A Case for Civics Education
Parkland Spanaway Rotary – June 22, 2010
Hans Zeiger
The educational challenges facing our country are very great. We are increasingly aware of our need to compete with the rest of the world.
An aspect of education that we overlook in our haste to make students economically competent is the need for political competence. Education is more than just how to be a worker. It is how to be a citizen.
A study of 14,000 college freshmen and seniors by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute with the University of Connecticut in 2007 found that civic literacy was appallingly low. The survey asked 60 basic questions about American government and history. The average freshman score was 50.4 percent and the average senior score was 54.2 percent. Those are failing grades. According to a 2003 survey by the National Conference on State Legislatures, the Center for Civic Education, and the Center on Congress at Indiana University, only about half of Americans between 15-26 said it’s important to be informed about government and politics; fewer than half thought it was important to express opinions to elected officials. The same survey showed that 82 percent of young people could identify Springfield as the hometown of the Simpsons, and 64 percent could name the current American Idol; only 10 percent could identify the Speaker of the House.
Civics education is important in a democratic republic because each of us is responsible for our government. Our form of government requires participation, and participation requires education.
Civics education teaches the way in which all can be included in the American experiment. It contains at its heart the American creed, that all human beings are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It teaches the need for responsibility, both personally and publicly.
The study of citizenship both locally and nationally is so important now, because our sense of identity is challenged in so many ways. We are more diverse and more globally-focused than ever before. The internet draws young Americans beyond the local communities in which they live. All of these things are good—diversity, globalization, the internet. Young people also need a sense of national identity and sense of responsibility as citizens.
The problem with civics education isn’t just a statistical thing that’s reflected in the study I cited. It’s a real crisis of priorities. In the 1960s, civic education began to disappear from schools. In 1961, 73 percent of high schools offered U.S. History, and by 1973, that had dropped to 53 percent.
The main reason government invests in public education in the first place is because we need to educate the future leaders of our government. Our Founders saw this civic link. They wrote in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787– one of the four organic documents of our country – “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government an the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Many of the Founders emphasized the importance of education. George Washington called for a national university. Benjamin Franklin taught the necessity of practical education and founded the University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Tyler in 1810 that with his political career concluded, “I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength.” The two goals were:
1. “That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.”[1]
Jefferson’s 1818 Rockfish Gap Report listed thirteen educational goals of the university, including several directly related to the formation of good citizens:
“To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either….
To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens….
To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend;
To expound the principles and structure of government….”[2]
Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
This continued under statehood. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.”
But the father of basic education in Washington was a man from Puyallup named John R. Rogers. He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them.
So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.
Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.
There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.
The story of John Rogers serves two purposes. It tells us something about our education system in this state. It also shows us what men and women can achieve in a free society. And young people need to learn about men like this in order to have models of how they can do great things as well.
Civics education took a couple of turns in the 20th Century. First, it was complicated by the Progressive movement, which celebrated the administrative state as a solution to the increasing complexity of society’s problems. Instead of solving problems through the three branches of government, you could delegate a lot of issues to bureaucracies, and so you needed a professional expert class of civil servants to deal with problems. Second, a lot of what was known as civics and history was lumped together under the heading of Social Studies. That meant that current events and issues often became more important than a deep understanding of our institutions, history, and national idea.
But civics education is just as important as ever. There are at least five reasons why we need to make it a priority:
1. We need a knowledgeable electorate.
2. Every generation must be reminded of the American idea of equality and liberty.
3. We need good and well-educated political leaders.
4. We need a way to educate new citizens.
5. We need civility grounded in a common understanding of who we are as a people.
Altogether civics education can help to cement our identity as a people. We should be humble – we are far from perfect, but our experiment is great in the history of the world. We have always had sufficient pride in our country and common intellectual and moral resources to pull together in time of need. It would be a tragedy if we forgot our identity. Nations can survive wars and famines and depressions. But nations that go through identity crises rarely come through intact.
Today we can do three things to promote this: get involved in organizations that promote civic education, ensure that local school districts are taking history and civics seriously, and find ways to get involved in civic life of our community. Of course, Rotary does that.
[1] Jefferson to John Tyler, 26 May 1810, The Essential Jefferson, ed. Jean M. Yarbrough, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2006), 207.
[2] Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” 1818, Yarbrough, 67.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
A Message to the Class of 2010
Puyallup High School Commencement
Hans Zeiger
June 12, 2010
Watch a video here.
Thank you Lauren. Mr. Smith, Boardmembers Heath and Ihrig, Superintendent Apostle—my brother Ross Zeiger:
My task this morning is to persuade Dr. Apostle that you deserve your diplomas. If I succeed, you can walk. If I fail, you have to start all over again as sophomores.
At the dawn of time, about eighteen years ago, the class of 2010 came into the world.
It was a remarkable moment in history. About that same time, a new word entered our vocabulary: internet. You in the class of 2010 have never known life without it. Think how much the world has changed since you and the internet were born. And consider the opportunities as well as the challenges before you.
Not least is the challenge of remembering what it is to be human.
For all the technological wonders that mark our age, nothing can replace the wonder of the person sitting next to you. No collection of online information can take the place of the teachers who have guided you through school. And no number of Facebook “friendships” can improve on the awesome potential for love and service that you’ve known in a flesh-and-blood community.
You in the class of 2010 are the inheritors of a grand story—generations old, borne of extraordinary generosity, and deeply infused with pride of place.
One hundred years ago, 1910, the new Puyallup High School opened its doors. Ninety-nine Junes ago, the great educator Edmund B. Walker presented diplomas to the first class. To the sons and daughters of Puyallup who walked after that class, the friendships and values formed here have been a source of strength in the midst of the years.
Today, a new generation of Vikings is waiting at the commencement platform. Because our hopes are invested with yours, today is a happy day. It is also sad, because it’s hard to say goodbye.
But always remember that you can come home.
As you part ways today, take inspiration from the significance of your heritage. Wherever you go now, let them know that you come from a place called Puyallup. Tell them that purple and gold runs in your blood. Then come back here to this Valley and let it run on.
And so, I have one charge for you this morning: Never forget where you come from. May it be your lifelong ambition to give generously to the community that has given so much to you. Puyallup means “The Generous People.” All around you is proof that we live up to our name. Your task in the years ahead is to continue that great tradition.
God bless you.
Hans Zeiger
June 12, 2010
Watch a video here.
Thank you Lauren. Mr. Smith, Boardmembers Heath and Ihrig, Superintendent Apostle—my brother Ross Zeiger:
My task this morning is to persuade Dr. Apostle that you deserve your diplomas. If I succeed, you can walk. If I fail, you have to start all over again as sophomores.
At the dawn of time, about eighteen years ago, the class of 2010 came into the world.
It was a remarkable moment in history. About that same time, a new word entered our vocabulary: internet. You in the class of 2010 have never known life without it. Think how much the world has changed since you and the internet were born. And consider the opportunities as well as the challenges before you.
Not least is the challenge of remembering what it is to be human.
For all the technological wonders that mark our age, nothing can replace the wonder of the person sitting next to you. No collection of online information can take the place of the teachers who have guided you through school. And no number of Facebook “friendships” can improve on the awesome potential for love and service that you’ve known in a flesh-and-blood community.
You in the class of 2010 are the inheritors of a grand story—generations old, borne of extraordinary generosity, and deeply infused with pride of place.
One hundred years ago, 1910, the new Puyallup High School opened its doors. Ninety-nine Junes ago, the great educator Edmund B. Walker presented diplomas to the first class. To the sons and daughters of Puyallup who walked after that class, the friendships and values formed here have been a source of strength in the midst of the years.
Today, a new generation of Vikings is waiting at the commencement platform. Because our hopes are invested with yours, today is a happy day. It is also sad, because it’s hard to say goodbye.
But always remember that you can come home.
As you part ways today, take inspiration from the significance of your heritage. Wherever you go now, let them know that you come from a place called Puyallup. Tell them that purple and gold runs in your blood. Then come back here to this Valley and let it run on.
And so, I have one charge for you this morning: Never forget where you come from. May it be your lifelong ambition to give generously to the community that has given so much to you. Puyallup means “The Generous People.” All around you is proof that we live up to our name. Your task in the years ahead is to continue that great tradition.
God bless you.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Superintendents Who Built Puyallup
Superintendents Who Built Puyallup
By Hans Zeiger
Daffodil Kiwanis
Mrs. Turner’s Restaurant, May 5, 2010
Thank you for having me. Charlie and Clarence are the ones to blame for the invitation.
I’ve been talking at the various service clubs in the area lately about great men and women in our local history. I was thinking about what aspect of our community’s history I could discuss this morning. I’ve been to this club enough times in the past to know that there are a few school administrators who show up here. That means that I have to be on my best behavior this morning—even if you’re not on your best behavior.
Puyallup is an education community, and many of you have had a big role in that. So I decided it might be worth talking about a couple of the great superintendents who built the Puyallup School District, E.B. Walker and Paul Hanawalt. These two men laid the groundwork for this school district to be one of the great districts in the State of Washington. They shared Indiana roots, a passion for kids, and a positive vision for the future.
Edmund Burton Walker was born the same week the Civil War began in April of 1861. He was born on a farm across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky on the Indiana side, near a little town called New Albany. Of course Kentucky was a slave state and Indiana was a free state. So as Edmund grew up in New Albany during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he was aware of the country’s deep divisions and inequalities.
He also would have come to know that education might have an equalizing effect. Horace Mann had talked about education as the great equalizer. Edmund attended a rural grade school, and then went on to the high school in New Albany. And there was a unique thing about that high school that must have shaped Edmund’s views of education powerfully, and that was that New Albany High School was the first public high school in the State of Indiana.
Edmund Walker received a good education there, and after graduating he worked his way through college at DePauw University north in Greencastle by taking summer school and correspondence courses. He received his teaching credentials and taught in New Albany for the next two decades. He spent most of his years there as principal at East Spring Street Elementary School. He married a former student named Nancy Jane Young in 1885.
By 1903, Walker’s brother had gone west to Tacoma where he started a hardware store. So Edmund and Nancy Jane and their three kids and Edmund’s parents decided that they would all go west too. That summer of 1903, they packed up their belongings, boarded a train, and almost didn’t make it out of the Midwest. The train nearly derailed as it passed out of Illinois where the Mississippi River was flooding and endangering the railway. The train stopped, and the conductor came through to organize the passengers according to weight in order to keep the train in balance.
In Tacoma, Walker figured out that he wasn’t cut out for the hardware business, so he left his brother to run the store while he went over to Central School to take the Washington State teaching exam. His score on the math section was perfect.
The Puyallup School District needed a principal at Spinning Elementary, and Walker showed up just in time for the start of the 1903 school year. Walker’s daughter Maude recalled moving to Puyallup in a profile of her father in 1975. She wrote, “Puyallup in 1903-’04 was a small community with many churches. During the summer there were many Indian hop-pickers and seasonal workers roaming the streets. Every member of families went out to berry fields and hop fields in those days. I have visions yet of picking hops and carefully emptying many small containers into the big hop box. Our church friends introduced us to harvesting crops and we met many friendly people there. I especially remember our lunches of applesauce and jelly sandwiches – a happy time even if the yellow jackets buzzed around us as they were hungry too!”
Walker only lasted one school year at Spinning before he was hired by the Auburn School District to be their superintendent. He worked there from 1904 to 1908, and then the Puyallup School District wanted him back, so E.B. and Nancy Jane Walker came back in 1908 and moved into a big house on Pioneer.
E.B. Walker had several principles that he tried to impart to Puyallup’s teachers. His daughter listed four of them:
1. Be firm but fair—always kind
2. Keep a keen sense of humor.
3. Look for the good in every pupil.
4. Guard against raising your voice when provoked.
E.B. Walker had three great achievements during his 12 years as Puyallup’s education leader. First, he opened Puyallup High School in 1910. The class of 1910 graduated from Puyallup Central School, and the class of 1911 was able to enjoy the impressive new building. It was built at a cost of less than $35,000, which would be about $800,000 in today’s dollars. That was 100 years ago.
Second, Walker became the leading advocate for a public library in Puyallup. He chaired the library board that began raising money for a library. There’s a photo on the first page of Lori Price and Ruth Anderson’s history of Puyallup of women loaded into cars to raise money for the library. And the idea for the fundraiser was that they would cruise town with the authorization to impose fines on miscreants. They raised $425 that day. Finally, Walker wrote the grant requests that led to the Carnegie Foundation’s major gift to establish Puyallup’s first library in 1912.
And Walker’s third great achievement was selecting the junior high model for the Puyallup School District. He opened the Puyallup Junior High on the high school campus in 1919.
Sadly, the same school year that Walker opened the junior high, he contracted cancer, and he stepped down as superintendent in 1920 and died the following year. As the community mourned his passing, a local banker named C.M. Case donated a silver cup to Puyallup High School in honor of E.B. Walker. To this day, the cup is presented to a graduating senior who has demonstrated qualities of character, citizenship, personality, and scholarship. Now, the Walker Cup is duplicated for Rogers and Emerald Ridge as well, and the district’s fourth high school, the alternative school, was named E.B. Walker High School. There’s also a plaque in memory of Walker outside the old junior high entrance on the high school. So the Walker legacy continues.
One of Walker’s hires for the new junior high was a young man who had grown up in Tacoma, graduated from the College of Puget Sound just before World War I and then joined the Navy. When he returned from the war, he put in an application to Walker. So E.B. Walker hired Paul Hanawalt in the fall of 1919 to teach math in the junior high.
Hanawalt worked for the Puyallup School District for the next 41 years. Hanawalt had an extraordinary personality. He was always positive, always cheerful, and what people remember the most is that he was always whistling. Ruth Brackman Martinson, student body president at PHS in 1941-1942 and then the school’s secretary, told me that Hanawalt was “always loving and kindly. He could whistle like birds—he could make them sound like the bird was right in the room. That was what enthralled kids.”
Paul Hanawalt was born in 1896 in Greencastle, Indiana, the same place where E.B. Walker had gone for his college education. Hanawalt moved to Tacoma as a child when his father was hired as professor of math at the College of Puget Sound. Hanawalt graduated from Stadium High School. Then at CPS, he played basketball, was elected class president, and met his wife Alice. They would have a son Frank and a daughter Ruth. Frank passed away recently, but I had the privilege of interviewing him a couple years ago. He was a great educator in his own right, principal of Garfield High School, philanthropic leader, and civil rights activist in Seattle.
Paul Hanawalt quickly rose from Junior High principal to High School principal during the 1920s. He coached track and basketball.
When Hanawalt took the superintendent’s office in 1930, the school district budget was in trouble. His first task was to resolve the district’s serious warrant debt. In 1932, he cut teacher salaries by 5 percent in order to keep the district in balance and avoid layoffs. “He was successful,” his son Frank told me. None of the teachers “ever got a check that had problems. He had a good business mind as well as being an outstanding educator.”
By the mid-1930s, Hanawalt pursued federal funding for school construction, which he used in the construction of the new Maplewood Elementary, his first major project. A number of other milestones occurred over the course of Hanawalt’s long tenure. The Puyallup Heights School merged with the District in 1944, Firgrove merged in 1946, and Waller Road was consolidated in 1950. Hanawalt introduced driver’s ed courses to the school district in 1946. He led the drive for a $185,000 bond measure to expand Meeker and Maplewood in 1947. He oversaw the construction of Karshner Elementary in 1952, East Junior High in 1956, and the consolidation of Woodland School in 1956.
In all of this, kids came first. Hanawalt had faith in his students and faith in the community. He patiently encouraged kids to work hard in school and succeed. “The ceiling is unlimited,” he often said in his speeches around town. He was a big proponent of character education.
Hanawalt had high moral standards for himself and his teachers. My Grandpa tells me that according to the superintendent’s rules, “you didn’t buy liquor or beer in the local stores, and you didn’t go to the taverns.” Somebody once brought a case of Pabst to his office, and when he was moving offices years later, they found the beer unopened. Hanawalt also disapproved of teachers smoking cigarettes. Furthermore, he told the district faculty that “you need to live in the community.”
Hanawalt worked with a number of school board members over his long service, but the ones who served longest and most notably are Fred DeBon (1939-1947), Charles Aylen (1931-1942), and Eileen Kalles (1952-1965).
During the difficult years of the Depression and the War, Hanawalt was a man with a social conscience. He made at least one public gesture of support for Japanese-American students who were evacuated to the Puyallup Fairgrounds in the spring of 1942.
Hanawalt went to the relocation authorities and requested a brief leave for several Japanese-American students of Puyallup High School who were to graduate with the Class of 1942. His request was approved. On graduation day in June, the superintendent drove to the gates of the Fairgrounds, where he picked up Rosie Takemura and Yukio Takeuchi and took them to the high school auditorium to walk with their class.
When the exercises had finished, Rosie and Yukio made their way back out to Mr. Hanawalt’s car, which he would drive back to the Fairgrounds. But first, he made a detour up Pioneer and stopped at Martin’s Confectionary. There, he treated the new Viking alums to Mr. Martin’s homemade ice cream. We should not forget such moments in the history of our community.
Several years later, my own family story would intersect with the legend of Paul Hanawalt. Hanawalt hired my Grandpa Ed to teach Fifth Grade at Maplewood Elementary in 1952. My grandpa had a choice among three school districts, and he chose Puyallup, I’m sure in no small part because of Hanawalt’s leadership. In 1958, my great grandparents moved to Puyallup as well, and great grandpa Ernest taught science at West Junior High while great grandpa Leata taught kindergarten at Meeker.
Hanawalt had fun with his staff. My grandpa tells the story of the annual faculty picnic softball game in which Hanawalt was thrown a softball—or the cover of a softball filled with flour. “Boy did he lay into that thing.”
Of course, as you know, Paul Hanawalt was a Kiwanian, and he had a 33-year perfect attendance record. He was also involved with the American Legion, Chamber, and served for a time as chairman of the State Teachers Retirement System.
Hanawalt’s name is preserved on the gymnasium of Puyallup High School, appropriate since he was an enthusiast for Puyallup athletics. In his three decades as superintendent, he was a reliable presence in the stands of Viking Field and the bleachers of the high school gym. So Hanawalt’s legacy lives on.
Paul Hanawalt and E.B. Walker—these two men exemplify something about our community that is noble, and that has endured through over a century and a half as thousands of students have come through this school district. There is a certain greatness about those who give their lives to the education of the young. E.B. Walker and Paul Hanawalt were great men.
By Hans Zeiger
Daffodil Kiwanis
Mrs. Turner’s Restaurant, May 5, 2010
Thank you for having me. Charlie and Clarence are the ones to blame for the invitation.
I’ve been talking at the various service clubs in the area lately about great men and women in our local history. I was thinking about what aspect of our community’s history I could discuss this morning. I’ve been to this club enough times in the past to know that there are a few school administrators who show up here. That means that I have to be on my best behavior this morning—even if you’re not on your best behavior.
Puyallup is an education community, and many of you have had a big role in that. So I decided it might be worth talking about a couple of the great superintendents who built the Puyallup School District, E.B. Walker and Paul Hanawalt. These two men laid the groundwork for this school district to be one of the great districts in the State of Washington. They shared Indiana roots, a passion for kids, and a positive vision for the future.
Edmund Burton Walker was born the same week the Civil War began in April of 1861. He was born on a farm across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky on the Indiana side, near a little town called New Albany. Of course Kentucky was a slave state and Indiana was a free state. So as Edmund grew up in New Albany during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he was aware of the country’s deep divisions and inequalities.
He also would have come to know that education might have an equalizing effect. Horace Mann had talked about education as the great equalizer. Edmund attended a rural grade school, and then went on to the high school in New Albany. And there was a unique thing about that high school that must have shaped Edmund’s views of education powerfully, and that was that New Albany High School was the first public high school in the State of Indiana.
Edmund Walker received a good education there, and after graduating he worked his way through college at DePauw University north in Greencastle by taking summer school and correspondence courses. He received his teaching credentials and taught in New Albany for the next two decades. He spent most of his years there as principal at East Spring Street Elementary School. He married a former student named Nancy Jane Young in 1885.
By 1903, Walker’s brother had gone west to Tacoma where he started a hardware store. So Edmund and Nancy Jane and their three kids and Edmund’s parents decided that they would all go west too. That summer of 1903, they packed up their belongings, boarded a train, and almost didn’t make it out of the Midwest. The train nearly derailed as it passed out of Illinois where the Mississippi River was flooding and endangering the railway. The train stopped, and the conductor came through to organize the passengers according to weight in order to keep the train in balance.
In Tacoma, Walker figured out that he wasn’t cut out for the hardware business, so he left his brother to run the store while he went over to Central School to take the Washington State teaching exam. His score on the math section was perfect.
The Puyallup School District needed a principal at Spinning Elementary, and Walker showed up just in time for the start of the 1903 school year. Walker’s daughter Maude recalled moving to Puyallup in a profile of her father in 1975. She wrote, “Puyallup in 1903-’04 was a small community with many churches. During the summer there were many Indian hop-pickers and seasonal workers roaming the streets. Every member of families went out to berry fields and hop fields in those days. I have visions yet of picking hops and carefully emptying many small containers into the big hop box. Our church friends introduced us to harvesting crops and we met many friendly people there. I especially remember our lunches of applesauce and jelly sandwiches – a happy time even if the yellow jackets buzzed around us as they were hungry too!”
Walker only lasted one school year at Spinning before he was hired by the Auburn School District to be their superintendent. He worked there from 1904 to 1908, and then the Puyallup School District wanted him back, so E.B. and Nancy Jane Walker came back in 1908 and moved into a big house on Pioneer.
E.B. Walker had several principles that he tried to impart to Puyallup’s teachers. His daughter listed four of them:
1. Be firm but fair—always kind
2. Keep a keen sense of humor.
3. Look for the good in every pupil.
4. Guard against raising your voice when provoked.
E.B. Walker had three great achievements during his 12 years as Puyallup’s education leader. First, he opened Puyallup High School in 1910. The class of 1910 graduated from Puyallup Central School, and the class of 1911 was able to enjoy the impressive new building. It was built at a cost of less than $35,000, which would be about $800,000 in today’s dollars. That was 100 years ago.
Second, Walker became the leading advocate for a public library in Puyallup. He chaired the library board that began raising money for a library. There’s a photo on the first page of Lori Price and Ruth Anderson’s history of Puyallup of women loaded into cars to raise money for the library. And the idea for the fundraiser was that they would cruise town with the authorization to impose fines on miscreants. They raised $425 that day. Finally, Walker wrote the grant requests that led to the Carnegie Foundation’s major gift to establish Puyallup’s first library in 1912.
And Walker’s third great achievement was selecting the junior high model for the Puyallup School District. He opened the Puyallup Junior High on the high school campus in 1919.
Sadly, the same school year that Walker opened the junior high, he contracted cancer, and he stepped down as superintendent in 1920 and died the following year. As the community mourned his passing, a local banker named C.M. Case donated a silver cup to Puyallup High School in honor of E.B. Walker. To this day, the cup is presented to a graduating senior who has demonstrated qualities of character, citizenship, personality, and scholarship. Now, the Walker Cup is duplicated for Rogers and Emerald Ridge as well, and the district’s fourth high school, the alternative school, was named E.B. Walker High School. There’s also a plaque in memory of Walker outside the old junior high entrance on the high school. So the Walker legacy continues.
One of Walker’s hires for the new junior high was a young man who had grown up in Tacoma, graduated from the College of Puget Sound just before World War I and then joined the Navy. When he returned from the war, he put in an application to Walker. So E.B. Walker hired Paul Hanawalt in the fall of 1919 to teach math in the junior high.
Hanawalt worked for the Puyallup School District for the next 41 years. Hanawalt had an extraordinary personality. He was always positive, always cheerful, and what people remember the most is that he was always whistling. Ruth Brackman Martinson, student body president at PHS in 1941-1942 and then the school’s secretary, told me that Hanawalt was “always loving and kindly. He could whistle like birds—he could make them sound like the bird was right in the room. That was what enthralled kids.”
Paul Hanawalt was born in 1896 in Greencastle, Indiana, the same place where E.B. Walker had gone for his college education. Hanawalt moved to Tacoma as a child when his father was hired as professor of math at the College of Puget Sound. Hanawalt graduated from Stadium High School. Then at CPS, he played basketball, was elected class president, and met his wife Alice. They would have a son Frank and a daughter Ruth. Frank passed away recently, but I had the privilege of interviewing him a couple years ago. He was a great educator in his own right, principal of Garfield High School, philanthropic leader, and civil rights activist in Seattle.
Paul Hanawalt quickly rose from Junior High principal to High School principal during the 1920s. He coached track and basketball.
When Hanawalt took the superintendent’s office in 1930, the school district budget was in trouble. His first task was to resolve the district’s serious warrant debt. In 1932, he cut teacher salaries by 5 percent in order to keep the district in balance and avoid layoffs. “He was successful,” his son Frank told me. None of the teachers “ever got a check that had problems. He had a good business mind as well as being an outstanding educator.”
By the mid-1930s, Hanawalt pursued federal funding for school construction, which he used in the construction of the new Maplewood Elementary, his first major project. A number of other milestones occurred over the course of Hanawalt’s long tenure. The Puyallup Heights School merged with the District in 1944, Firgrove merged in 1946, and Waller Road was consolidated in 1950. Hanawalt introduced driver’s ed courses to the school district in 1946. He led the drive for a $185,000 bond measure to expand Meeker and Maplewood in 1947. He oversaw the construction of Karshner Elementary in 1952, East Junior High in 1956, and the consolidation of Woodland School in 1956.
In all of this, kids came first. Hanawalt had faith in his students and faith in the community. He patiently encouraged kids to work hard in school and succeed. “The ceiling is unlimited,” he often said in his speeches around town. He was a big proponent of character education.
Hanawalt had high moral standards for himself and his teachers. My Grandpa tells me that according to the superintendent’s rules, “you didn’t buy liquor or beer in the local stores, and you didn’t go to the taverns.” Somebody once brought a case of Pabst to his office, and when he was moving offices years later, they found the beer unopened. Hanawalt also disapproved of teachers smoking cigarettes. Furthermore, he told the district faculty that “you need to live in the community.”
Hanawalt worked with a number of school board members over his long service, but the ones who served longest and most notably are Fred DeBon (1939-1947), Charles Aylen (1931-1942), and Eileen Kalles (1952-1965).
During the difficult years of the Depression and the War, Hanawalt was a man with a social conscience. He made at least one public gesture of support for Japanese-American students who were evacuated to the Puyallup Fairgrounds in the spring of 1942.
Hanawalt went to the relocation authorities and requested a brief leave for several Japanese-American students of Puyallup High School who were to graduate with the Class of 1942. His request was approved. On graduation day in June, the superintendent drove to the gates of the Fairgrounds, where he picked up Rosie Takemura and Yukio Takeuchi and took them to the high school auditorium to walk with their class.
When the exercises had finished, Rosie and Yukio made their way back out to Mr. Hanawalt’s car, which he would drive back to the Fairgrounds. But first, he made a detour up Pioneer and stopped at Martin’s Confectionary. There, he treated the new Viking alums to Mr. Martin’s homemade ice cream. We should not forget such moments in the history of our community.
Several years later, my own family story would intersect with the legend of Paul Hanawalt. Hanawalt hired my Grandpa Ed to teach Fifth Grade at Maplewood Elementary in 1952. My grandpa had a choice among three school districts, and he chose Puyallup, I’m sure in no small part because of Hanawalt’s leadership. In 1958, my great grandparents moved to Puyallup as well, and great grandpa Ernest taught science at West Junior High while great grandpa Leata taught kindergarten at Meeker.
Hanawalt had fun with his staff. My grandpa tells the story of the annual faculty picnic softball game in which Hanawalt was thrown a softball—or the cover of a softball filled with flour. “Boy did he lay into that thing.”
Of course, as you know, Paul Hanawalt was a Kiwanian, and he had a 33-year perfect attendance record. He was also involved with the American Legion, Chamber, and served for a time as chairman of the State Teachers Retirement System.
Hanawalt’s name is preserved on the gymnasium of Puyallup High School, appropriate since he was an enthusiast for Puyallup athletics. In his three decades as superintendent, he was a reliable presence in the stands of Viking Field and the bleachers of the high school gym. So Hanawalt’s legacy lives on.
Paul Hanawalt and E.B. Walker—these two men exemplify something about our community that is noble, and that has endured through over a century and a half as thousands of students have come through this school district. There is a certain greatness about those who give their lives to the education of the young. E.B. Walker and Paul Hanawalt were great men.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Scoop Jackson Republicans for the environment
"A blueprint for Republican environmentalism"
by Hans Zeiger
Crosscut.com
Evergreen State Republicans are thinking more than they usually do about the possibilities of a statewide governing majority. What Republicans probably aren’t thinking much about is this week's Earth Day 40. But if the Republican majority in Washington state is to be more than short-lived, Republicans will have to learn to take the environment seriously. They should look to the great Democrat Scoop Jackson as a model.
Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington was one of the great conservationist senators in our nation’s history. In 1969, the Sierra Club named Jackson the first politician to receive its John Muir Award. Though Jackson was considered a liberal until the Vietnam era, he was a model of conservative environmental statesmanship.
Jackson called for the protection of “our national wilderness system” while “meeting, outside the wilderness reserves, all our needs for commodities and for developed recreational areas.”
Jackson sponsored or co-sponsored the Wilderness Act of 1964 to preserve millions of acres of land, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, the Alaska Native Claims Act of 1971 to grant 40 million acres of land to Alaska natives, and several national park bills. He authored and persuaded President Nixon to sign the Public Lands for Parks Bill of 1969, allowing the federal government to donate or discount surplus lands to state or local governments for parkland. He pushed through the National Environmental Policy Act to require environmental impact statements for large federal activities and fought to save the Everglades from agricultural drainage.
In all of this, according to Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute and PBS, “Jackson was not an ecology freak who considered industry a villain or development an anathema. He was a balancer who believed in the possibility and necessity of reconciling environmental protection with robust economic growth.”
In short, Jackson was a conservative environmentalist.
Thus, when the New Left began to promote a more regulatory approach to the environment in the 1970s, the conservationist Sen. Jackson had no sympathy for “environmental extremists who attribute all our nation’s environmental ills to economic growth and to our large gross national product.” The new environmental left preached “a gloom and doom view of America that denies the existence of progress,” he said.
For Jackson and other traditional conservationists, economic and technological advancement were entirely compatible with environmental protection. But as soon as the priorities of the environmental movement shifted from conservation to the restructuring of society, it became very difficult for political leaders to restore the kind of balancing statesmanship that Wattenberg had attributed to Scoop Jackson.
With liberal environmentalists setting the terms of the debate, Republicans often assumed the defensive. But Republicans can no longer afford to be the Party of No on the environment. Not with many Americans demanding positive, constructive environmental solutions and ready for a revival of Jackson's pro-conservation, pro-free enterprise, pro-limited government answers to environmental challenges.
If Republicans are to succeed in the 21st century, they must study Jackson’s example of environmental statesmanship. They must learn how to think and communicate effectively about the environment—without sounding like liberals on one hand or careless opponents of clean air and water on the other. Republicans must get involved with private-sector initiatives in the Northwest like the Cascade Land Conservancy and Stewardship Partners.
Republicans will face painful consequences for failing to change their approach to the environment. Failure to present positive alternatives to the regulatory status quo will allow liberal environmentalists to continue to set the environmental agenda. Failure to formulate a strong environmental agenda of their own will hurt Republicans in short-term elections and long-term overall effectiveness.
Acceptance of environmental conservation as a fundamental part of the Republican platform will open doors of opportunity across the country, and especially in the Northwest. It’s time for a few more Scoop Jackson Republicans for the environment.
by Hans Zeiger
Crosscut.com
Evergreen State Republicans are thinking more than they usually do about the possibilities of a statewide governing majority. What Republicans probably aren’t thinking much about is this week's Earth Day 40. But if the Republican majority in Washington state is to be more than short-lived, Republicans will have to learn to take the environment seriously. They should look to the great Democrat Scoop Jackson as a model.
Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington was one of the great conservationist senators in our nation’s history. In 1969, the Sierra Club named Jackson the first politician to receive its John Muir Award. Though Jackson was considered a liberal until the Vietnam era, he was a model of conservative environmental statesmanship.
Jackson called for the protection of “our national wilderness system” while “meeting, outside the wilderness reserves, all our needs for commodities and for developed recreational areas.”
Jackson sponsored or co-sponsored the Wilderness Act of 1964 to preserve millions of acres of land, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, the Alaska Native Claims Act of 1971 to grant 40 million acres of land to Alaska natives, and several national park bills. He authored and persuaded President Nixon to sign the Public Lands for Parks Bill of 1969, allowing the federal government to donate or discount surplus lands to state or local governments for parkland. He pushed through the National Environmental Policy Act to require environmental impact statements for large federal activities and fought to save the Everglades from agricultural drainage.
In all of this, according to Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute and PBS, “Jackson was not an ecology freak who considered industry a villain or development an anathema. He was a balancer who believed in the possibility and necessity of reconciling environmental protection with robust economic growth.”
In short, Jackson was a conservative environmentalist.
Thus, when the New Left began to promote a more regulatory approach to the environment in the 1970s, the conservationist Sen. Jackson had no sympathy for “environmental extremists who attribute all our nation’s environmental ills to economic growth and to our large gross national product.” The new environmental left preached “a gloom and doom view of America that denies the existence of progress,” he said.
For Jackson and other traditional conservationists, economic and technological advancement were entirely compatible with environmental protection. But as soon as the priorities of the environmental movement shifted from conservation to the restructuring of society, it became very difficult for political leaders to restore the kind of balancing statesmanship that Wattenberg had attributed to Scoop Jackson.
With liberal environmentalists setting the terms of the debate, Republicans often assumed the defensive. But Republicans can no longer afford to be the Party of No on the environment. Not with many Americans demanding positive, constructive environmental solutions and ready for a revival of Jackson's pro-conservation, pro-free enterprise, pro-limited government answers to environmental challenges.
If Republicans are to succeed in the 21st century, they must study Jackson’s example of environmental statesmanship. They must learn how to think and communicate effectively about the environment—without sounding like liberals on one hand or careless opponents of clean air and water on the other. Republicans must get involved with private-sector initiatives in the Northwest like the Cascade Land Conservancy and Stewardship Partners.
Republicans will face painful consequences for failing to change their approach to the environment. Failure to present positive alternatives to the regulatory status quo will allow liberal environmentalists to continue to set the environmental agenda. Failure to formulate a strong environmental agenda of their own will hurt Republicans in short-term elections and long-term overall effectiveness.
Acceptance of environmental conservation as a fundamental part of the Republican platform will open doors of opportunity across the country, and especially in the Northwest. It’s time for a few more Scoop Jackson Republicans for the environment.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tax Day Speech
Tax Day Speech: Three Great Politicians from Puyallup
Puyallup Kiwanis
April 15, 2010
Hans Zeiger
I apologize that I won’t be able to lift your spirits on Tax Day. I’ve heard the suggestion that we should move tax day to the first week in November so that we can put Election Day in some perspective. These days, we hear a lot of complaining about our politicians, but you know, this community has elected some good ones over the years. This community has produced a governor, a State House Speaker, a State Senate Majority Leader, a State Treasurer, three State Superintendents, a member of Congress, and of course most importantly, an august and distinguished body of eminent beings known widely throughout the world for their harmonious deliberations—the Puyallup City Council.
But this morning I want to talk about three great political leaders from Puyallup in our early history. They came from different points of view and different backgrounds, but they shared a deep love for this community and left a deep imprint on it. One was a conservative Republican, one was a liberal Progressive, and one was a Populist. All three have landmarks in the community named for them.
The first great statesman from Puyallup was John Rogers. John Rankin Rogers was born in Brunswick, Maine in 1838 and became a professional wanderer who worked at various times as a farmer, teacher, pharmacist, drugstore manager, newspaper editor, and political organizer in the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Illinois, and Kansas. He was an endlessly curious and restless man who could never stay put. It was late in life when he finally found what he had been searching for all those years. He found a place and a calling. The place was Puyallup, and the calling was the leader of the Populist movement in Washington State. He had been the editor of a Populist newspaper in Kansas, and his son had moved up to the Northwest and started a newspaper of his own in Puyallup. So the elder Rogers went up to join his son. They worked on the Populist newspaper just as the People’s Party and the national movement for free silver and land reform was picking up steam. He was a tireless writer of pamphlets and books. And within a couple years, Rogers had been elected to the State Senate from the Puyallup area.
He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.” Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.
Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.
There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.
Of course, Rogers had his critics. Some accused him of being the political agent of Ezra Meeker. The editor of the Olympia Standard John Murphy referred to Meeker as “the antiquated fraud.” Murphy had a nickname for Rogers also: “His accidency.” Murphy and others suspected that Rogers was trying to move the state capitol to the so-called “hop yard” known as Puyallup. Well, Rogers ended up vetoing a bill on his desk to finance the completion of a state capitol, and he proposed moving into the Thurston County courthouse as an alternative, which was eventually what happened. Murphy covered the news of the veto this way: “His accidency hied himself to Puyallup Saturday after vetoing the capitol bill to receive the plaudits of an admiring constituency. He was received with open arms by that antiquated fraud Ezra Meeker.”
Rogers was known for his vetoes and threats of vetoes which kept spending to a minimum in a time of economic difficulty. In fact, the state budget was $3 million in the biennium before Rogers took office, and as a result of Rogers’s veto power and influence, he was able to get the budget down to about $1.2 million for the 1897-1899 biennium. He died shortly after leaving the governor’s mansion.
And by the way, John Rogers is the only former governor in the history of our state to have a statue in his honor. It stands outside the State Education Building in Olympia, where Puyallup’s own Buster Brouillet, Judith Billings, and now Randy Dorn would eventually work. And Rogers is the only former governor to have not only a high school named in his honor, but two high schools—one in Puyallup, and one in Spokane.
The second great Puyallup political leader was William Hall Paulhamus, born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in the last month of the Civil War, who made his way out west as soon as he could and became a banker and part-time sheriff in Tacoma by 1890. The author Earl Chapman May later described Paulhamus as “blue-eyed, bullet-headed, kindly but positive, stocky and aggressive.” He had the unusual combination of great intelligence, great ambition, and great moral character. He was a Christian Scientist by faith. So here he was in a Tacoma bank, and he was getting bored.
The adventure writer Lewis Theiss later wrote a profile of Paulhamus in a 1916 Outlook magazine. He wrote, “Banking did not seem to offer much to this young man. On the other hand, the land presented a promising prospect. Crystal streams flowed through the near-by bottom lands. The black, virgin soil was so rich that vegetation sprang up overnight. One had only to tickle the earth with a hoe and it burst into a smile of golden fruits and berries. The prospect was too alluring to be resisted. The young man gave up his bank position, bought a few acres in a modern Eden called Puyallup, some eight miles from Tacoma, and became, like most of his neighbors, a fruit and berry raiser.”
He had 17 acres, and his first crops were fruitful. But he couldn’t make a decent living from it. He discovered that most of the other farmers around him in the Valley weren’t making much of a living either; many of them were downright poor. And the reason for that was that they were all underselling each other in the local markets, which meant that berry prices were lower than they needed to be. Paulhamus sized up the problem. He called a meeting of the berry farmers in Puyallup and Sumner. And he said this very simple thing that defined not only his economic but his political philosophy: “In union there is strength. Also there is good living. Let us get together.”
That gathering became the Puyallup and Sumner Fruit Growers’ Association in 1902, with Paulhamus as it president. Whether you had a little berry patch behind your house downtown or a big berry field in Riverside, you could buy a share in the Association, and in exchange for delivering your berries to the Association you would receive a market rate for your produce. And as growers were paid more, there was a real incentive to produce more. The growth was phenomenal. Before long, Paulhamus had a different kind of problem. Now, there was an over-supply of berries.
Once again, Paulhamus stepped in with a brilliant solution. He said, it’s simple – What do you do when you have extra berries? You can them. So Paulhamus took $50,000 that the Association had accrued in savings and built the cannery right in the heart of downtown Puyallup. In the three years from 1912 to 1915, raspberry canning went through the roof from 162,000 pounds to 3 million pounds. And Puyallup became the world leader in blackberry jam. By the time World War I came around, Puyallup’s cannery supplied all the blackberry jam for the United States Army.
Paulhamus is probably best remembered as the principal founder of the Puyallup Fair. Paulhamus basically built the Fair. In the early days of the Fair, Paulhamus was the Fair’s manager, police chief, horse racing judge, and announcer. You’d see him there at the Grandstand with his bullhorn. He was engaged in that project at the same time he was building the berry industry, and often there was some overlap. For example, in 1913, Paulhamus invited a family whose name was Fisher to make scones at the Fair, and he provided his own personal raspberry jam recipe to go with the scone. We could go on about Paulhamus’s role in the Fair.
Well in 1907 Paulhamus was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate. He was probably the highest ranking freshman Senator in the history of this state. He was chairman of the powerful Railroad Committee as well as the Transportation Committee, and he was named to the appropriations committee, the banking committee, the roads and bridges committee, and the taxation committee. In the Senate he fought successfully for a number of things that endure to this day. He led the fight for the Orting Soldiers Home, for flood control funding, for road improvement, and for reopening the Puyallup Experiment Station. Paulhamus was a Progressive Republican who looked to Theodore Roosevelt as a national figure, and temperamentally the two figures were similar.
Like Roosevelt, Paulhamus was a fierce opponent of corruption in government. And Paulhamus’s most important achievement in the Senate came in 1909 when he led the fight for government accountability and ethics. After state insurance commissioner John Schively and Secretary of State Sam Nichols were accused of misappropriating funds and extortion, Paulhamus called for the legislature to authorize oversight investigations of all state departments. The old boys in the senate pushed back and defeated the proposal. Tensions rose between defenders of the status quo and Paulhamus’s reformers. After observing several incidences of physical violence in the corridors of the capitol, the Olympia Recorder dubbed the session the “Fighting Legislature.” Despite the controversy, Paulhamus continued to insist on reform. Finally, on the very last day of the session, the House passed an authorization bill, and when it came to the Senate, it passed by one vote. In the course of the ensuing investigation, the corruption was found to be much deeper. The state’s chief highway engineer had run away with money from the unauthorized sale of a right-of-way near Lake Keechelus, the adjutant general of the Washington National Guard had embezzled thousands of dollars, and even members of the State Supreme Court were caught embezzling.
The most important part of all of this was that the people of Washington saw what had happened and raised their expectations for public service. And that was thanks to Paulhamus. Paulhamus’s greatest achievement in the State Senate was that he took a bold stand for the integrity of state government. So William Paulhamus of Puyallup was not only the father of the Fair and the father of the berry industry in the valley, he was also the father of government accountability in Washington State. Paulhamus ran for governor as a Progressive Bull Mooser in 1912, the same year Roosevelt was running for President on that ticket. Even though he lost, he was able to advance his reform ideas further through the campaign. He also turned down job offers in two presidential administrations. He preferred to do his work in the Puyallup Valley, and through it all he was a man of great integrity. In W.P. Bonney’s 1927 history of Pierce County, he wrote, “Throughout all the years of his residence here Mr. Paulhamus was true to every trust reposed in him.”
The third great Puyallup statesmen was Dr. Warner Karshner, who has become one of my personal heroes, and not just because I attended Karshner Elementary as a kid. Rosemary Eckerson can correct me if I get anything wrong about Karshner. Karshner was born in Ohio in 1880 and came out here from the Midwest with his family to homestead in the Puyallup Valley. They fixed up a plot of land and sold it to some pamphleteer who had just blown into town from Kansas, named John Rogers.
Karshner went to study medicine at the University of Washington. After graduating, he and his wife Ella returned to Puyallup where he began his medical practice. He delivered hundreds of Puyallup babies, performed major surgeries with great skill, and conducted the first successful stomach cancer surgery in Pierce County. He took time away during World War I to run an army hospital in Georgia. He was a poet, an author, a newspaper columnist, a world traveler, a public philosopher, a scientist, and a civic booster. Every time there was an event in town where some group needed a speaker, Karshner was the go-to man, because he always had something brilliant and insightful to say. He was the commencement speaker at Puyallup High School year after year. He served on the School Board and advocated a modern high school building in the early 1900s. Then he was elected to the State Senate as a Republican in 1916.
After he won the Puyallup Valley Tribune wrote that he was “a man of courage, ability, and unswerving integrity. There will be few men in the next legislature so highly trained in mind and by habits of industry. He is at once a student and a thinker; alert, active, purposeful. He delves for the facts himself. If the truth is there he finds it … He can’t be led or fooled.”
Well Dr. Karshner was the leading conservative Republican of the State Senate in his time. He was so conservative on social issues that he not only wanted Prohibition but he wanted Prohibition on communion wine. And he was a limited government conservative. The News Tribune once wrote, “Senator Karshner … has from the very first fought for a program of economy, even to the point of raising the ire of other legislators by his determined stand for lower taxes.” He was frequently calling for tax cuts and spending cuts. Just 20 years after John Rogers was dealing with $1 million to $3 million budgets, the general budget had risen to $50 million. And that was too much for Karshner, who sat on the Appropriations Committee. “Out of a general budget of something like $50,000,000, less than half is of special interest to the general taxpayer.” Dr. Karshner was outspokenly opposed to the public power lobby. Karshner voted against funding for the Centralia Normal School, the Spokane Women’s Clinic, the Northwest Tourist Fund, an Orthopedic program, and others. He said that these were “measures which I feel have no standing in law.” And when the economy was tough around the time of World War I, Senator Karshner said that it would be wrong to raise taxes.
There’s a cartoon of Dr. Karshner standing in front of a patient on the operating table and he’s raising a giant cleaver above his head. The patient has a name tag which says, “Appropriations.”
Karshner was a limited government conservative, but that wasn’t because he was opposed to worthy community efforts. He just happened to believe that there ought to be a wide sphere for private philanthropy in any community, and it’s best if the state can create policies to encourage that rather than trying to do what caring people in a community can do just as well themselves. And Karshner practiced what he preached. Good Samaritan Hospital is one of Karshner’s legacies. He led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital in the early 1920s, and the money for the hospital was raised within the community. So Karshner called on people in Puyallup to give generously to the work of building Puyallup Valley Hospital at 4th and Meridian. They raised $150,000 for the building and equipment.
It wouldn’t surprise you that Kiwanis was heavily involved in that. In fact, when the hospital opened in 1922, Kiwanis sponsored a pie eating contest, and the purpose of the pie eating contest was to see who could be the first patient in the new hospital. I propose that you should repeat that when the new building opens next year. Those of you from Sumner can supply some of your world-famous strawberry-rhubarb pie.
In addition to his work in health care, Karshner appreciated the value of education. As I said, he was the default commencement speaker at the high school, and in his commencement speech of 1915 he told the graduates that there was something expected of them in exchange for the public investment that was made for their school years. And that was that they were to “make good.” “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” he told them.
Dr. Karshner may have been for limited government, but that doesn’t mean that he was opposed to funding education. In the tradition of that other budget-cutter John Rogers, Senator Karshner believed that education was a public priority. The state’s number one tax cutter and spending limiter was also its biggest proponent for school funding. He once called for “a state tax sufficient to cover the educational load.” He was a proponent for levy equalization, and he thought that the state should fully fund basic education.
Of course, not only is a school named after Dr. Karshner, but he also donated thousands of items from his travels to the Puyallup School District in honor of his son who was a Puyallup High School student when he died in 1927. So the Karshner legacy lives on.
These three men I’ve described hailed from different political philosophies, different backgrounds. Rogers spent his whole life wandering until he found Puyallup, Paulhamus discovered Puyallup after he got bored in Tacoma, and Karshner spent his formative years here and returned as an adult. One man was a pamphleteer and political organizer, one was an agricultural entrepreneur, and one was a doctor and public intellectual. But these men had a couple of things in common: a love for Puyallup, and a passion for public service. Rogers left a lasting legacy in K-12 education, Paulhamus left behind the Fair, the berries, and a more responsible political culture, and Karshner left behind a dual belief in limited government and strong communities. These men were neighbors, and they worked together in the great project of building this community and this state. That is a project worth continuing. Thanks to all of you for everything you’re doing to make that happen. And thanks for letting me speak with you.
Puyallup Kiwanis
April 15, 2010
Hans Zeiger
I apologize that I won’t be able to lift your spirits on Tax Day. I’ve heard the suggestion that we should move tax day to the first week in November so that we can put Election Day in some perspective. These days, we hear a lot of complaining about our politicians, but you know, this community has elected some good ones over the years. This community has produced a governor, a State House Speaker, a State Senate Majority Leader, a State Treasurer, three State Superintendents, a member of Congress, and of course most importantly, an august and distinguished body of eminent beings known widely throughout the world for their harmonious deliberations—the Puyallup City Council.
But this morning I want to talk about three great political leaders from Puyallup in our early history. They came from different points of view and different backgrounds, but they shared a deep love for this community and left a deep imprint on it. One was a conservative Republican, one was a liberal Progressive, and one was a Populist. All three have landmarks in the community named for them.
The first great statesman from Puyallup was John Rogers. John Rankin Rogers was born in Brunswick, Maine in 1838 and became a professional wanderer who worked at various times as a farmer, teacher, pharmacist, drugstore manager, newspaper editor, and political organizer in the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Illinois, and Kansas. He was an endlessly curious and restless man who could never stay put. It was late in life when he finally found what he had been searching for all those years. He found a place and a calling. The place was Puyallup, and the calling was the leader of the Populist movement in Washington State. He had been the editor of a Populist newspaper in Kansas, and his son had moved up to the Northwest and started a newspaper of his own in Puyallup. So the elder Rogers went up to join his son. They worked on the Populist newspaper just as the People’s Party and the national movement for free silver and land reform was picking up steam. He was a tireless writer of pamphlets and books. And within a couple years, Rogers had been elected to the State Senate from the Puyallup area.
He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.” Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.
Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.
There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.
Of course, Rogers had his critics. Some accused him of being the political agent of Ezra Meeker. The editor of the Olympia Standard John Murphy referred to Meeker as “the antiquated fraud.” Murphy had a nickname for Rogers also: “His accidency.” Murphy and others suspected that Rogers was trying to move the state capitol to the so-called “hop yard” known as Puyallup. Well, Rogers ended up vetoing a bill on his desk to finance the completion of a state capitol, and he proposed moving into the Thurston County courthouse as an alternative, which was eventually what happened. Murphy covered the news of the veto this way: “His accidency hied himself to Puyallup Saturday after vetoing the capitol bill to receive the plaudits of an admiring constituency. He was received with open arms by that antiquated fraud Ezra Meeker.”
Rogers was known for his vetoes and threats of vetoes which kept spending to a minimum in a time of economic difficulty. In fact, the state budget was $3 million in the biennium before Rogers took office, and as a result of Rogers’s veto power and influence, he was able to get the budget down to about $1.2 million for the 1897-1899 biennium. He died shortly after leaving the governor’s mansion.
And by the way, John Rogers is the only former governor in the history of our state to have a statue in his honor. It stands outside the State Education Building in Olympia, where Puyallup’s own Buster Brouillet, Judith Billings, and now Randy Dorn would eventually work. And Rogers is the only former governor to have not only a high school named in his honor, but two high schools—one in Puyallup, and one in Spokane.
The second great Puyallup political leader was William Hall Paulhamus, born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in the last month of the Civil War, who made his way out west as soon as he could and became a banker and part-time sheriff in Tacoma by 1890. The author Earl Chapman May later described Paulhamus as “blue-eyed, bullet-headed, kindly but positive, stocky and aggressive.” He had the unusual combination of great intelligence, great ambition, and great moral character. He was a Christian Scientist by faith. So here he was in a Tacoma bank, and he was getting bored.
The adventure writer Lewis Theiss later wrote a profile of Paulhamus in a 1916 Outlook magazine. He wrote, “Banking did not seem to offer much to this young man. On the other hand, the land presented a promising prospect. Crystal streams flowed through the near-by bottom lands. The black, virgin soil was so rich that vegetation sprang up overnight. One had only to tickle the earth with a hoe and it burst into a smile of golden fruits and berries. The prospect was too alluring to be resisted. The young man gave up his bank position, bought a few acres in a modern Eden called Puyallup, some eight miles from Tacoma, and became, like most of his neighbors, a fruit and berry raiser.”
He had 17 acres, and his first crops were fruitful. But he couldn’t make a decent living from it. He discovered that most of the other farmers around him in the Valley weren’t making much of a living either; many of them were downright poor. And the reason for that was that they were all underselling each other in the local markets, which meant that berry prices were lower than they needed to be. Paulhamus sized up the problem. He called a meeting of the berry farmers in Puyallup and Sumner. And he said this very simple thing that defined not only his economic but his political philosophy: “In union there is strength. Also there is good living. Let us get together.”
That gathering became the Puyallup and Sumner Fruit Growers’ Association in 1902, with Paulhamus as it president. Whether you had a little berry patch behind your house downtown or a big berry field in Riverside, you could buy a share in the Association, and in exchange for delivering your berries to the Association you would receive a market rate for your produce. And as growers were paid more, there was a real incentive to produce more. The growth was phenomenal. Before long, Paulhamus had a different kind of problem. Now, there was an over-supply of berries.
Once again, Paulhamus stepped in with a brilliant solution. He said, it’s simple – What do you do when you have extra berries? You can them. So Paulhamus took $50,000 that the Association had accrued in savings and built the cannery right in the heart of downtown Puyallup. In the three years from 1912 to 1915, raspberry canning went through the roof from 162,000 pounds to 3 million pounds. And Puyallup became the world leader in blackberry jam. By the time World War I came around, Puyallup’s cannery supplied all the blackberry jam for the United States Army.
Paulhamus is probably best remembered as the principal founder of the Puyallup Fair. Paulhamus basically built the Fair. In the early days of the Fair, Paulhamus was the Fair’s manager, police chief, horse racing judge, and announcer. You’d see him there at the Grandstand with his bullhorn. He was engaged in that project at the same time he was building the berry industry, and often there was some overlap. For example, in 1913, Paulhamus invited a family whose name was Fisher to make scones at the Fair, and he provided his own personal raspberry jam recipe to go with the scone. We could go on about Paulhamus’s role in the Fair.
Well in 1907 Paulhamus was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate. He was probably the highest ranking freshman Senator in the history of this state. He was chairman of the powerful Railroad Committee as well as the Transportation Committee, and he was named to the appropriations committee, the banking committee, the roads and bridges committee, and the taxation committee. In the Senate he fought successfully for a number of things that endure to this day. He led the fight for the Orting Soldiers Home, for flood control funding, for road improvement, and for reopening the Puyallup Experiment Station. Paulhamus was a Progressive Republican who looked to Theodore Roosevelt as a national figure, and temperamentally the two figures were similar.
Like Roosevelt, Paulhamus was a fierce opponent of corruption in government. And Paulhamus’s most important achievement in the Senate came in 1909 when he led the fight for government accountability and ethics. After state insurance commissioner John Schively and Secretary of State Sam Nichols were accused of misappropriating funds and extortion, Paulhamus called for the legislature to authorize oversight investigations of all state departments. The old boys in the senate pushed back and defeated the proposal. Tensions rose between defenders of the status quo and Paulhamus’s reformers. After observing several incidences of physical violence in the corridors of the capitol, the Olympia Recorder dubbed the session the “Fighting Legislature.” Despite the controversy, Paulhamus continued to insist on reform. Finally, on the very last day of the session, the House passed an authorization bill, and when it came to the Senate, it passed by one vote. In the course of the ensuing investigation, the corruption was found to be much deeper. The state’s chief highway engineer had run away with money from the unauthorized sale of a right-of-way near Lake Keechelus, the adjutant general of the Washington National Guard had embezzled thousands of dollars, and even members of the State Supreme Court were caught embezzling.
The most important part of all of this was that the people of Washington saw what had happened and raised their expectations for public service. And that was thanks to Paulhamus. Paulhamus’s greatest achievement in the State Senate was that he took a bold stand for the integrity of state government. So William Paulhamus of Puyallup was not only the father of the Fair and the father of the berry industry in the valley, he was also the father of government accountability in Washington State. Paulhamus ran for governor as a Progressive Bull Mooser in 1912, the same year Roosevelt was running for President on that ticket. Even though he lost, he was able to advance his reform ideas further through the campaign. He also turned down job offers in two presidential administrations. He preferred to do his work in the Puyallup Valley, and through it all he was a man of great integrity. In W.P. Bonney’s 1927 history of Pierce County, he wrote, “Throughout all the years of his residence here Mr. Paulhamus was true to every trust reposed in him.”
The third great Puyallup statesmen was Dr. Warner Karshner, who has become one of my personal heroes, and not just because I attended Karshner Elementary as a kid. Rosemary Eckerson can correct me if I get anything wrong about Karshner. Karshner was born in Ohio in 1880 and came out here from the Midwest with his family to homestead in the Puyallup Valley. They fixed up a plot of land and sold it to some pamphleteer who had just blown into town from Kansas, named John Rogers.
Karshner went to study medicine at the University of Washington. After graduating, he and his wife Ella returned to Puyallup where he began his medical practice. He delivered hundreds of Puyallup babies, performed major surgeries with great skill, and conducted the first successful stomach cancer surgery in Pierce County. He took time away during World War I to run an army hospital in Georgia. He was a poet, an author, a newspaper columnist, a world traveler, a public philosopher, a scientist, and a civic booster. Every time there was an event in town where some group needed a speaker, Karshner was the go-to man, because he always had something brilliant and insightful to say. He was the commencement speaker at Puyallup High School year after year. He served on the School Board and advocated a modern high school building in the early 1900s. Then he was elected to the State Senate as a Republican in 1916.
After he won the Puyallup Valley Tribune wrote that he was “a man of courage, ability, and unswerving integrity. There will be few men in the next legislature so highly trained in mind and by habits of industry. He is at once a student and a thinker; alert, active, purposeful. He delves for the facts himself. If the truth is there he finds it … He can’t be led or fooled.”
Well Dr. Karshner was the leading conservative Republican of the State Senate in his time. He was so conservative on social issues that he not only wanted Prohibition but he wanted Prohibition on communion wine. And he was a limited government conservative. The News Tribune once wrote, “Senator Karshner … has from the very first fought for a program of economy, even to the point of raising the ire of other legislators by his determined stand for lower taxes.” He was frequently calling for tax cuts and spending cuts. Just 20 years after John Rogers was dealing with $1 million to $3 million budgets, the general budget had risen to $50 million. And that was too much for Karshner, who sat on the Appropriations Committee. “Out of a general budget of something like $50,000,000, less than half is of special interest to the general taxpayer.” Dr. Karshner was outspokenly opposed to the public power lobby. Karshner voted against funding for the Centralia Normal School, the Spokane Women’s Clinic, the Northwest Tourist Fund, an Orthopedic program, and others. He said that these were “measures which I feel have no standing in law.” And when the economy was tough around the time of World War I, Senator Karshner said that it would be wrong to raise taxes.
There’s a cartoon of Dr. Karshner standing in front of a patient on the operating table and he’s raising a giant cleaver above his head. The patient has a name tag which says, “Appropriations.”
Karshner was a limited government conservative, but that wasn’t because he was opposed to worthy community efforts. He just happened to believe that there ought to be a wide sphere for private philanthropy in any community, and it’s best if the state can create policies to encourage that rather than trying to do what caring people in a community can do just as well themselves. And Karshner practiced what he preached. Good Samaritan Hospital is one of Karshner’s legacies. He led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital in the early 1920s, and the money for the hospital was raised within the community. So Karshner called on people in Puyallup to give generously to the work of building Puyallup Valley Hospital at 4th and Meridian. They raised $150,000 for the building and equipment.
It wouldn’t surprise you that Kiwanis was heavily involved in that. In fact, when the hospital opened in 1922, Kiwanis sponsored a pie eating contest, and the purpose of the pie eating contest was to see who could be the first patient in the new hospital. I propose that you should repeat that when the new building opens next year. Those of you from Sumner can supply some of your world-famous strawberry-rhubarb pie.
In addition to his work in health care, Karshner appreciated the value of education. As I said, he was the default commencement speaker at the high school, and in his commencement speech of 1915 he told the graduates that there was something expected of them in exchange for the public investment that was made for their school years. And that was that they were to “make good.” “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” he told them.
Dr. Karshner may have been for limited government, but that doesn’t mean that he was opposed to funding education. In the tradition of that other budget-cutter John Rogers, Senator Karshner believed that education was a public priority. The state’s number one tax cutter and spending limiter was also its biggest proponent for school funding. He once called for “a state tax sufficient to cover the educational load.” He was a proponent for levy equalization, and he thought that the state should fully fund basic education.
Of course, not only is a school named after Dr. Karshner, but he also donated thousands of items from his travels to the Puyallup School District in honor of his son who was a Puyallup High School student when he died in 1927. So the Karshner legacy lives on.
These three men I’ve described hailed from different political philosophies, different backgrounds. Rogers spent his whole life wandering until he found Puyallup, Paulhamus discovered Puyallup after he got bored in Tacoma, and Karshner spent his formative years here and returned as an adult. One man was a pamphleteer and political organizer, one was an agricultural entrepreneur, and one was a doctor and public intellectual. But these men had a couple of things in common: a love for Puyallup, and a passion for public service. Rogers left a lasting legacy in K-12 education, Paulhamus left behind the Fair, the berries, and a more responsible political culture, and Karshner left behind a dual belief in limited government and strong communities. These men were neighbors, and they worked together in the great project of building this community and this state. That is a project worth continuing. Thanks to all of you for everything you’re doing to make that happen. And thanks for letting me speak with you.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"What is the South Hill?"
“What is the South Hill?”
Speech to the South Hill Rotary
Hans Zeiger
March 25, 2010
The Ram Restaurant
Today I’m going to talk about a very controversial topic, and that is South Hill’s identity. Because this involves talking about the history of South Hill, I have a disadvantage in this room, and that’s because Paul Hackett happens to know something about South Hill history. So Paul, you have my permission to throw things at me if I get anything wrong.
My family has a stake in the South Hill dating back almost 60 years. My grandparents bought 5 acres in 1952 over in what used to be called the Rabbit Farms area, near 122nd. And they raised their kids there in the woods and watched the hill grow up around them. Their property is on a hill of its own, and Grandma Wilma wanted a house on top of the hill with a view of the mountain. So they built their new house about 10 years ago, and the view is wonderful. She passed on in 2004, but my Grandpa Ed still lives up there on Zeiger hill. He claims that it is the highest elevation on the South Hill, but I have evidence from Google earth that it’s like the 2nd or 3rd highest. He won’t believe me.
But there are a few reasons that it is not easy to talk about the identity of the South Hill.
One reason is that it’s not clear to everyone exactly where the South Hill is located—or I guess I should say it’s not clear what’s located on the South Hill. Somebody was pointing out to me the other day that a newspaper article a few years ago was attempting to identify the location of Thun Field, and it started out by saying that it was near Tacoma, then that it was in Puyallup, and then that it was on the South Hill. But Thun Field is closer to Orting than it is to Puyallup. And once you go south of 176th, there’s people who claim to live in North Graham. And then there’s the confusion regarding the Post Office. Mail that comes to these parts has a Puyallup address, but it comes through the South Hill Post Office, so you can actually address something to South Hill, Washington if you want. It’s really a matter of personal preference whether you live in Puyallup or South Hill.
A second reason why it’s tough to talk about South Hill’s identity is that it’s not an official city, despite efforts in recent decades to incorporate. South Hill is actually a cluster of smaller residential areas, some of which are in the City of Puyallup and some of which are in unincorporated Pierce County. Each area has a bit different character from the next, partly because they were developed at different times and attracted some different demographics. Rodesco and Manorwood were mostly built in the late 1970s and 1980s. Sunrise and Gem Heights and Crystal Ridge have been built up over the last 20 years.
But there’s really nothing new about that kind of fragmented identity here. South Hill has never really been one single community. Originally, it was divided into several distinct neighborhoods, whose names are still mostly in existence in recognizable landmarks. Three of the neighborhoods were centered around old, small independent schools that each had their own school boards: Firgrove, Woodland, and Puyallup Heights. We are in the Puyallup Heights neighborhood here, which encompassed the whole mall area. My grandpa bought his property between here and Firgrove in what was then called the Rabbit Farms area, above Alderton. And places on the Hill acquired familiar names, like Willows Corner over where Border’s books is today. The Willows Tavern was one of the main hangouts on the Hill at one time, along with the Fruitland Grange and the schools, which doubled as community halls.
Most South Hill people were farmers, but a lot of them worked in the Valley. My grandparents bought their place from an English guy named Robert Newcomb who jumped ship from a British vessel in Canada, and moved to the Hill in 1930 and built the little house on the property. He raised chickens, but he made most of his small living by working seasonal shifts at Hunt’s Cannery downtown.
Many of the earliest settlers here were German families who came here to farm: the Kupfers settled on 160 acres at Willows Corner in 1878 and set up a hop farm, and then there were the Barths and the Mosolfs not far from them. The Patzners, the Glasers, the Muehlers, and the Bergers were all German families on the South Hill. This made the South Hill different, for example, from the North Hill, with its Norwegian settlers in the Mountain View neighborhood and Swedish settlers in the Edgewood and Jovita neighborhoods.
South Hill people got to know each other in their respective neighborhoods. So if you were growing up here, your identity with the larger South Hill was cemented when you headed down the hill to attend Puyallup High School. Kids from the South Hill had something in common when they were suddenly in the big town down in the valley. Until 1939, there was no school bus service from the hill down to the valley, so kids usually rode bikes down the hill.
South Hill people who attended PHS had a reputation of being from the country. They were usually lower class farm kids. They didn’t always fit in with the kids from the Northwest part of the Valley, where the elite in town lived. So if you were from the South Hill, people at school knew that. The South Hill was rural and simple and poor. There are very few grand old houses or landmarks that remain, because the houses were simple. But it’s important to remember that the South Hill was also a strong community of friends.
The South Hill produced some notable heroes during World War II. I’ll mention one, Leonard Humiston, who grew up right where Bethany Baptist now stands. He attended the Puyallup Heights School and graduated from Puyallup High School in 1935. He joined the Army Air Corps right out of school and by December 6, 1941 he was at an air field in California, dispatched to the Philippines. And they had to stop for refueling at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii. And as they approached, the morning of December 7, they were listening to Hawaiian tunes on the radio, and then they saw smoke in the distance. Then some planes started flying their way, and they thought the Navy was providing an escort. But when a Japanese A6M2 Zero flies right up and starts in with the machine gun fire, and here they are unarmed, so they turn back to sea. After awhile they made a second effort for a downwind landing at Bellows Field, but as they came onto the runway they couldn’t stop and careened into a ditch. And just behind them, here come this big flock of Zeros and they were strafing this downed plane. And when this native son of the South Hill got out to seek refuge at Bellows Field, he had just survived the first American air combat of World War II.
A couple of important things happened on South Hill during World War II. One was the landing of a Japanese balloon bomb in the middle of the woods on the Hill on March 3, 1945 right near where Zeiger Elementary stands today. It was apparently a dud. The second thing was that about that same time, the U.S. Army was finishing a small airstrip for training purposes. John Thun ended up purchasing the airfield in 1950.
A number of people moved to the Hill in the 50s and 60s during the Postwar boom. The people who came during these years set down roots on the Hill and raised their families here. Many of them started businesses on the Hill. My own family came here during that time. The Boy Scout Troop that I grew up in and that I still assist as a volunteer leader was founded by George Newcomer in 1951 at Woodland School, and it helped to accommodate some of the new families who were moving into the area.
1968 was an important year, because that was the year that Rogers High School opened, which became a community center for the whole South Hill for the next generation. My dad was in the second graduating class from Rogers, 1972.
And the 1970s is when the Hill started really growing big-time. There was little official coordination. There were battles between community leaders and the county over development. Paul Hackett was the leader of the South Hill Community Council in its early days. South Hill developed a fairly laissez faire quality that remains an important part of its DNA to this day. That was reflected in the Hill’s housing boom and the growth of the Meridian corridor.
That growth happened quickly. The first wave of growth was in the late 60s and early 70s, and that was symbolized when Piggly Wiggly, Pay N Save, and a few other stores opened at Willow’s Corner in 1973, with Ma’s Place just up the road from there. The second wave came within the decade as Safeway and Ernst sprung up at 116th. In the third wave, South Hill became the focus of shopping in the greater Puyallup area. When the Mall opened in the 1980s, it really shifted a lot of shopping from the Hi Ho Shopping Center and various smaller stores in the Valley to larger stores on the hill, which continued to expand along Meridian over time. And Fairchild Industries opened its plant on the Hill in 1981. And of course each of these waves brought new housing developments on the Hill.
But with its development and consumer emphasis, South Hill has also had a few major community gathering spots that have opened up in recent years. The first was Pierce College Puyallup, which was founded by the great education statesman Buster Brouillet in 1989. The second was the Mel Korum Family YMCA, which started 10 years ago and has really become a central place for activity on the Hill. And the third was the second high school on the hill, Emerald Ridge in the middle of Sunrise, which opened the same year as the YMCA.
It’s really interesting to think that the South Hill lagged behind the Valley in terms of its development basically by 100 years. Ezra Meeker platted downtown Puyallup in 1877. Most of what we know as the South Hill has happened within our lifetimes—within my lifetime. I can remember when the ground we’re standing on was underneath a forest across the street from the brand-new South Hill Mall. South Hill is much younger than the Valley. Somebody was telling me recently that he was in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and reminded that the Willamette Valley is 50 years older than Seattle because of the settlement patterns, and you can tell. The houses, the historical memory, is like the Midwest rather than the Northwest. And it’s like that with Puyallup – its development is basically 100 years older than the South Hill.
But the South Hill does have these deeper roots on which we can draw, and I think as the South Hill continues to develop, it’s important to figure out what sets this place apart. What are the strengths that we can build on? What are the historic things that predate South Hill’s boom that we can draw upon to make the community better for the future?
Well, my grandpa likes to say that it’s the people that make any community or organization what it is. There are really four categories of people on the South Hill.
The first and smallest category are the real old-timers, the ones who if you asked where they grew up would tell you Rabbit Farms or Puyallup Heights or Firgrove. Many of them, as I said, were from German families. These people are very traditional and many of them are related to each other. You can meet many of these people if you show up at a meeting of the South Hill Historical Society. There was a reunion last summer for the old Firgrove School and it was like a family reunion for about three families that are all married into each other.
The second category are the people who moved to South Hill after World War II to raise their families here, start businesses here, and who have spent their lives in the community quietly building it, people like my grandpa Ed who was a principal at Firgrove and opened Wildwood Park Elementary School in 1966 and then Pope Elementary School in 1981 and finished his career at Sunrise Elementary after it had opened to accommodate the families in the Manorwood area.
A third category includes people who probably grew up in the Puyallup area or at least worked locally, and they moved to the Hill or stayed on the Hill because there was room to grow in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I was talking with Gerry Moody before the meeting, and he’s part of this group. Some, like my uncle Karl, grew up on the South Hill, then worked here, and raised his family here. Others may have started out in the Valley or Tacoma, but the South Hill was a good place to start a family and find a house.
The fourth category of South Hill residents includes the most recent newcomers, young working families that commute to jobs across the spectrum: blue collar workers, service workers, tech workers, military personnel from McChord and Ft. Lewis. Along with the growth of South Hill as a bedroom community there has been continued growth in local businesses as well as local schools. There are now 16 elementary schools, junior highs, and high schools on the Hill. With growth there have also been a variety of social challenges for the South Hill community, including the obvious congestion, as well as some crime, and poverty.
But for all of its imperfections, I am proud of my family’s roots here. And I think that as South Hill continues to develop, it can preserve those roots and cultivate a sense of place in the rising generation. Men and women need to have a sense of place, a sense of home if they are to live decent lives. And if we call the South Hill home, we must do everything we can to make it better.
And I would suggest three specific things that can be done to make South Hill better.
The first has to do with teaching newer South Hill residents the history of this community. As things change, it’s important to cultivate an awareness of how things have been in the past so that we can have a sense of continuity. And so I’d ask those of you who are interested in local history to consider joining the South Hill Historical Society. The Society has been a labor of love for Paul Hackett and others like Don Glaser and Carl Vest, but we need new blood and a renewed determination to tell the story of South Hill.
The second thing that we need to do is to preserve some of the older landmarks here. You’ve seen some of the old street names on street signs, like Glaser Road, Patzner Road, and Muehler-Berger Road. The next thing to be done is to preserve the old Firgrove School, which was built in 1935. Paul and others are working to place Firgrove on the National Register of Historic Places. It would be wonderful if community groups could purchase the building for use rather than allowing it to be demolished. People need physical reminders of their history.
And finally, let me commend you for what you’ve done as a Rotary Club to make the South Hill a better place. Rotary has been an important part of the Hill since 1983. All I can say in conclusion is to keep doing what you’re doing. Thanks for having me.
Speech to the South Hill Rotary
Hans Zeiger
March 25, 2010
The Ram Restaurant
Today I’m going to talk about a very controversial topic, and that is South Hill’s identity. Because this involves talking about the history of South Hill, I have a disadvantage in this room, and that’s because Paul Hackett happens to know something about South Hill history. So Paul, you have my permission to throw things at me if I get anything wrong.
My family has a stake in the South Hill dating back almost 60 years. My grandparents bought 5 acres in 1952 over in what used to be called the Rabbit Farms area, near 122nd. And they raised their kids there in the woods and watched the hill grow up around them. Their property is on a hill of its own, and Grandma Wilma wanted a house on top of the hill with a view of the mountain. So they built their new house about 10 years ago, and the view is wonderful. She passed on in 2004, but my Grandpa Ed still lives up there on Zeiger hill. He claims that it is the highest elevation on the South Hill, but I have evidence from Google earth that it’s like the 2nd or 3rd highest. He won’t believe me.
But there are a few reasons that it is not easy to talk about the identity of the South Hill.
One reason is that it’s not clear to everyone exactly where the South Hill is located—or I guess I should say it’s not clear what’s located on the South Hill. Somebody was pointing out to me the other day that a newspaper article a few years ago was attempting to identify the location of Thun Field, and it started out by saying that it was near Tacoma, then that it was in Puyallup, and then that it was on the South Hill. But Thun Field is closer to Orting than it is to Puyallup. And once you go south of 176th, there’s people who claim to live in North Graham. And then there’s the confusion regarding the Post Office. Mail that comes to these parts has a Puyallup address, but it comes through the South Hill Post Office, so you can actually address something to South Hill, Washington if you want. It’s really a matter of personal preference whether you live in Puyallup or South Hill.
A second reason why it’s tough to talk about South Hill’s identity is that it’s not an official city, despite efforts in recent decades to incorporate. South Hill is actually a cluster of smaller residential areas, some of which are in the City of Puyallup and some of which are in unincorporated Pierce County. Each area has a bit different character from the next, partly because they were developed at different times and attracted some different demographics. Rodesco and Manorwood were mostly built in the late 1970s and 1980s. Sunrise and Gem Heights and Crystal Ridge have been built up over the last 20 years.
But there’s really nothing new about that kind of fragmented identity here. South Hill has never really been one single community. Originally, it was divided into several distinct neighborhoods, whose names are still mostly in existence in recognizable landmarks. Three of the neighborhoods were centered around old, small independent schools that each had their own school boards: Firgrove, Woodland, and Puyallup Heights. We are in the Puyallup Heights neighborhood here, which encompassed the whole mall area. My grandpa bought his property between here and Firgrove in what was then called the Rabbit Farms area, above Alderton. And places on the Hill acquired familiar names, like Willows Corner over where Border’s books is today. The Willows Tavern was one of the main hangouts on the Hill at one time, along with the Fruitland Grange and the schools, which doubled as community halls.
Most South Hill people were farmers, but a lot of them worked in the Valley. My grandparents bought their place from an English guy named Robert Newcomb who jumped ship from a British vessel in Canada, and moved to the Hill in 1930 and built the little house on the property. He raised chickens, but he made most of his small living by working seasonal shifts at Hunt’s Cannery downtown.
Many of the earliest settlers here were German families who came here to farm: the Kupfers settled on 160 acres at Willows Corner in 1878 and set up a hop farm, and then there were the Barths and the Mosolfs not far from them. The Patzners, the Glasers, the Muehlers, and the Bergers were all German families on the South Hill. This made the South Hill different, for example, from the North Hill, with its Norwegian settlers in the Mountain View neighborhood and Swedish settlers in the Edgewood and Jovita neighborhoods.
South Hill people got to know each other in their respective neighborhoods. So if you were growing up here, your identity with the larger South Hill was cemented when you headed down the hill to attend Puyallup High School. Kids from the South Hill had something in common when they were suddenly in the big town down in the valley. Until 1939, there was no school bus service from the hill down to the valley, so kids usually rode bikes down the hill.
South Hill people who attended PHS had a reputation of being from the country. They were usually lower class farm kids. They didn’t always fit in with the kids from the Northwest part of the Valley, where the elite in town lived. So if you were from the South Hill, people at school knew that. The South Hill was rural and simple and poor. There are very few grand old houses or landmarks that remain, because the houses were simple. But it’s important to remember that the South Hill was also a strong community of friends.
The South Hill produced some notable heroes during World War II. I’ll mention one, Leonard Humiston, who grew up right where Bethany Baptist now stands. He attended the Puyallup Heights School and graduated from Puyallup High School in 1935. He joined the Army Air Corps right out of school and by December 6, 1941 he was at an air field in California, dispatched to the Philippines. And they had to stop for refueling at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii. And as they approached, the morning of December 7, they were listening to Hawaiian tunes on the radio, and then they saw smoke in the distance. Then some planes started flying their way, and they thought the Navy was providing an escort. But when a Japanese A6M2 Zero flies right up and starts in with the machine gun fire, and here they are unarmed, so they turn back to sea. After awhile they made a second effort for a downwind landing at Bellows Field, but as they came onto the runway they couldn’t stop and careened into a ditch. And just behind them, here come this big flock of Zeros and they were strafing this downed plane. And when this native son of the South Hill got out to seek refuge at Bellows Field, he had just survived the first American air combat of World War II.
A couple of important things happened on South Hill during World War II. One was the landing of a Japanese balloon bomb in the middle of the woods on the Hill on March 3, 1945 right near where Zeiger Elementary stands today. It was apparently a dud. The second thing was that about that same time, the U.S. Army was finishing a small airstrip for training purposes. John Thun ended up purchasing the airfield in 1950.
A number of people moved to the Hill in the 50s and 60s during the Postwar boom. The people who came during these years set down roots on the Hill and raised their families here. Many of them started businesses on the Hill. My own family came here during that time. The Boy Scout Troop that I grew up in and that I still assist as a volunteer leader was founded by George Newcomer in 1951 at Woodland School, and it helped to accommodate some of the new families who were moving into the area.
1968 was an important year, because that was the year that Rogers High School opened, which became a community center for the whole South Hill for the next generation. My dad was in the second graduating class from Rogers, 1972.
And the 1970s is when the Hill started really growing big-time. There was little official coordination. There were battles between community leaders and the county over development. Paul Hackett was the leader of the South Hill Community Council in its early days. South Hill developed a fairly laissez faire quality that remains an important part of its DNA to this day. That was reflected in the Hill’s housing boom and the growth of the Meridian corridor.
That growth happened quickly. The first wave of growth was in the late 60s and early 70s, and that was symbolized when Piggly Wiggly, Pay N Save, and a few other stores opened at Willow’s Corner in 1973, with Ma’s Place just up the road from there. The second wave came within the decade as Safeway and Ernst sprung up at 116th. In the third wave, South Hill became the focus of shopping in the greater Puyallup area. When the Mall opened in the 1980s, it really shifted a lot of shopping from the Hi Ho Shopping Center and various smaller stores in the Valley to larger stores on the hill, which continued to expand along Meridian over time. And Fairchild Industries opened its plant on the Hill in 1981. And of course each of these waves brought new housing developments on the Hill.
But with its development and consumer emphasis, South Hill has also had a few major community gathering spots that have opened up in recent years. The first was Pierce College Puyallup, which was founded by the great education statesman Buster Brouillet in 1989. The second was the Mel Korum Family YMCA, which started 10 years ago and has really become a central place for activity on the Hill. And the third was the second high school on the hill, Emerald Ridge in the middle of Sunrise, which opened the same year as the YMCA.
It’s really interesting to think that the South Hill lagged behind the Valley in terms of its development basically by 100 years. Ezra Meeker platted downtown Puyallup in 1877. Most of what we know as the South Hill has happened within our lifetimes—within my lifetime. I can remember when the ground we’re standing on was underneath a forest across the street from the brand-new South Hill Mall. South Hill is much younger than the Valley. Somebody was telling me recently that he was in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and reminded that the Willamette Valley is 50 years older than Seattle because of the settlement patterns, and you can tell. The houses, the historical memory, is like the Midwest rather than the Northwest. And it’s like that with Puyallup – its development is basically 100 years older than the South Hill.
But the South Hill does have these deeper roots on which we can draw, and I think as the South Hill continues to develop, it’s important to figure out what sets this place apart. What are the strengths that we can build on? What are the historic things that predate South Hill’s boom that we can draw upon to make the community better for the future?
Well, my grandpa likes to say that it’s the people that make any community or organization what it is. There are really four categories of people on the South Hill.
The first and smallest category are the real old-timers, the ones who if you asked where they grew up would tell you Rabbit Farms or Puyallup Heights or Firgrove. Many of them, as I said, were from German families. These people are very traditional and many of them are related to each other. You can meet many of these people if you show up at a meeting of the South Hill Historical Society. There was a reunion last summer for the old Firgrove School and it was like a family reunion for about three families that are all married into each other.
The second category are the people who moved to South Hill after World War II to raise their families here, start businesses here, and who have spent their lives in the community quietly building it, people like my grandpa Ed who was a principal at Firgrove and opened Wildwood Park Elementary School in 1966 and then Pope Elementary School in 1981 and finished his career at Sunrise Elementary after it had opened to accommodate the families in the Manorwood area.
A third category includes people who probably grew up in the Puyallup area or at least worked locally, and they moved to the Hill or stayed on the Hill because there was room to grow in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I was talking with Gerry Moody before the meeting, and he’s part of this group. Some, like my uncle Karl, grew up on the South Hill, then worked here, and raised his family here. Others may have started out in the Valley or Tacoma, but the South Hill was a good place to start a family and find a house.
The fourth category of South Hill residents includes the most recent newcomers, young working families that commute to jobs across the spectrum: blue collar workers, service workers, tech workers, military personnel from McChord and Ft. Lewis. Along with the growth of South Hill as a bedroom community there has been continued growth in local businesses as well as local schools. There are now 16 elementary schools, junior highs, and high schools on the Hill. With growth there have also been a variety of social challenges for the South Hill community, including the obvious congestion, as well as some crime, and poverty.
But for all of its imperfections, I am proud of my family’s roots here. And I think that as South Hill continues to develop, it can preserve those roots and cultivate a sense of place in the rising generation. Men and women need to have a sense of place, a sense of home if they are to live decent lives. And if we call the South Hill home, we must do everything we can to make it better.
And I would suggest three specific things that can be done to make South Hill better.
The first has to do with teaching newer South Hill residents the history of this community. As things change, it’s important to cultivate an awareness of how things have been in the past so that we can have a sense of continuity. And so I’d ask those of you who are interested in local history to consider joining the South Hill Historical Society. The Society has been a labor of love for Paul Hackett and others like Don Glaser and Carl Vest, but we need new blood and a renewed determination to tell the story of South Hill.
The second thing that we need to do is to preserve some of the older landmarks here. You’ve seen some of the old street names on street signs, like Glaser Road, Patzner Road, and Muehler-Berger Road. The next thing to be done is to preserve the old Firgrove School, which was built in 1935. Paul and others are working to place Firgrove on the National Register of Historic Places. It would be wonderful if community groups could purchase the building for use rather than allowing it to be demolished. People need physical reminders of their history.
And finally, let me commend you for what you’ve done as a Rotary Club to make the South Hill a better place. Rotary has been an important part of the Hill since 1983. All I can say in conclusion is to keep doing what you’re doing. Thanks for having me.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Support the Puyallup Schools levy
Letter to the Editor
Puyallup Herald
February 10, 2010
I want to briefly explain why I will support the February 9 Puyallup School District replacement levy. Puyallup is an education community. I am the son, grandson, and great grandson of Puyallup teachers, and I was blessed to attend Karshner Elementary, Aylen Junior High, and graduate from Puyallup High School.
Puyallup is famous for its first-class teaching staff, its exceptional athletic programs, and its tradition of community support. In this time of economic hardship, we must not raise taxes, and this levy will not increase taxes. Many areas of government spending should be cut, but cutting over 20% of the Puyallup School District budget would be too much to bear.
Please join me in voting yes for the Puyallup Schools levy.
Hans Zeiger
Puyallup Herald
February 10, 2010
I want to briefly explain why I will support the February 9 Puyallup School District replacement levy. Puyallup is an education community. I am the son, grandson, and great grandson of Puyallup teachers, and I was blessed to attend Karshner Elementary, Aylen Junior High, and graduate from Puyallup High School.
Puyallup is famous for its first-class teaching staff, its exceptional athletic programs, and its tradition of community support. In this time of economic hardship, we must not raise taxes, and this levy will not increase taxes. Many areas of government spending should be cut, but cutting over 20% of the Puyallup School District budget would be too much to bear.
Please join me in voting yes for the Puyallup Schools levy.
Hans Zeiger
Three Great Education Statesmen from Puyallup
Three Great Education Statesmen from Puyallup
By Hans Zeiger
South Hill Sunrisers Kiwanis
February 10, 2010
My family’s story in the Puyallup area starts back in 1952, when young Ed Zeiger showed up in town and started teaching at Maplewood Elementary and eventually populated a good part of the town with his own kids and grandkids, of which I am one. My mom took her first job teaching fourth grade at Wildwood Park Elementary School 31 years ago. Ed Zeiger was the principal there, and before long he had played matchmaker for Miss Nisker and his third son Walt. I am the son, grandson, and great grandson of Puyallup teachers. I am a proud graduate of Puyallup High School. So when it comes to public schools, as you might guess, I’m against them (Just kidding).
This morning I want to talk about three great education statesmen in our community’s history. They came from different points of view, but they shared one thing in common, and that was their advocacy for our public schools. One was a conservative Republican, one was a liberal Democrat, and one was a Populist. All three of them have schools named after them.
The first education statesman was John Rogers. John Rogers was born in Brunswick, Maine in 1838 and became a professional wanderer who worked at various times as a farmer, teacher, pharmacist, drugstore manager, newspaper editor, and political organizer in the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Illinois, and Kansas. He was an endlessly curious and restless man who could never stay put. It was late in life when he finally found what he had been searching for all those years. He found a place and a calling. The place was Puyallup, and the calling was the leader of the Populist movement in Washington State. He had been the editor of a Populist newspaper in Kansas, and his son had moved up to the Northwest and started a newspaper of his own in Puyallup. So the elder Rogers went up to join his son. They worked on the Populist newspaper just as the People’s Party and the national movement for free silver and land reform was picking up steam. He was a tireless writer of pamphlets and books. And within a couple years, Rogers had been elected to the State Senate from the Puyallup area.
He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.” That was based on an old tradition in America. One of the four organic documents of our nation’s founding was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which set out the purposes for the new territories, and the Congress zoned the territory to have townships where a certain area would be set aside for schools. And in that Northwest Ordinance, they wrote this, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of instruction shall be encouraged in these territories.” And so education spread from coast to coast. And Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.
Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.
There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.
Of course, Rogers had his critics. Some accused him of being the political agent of Ezra Meeker, who the editor of the Olympia Standard John Murphy referred to as “the antiquated fraud.” Murphy had a nickname for Rogers also: “His accidency.” Murphy and others suspected that Rogers was trying to move the state capitol to the so-called “hop yard” known as Puyallup. And Rogers ended up vetoing a bill on his desk to finance the completion of a state capitol, though he suggested moving into the Thurston County courthouse as an alternative. Rogers was known for his vetoes and threats of vetoes which kept spending to a minimum in a time of economic difficulty. In fact, the state budget was $3 million in the biennium before Rogers took office, and as a result of Rogers’s veto power and influence, he was able to get the budget down to about $1.2 million for the 1897-1899 biennium. He died shortly after leaving the governor’s mansion.
And by the way, John Rogers is the only former governor in the history of our state to have a statue in his honor. It stands outside the State Education Building in Olympia, where one of the other three men I’ll talk about would eventually work.
The second Puyallup education statesman was Dr. Warner Karshner, who has become one of my personal heroes, and not just because I attended Karshner Elementary as a kid. Karshner was born in Ohio in 1880 and came out here from the Midwest to study medicine at the University of Washington. After graduating, he and his wife Ella settled in Puyallup where he began his medical practice. He delivered hundreds of Puyallup babies, performed major surgeries with great skill, and conducted the first successful stomach cancer surgery in Pierce County. He was a poet, an author, a newspaper columnist, a world traveler, a public philosopher, a scientist, and a civic booster. Everytime there was an event in town where some group needed a speaker, Karshner was the go-to man, because he always had something brilliant and insightful to say. He was the commencement speaker at Puyallup High School year after year. He served on the School Board and advocated a modern high school building in the early 1900s. Then he was elected to the State Senate as a Republican in 1916, beating William Chamberlain who was one of the Fair founders by a vote of 4,544 to 2,845.
After he won the Puyallup Valley Tribune wrote that he was “a man of courage, ability, and unswerving integrity. There will be few men in the next legislature so highly trained in mind and by habits of industry. He is at once a student and a thinker; alert, active, purposeful. He delves for the facts himself. If the truth is there he finds it … He can’t be led or fooled.”
Well Dr. Karshner was the leading conservative Republican of the State Senate in his time. He was so conservative on social issues that he not only wanted Prohibition but he wanted Prohibition on communion wine. And he was a limited government conservative. The News Tribune once wrote, “Senator Karshner … has from the very first fought for a program of economy, even to the point of raising the ire of other legislators by his determined stand for lower taxes.” He was frequently calling for tax cuts and spending cuts. Just 20 years after John Rogers was dealing with $1 million to $3 million budgets, the general budget had risen to $50 million. And that was too much for Karshner, who sat on the Appropriations Committee. “Out of a general budget of something like $50,000,000, less than half is of special interest to the general taxpayer.” Dr. Karshner was outspokenly opposed to the public power lobby. Karshner voted against funding for the Centralia Normal School, the Spokane Women’s Clinic, the Northwest Tourist Fund, an Orthopedic program, and others. He said that these were “measures which I feel have no standing in law.” And when the economy was tough around the time of World War I, Senator Karshner said that it would be wrong to raise taxes.
There’s a cartoon of Dr. Karshner standing in front of a patient on the operating table and he’s raising a giant cleaver above his head. The patient has a name tag which says, “Appropriations.”
Karshner was a limited government conservative, but that wasn’t because he was opposed to worthy community efforts. He just happened to believe that there ought to be a wide sphere for private philanthropy in any community, and it’s best if the state can create policies to encourage that rather than trying to do what caring people in a community can do just as well themselves. And Karshner practiced what he preached. Good Samaritan Hospital is one of Karshner’s legacies. He led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital in the early 1920s, and the money for the hospital was raised within the community. So Karshner called on people in Puyallup to give generously to the work of building Puyallup Valley Hospital at 4th and Meridian. They raised $150,000 for the building and equipment.
It wouldn’t surprise you that Kiwanis was heavily involved in that. In fact, when the hospital opened in 1922, Kiwanis sponsored a pie eating contest to see who could be the first patient in the new hospital. I propose that you should repeat that when the new building opens next year.
In addition to his work in health care, Karshner appreciated the value of education. As I said, he was the default commencement speaker at the high school, and in his commencement speech of 1915 he told the graduates that there was something expected of them in exchange for the public investment that was made for their school years. And that was that they were to “make good.” “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” he told them. And this man was a great orator. You can just imagine Puyallup’s doctor there in that beautiful auditorium warning the graduates to “select their course ere the undertow of life drags them away from their moorings to perish in some Sargasso sea, or into some vortex strewn with human derelicts. Life is short … and there is much to do. The graduates were standing on the threshold of the world, with material to build a bridgeway to the stars, and he hoped none of them would be content to close their career by digging a dugout. All nature speaks to them, calling them to study and learn—to come up higher. ‘Will you come; will you come,’ impressively concluded the speaker.”
Dr. Karshner may have been for limited government, but that doesn’t mean that he was opposed to funding education. In the tradition of that other budget-cutter John Rogers, Senator Karshner believed that education was a public priority. The state’s number one tax cutter and spending limiter was also its biggest proponent for school funding. He once called for “a state tax sufficient to cover the educational load.” He was a proponent for levy equalization, and he thought that the state should fully fund basic education.
Of course, not only is a school named after Dr. Karshner, but he also donated thousands of items from his travels to the Puyallup School District in honor of his son who was a Puyallup High School student when he died in 1927. So the Karshner legacy lives on.
The third great education statesman from Puyallup was Frank Brouillet, who was born the year that Ezra Meeker died, 1928. Soon after he was born a lady saw him in his carriage and said that he was a cute little buster, so he became known as Buster. He was in the PHS class of 1946, captain of the football, basketball, and track teams, involved in student government and debate. He earned his BA from UPS and his Master’s from the University of Montana, served in Army Counter-intelligence, and came home in 1955 to take a teaching job at Puyallup High School. The next year he went doorbelling across the 25th District and won a seat in the State House of Representatives. He served there for sixteen years, chairing the Education Committee and rising to become Democratic Caucus Chair. He continued to teach and earned an Ed.D in education in 1965. And so he really specialized in education there and became the go-to man on that issue.
I’ve learned more about politics in this community from reading Buster Brouillet’s oral history in the state archives than I have from any political operative who claims to know how politics works. Buster understood this community and made it a better place through his advocacy in Olympia. He understood the importance of human relationships, and that getting to know people is the best way to build a coalition. He built a coalition for Puyallup in the legislature with Leonard Sawyer when he was Speaker of the House, and then he mentored a new generation of young Democrats, all in their 20s, Marc Gaspard, Dan Grimm, and George Walk, which formed a coalition that lasted for the next 20 years as those three rose into leadership. With Brouillet moving on to be State Superintendent in 1972, people started referring to the 25th District legislative delegation as the Puyallup Mafia. So Puyallup had a great influence in Olympia because of Buster Brouillet.
He served four terms as State Superintendent. And there were a few major things that Buster Brouillet accomplished for education in this state. He was asked about his biggest accomplishments, and he listed three things. One is that he really raised the standard for school funding, which we can argue about how well those dollars are spent, but Washington State has had a fairly strong level of overall funding for our schools. Second, Brouillet invested a lot of resources into educating people with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and immigrant students. He said his goal was to bring them into the mainstream no matter what their background. And then third, something that he was particularly proud of, he began an exchange program with China, and he really raised the state’s consciousness about our place in the world and especially on the Pacific Rim.
He came home after that and launched Pierce College Puyallup, and then he headed up the education program at the University of Washington Tacoma before his death in 2001. And of course, the Brouillet family remains active both in education and in local politics. Marc Brouillet was my student government advisor at Puyallup High School and then went on to be principal at Ed Zeiger Elementary.
There are other Puyallup education statesmen and women who we could mention: Paul Hanawalt, Eileen Kalles, Vitt Ferrucci, Judith Billings. So we could go on, but I guess the moral of the story is that this is an education community, and that when it comes to education as a public priority, it needs to be #1. John Rogers, Warner Karshner, Buster Brouillet—three different political parties, three different backgrounds, three different personalities and ways of living, three different perspectives, but these three great men had one thing in common—I guess two things: they loved Puyallup, and they loved our schools. And I guess I’ll close by saying that I hope as a young person to whom much has been given that we can continue their legacy for generations to come.
And I should thank all of you for everything you’ve done to make that dream a reality. Thanks.
By Hans Zeiger
South Hill Sunrisers Kiwanis
February 10, 2010
My family’s story in the Puyallup area starts back in 1952, when young Ed Zeiger showed up in town and started teaching at Maplewood Elementary and eventually populated a good part of the town with his own kids and grandkids, of which I am one. My mom took her first job teaching fourth grade at Wildwood Park Elementary School 31 years ago. Ed Zeiger was the principal there, and before long he had played matchmaker for Miss Nisker and his third son Walt. I am the son, grandson, and great grandson of Puyallup teachers. I am a proud graduate of Puyallup High School. So when it comes to public schools, as you might guess, I’m against them (Just kidding).
This morning I want to talk about three great education statesmen in our community’s history. They came from different points of view, but they shared one thing in common, and that was their advocacy for our public schools. One was a conservative Republican, one was a liberal Democrat, and one was a Populist. All three of them have schools named after them.
The first education statesman was John Rogers. John Rogers was born in Brunswick, Maine in 1838 and became a professional wanderer who worked at various times as a farmer, teacher, pharmacist, drugstore manager, newspaper editor, and political organizer in the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Illinois, and Kansas. He was an endlessly curious and restless man who could never stay put. It was late in life when he finally found what he had been searching for all those years. He found a place and a calling. The place was Puyallup, and the calling was the leader of the Populist movement in Washington State. He had been the editor of a Populist newspaper in Kansas, and his son had moved up to the Northwest and started a newspaper of his own in Puyallup. So the elder Rogers went up to join his son. They worked on the Populist newspaper just as the People’s Party and the national movement for free silver and land reform was picking up steam. He was a tireless writer of pamphlets and books. And within a couple years, Rogers had been elected to the State Senate from the Puyallup area.
He is best remembered because he is the man who first took the words of the State Constitution seriously in working to implement them. Our Constitution says that education is the “paramount duty of the state.” That was based on an old tradition in America. One of the four organic documents of our nation’s founding was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which set out the purposes for the new territories, and the Congress zoned the territory to have townships where a certain area would be set aside for schools. And in that Northwest Ordinance, they wrote this, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of instruction shall be encouraged in these territories.” And so education spread from coast to coast. And Washington Territory took education very seriously; our first territorial governor Isaac Stevens said that every child should have the equal opportunity to receive an education.
So State Senator Rogers introduced what has become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Bill in 1893. It proposed that there should be adequate funding for the Basic Education of every child in the state. And that was a radical thing, because it meant that if you lived in the Valley and went to Maplewood School you had just the same right to a basic education as if you lived in the Woodland area and went to Woodland School. And it was to say that all of us together have an interest in the education of the young, even the Barefoot Schoolboys and Schoolgirls. And that was actually a hard sell with the big cities at the time, because that meant they would have to pay more taxes to cover the poorer rural areas. So Rogers lost his first attempt to get that bill in the Senate. But he was a persistent man. He introduced the bill again, and it failed, and then again. His persistence paid off, because he was also a persuasive man. And in the very final days of the 1893 session, the Rogers Barefoot Schoolboy Bill passed.
Guess how much the per pupil state cost of basic education was for one year? $6.
There was a reward for Rogers’s persistence, and it isn’t just that they named a school in Puyallup after him. People in this state have always loved education, and if you are a champion of it, you can become a hero. Rogers suddenly became a sensation, and in the 1896 election, he was elected governor.
Of course, Rogers had his critics. Some accused him of being the political agent of Ezra Meeker, who the editor of the Olympia Standard John Murphy referred to as “the antiquated fraud.” Murphy had a nickname for Rogers also: “His accidency.” Murphy and others suspected that Rogers was trying to move the state capitol to the so-called “hop yard” known as Puyallup. And Rogers ended up vetoing a bill on his desk to finance the completion of a state capitol, though he suggested moving into the Thurston County courthouse as an alternative. Rogers was known for his vetoes and threats of vetoes which kept spending to a minimum in a time of economic difficulty. In fact, the state budget was $3 million in the biennium before Rogers took office, and as a result of Rogers’s veto power and influence, he was able to get the budget down to about $1.2 million for the 1897-1899 biennium. He died shortly after leaving the governor’s mansion.
And by the way, John Rogers is the only former governor in the history of our state to have a statue in his honor. It stands outside the State Education Building in Olympia, where one of the other three men I’ll talk about would eventually work.
The second Puyallup education statesman was Dr. Warner Karshner, who has become one of my personal heroes, and not just because I attended Karshner Elementary as a kid. Karshner was born in Ohio in 1880 and came out here from the Midwest to study medicine at the University of Washington. After graduating, he and his wife Ella settled in Puyallup where he began his medical practice. He delivered hundreds of Puyallup babies, performed major surgeries with great skill, and conducted the first successful stomach cancer surgery in Pierce County. He was a poet, an author, a newspaper columnist, a world traveler, a public philosopher, a scientist, and a civic booster. Everytime there was an event in town where some group needed a speaker, Karshner was the go-to man, because he always had something brilliant and insightful to say. He was the commencement speaker at Puyallup High School year after year. He served on the School Board and advocated a modern high school building in the early 1900s. Then he was elected to the State Senate as a Republican in 1916, beating William Chamberlain who was one of the Fair founders by a vote of 4,544 to 2,845.
After he won the Puyallup Valley Tribune wrote that he was “a man of courage, ability, and unswerving integrity. There will be few men in the next legislature so highly trained in mind and by habits of industry. He is at once a student and a thinker; alert, active, purposeful. He delves for the facts himself. If the truth is there he finds it … He can’t be led or fooled.”
Well Dr. Karshner was the leading conservative Republican of the State Senate in his time. He was so conservative on social issues that he not only wanted Prohibition but he wanted Prohibition on communion wine. And he was a limited government conservative. The News Tribune once wrote, “Senator Karshner … has from the very first fought for a program of economy, even to the point of raising the ire of other legislators by his determined stand for lower taxes.” He was frequently calling for tax cuts and spending cuts. Just 20 years after John Rogers was dealing with $1 million to $3 million budgets, the general budget had risen to $50 million. And that was too much for Karshner, who sat on the Appropriations Committee. “Out of a general budget of something like $50,000,000, less than half is of special interest to the general taxpayer.” Dr. Karshner was outspokenly opposed to the public power lobby. Karshner voted against funding for the Centralia Normal School, the Spokane Women’s Clinic, the Northwest Tourist Fund, an Orthopedic program, and others. He said that these were “measures which I feel have no standing in law.” And when the economy was tough around the time of World War I, Senator Karshner said that it would be wrong to raise taxes.
There’s a cartoon of Dr. Karshner standing in front of a patient on the operating table and he’s raising a giant cleaver above his head. The patient has a name tag which says, “Appropriations.”
Karshner was a limited government conservative, but that wasn’t because he was opposed to worthy community efforts. He just happened to believe that there ought to be a wide sphere for private philanthropy in any community, and it’s best if the state can create policies to encourage that rather than trying to do what caring people in a community can do just as well themselves. And Karshner practiced what he preached. Good Samaritan Hospital is one of Karshner’s legacies. He led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital in the early 1920s, and the money for the hospital was raised within the community. So Karshner called on people in Puyallup to give generously to the work of building Puyallup Valley Hospital at 4th and Meridian. They raised $150,000 for the building and equipment.
It wouldn’t surprise you that Kiwanis was heavily involved in that. In fact, when the hospital opened in 1922, Kiwanis sponsored a pie eating contest to see who could be the first patient in the new hospital. I propose that you should repeat that when the new building opens next year.
In addition to his work in health care, Karshner appreciated the value of education. As I said, he was the default commencement speaker at the high school, and in his commencement speech of 1915 he told the graduates that there was something expected of them in exchange for the public investment that was made for their school years. And that was that they were to “make good.” “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” he told them. And this man was a great orator. You can just imagine Puyallup’s doctor there in that beautiful auditorium warning the graduates to “select their course ere the undertow of life drags them away from their moorings to perish in some Sargasso sea, or into some vortex strewn with human derelicts. Life is short … and there is much to do. The graduates were standing on the threshold of the world, with material to build a bridgeway to the stars, and he hoped none of them would be content to close their career by digging a dugout. All nature speaks to them, calling them to study and learn—to come up higher. ‘Will you come; will you come,’ impressively concluded the speaker.”
Dr. Karshner may have been for limited government, but that doesn’t mean that he was opposed to funding education. In the tradition of that other budget-cutter John Rogers, Senator Karshner believed that education was a public priority. The state’s number one tax cutter and spending limiter was also its biggest proponent for school funding. He once called for “a state tax sufficient to cover the educational load.” He was a proponent for levy equalization, and he thought that the state should fully fund basic education.
Of course, not only is a school named after Dr. Karshner, but he also donated thousands of items from his travels to the Puyallup School District in honor of his son who was a Puyallup High School student when he died in 1927. So the Karshner legacy lives on.
The third great education statesman from Puyallup was Frank Brouillet, who was born the year that Ezra Meeker died, 1928. Soon after he was born a lady saw him in his carriage and said that he was a cute little buster, so he became known as Buster. He was in the PHS class of 1946, captain of the football, basketball, and track teams, involved in student government and debate. He earned his BA from UPS and his Master’s from the University of Montana, served in Army Counter-intelligence, and came home in 1955 to take a teaching job at Puyallup High School. The next year he went doorbelling across the 25th District and won a seat in the State House of Representatives. He served there for sixteen years, chairing the Education Committee and rising to become Democratic Caucus Chair. He continued to teach and earned an Ed.D in education in 1965. And so he really specialized in education there and became the go-to man on that issue.
I’ve learned more about politics in this community from reading Buster Brouillet’s oral history in the state archives than I have from any political operative who claims to know how politics works. Buster understood this community and made it a better place through his advocacy in Olympia. He understood the importance of human relationships, and that getting to know people is the best way to build a coalition. He built a coalition for Puyallup in the legislature with Leonard Sawyer when he was Speaker of the House, and then he mentored a new generation of young Democrats, all in their 20s, Marc Gaspard, Dan Grimm, and George Walk, which formed a coalition that lasted for the next 20 years as those three rose into leadership. With Brouillet moving on to be State Superintendent in 1972, people started referring to the 25th District legislative delegation as the Puyallup Mafia. So Puyallup had a great influence in Olympia because of Buster Brouillet.
He served four terms as State Superintendent. And there were a few major things that Buster Brouillet accomplished for education in this state. He was asked about his biggest accomplishments, and he listed three things. One is that he really raised the standard for school funding, which we can argue about how well those dollars are spent, but Washington State has had a fairly strong level of overall funding for our schools. Second, Brouillet invested a lot of resources into educating people with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and immigrant students. He said his goal was to bring them into the mainstream no matter what their background. And then third, something that he was particularly proud of, he began an exchange program with China, and he really raised the state’s consciousness about our place in the world and especially on the Pacific Rim.
He came home after that and launched Pierce College Puyallup, and then he headed up the education program at the University of Washington Tacoma before his death in 2001. And of course, the Brouillet family remains active both in education and in local politics. Marc Brouillet was my student government advisor at Puyallup High School and then went on to be principal at Ed Zeiger Elementary.
There are other Puyallup education statesmen and women who we could mention: Paul Hanawalt, Eileen Kalles, Vitt Ferrucci, Judith Billings. So we could go on, but I guess the moral of the story is that this is an education community, and that when it comes to education as a public priority, it needs to be #1. John Rogers, Warner Karshner, Buster Brouillet—three different political parties, three different backgrounds, three different personalities and ways of living, three different perspectives, but these three great men had one thing in common—I guess two things: they loved Puyallup, and they loved our schools. And I guess I’ll close by saying that I hope as a young person to whom much has been given that we can continue their legacy for generations to come.
And I should thank all of you for everything you’ve done to make that dream a reality. Thanks.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
100 Years of Scouting in Washington State
Washington has benefited from a century of Scouting
Hans Zeiger
The Seattle Times, February 9, 2010
THE Pacific Northwest was a great place to be a Boy Scout. It meant summer camp on the Olympic Peninsula, ocean camp at Ocean Shores, treks through the North Cascades, Olympic National Park and the Wonderland Trail.
We had annual outings to Millsylvania State Park near Olympia for canoeing, and Meeker Lakes in the Cascades for junior Scouts to learn how to hike. We also made occasional trips to places like Yellowstone, the Tetons and Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico for variety, but we could have gotten by just fine sticking around home. The scenery and terrain around here are sufficient for a lifetime of adventures.
Any kid who thought "Scouts" was showing up at 7:30 on Monday night for the weekly meeting of 6-square and rank advancement was missing out. Most of what we did in Puyallup's Troop 174 was only indirectly related to moving through the ranks (Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life and Eagle). The substance of Scouting was to be found out in the woods. That's where we had most of our fun, developed close friendships, made mistakes, witnessed some beautiful sights, and learned a few things about what it would take to be men.
It was at Camp Hahobas on Hood Canal that I learned to be a confident swimmer, to handle fire, and to be away from home for an entire week. A few years later, as my troop's co-senior patrol leader at Hahobas, I learned to lead by delegation. And it was during a snow-caving expedition to Mount Rainier that the Scout motto of "be prepared" first sank in for me. Let's just say I figured out the importance of having extra warm and dry clothing.
The Boy Scouts of America turns 100 years old this week, and the organization deserves a lot of credit for making this region a better place to live. Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts have contributed hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours improving Washington's forest trails and city parks, installing picnic tables and church pews, painting public buildings and cleaning up environmental hazards. In response to current state and local budget shortfalls, government officials might consider turning to Eagle Scouts for free labor when projects need to get done.
Among our state's luminaries who have attained the distinguished Eagle Scout rank are former Govs. Gary Locke and Dan Evans, Attorney General Rob McKenna, former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley, business leaders Howard Lincoln, John Creighton and Jimmy Collins, and civic leader William Gates Sr.
Washington state is also distinguished for having the longest-operating Boy Scout camp west of the Mississippi, the 440-acre Camp Parsons on Hood Canal (since 1919).
Through its various programs — Cub Scouts, Venturing, Explorers, Scoutreach, Learning for Life, and traditional Boy Scouts for boys under 18 years old — scouting teaches the values that make our communities strong.
Anybody who wants to live a decent life would do well to repeat the Scout Oath every day. "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Contained within that statement are all the basics for governing ourselves in a free society. Personal responsibility — the foundation for our freedoms — is unmistakably contained in the Scout Oath.
Will Rogers remarked that the problem with the Boy Scouts is that there aren't enough of them. I have talked to a number of people who regret not having been Boy Scouts. I always tell them that it's not too late: The Scouts need adult leaders. And even if one didn't participate in scouting as a child, moms and dads can get as much out of the program as their kids.
As always, the Boy Scouts of our community needs members and financial supporters. What better way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting than to contact your local Scout unit or council and find out how you can give back to Scouting?
Hans Zeiger is an Eagle Scout and assistant Scoutmaster in Puyallup's Troop 174. He is a senior fellow of the American Civil Rights Union and author of a 2005 book about Scouting.
Hans Zeiger
The Seattle Times, February 9, 2010
THE Pacific Northwest was a great place to be a Boy Scout. It meant summer camp on the Olympic Peninsula, ocean camp at Ocean Shores, treks through the North Cascades, Olympic National Park and the Wonderland Trail.
We had annual outings to Millsylvania State Park near Olympia for canoeing, and Meeker Lakes in the Cascades for junior Scouts to learn how to hike. We also made occasional trips to places like Yellowstone, the Tetons and Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico for variety, but we could have gotten by just fine sticking around home. The scenery and terrain around here are sufficient for a lifetime of adventures.
Any kid who thought "Scouts" was showing up at 7:30 on Monday night for the weekly meeting of 6-square and rank advancement was missing out. Most of what we did in Puyallup's Troop 174 was only indirectly related to moving through the ranks (Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life and Eagle). The substance of Scouting was to be found out in the woods. That's where we had most of our fun, developed close friendships, made mistakes, witnessed some beautiful sights, and learned a few things about what it would take to be men.
It was at Camp Hahobas on Hood Canal that I learned to be a confident swimmer, to handle fire, and to be away from home for an entire week. A few years later, as my troop's co-senior patrol leader at Hahobas, I learned to lead by delegation. And it was during a snow-caving expedition to Mount Rainier that the Scout motto of "be prepared" first sank in for me. Let's just say I figured out the importance of having extra warm and dry clothing.
The Boy Scouts of America turns 100 years old this week, and the organization deserves a lot of credit for making this region a better place to live. Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts have contributed hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours improving Washington's forest trails and city parks, installing picnic tables and church pews, painting public buildings and cleaning up environmental hazards. In response to current state and local budget shortfalls, government officials might consider turning to Eagle Scouts for free labor when projects need to get done.
Among our state's luminaries who have attained the distinguished Eagle Scout rank are former Govs. Gary Locke and Dan Evans, Attorney General Rob McKenna, former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley, business leaders Howard Lincoln, John Creighton and Jimmy Collins, and civic leader William Gates Sr.
Washington state is also distinguished for having the longest-operating Boy Scout camp west of the Mississippi, the 440-acre Camp Parsons on Hood Canal (since 1919).
Through its various programs — Cub Scouts, Venturing, Explorers, Scoutreach, Learning for Life, and traditional Boy Scouts for boys under 18 years old — scouting teaches the values that make our communities strong.
Anybody who wants to live a decent life would do well to repeat the Scout Oath every day. "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Contained within that statement are all the basics for governing ourselves in a free society. Personal responsibility — the foundation for our freedoms — is unmistakably contained in the Scout Oath.
Will Rogers remarked that the problem with the Boy Scouts is that there aren't enough of them. I have talked to a number of people who regret not having been Boy Scouts. I always tell them that it's not too late: The Scouts need adult leaders. And even if one didn't participate in scouting as a child, moms and dads can get as much out of the program as their kids.
As always, the Boy Scouts of our community needs members and financial supporters. What better way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting than to contact your local Scout unit or council and find out how you can give back to Scouting?
Hans Zeiger is an Eagle Scout and assistant Scoutmaster in Puyallup's Troop 174. He is a senior fellow of the American Civil Rights Union and author of a 2005 book about Scouting.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Seven Reasons to Know Puyallup History
“Seven Reasons to Know Puyallup History”
By Hans Zeiger
Speech to Puyallup Rotary
January 6, 2010
I remember getting out of college a few years ago and thinking—I’ve studied a lot about the idea of community and tradition, but I just don’t feel the sense of connection and place in my own community that I should.
But before I did anything about that, I had this other interest in World War II history. I was watching Band of Brothers, and if you’ve seen it you know how there are interviews with the actual veterans of the European war in the beginning of the episodes. And I thought, boy, there are guys like that around Puyallup who won’t be with us much longer. So I started out in December of 2007 sitting down for about 5 hours with the late Paul Harmes, and he just opened my eyes to a great project. I thought, I want to write the story of one community during World War II. So I’ve been working on that now for a couple years and I’ve just been blessed with a deepening understanding of this community and the kinds of people who’ve lived here, not only war heroes, but decent and generous people from all walks of life.
The first reason to know local history is that it reveals our character. Puyallup means “The Generous People,” and I like to think that we live up to our name. Ezra Meeker set an early example as a philanthropist who gave a lot of land to the city and to churches. Warner Karshner led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital, which became Good Sam, and civic groups and individuals did their part to build that hospital. In the course of my interviews I’ve come across some cool stories, like the manager of Queen City Grocery in the 30s and 40s, Marty Martinson, who volunteered his lunch hour to deliver groceries to shut-ins around town. And then there were the Puyallup families that opened their homes after the attack on Pearl Harbor to share Christmas dinner with the men of the 260th Anti-Aircraft Regiment who were far from home and temporarily stationed in Puyallup.
These are things that still go on, and the Lions Club is a big part of that.
Second, roots actually do count for something around here. For example, there is a very selective group of people who seem to join the Fair Board of Directors—namely, descendents of the people who were on the original Fair Board of Directors. Hence there have been several generations of Corlisses and Hogans and Elvinses on the board.
Now, some of you who grew up around here know that there’s even historical roots on the South Hill. Ma’s Place and Firgrove Elementary and the Fruitland Grange are some of the old landmarks. I’m a member of a group called the South Hill Historical Society, where I think I am the youngest member by about 60 years. And being a Zeiger means that I’m a newcomer at the meetings. You see, the Zeigers showed up on the South Hill in—1952. By then the Glasers and the Patzners and the Barths and the Mosolfs and the Thuns—had already been stuck in Meridian traffic for several decades.
But I was talking with my aunt Sally the other day about how it’s so important to welcome newcomers. We should always remember that there is a place for newcomers in P-town. I remember talking with a retired carpenter named Manford Hogman and he told me about growing up in poverty in Illinois during the Great Depression and then coming out here with his family in a jalopy around 1939. And he said there were a couple guys who really made him feel welcome at Puyallup High School—and he named those guys: Ray Glaser and Eddie Myers. Both of those guys by the way gave their lives in World War II. Eddie Myers had been the quarterback of the Puyallup Vikings and the class president of the class of 1940. The lesson of our history is that there is goodness in helping outsiders and newcomers to feel welcome.
The third reason to know local history is that it repeats itself. If you think that things are divisive on the city council now, you should go back 120 years ago when Ezra Meeker and J.P. Stewart were at war for the future of the new city. Ezra was our first mayor, but as with most things he undertook, he had strong opposition. Now you’ll recall that Ezra built this town on hops, as well as his own fortune. There’s an interesting little contradiction in that because Ezra was a teetotaler and a temperance activist. So when he ran for reelection, his opponent put a keg of whiskey out on the sidewalk along Meridian with a label, “Courtesy of E Meeker.” The temperance voters weren’t too pleased, and Ezra Meeker lost his reelection.
The fourth reason to know local history is that it’s pretty funny. Ezra Meeker actually had a real sense of humor. To those of you who’ve ever taken flack for living in a place that has a name that’s hard to pronounce, you might appreciate this passage from a book that Ezra Meeker wrote about settling Puyallup. This is Ezra’s apology to us:
But such a name! I consider it no honor to the man who named the town (now city) of Puyallup. I accept the odium attached to inflicting that name on suffering succeeding generations by first platting a few blocks of land into village lots and recording them under the name Puyallup. I have been ashamed of the act ever since. The first time I went East after the town was named and said to a friend in New York that our town was named Puyallup he seemed startled.
“Named WHAT?”
“Puyallup,” I said, emphasizing the word.
“That’s a jaw breaker,” came the response. “How do you spell it?”
“P-u-y-a-l-l-u-p,” I said.
“Let me see—how did you say you pronounced it?”
Pouting out my lips …. and emphasizing every letter and syllable so as to bring out the Peww for Puy, and the strong emphasis on the al, and cracking my lips together to cut off the lup, I finally drilled my friend so he could pronounce the word, yet fell short of the elegance of the scientific pronunciation.
Then when I crossed the Atlantic and across the old London bridge to the borough, and there encountered the factors of the hop trade on that historic ground, the haunts of Dickens in his day; and when we were bid to be seated to partake of the viands of an elegant dinner; and when I saw the troubled look of my friend, whose lot it was to introduce me to the assembled hop merchants, and knew what was weighing on his mind, my sympathy went out to him but remained helpless to aid him.
“I say—I say—let me introduce to you my American friend from—my American friend from—from—from—“
And when, with an imploring look he visibly appealed to me for help, and finally blurted out:
“I say, Meeker, I cawn’t remember that blarsted name—what is it?”
And when the explosion of mirth came with:
“All the same, he’s a jolly good fellow—a jolly good fellow.”
I say, when all this had happened, and much more besides, I could yet feel resigned to my fate…
Then when, at night at the theaters, the jesters would say:
“Whar was it, stranger, you said you was from?”
“PUY-AL-LUP!”
“Oh you did?” followed by roars of laughter all over the house. All this I could hear with seeming equanimity.
But when letters began to come addressed “Pewlupe,” “Polly-pup,” “Pull-all-up,” “Pewl-a-loop,” and finally “Pay-all-up,” then my cup of sorrow was full and I was ready to put on sackcloth and ashes.
The fifth reason to know local history is that you and I need heroes who we can be like. It’s well and good to look up to the Washingtons and Lincolns and the pro-athletes and Hollywood stars, but most of us have to figure out a way to live heroically in the setting we’ve been blessed to enjoy. Some would say that you’re not succeeding if you’re not a celebrity, but it’s important that we recognize our hometown heroes as well. As I began to look into the World War II generation in this community, I found some heroes of my own. There’s a lot who I could describe, but I guess I’ll briefly mention three who were neighbors when they were growing up.
If you head down Pioneer to where it intersects with Fruitland, you’ll find the neighborhood where Eddie Myers, Bobby Bigelow, and Al Tresch grew up. If you went back to the 1930s, Eddie’s dad and Bobby’s dad worked at the experimental station, and Al’s dad Robert Tresch was a Swiss immigrant dairyman who owned a farm from 17th to the experimental station all the way back to the railroad tracks. Eddie was a popular leader, Bobby was a quiet boy who loved the outdoors, and Al was the town bully. I mentioned Eddie Myers already—he was a little guy but a heck of a quarterback when Jigs Dahlberg was coaching and the stands were packed on Fridays at Viking Field. Bobby was introverted but he loved wandering around in the woods and wanted to be a forest ranger. Al dropped out of the fifth grade at Maplewood and was over 300 pounds by the time he should have been in high school. Everyone knew him as “Fat Tresch.” He ran off to join the Army in 1939 and by 1941 found himself in the losing fight for Coreggidor in the Philippines. In the course of that fight, Tresch and another man snuck around at high risk to their lives to take out a Japanese machine gun nest, and they earned the Silver Star. But his fight wasn’t over. He was taken prisoner by Japanese in Bataan Death March and spent the next four years in captivity.
Meanwhile, Eddie became an officer in the 417th Infantry and was beloved by his men. One of his former officers described him on a Bill Moyers special as someone who was like a father to his men. He led his men through the winter of 1944-45, the Battle of the Bulge. But he was killed by a mortar shell on February 17, 1945 in a town called Welshbillag just across the Zauer River.
Bobby joined the Army Cavalry as a Medic. Not long after his friend Eddie’s death, he was crossing the Jones Bridge over the Pasig River to liberate Manila and vindicate the sacrifices of men like his neighbor Al Tresch. And as he bent down to help a wounded comrade, he was hit by a bullet in the head. That final posture of this quiet hero is significant if you look at the statue of a soldier in Pioneer Park. Bobby died, Eddie died, but Fat Tresch survived and returned home as the hero of Bataan.
A sixth reason to know local history is to avoid repeating the bad parts. It was ten years ago this year that Puyallup High School was embroiled in racial tensions that revealed some ugly realities about how we deal with diversity. There was a time in this town when real estate agents wouldn’t show homes to black families. Very early in our history, there is a record of one lone black man who was in Puyallup doing menial work, and people referred to him with a derogatory nickname on the basis of his race. And you know, one of the things I’ve become very aware of in the last couple of years is the impact of the internment of Japanese Americans on this area. It changed the community. Fife the most. As I see it, it wasn’t so much the imprisonment of American citizens that was the greatest injustice as it was the removal of them from soil that they loved and that they farmed productively. I remember going to visit Bob Mizukami, the former mayor of Fife and a former internee, and he told me that there’s one person whose name I should bring up to make sure that he’s discredited in history. He was the editor of the Sumner Newspaper and a local politician named Nifty Garrett. Garrett was the local leader of the Remember Pearl Harbor Society. They displayed anti-Japanese signs in store windows. In the paper they printed the names of those businesses under a banner that opposed the return of Japanese-Americans to the area.
But amid the sins and scars of history, you have to also locate the better angels of our nature. I was touched when Frank Hanawalt told me a story about his father, the longtime schools superintendent Paul Hanawalt. Hanawalt went to the relocation authorities and requested a brief leave for several Japanese-American students of Puyallup High School who were to graduate with the Class of 1942. His request was approved. On graduation day in June, the superintendent drove to the gates of the Fairgrounds, where he picked up Rosie Takemura and Yukio Takeuchi and took them to the high school auditorium to walk with their class.
When the exercises had finished, Rosie and Yukio made their way back out to Mr. Hanawalt’s car, which he would drive back to the Fairgrounds. But first, he made a detour up Pioneer and stopped at Martin’s Confectionary. There, he treated the new Viking alums to Mr. Martin’s homemade ice cream. We should not forget such moments in the history of our community.
And finally, I would say that the seventh reason to know your local history is that human beings need a sense of place. You need to have someplace that you can call home. I’ve heard somebody say that the more things change, the more we have to depend on things that never change. And we live in a time when things are changing all around us. I figure change can be a good thing as long as we have some memory of where we’ve come from to put everything in perspective and to give us a sense that not only does this place belong to us, but we kind of belong here.
There’s this tension between change and tradition that is best embodied in Ezra Meeker. He was somebody who was always ahead of his time, always exploring the next business opportunity, always looking for a new adventure. But in his older years, he wanted the younger generation to remember the pioneers. When I’ve given tours of the Meeker Mansion to fourth grade classes, I ask them to remember what Puyallup would have been like when it was a dense forest planted into the rich volcanic soil. And then to imagine how it turned into a town within a couple generations. Then I try to impress on them that our town isn’t really all that old, and that our history is still being made. You and I are a part of it.
Part of my love for history runs in my blood. About 25 or 30 years ago, Bob Minnich and my great grandpa Ernest lobbied the city council to save a giant Black Walnut tree from being torn out along 7th Street NW. And sure enough, that great old tree still stands there today as a testimony to the dedication of those men. There’s a curved sidewalk that winds around the tree, and I often think of that as the kind of legacy that’s worth leaving. You know, it’s nice to think that we could change the world, but I think we should consider ourselves blessed if we have the chance to make an impact on just a few lives. Rotary does that every day, and I can’t think of a better example of this community’s generosity and goodness than what you’re doing. So thanks for letting me speak with you today.
By Hans Zeiger
Speech to Puyallup Rotary
January 6, 2010
I remember getting out of college a few years ago and thinking—I’ve studied a lot about the idea of community and tradition, but I just don’t feel the sense of connection and place in my own community that I should.
But before I did anything about that, I had this other interest in World War II history. I was watching Band of Brothers, and if you’ve seen it you know how there are interviews with the actual veterans of the European war in the beginning of the episodes. And I thought, boy, there are guys like that around Puyallup who won’t be with us much longer. So I started out in December of 2007 sitting down for about 5 hours with the late Paul Harmes, and he just opened my eyes to a great project. I thought, I want to write the story of one community during World War II. So I’ve been working on that now for a couple years and I’ve just been blessed with a deepening understanding of this community and the kinds of people who’ve lived here, not only war heroes, but decent and generous people from all walks of life.
The first reason to know local history is that it reveals our character. Puyallup means “The Generous People,” and I like to think that we live up to our name. Ezra Meeker set an early example as a philanthropist who gave a lot of land to the city and to churches. Warner Karshner led the fundraising drive for the Puyallup Valley Hospital, which became Good Sam, and civic groups and individuals did their part to build that hospital. In the course of my interviews I’ve come across some cool stories, like the manager of Queen City Grocery in the 30s and 40s, Marty Martinson, who volunteered his lunch hour to deliver groceries to shut-ins around town. And then there were the Puyallup families that opened their homes after the attack on Pearl Harbor to share Christmas dinner with the men of the 260th Anti-Aircraft Regiment who were far from home and temporarily stationed in Puyallup.
These are things that still go on, and the Lions Club is a big part of that.
Second, roots actually do count for something around here. For example, there is a very selective group of people who seem to join the Fair Board of Directors—namely, descendents of the people who were on the original Fair Board of Directors. Hence there have been several generations of Corlisses and Hogans and Elvinses on the board.
Now, some of you who grew up around here know that there’s even historical roots on the South Hill. Ma’s Place and Firgrove Elementary and the Fruitland Grange are some of the old landmarks. I’m a member of a group called the South Hill Historical Society, where I think I am the youngest member by about 60 years. And being a Zeiger means that I’m a newcomer at the meetings. You see, the Zeigers showed up on the South Hill in—1952. By then the Glasers and the Patzners and the Barths and the Mosolfs and the Thuns—had already been stuck in Meridian traffic for several decades.
But I was talking with my aunt Sally the other day about how it’s so important to welcome newcomers. We should always remember that there is a place for newcomers in P-town. I remember talking with a retired carpenter named Manford Hogman and he told me about growing up in poverty in Illinois during the Great Depression and then coming out here with his family in a jalopy around 1939. And he said there were a couple guys who really made him feel welcome at Puyallup High School—and he named those guys: Ray Glaser and Eddie Myers. Both of those guys by the way gave their lives in World War II. Eddie Myers had been the quarterback of the Puyallup Vikings and the class president of the class of 1940. The lesson of our history is that there is goodness in helping outsiders and newcomers to feel welcome.
The third reason to know local history is that it repeats itself. If you think that things are divisive on the city council now, you should go back 120 years ago when Ezra Meeker and J.P. Stewart were at war for the future of the new city. Ezra was our first mayor, but as with most things he undertook, he had strong opposition. Now you’ll recall that Ezra built this town on hops, as well as his own fortune. There’s an interesting little contradiction in that because Ezra was a teetotaler and a temperance activist. So when he ran for reelection, his opponent put a keg of whiskey out on the sidewalk along Meridian with a label, “Courtesy of E Meeker.” The temperance voters weren’t too pleased, and Ezra Meeker lost his reelection.
The fourth reason to know local history is that it’s pretty funny. Ezra Meeker actually had a real sense of humor. To those of you who’ve ever taken flack for living in a place that has a name that’s hard to pronounce, you might appreciate this passage from a book that Ezra Meeker wrote about settling Puyallup. This is Ezra’s apology to us:
But such a name! I consider it no honor to the man who named the town (now city) of Puyallup. I accept the odium attached to inflicting that name on suffering succeeding generations by first platting a few blocks of land into village lots and recording them under the name Puyallup. I have been ashamed of the act ever since. The first time I went East after the town was named and said to a friend in New York that our town was named Puyallup he seemed startled.
“Named WHAT?”
“Puyallup,” I said, emphasizing the word.
“That’s a jaw breaker,” came the response. “How do you spell it?”
“P-u-y-a-l-l-u-p,” I said.
“Let me see—how did you say you pronounced it?”
Pouting out my lips …. and emphasizing every letter and syllable so as to bring out the Peww for Puy, and the strong emphasis on the al, and cracking my lips together to cut off the lup, I finally drilled my friend so he could pronounce the word, yet fell short of the elegance of the scientific pronunciation.
Then when I crossed the Atlantic and across the old London bridge to the borough, and there encountered the factors of the hop trade on that historic ground, the haunts of Dickens in his day; and when we were bid to be seated to partake of the viands of an elegant dinner; and when I saw the troubled look of my friend, whose lot it was to introduce me to the assembled hop merchants, and knew what was weighing on his mind, my sympathy went out to him but remained helpless to aid him.
“I say—I say—let me introduce to you my American friend from—my American friend from—from—from—“
And when, with an imploring look he visibly appealed to me for help, and finally blurted out:
“I say, Meeker, I cawn’t remember that blarsted name—what is it?”
And when the explosion of mirth came with:
“All the same, he’s a jolly good fellow—a jolly good fellow.”
I say, when all this had happened, and much more besides, I could yet feel resigned to my fate…
Then when, at night at the theaters, the jesters would say:
“Whar was it, stranger, you said you was from?”
“PUY-AL-LUP!”
“Oh you did?” followed by roars of laughter all over the house. All this I could hear with seeming equanimity.
But when letters began to come addressed “Pewlupe,” “Polly-pup,” “Pull-all-up,” “Pewl-a-loop,” and finally “Pay-all-up,” then my cup of sorrow was full and I was ready to put on sackcloth and ashes.
The fifth reason to know local history is that you and I need heroes who we can be like. It’s well and good to look up to the Washingtons and Lincolns and the pro-athletes and Hollywood stars, but most of us have to figure out a way to live heroically in the setting we’ve been blessed to enjoy. Some would say that you’re not succeeding if you’re not a celebrity, but it’s important that we recognize our hometown heroes as well. As I began to look into the World War II generation in this community, I found some heroes of my own. There’s a lot who I could describe, but I guess I’ll briefly mention three who were neighbors when they were growing up.
If you head down Pioneer to where it intersects with Fruitland, you’ll find the neighborhood where Eddie Myers, Bobby Bigelow, and Al Tresch grew up. If you went back to the 1930s, Eddie’s dad and Bobby’s dad worked at the experimental station, and Al’s dad Robert Tresch was a Swiss immigrant dairyman who owned a farm from 17th to the experimental station all the way back to the railroad tracks. Eddie was a popular leader, Bobby was a quiet boy who loved the outdoors, and Al was the town bully. I mentioned Eddie Myers already—he was a little guy but a heck of a quarterback when Jigs Dahlberg was coaching and the stands were packed on Fridays at Viking Field. Bobby was introverted but he loved wandering around in the woods and wanted to be a forest ranger. Al dropped out of the fifth grade at Maplewood and was over 300 pounds by the time he should have been in high school. Everyone knew him as “Fat Tresch.” He ran off to join the Army in 1939 and by 1941 found himself in the losing fight for Coreggidor in the Philippines. In the course of that fight, Tresch and another man snuck around at high risk to their lives to take out a Japanese machine gun nest, and they earned the Silver Star. But his fight wasn’t over. He was taken prisoner by Japanese in Bataan Death March and spent the next four years in captivity.
Meanwhile, Eddie became an officer in the 417th Infantry and was beloved by his men. One of his former officers described him on a Bill Moyers special as someone who was like a father to his men. He led his men through the winter of 1944-45, the Battle of the Bulge. But he was killed by a mortar shell on February 17, 1945 in a town called Welshbillag just across the Zauer River.
Bobby joined the Army Cavalry as a Medic. Not long after his friend Eddie’s death, he was crossing the Jones Bridge over the Pasig River to liberate Manila and vindicate the sacrifices of men like his neighbor Al Tresch. And as he bent down to help a wounded comrade, he was hit by a bullet in the head. That final posture of this quiet hero is significant if you look at the statue of a soldier in Pioneer Park. Bobby died, Eddie died, but Fat Tresch survived and returned home as the hero of Bataan.
A sixth reason to know local history is to avoid repeating the bad parts. It was ten years ago this year that Puyallup High School was embroiled in racial tensions that revealed some ugly realities about how we deal with diversity. There was a time in this town when real estate agents wouldn’t show homes to black families. Very early in our history, there is a record of one lone black man who was in Puyallup doing menial work, and people referred to him with a derogatory nickname on the basis of his race. And you know, one of the things I’ve become very aware of in the last couple of years is the impact of the internment of Japanese Americans on this area. It changed the community. Fife the most. As I see it, it wasn’t so much the imprisonment of American citizens that was the greatest injustice as it was the removal of them from soil that they loved and that they farmed productively. I remember going to visit Bob Mizukami, the former mayor of Fife and a former internee, and he told me that there’s one person whose name I should bring up to make sure that he’s discredited in history. He was the editor of the Sumner Newspaper and a local politician named Nifty Garrett. Garrett was the local leader of the Remember Pearl Harbor Society. They displayed anti-Japanese signs in store windows. In the paper they printed the names of those businesses under a banner that opposed the return of Japanese-Americans to the area.
But amid the sins and scars of history, you have to also locate the better angels of our nature. I was touched when Frank Hanawalt told me a story about his father, the longtime schools superintendent Paul Hanawalt. Hanawalt went to the relocation authorities and requested a brief leave for several Japanese-American students of Puyallup High School who were to graduate with the Class of 1942. His request was approved. On graduation day in June, the superintendent drove to the gates of the Fairgrounds, where he picked up Rosie Takemura and Yukio Takeuchi and took them to the high school auditorium to walk with their class.
When the exercises had finished, Rosie and Yukio made their way back out to Mr. Hanawalt’s car, which he would drive back to the Fairgrounds. But first, he made a detour up Pioneer and stopped at Martin’s Confectionary. There, he treated the new Viking alums to Mr. Martin’s homemade ice cream. We should not forget such moments in the history of our community.
And finally, I would say that the seventh reason to know your local history is that human beings need a sense of place. You need to have someplace that you can call home. I’ve heard somebody say that the more things change, the more we have to depend on things that never change. And we live in a time when things are changing all around us. I figure change can be a good thing as long as we have some memory of where we’ve come from to put everything in perspective and to give us a sense that not only does this place belong to us, but we kind of belong here.
There’s this tension between change and tradition that is best embodied in Ezra Meeker. He was somebody who was always ahead of his time, always exploring the next business opportunity, always looking for a new adventure. But in his older years, he wanted the younger generation to remember the pioneers. When I’ve given tours of the Meeker Mansion to fourth grade classes, I ask them to remember what Puyallup would have been like when it was a dense forest planted into the rich volcanic soil. And then to imagine how it turned into a town within a couple generations. Then I try to impress on them that our town isn’t really all that old, and that our history is still being made. You and I are a part of it.
Part of my love for history runs in my blood. About 25 or 30 years ago, Bob Minnich and my great grandpa Ernest lobbied the city council to save a giant Black Walnut tree from being torn out along 7th Street NW. And sure enough, that great old tree still stands there today as a testimony to the dedication of those men. There’s a curved sidewalk that winds around the tree, and I often think of that as the kind of legacy that’s worth leaving. You know, it’s nice to think that we could change the world, but I think we should consider ourselves blessed if we have the chance to make an impact on just a few lives. Rotary does that every day, and I can’t think of a better example of this community’s generosity and goodness than what you’re doing. So thanks for letting me speak with you today.
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