West Seattle, Washington
07 Saturday
The Kenney‘s CEO Kevin McFeely had an extra reason to be all smiles Wednesday afternoon – friends and colleagues from around the area crowded one of the West Seattle retirement center’s meeting rooms for a reception in his honor. The occasion: He’s been elected to chair the board of Aging Services of Washington, whose CEO Deb Murphy is with him in the top photo. According to an announcement from The Kenney, McFeely will serve a one-year term working with Murphy “in support of Aging Services’ legislative advocacy and professional development programs.” Serious work – though he got a goofy gift from his staff, worn ever so briefly at the reception:
McFeely has been on the Aging Services of Washington board since 2001. You can find out more about the group at agingwa.org.
We’ve reported before on Rebuilding Together Seattle‘s projects in West Seattle – part of their work all over the city handling repair/renovation work for people in need – and this week they were back out west to help WestSide Baby, thanks to a Pepsi Beverage Company grant.
Margie at RTS says 30 Pepsi volunteers pitched in to help WestSide Baby fix up the new space it’s using for more storage near its White Center headquarters; lots more photos on the RTS website
As the Seattle-area Susan Komen 3 Day for the Cure walk starts this morning, thanks to Glen Syvertsen for sharing that new video featuring Tracy Dart, the breast-cancer survivor who is namesake for West Seattle’s best-known 3 Day team, Team Tracy, with narration by Tom Hutyler, best known as the Safeco Field “Voice of the Mariners.” (Tom and Glen are both West Seattleites too.) Team Tracy did make the $40,000 fundraising goal mentioned in the video, by the way, and as Tracy mentions on her website, she’s carrying the “Courage” banner in the Survivors’ Circle. Team Tracy members and hundreds of others will leave Redmond this morning on an east/north route, concluding at Memorial Stadium downtown on Sunday. If you’d like to cheer the walkers along the way, “cheering stations” are listed on the 3 Day website. Good luck to all the walkers!
The Washington State Lottery just sent us that photo with word that 85-year-old Mabel Aide, who’s lived in West Seattle since 1945, just hit the Hit 5 jackpot – $160,000. According to the lottery’s communications team, she and her best friend always play together – he calls the hotline and reads her the numbers – she thought she had four out of five, then doublechecked, and realized she hit all five. First reaction? “Relief.” What’ll she do with the money? Pay off bills and her mortgage, and travel, she told the lottery folks. By the way, she bought the ticket at Jefferson Square Safeway – which gets $1,600 for selling it.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
“It’s out of the oven!”
So proclaims nationally renowned food writer Kim O’Donnel of her new book “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook,” published this month, and new this week on West Seattle shelves (at Click! Design That Fits [WSB sponsor]).
O’Donnel is a relatively recent West Seattle transplant – one year so far on Alki, after a couple years elsewhere in Seattle following a move from “the other Washington,” where she was a longtime food writer for the Washington Post, for which she also hosted Web chats and produced a series of online cooking videos long before such things were commonplace.
“The other Washington” also is where she was when we spoke by phone earlier this week, as she started a national tour for “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook” (the tour will of course bring her back here for readings/signings, too), which suggests one meatless menu for every week of the year.
Right off the top, we should mention, O’Donnel is not a vegetarian (as you’ll hear her explain in the promotional video clip atop this story).
Preventing and tracking crime were the main points of discussion at Tuesday night’s West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting, first time the group’s met since June – members voted earlier this year to change the bylaws to skip July and August meetings. Toplines – including which crimes are up, who’s on the street, and a one-day chance to clean out your medicine cabinet – ahead:Read More
(Photo by Deanie Schwarz)
A rare break tonight for the team at White Center’s Proletariat Pizza – proprietors Stefanie and Mike Albaeck, Highland Park residents (shown above with daughter Hazel and newborn Hollis), took their staff out for an anniversary celebration. Proletariat just finished its first year in business. For our partner site White Center Now, contributing reporter Deanie Schwarz talked with the Albaecks about their amazing year – read the full story here.
The Jade West Café north of Morgan Junction has remained closed since the drunk-driving crash last December that left longtime proprietor Wah Wong and his son Jason Wong seriously injured. (The drunk driver who hit them pleaded guilty and was sentenced last February.) We’ve been trying to reach the family for a while for a followup – but today, something new arrived in the inbox, with a fast-approaching deadline: The ongoing Pepsi Refresh “vote for a project Pepsi will fund” promotion has partnered with Major League Soccer, and each team proposed a project. The Seattle Sounders‘ project seeks to get the $50,000 Pepsi grant to renovate the Wongs’ Beacon Hill home, to help with the mobility issues they’ve suffered because of the crash injuries – Jason lost a leg. WSB’er Ben forwarded us a Sounders e-mail about this – the first he, and we, had heard of it – but take note, THE VOTING DEADLINE IS 8:59 PM OUR TIME TONIGHT. You can vote here.
Thanks to Seana for sharing the link: Almost exactly a year after the alcohol-poisoning death of 15-year-old Nick Barnes, a former Madison Middle School student who had moved to Lewis County, charges have been filed there. Lewis County Sirens reports that the owner of the house where Nick was found unconscious, 29-year-old James W. Taylor, is charged with nine crimes including second-degree manslaughter. More details here.
(Photo by Sofia Zadra Goff)
Two celebrations of note: First – Parent Trust for Washington Children has given its 2010 Leadership Award to the five authors of the million-plus-copies-selling manual “Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn” – including West Seattle’s April Bolding (second from right, with, from left, Penny Simkin, Ann Keppler, Janet Whalley, and Janelle Durham). Thursday also was proclaimed “Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn” Day by King County Executive Dow Constantine, in honor of the book that’s guided countless expectant parents over the past 20 years. It’s been revised multiple times, with the fourth edition now out; Bolding joined the co-author team in 2007. (Read more about her on her website, here.)
More awards: At left, a photo from Tuesday night’s awards ceremony at the Duwamish Longhouse for the West Seattle Garden Tour (co-sponsored this year by WSB) and its 2010 beneficiaries – who received a total of $23,190 from the nonprofit tour’s proceeds. The 2010 beneficiaries were Highland Park Elementary School, Seattle Tilth, Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center Rain Garden, South Seattle Community College Arboretum and ArtsWest (WSB sponsor). WSGT provided the photo, identifying those left to right as: Jim Reid (WSGT 2010 VP and current President) and Kam Boulle (WSGT 2010 President) with representatives from HP Elementary, Duwamish Longhouse, Seattle Tilth and ArtsWest. Meantime, the West Seattle Garden Tour membership committee is seeking new volunteers – they meet for monthly potlucks “to review the steady, building progress of the tour.” Interested in helping? westseattlegt@gmail.com – next meeting is October 13th.
One of West Seattle’s newest residents will have quite the story to tell when she grows up! She’s the 7-pound, 15.7-ounce newborn daughter of Kelly Faherty and husband Mike – born at 3:30 yesterday afternoon in the parking area of the Swedish Medical Clinic at 3400 California SW. No, they don’t routinely deliver babies there, but this is Kelly and Mike’s second child, and their new daughter just wasn’t going to wait long enough for a trip to the hospital downtown. Swedish’s Ed Boyle got permission to share that much with us; we also checked in with the Seattle Fire Department, since firefighters responded too. SFD’s Dana Vander Houwen says one of the firefighters who responded (Engine 29 and Medic 32 were sent out) told her that a clinic doctor came out and delivered the baby on a gurney in the parking area, with firefighter and firefighter/paramedic help! From there, mom and baby were taken to Swedish Medical Center on First Hill, and by all accounts are doing well.
At this week’s Kiwanis Club of West Seattle lunch meeting, the club honored Alki Lumber and Hardware owner Jim Sweeney as an “Everyday Hero.” He donated materials for the Kiwanis service project in June that placed bag dispensers at Westcrest Off-Leash Area, West Seattle’s only off-leash dog park. Alki Lumber was founded by his father William J. Sweeney – a onetime president of the Kiwanis chapter; Jim Sweeney took over at age 20 when his father died in 1959. (Our photo shows him with the Kiwanis Club’s West Niver.) When he started running the business, Sweeney said, Seattle had 131 lumber yards, but today, only a handful remain – they’re planning to expand their hardware section this year, though, and will be an Orgill Hardware affiliate when that’s done.
(Video from West Seattle See Dogs and other guide puppies meeting SPD horses in Highland Park in June)
Tonight at the Mariners-Angels game, guide dogs will be in the spotlight – local Guide Dogs for the Blind volunteers, puppy-raisers including West Seattle See Dogs, and others, sold more than 738 tickets for the game and get the honor of throwing out the first pitch! West Seattle See Dogs’ Ruth Oldham tells WSB, “There will be over 40 guide dog puppies and guide dogs in the stands and on the Main Concourse Meeting and Greeting fans as they arrive. (Section 128 behind Home Plate) at the Main Entrance.” Then around 6:40 pm, Ruth says, “The First Pitch (will be) thrown out by Bob Sonnenburg and his guide Nino (since this whole thing was Bob’s idea!). Other pre-selected GDB volunteers and pups will join Bob on the field.” They’ll also have informational tables for Guide Dogs for the Blind at a couple of places around the stadium, and if you’re at the game, you’ll hear announcements too. Ruth enthuses, “What an incredible opportunity. There has never an event this large with the potential for increasing public awareness about Guide Dogs, and increasing public awareness about blindness in general.”
Daryl and Donna e-mailed to ask that we publish news of Helen Finnell‘s passing, explaining, “Helen was a resident of West Seattle from approximately 1948-2003 and volunteered for a number of years at both the West Seattle Senior Center and Food Bank.” Her memorial and burial are set for this Tuesday. Read ahead for the full announcement:Read More
Jack Miller at Husky Deli has been getting condolences all day from folks getting the news about his Aunt Alyce, who worked at the store for more than 70 of her 90 years – until August 10th, less than two weeks ago. She died yesterday morning. She never married but leaves behind 20 nieces and nephews. She was born Mary Alyce Miller on November 15, 1919 in Peru, Indiana, and moved to West Seattle in 1931. In 1936, her father bought the Edgewood Farm Grocery, and she began working behind the counter. Jack Miller says she’s the one “who got the store through the war.” She worked to keep it open and operating even when wartime rationing and restrictions were in place. Jack says she was always dedicated to the family business, and that she taught him the value of a dollar earned. Alyce’s rosary and vigil will be 7 pm this Friday night at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, followed by her Funeral Mass there at 10:30 am Saturday.
On the day that longtime West Seattle entrepreneur and Rotarian Ken Wise was remembered — a crowd packed Fauntleroy Church for his 11 am memorial service – a proclamation from King County Executive Dow Constantine honors Mr. Wise. See it here (thanks to Brian Waid for sharing it). Mr. Wise died of cancer on Aug. 1st at age 79.
So it turns out there was a major West Seattle connection to yesterday’s presidential visit beyond The Big Booms. From the “we’re embarrassed we didn’t know this earlier” department, a longtime WSB’er e-mailed tonight to point out that Gillian Allen-White, the Grand Central Bakery co-owner who hosted President Obama’s mini-business roundtable in Pioneer Square yesterday, is a West Seattleite – co-president of the Sanislo Elementary School PTA, in fact. She is at the president’s left in the WhiteHouse.gov video above, and there’s a photo on SeattleTimes.com (WSB partner) tonight, with a story by food writer Nancy Leson, who followed up with Allen-White to get the lowdown on what the president ordered for lunch while there.
Story and photos by Jonathan Stumpf
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
Lisa Coronado — an actress, producer, and West Seattle resident — is still marveling at the recent phone call she received from the owner of C&P Coffee Company, offering up the coffeehouse as a filming location and any services it can provide to Coronado and her West Seattle-based show “The Divine Marigolds,” which she hopes will make it to TV.
“I mean, where else are you going to get that except West Seattle?” asked Coronado during a break from a script reading of the pilot episode, titled “Finnegan’s Wake.”
They describe their show as “a heartfelt comedy about a tight knit Irish-American family set in the gorgeous Alki Beach area of Seattle, Washington.”
Thanks to Sue for noticing this and sharing the link: Central District News has an update today on Leschi neighbors’ plans for a memorial to Seattle Police Officer Tim Brenton, murdered there in the line of duty last fall. Officer Brenton, you may recall, had West Seattle ties, including having graduated from West Seattle High School in 1988. The CD News story includes images of what is on the drawing board for the memorial in Leschi – and a request for donations if you’d like to help them cover its $25,000 cost. Meantime, Officer Brenton’s accused murderer awaits trial.
(WSB photo from December 2009)
That’s the family-suggested heading for the obituary that will appear in the Seattle Times this weekend and was shared with us for publication today by Dave Townsend, nephew of Ken Wise, the longtime entrepreneur, Rotarian, and totem-pole sleuth – the only photo in our files is the one above, with Mr. Wise at left, the day he and fellow Rotarian Duane Ruud (right) went out to Lake Sawyer to try to track down the then-missing pole, later recovered, and then reinstalled four days before his death (as Rotary past president Amy Lee Derenthal noted at last night’s rededication). Hours before that sleuthing expedition (which WSB co-publisher Patrick Sand tagged along for, taking the above photo), Mr. Wise had joined in the annual Rotary Shopping Spree at SODO Sears – an event he founded, according to his obituary. His service is one week from tomorrow, as you’ll read, ahead:
Born and raised in West Seattle, Kenny Wise was a local institution:
From leading the West Seattle Rotary Kiddies Parade at Hi-Yu, to being Santa for years at the Rotary Christmas shopping day at Sears for needy children, which he initiated in 1974, and most recently leading the hunt for the stolen Rotary Totem Pole, he was everywhere in West Seattle.
(Photos courtesy West Seattle Amateur Radio Club)
If you were out on Alki on Saturday and passed the Oldsmobile seen on the left in the photo above, you might have noticed it was no ordinary car: It served as an antenna for the West Seattle Amateur Radio Club, whose members set up a tent at Alki Beach Park, conducting a special operation in honor of the nearby Alki Lighthouse:
(By the tent, that’s Chris [KE7JBF], who we’re told brought the pink box o’ treats from Cupcake Royale [WSB sponsor].) The event’s goal: To “activate” the lighthouse via radio transmissions with the code USA005, in honor of International Lighthouse and Lightship Week (which concluded on Saturday). Club member Steve (K6US) sent the code before the Saturday rain really got going:
They weren’t able to operate from the lighthouse itself, according to club vice president Curt Black (WR5J), because, as an official U.S. Coast Guard installation, “it’s pretty busy during Seafair.” So they’re hoping to set up on its grounds in two weeks, on August 21st. (You can find out more about the club at westseattlearc.com.)
By Keri DeTore
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
Since January, we’ve been following the story of Lisa Town, diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43, and her husband David Town, who committed to participating in this year’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Climb to Fight Breast Cancer on Mount Rainier.
Here’s our original story from January; then in March, they held a fundraiser at Talarico’s to help them get to their $5,000 goal, the amount required to participate in the climb. Tonight, we can report that not only did they reach their financial goal, but David summitted Mount Rainier on July 24th during Climb for the Cure.
“It was a great feeling … a big relief,” says David.
By Christian Reyes
University of Washington News Lab
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
Amid summer plans and college applications, Chief Sealth International High School student Molly Freed took a break from her regular life to attend a special conference with her social-studies teacher more than a thousand miles away.
Freed and her teacher, Noah Zeichner, were named Bezos Scholars in mid-April, an honor that only 12 students and 12 educators received across the country. All scholars attended the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado in July.
“I was incredibly excited,” Freed said when describing her reaction when she first heard the news. “I had connected my happiness in general to whether or not I got into the program, so I was relieved that my summer was (going to be) as life-changing as I thought.”
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