwest Airlines’ management, and swore by the company’s safety record. And Irene believed in the DC-7C.

“I was so convinced that everything was going to be okay,” Irene said, “because I had such faith in the airline running a good, tight ship.”

Episode 3 is called ‘Best Friends:’ ‘Jody has always stayed with me’ after 1963 crash

Episode 4 is called ‘Scuttlebutt:’ One theory is friendly fire brought down Flight 293

Episode 5 is called ‘The Ditching:’ Another Flight 293 nearly suffered a similar disaster

Northwest Airlines flight attendant Patti Moran, center, in a childhood photo, was secretly married just a few months before she died on Flight 293. Her siblings are on each side of her. (Photo courtesy of Rosie Geer)

And though the search for survivors was called off, Irene clung to this faith for more than a year. It was the summer of 1964 when she ran into a Northwest Airlines executive during a trip to Minnesota to visit her husband’s family.

“‘Irene, give up that hope. I was at the crash scene,'” Irene said the airline executive told her. “’There was nothing but small debris floating,'” the man continued, Irene said. “‘That thing had to have come apart in the air,'” he said.

More from Feliks Banel: The historian’s most recent stories for KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest

Those particular words contributed to a conspiracy theory that Irene and many other family members left behind by the tragedy of Flight 293 would continue to believe for decades: that Flight 293 had been shot down by an air-to-air missile.

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