Download pdf - Legacy - Legacies - 125th Anniversary

Wednesday, August 26, 2015 • Whidbey News-Times WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM Page B1

By JESSIE [email protected]

T he people who create small-town newspapers are, in many ways, a

reflection of the community.Over the 125 years of its exis-

tence, a varied assortment of peo-ple have contributed to the many papers that came to be known as the Whidbey News-Times — from the paper boys to the press opera-tors to ad salespeople to reporters.

They were pillars of the com-munity, colorful local characters and quite a few oddballs. A woman who could become one of the old-est proofreaders in the world and even a future Pulitzer Prize win-

ner worked for the Whidbey News-Times.

Perhaps the best known of the News-Times alums is Wallie Funk, who is now 93 years old and lives in Anacortes. He wasn’t just an editor, photojournalist and half-owner of the newspaper, but a community leader and philanthropist who con-tinues to make positive change in the community.

On Feb. 11, 1965, college buddies Funk and John Webber, who both had owned the Anacortes American, purchased the News-Times and the South Whidbey Record from long-time owners A. Glenn and Phyllis Smith.

Funk said Phyllis was really the brains of the operation.

While Funk ran the editorial aspects of the Whidbey News-Times, Webber ran the business side.

Funk said Webber was a great guy and a perfect partner, even though he had “an interesting Maine accent.”

Reached by phone, Funk said that he absolutely loved being “a newspaper man.” Under his leader-ship, the paper didn’t shy away from crime and politics, but he said he was also an advocate for the com-munity and a strong supporter of the Navy.

Funk was the president of the Navy League for three years.

Funk was omnipresent in the community for decades, almost always with his trademark Nikon

camera.He said one of the most note-

worthy events he ever covered was the 1970 orca roundup in Penn Cove. He was the first journalist at the extraordinary event and took more than 200 images of the whales trapped in net pens.

His photos appeared all over the nation and as far away as the London Times. The amazing pho-tos and stories the Whidbey News-Times covered about dead orcas —washed ashore with stones in their stomachs — helped turn the tide toward the protection of the whales.

Funk also helped many young journalists get their starts. Perhaps his best hire was Eric Nalder, who went on to became an investiga-

tive reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has won two Pulitzer Prizes.

In a 2007 story about Funk for the University of Washington’s Department of Communication, Nalder recalled that Funk hired him in 1970; he opined that Funk liked that he had long hair, a sport coat and a bad tie.

“This was the era of hippies,” said Nalder. “He embraced that.”

Nalder covered Island County government. In one early story, he wrote that Prosecutor Ed Beeksma asked the commissioners for more money to be able to attract good attorneys; some things never

These are the people who made the newsAt left, Nellie Williams worked at the newspaper until she was 100 years old. Center, Wallie Funk and John Webber, on right, are pictured signing papers for the purchase of the Whidbey News-Times. At right, Dorothy Neil was a longtime columnist and local historian.

SEE NEWS PEOPLE. PAGE B7Supplement to the Whidbey News-Times

By JESSIE [email protected]

T he yellowing pages of old newspapers — some brittle with age, some in tatters — tell the story of Whidbey

Island over the past 125 years.The format has changed over the

course of decades, from the giant, black-and-white broadsheet papers to the current tabloid size.

The mechanism for creating the pages transitioned from typesetting with metal letters to pasting pages together with hot wax to the cur-rent all-digital layout of print papers and the uploading of news to the Internet.

Still, the fundamentals are the same and the words on the pages belie that fact. From the beginning, the newspapers offered snapshots of community, from stories of local politics, tragedy and crime to the scores of Little League games and features about interesting people.

“A hundred and twenty five years on an island is pretty incredible,” said Rick Castellano, director of the Island County Historical Society.

The Janet Enzmann Archives at the museum in Coupeville contain hundreds of newspapers, including the very first one printed on the island.

Archivist Sarah Aldrich said she is working on digitizing the news-papers, which will be available to the public in a searchable format someday.

The Island News was the first newspaper published on Whidbey Island. It was established in Coupeville in 1885 by Flowers and O’Brien, according to “The Coast,” a 1902 history chronicle. But the newspaper was short-lived.

Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory listed the Island News in the 1885 edition, but it disappears from the directory two years later and never reappears.

The Island County Sun emerged in 1890. It was an eight-page paper published in Coupeville and cost $2 for a year’s subscription. Charles W. Angel was the publisher of the “Republican” newspaper, accord-ing to the N.W. Ayer and Son’s Newspaper Annual from that year.

But the newspaper struggled because of its “liberal tendencies,” according to Castellano.

In response, a group of the newspaper’s critics started a rival product, the Island County Times, in Coupeville in 1891. The rivalry between the two newspapers was bitter, as evident from an early edi-torial in the Times, which describes the fledging paper as one of the best weeklies in the Pacific Northwest that has reported accurately and without bias.

“And it has done this all in the face of the bitterest and most repre-hensible opposition,” it states, going on at great length to savage the reputation of the rival newspaper.

Nevertheless, the two newspa-pers merge as the Island County Times in 1894.

The early papers were without photographs and mixed ads with news stories. National news domi-nated the papers until well into the 20th Century.

Local news moved to the front page and photographs were added

circa 1909.Much of the early local news

involved the everyday life of Whidbey Island residents, such as who was visiting from out of town and where people went on vaca-tion. An unusually lengthy story in an 1891 paper described a woman who’s home was haunted by a “spook.”

Whidbey was “Whidby” and Penn Cove was “Penn’s Cove” in the early papers.

Like newspapers across the nation, early papers on Whidbey Island were frank, grisly and even insensitive by modern standards.

An 1893 story in the Sun describes in detail how Charles Crockett, “an old and respected resident,” killed

himself at his Coupeville home. The headline reads “Blew his

brains out.”The newspapers also captured

the racism and sexism of the time. A story in an early Island County Times, for example, argues that it was a positive development that “Chinamen” were moving off the island.

The first editor of the consoli-dated paper was E. G. Earle, who in 1900 sold it to D. Carl Pearson, historian Jimmie Jean Cook wrote in her book, “A Particular Friend, Penn’s Cove.”

The newspaper changed hands in quick succession in the coming decades. William T. Howard pur-chased it circa 1905 for $1,600.

“The Seattle News of July 15, 1906 refers to Mr. Howard as an old news-paper editor and publisher from Nebraska,” Cook wrote, “who ran the paper as a staunch Republican organ, was the official paper of the county and reached nearly every family in Island County.”

Beriah Brown purchased the newspaper in 1925.

By the 1930s, A. Glenn and Phyllis Smith owned and operat-ed the three main newspapers on the island. The Oak Harbor News, which started as the Farm Bureau News in 1911 by H. L. Bowmer, covered the north end of the island. The Whidbey Record, originally the Whidby Record, covered the south end since 1923. In the middle was the Island County Times.

The Smiths merged the Island County Times and the Oak Harbor News in 1959, creating the Whidbey News-Times.

“This is the last issue of the proud old Island County News established in 1891 in Coupeville, and one of the oldest weeklies in the State of Washington,” Smith wrote in the Sept. 24, 1959 edition of the Island County News.

Then in 1965, business partners Wallie Funk and John Webber pur-chased the News-Times and the Record from the Smiths. Funk and Webber had been co-owners of the Anacortes American, but they lost it after a merger with the Skagit Valley Herald.

As Funk explained, the Smiths would only sell to the two men, fresh out of journalism school, because they had “a passion for community journalism.”

The two college buddies had a 40-year partnership in the newspa-per business.

“I was in charge of editorial con-tent. He was in charge of the busi-ness side,” Funk said in a 2010 interview. “It was a relationship that worked well. Some marriages don’t last that long.”

The partners sold the papers to Sound Publishing in 1989 and soon after it became a twice-weekly paper to better serve the growing com-munity.

photo courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsend

Page B2 WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM Wednesday, August 26, 2015 • Whidbey News-Times

Whidbey newspapers merged, evolved

photo courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsend

Above, Wallie Funk took this photos of the 1970 orca capture in Penn Cove. His images were published internationally.Right, a truck drives through the old entrance to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.Below, the Farm Bureau News front page captures the response on Whidbey and the nation after the attack on Pearl Harbor.


From stories about missing pup-pies and quilt raffles to murder and war, the papers that make up the history of the Whidbey News-Times captured the first draft of history on the island.

The following is a look at some of the most significant stories, and some odd ones, over 125 years:

1891-1915News coverage near the turn of

the 19th century focused largely on events in towns scattered across the newly formed state of Washington. But when the occasional Whidby Island story -- yes, that’s Whidby without an “e” -- hit the front pages, it usually was related to a tragic event. Otherwise, it was often con-tained to one-sentence passages, announcing a resident’s travels to Seattle or a visitor to the island, in packages broken down by com-munity.

1892: A noted Coupeville doc-tor, Dr. Joshua Highwarden, suf-fers a heart attack and dies after over-exerting himself on the Coupeville wharf. Highwarden had run to the wharf around 4 a.m. in the morning to hold the steamer Washington for family and friends. As described in a April 16 front-page news story in the Sun, a funeral took place the next day, conducted by Rev. C.E. Newberry and Rev. Geo. Lindsay “in the pres-ence of nearly all the population.” Highwarden was the only regular physician on Whidby Island the previous five or six years, it was reported.

1893: Charles Crockett shoots himself with a rifle in a meticu-lously planned suicide at the family homestead in Coupeville where he lived with his brother. The front-page story in the Sun described the account in graphic detail.

1894: Coupeville becomes the official Island County seat.

1901: Fort Casey is activated, bringing more than 300 men to Central Whidbey. Designed to pro-tect the entrance of Puget Sound, the U.S. Army post remained active until 1953. It was acquired by Washington State Parks and Seattle Pacific University two years later.

1909: Corporal Robert A. Cost of the 149th Company, coast artil-lery, at Fort Casey, is accidently shot and instantly killed while duck hunting along the marshes and beach south of the post on Whidby Island. Cost decided to build a blind and while at work gathering driftwood, a flock of ducks flew by. In haste to get his gun for a shot, he grasped the barrel near the muzzle; the ham-mer caught on an obstruction and caused an explosion. The funeral for Cost, 26, is attended by more

than 200 at Fort Warden.1909: George W. Morse of

Oak Harbor will ask the legis-lature to appropriate $125,000 for the building of a bridge over Deception Pass to connect Whidby Island with the mainland. The surveys have already been made.

1909: A plan is proposed to establish ferry service between Clinton and the city of Everett.

1910: The much-antici-pated results of an election are announced in the courtroom of the county courthouse in Coupeville. By a majority vote of 41-36, the Town of Coupeville is incorporated April 2, 1910. W.H. Ives acts as judge of the election. Charles H. Lyon is elected as mayor.

1910: Coupeville High School announces its largest graduat-ing class in history — five. They are Myrtle Eugenia Wanamaker, John Edgar Herrett, Maria Enola Churchill, Reginald B. Wanamaker and Doris Belle Newcomb. Reginald Wanamaker, senior class president, would later die the same year from diptheria.

1911: The 110-foot steam-er Whidby catches fire and is destroyed while moored overnight in Oak Harbor. Two seamen are killed in the blaze. The boat was cut loose to save the wharf.

1911: A record wheat yield is announced on Ebey’s Prairie.

1915: Oak Harbor is incorpo-rated with 68 votes cast for citi-hood and 27 against. Jerome Ely is elected the city’s first mayor.

1916-1940Newly incorporated Oak Harbor

is hit with a large fire that wipes out a considerable number of water-front businesses. However, the biggest news of this quarter century is the construction of a bridge on North Whidbey that connects the island to the mainland and ends reliance on boat travel.

1916: Three feet of snow have fallen on Oak Harbor, with a February article describing it as the “worst snow ever.” Snow has been on the ground since Dec. 31, the longest stretch in at least 25 years.

1916: Ferry route to allow auto-mobile transport between Clinton and Mukilteo is accepted by unani-mous vote to begin in June.

1920: The east end of Oak Harbor’s business district is burned in a July fire just after noon, destroy-ing the Byrne Hotel, the Byrne store and Byrne dock and ware-house, and Kennedy’s blacksmith shop. Also burned were a creamery, a garage and several cabins. The fire originated under the blacksmith shop. Since there was no fire depart-ment in town, a bucket brigade formed until help arrived from a Fort Casey fire engine.

1934: A storm nicknamed the “Big Wind” blows the roof off the

old fire station in Oak Harbor.

1935: The Deception Pass Bridge is completed and hundreds of people attend the July 31 dedica-tion, including the state’s governor. The bridge was a vision of Capt. George W. Morse, who didn’t live to see its completion; however, his daughter attended the celebration. George Morse died in 1915.

1940: Figures tallied by the Bureau of Census show Island County’s population to be 6,029, an increase of 12.3 percent in a decade. It ranks 33rd out of 39 counties in the state.

125 years of island life captured in print

photo courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsdin

Deception Pass Bridge connected Whidbey Island with Fidalgo Island. The bridge was completed in 1935.

photo courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsdinphoto courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsdinphoto courtesy of Peggy Darst TownsdinWheat crops were abundant on North Whidbey in the early 1900s with record yields in some years. This is near Scenic Heights Road in Oak Harbor.

SEEHISTORY. PAGE B4


1941-1965Oak Harbor is forever

changed as events across the globe prompt the U.S. Navy to build a naval air station on North Whidbey. The agri-cultural community is trans-formed as the federal govern-ment buys up farmland to build an airfield and seaplane base. The change is dramatic for farmers, but is a major eco-nomic boost to the community.

1941: Whidby Island’s dairy production is laud-ed by the Skagit County Dairymen’s Association, which is receiving more than 600 cans of milk daily from Whidby Island. This is in addition to the large amount taken by the local creamery. Dairying is the largest single industry on Whidby.

1941: Plans for a large naval base on Whidby Island are revealed by state con-gressmen Henry M. Jackson and Warren G. Magnuson in a front-page article of the Island County Farm Bureau News July 17. The article, “Huge New Naval Air Base Scheduled for Whidby,” calls for $4 million to be spent on base construction, part of an expansion program as a result of the German-Russian war. Although construction of the naval base has long

been rumored, this is the first definite sign that the proj-ect is slated to come to the island, the article reports. Magnuson says that the naval affairs committee had agreed on the proposed base and the funding would be forthcoming. Within months, it was announced that the main base would include the fertile farmland of Clover Valley with the federal gov-ernment paying farmers for their land, and that 100 naval housing units would be built.

1941: George Scott of Oak Harbor wins the top $100 prize at the third annu-al Whidby Island Salmon Sweepstakes sponsored by the Langley Merchants Assocation. His winning fish was a 26-pound king salmon caught on a Martin plug.

1942: The Navy will take over the property in the designated air base area in Crescent Harbor and Clover Valley April 4, it is announced. At that date, the Navy will have exclusive title of all real property that is surveyed, including that still under negotiation, the article reports. This involves 4,400 acres of land.

1942: Construction of the Seaplane Base in Oak Harbor is underway in April as well as in the Clover Valley area where two airplane runways will be built. With

1,000 workers on the pay-roll and more needed, work on the Whidbey re-arming base is taking on the appear-ance which engineers have designed for it. The first PBY-5A Catalina aircraft also arrive at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station this same year.

1962: On Oct. 11, the Columbus Day storm strikes with 92 mph winds, causing an estimated quarter mil-lion dollars of damage on Whidbey Island. Wind blew away roofs, including that of Oak Harbor City Hall, lev-eled barns and toppled trees. One was a large oak on Midway Boulevard, consid-ered the second largest in Oak Harbor. The City of Oak Harbor signed a $400,000 insurance policy the after-noon the storm hit, upgrad-ing from $50,000 protection.

1966-1990Orca whales and the largely

unchanged farming landscape on Ebey’s Prairie are both under siege during this time period. The orca roundup in Penn Cove raises environmen-tal awareness and is the start of a 45-year fight to release a whale named Lolitta from a marine park in Florida and return her to Puget Sound. A threat of residential devel-opment near Ebey’s Landing leads to the creation of a

national reserve to protect the prairie’s rural landscape. In Greenbank, a white suprema-cist draws national news to the island in a shootout with the FBI. At the Coupeville jail, there is tragedy as a DUI sus-pect shoots and kills two sheriff deputies.

1966: Hundreds of island residents are drawn to a fire on a late October evening as the warehouses at the end of Oak Harbor’s landmark pier, the Maylor Dock, are destroyed. A night earlier, a crowd of 3,200 watched Oak Harbor High School’s foot-ball team score in the final 22 seconds to defeat Anacortes, 26-21, on Old Grad night to improve to 6-0.

1970: Whidbey General Hospital opens in Coupeville.

1970: Dozens of orca whales are captured in Penn Cove with the young-est selected to be sold to marine parks around the world. Among the seven sold to aquariums is Lolita, the only survivor who’s been at the Miami Seaquarium in Florida since 1970. The oth-ers died within five years. At least 80 Southern Puget Sound resident whales were captured near San de Fuca on the August day with many released. At least five died during the capture.

1978: While plans are

being made to place a resi-dential development near the bluff on Ebey’s Landing, the House Interior Committee in Washington, D.C., votes in to approve the authoriza-tion of $5 million to protect 8,000 acres in the Central Whidbey area from housing development. This leads to to the creation of the Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve, a first-of-a-kind unit of the National Park Service that protects the historical, agricultural and cultural tra-ditions and rural landscapes of the area. Local attorney Ken Pickard spearheaded efforts to prevent the pro-posed 69-lot housing subdivi-sion on 77 acres near Ebey’s Landing.

1978: At the request of a friend, Bruce Jenner makes a summer stop at Camp Casey in Coupeville and doesn’t charge Seattle Pacific University his usual $5,000 appearance fee. The 1976 Olympics decathlon champion is 28 at the time and working for NBC Sports. He gives an honest appraisal of what he’d be doing had he not won the Olympics gold. “Doing what I was doing in the San Jose area before the Olympics started,” he said. “Probably working at the local level in TV and giving talks as I had been doing in the San Jose area before the games. I wouldn’t have the endorsements because only the winners get that.” Then he added, “I give the same talk now as I did then -- it just costs more.”

1984: A two-day FBI siege in Greenbank results in the death of neo-Nazi lead-er Robert Mathews in the cold of December in a cabin off Smugglers Cove Road. Mathews was hiding out on Whidbey Island, posing as a divorced writer, when the FBI caught up with him and engaged in an intense shoot-out that ultimately set the cabin ablaze. Mathews died from smoke inhalation and there was no evidence of gun-shot wounds in his charred body, according to the medi-cal examiner.

1984: An EA-6B air-craft from Whidbey Island Naval Air Station reportedly explodes in midair shortly after four crewmen safely eject near Port Townsend. The plane crashes in a secluded state forest 10 miles east of Sequim.

1987: A 26-year-old Clinton man is charged with two counts of first-degree murder after gunning down two unarmed Island County sheriff deputies in the Island County jail. Darrin Hutchinson shot and killed deputies Bill Heffernan and John Saxerud while he was being adminis-tered a breathalyzer test in a room off the jail garage on a Saturday morning. He had been apprehended at the Clinton ferry dock on suspi-cion of driving while intoxi-cated.

Photo courtesy of the Island County Museum

The PBY-5A Catalina started arriving at the Seaplane Base in 1942.

Dozens of orcas were captured in Penn Cove in 1970. Many of them were sent to marine parks.

SEE HISTORY. PAGE B6

CONTINUED FROM B5


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Congratulations Whidbey News-TimesOn Celebrating Your 125th Anniversary!

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1989: Scenes for “War of the Roses” are shot in downtown Coupeville. The film features Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny Devito, who appear in a press conference at the Coupeville Rec Hall.

1991-2015Movie stars come to Whidbey Island as

three motion pictures are filmed in two consecutive years, including two within one month in Coupeville. The national spotlight then shifts to Oak Harbor, where yellow ribbons are tied to welcome home 24 crew members detained in China after a midair collision between a Whidbey-based U.S. Navy surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet. But controversy would take center stage during a large portion of this quarter century. An already controver-sial construction project in historic down-town Oak Harbor uncovers an ancient Native American burial ground. In Central Whidbey, a group forms to protest what they perceive to be a new, louder aircraft from the naval base and act to shut down the carrier landing field near Coupeville. A

large landslide in Central Whidbey draws national attention.

1997: Scenes for the Kevin Costner movie, “The Postman” are filmed at Rosario Beach near Deception Pass.

1998: Filming of “Practical Magic” takes place in April in downtown Coupeville. Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman and Aidan Quinn star in the Hollywood movie about witches, which includes a Warner Brothers crew of about 150. Buildings on Front Street are painted white for downtown scenes as Coupeville is transformed into a Massachusetts town. Jason Henne, a 13-year-old North Whidbey Middle School student, is picked as an extra and even has a speak-ing line as he yells, “You’re a witch, witch, witch!” Alice Martin of Coupeville also gets a speaking role. By the end of the month, filming starts in Coupeville on another Hollywood movie, “Snow Falling on Cedars,” starring Ethan Hawke. The movie has brief scenes that show Ebey’s Prairie and the Ferry House, which is still decorated with wallpaper from the movie.

2001: Oak Harbor residents, the nation-al media, the state’s governor and even entertainer Tony Orlando are on hand at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station to cel-ebrate the return of 24 crewmembers of the

U.S. Navy surveillance plane detained for 11 days in China after a midair collision with a Chinese fighter on April 1. Larry King inter-views several crewmembers live from Oak Harbor. The EP-3 Aries II propeller plane is part of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron I based at NAS Whidbey.

2009: In a topic of much debate that continues to this day, the Oak Harbor City Council votes 4-3 to transform Pioneer Way into a one-way, eastbound street as part of a downtown revitalization project. Construction is set to begin January 2011. A group of downtown merchants immediately launches a campaign against the decision but is unsuccessful in reversing it.

2011: A construction worker unearths an ancient Native American burial ground during the Pioneer Way construction project, resulting in millions of dollars in archaeology costs and a lawsuit from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The city’s insurance provider winds up pay-ing $1.2 million to the Swinomish, and the insurance companies for three contractors involved in the project pay an additional $800,000 to the tribe. The city also gives the tribe the deed to the old city shop property for a future tribal cemetery.

2013: A Central Whidbey group calling itself the Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve file a lawsuit against the Navy, claiming noise from the EA-18G Growler aircraft is harmful to community members’ health. The group wants the Navy’s alternate landing field near Coupeville, where carrier practice landings take place to be shut down.

2013: An EA-6B Prowler crashes into a field during a training mission in rural Eastern Washington, killing all three of the air crew onboard.

2013: An enormous landslide in a Central Whidbey neighborhood severely damages a home, wipes out a road and cuts away large chunks of property, necessitating evacuation of residents. It is believed to be the largest movement of earth in the state since the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980.

2015: A federal judge denies COER’s request to halt the Navy’s carrier landing practices at a field near Coupeville.

file photo

A massive landslide in Central Whidbey makes national news in 2013.

By DEBRA [email protected]

Happy birthday, United States Navy Reserve.

The reserve component of the Navy turned 100 in March, the anniversary of the congressional act that formalized its creation.

Citizen sailors have in some capacity always fought for American interests at sea.

Before the Continental Congress even created a Navy, citizens in Maine com-mandeered a schooner and took control of a British warship. Later, privateers raided the British merchant fleet and state-formed naval militias assisted in coastal defense.

Events in Europe at the start of the 20th Century underscored the need for a federal naval reserve, but it wasn’t until the outbreak of World War I, the Secretary of the Navy was able to suc-cessfully campaign Congress for the money to pay for a Navy Reserve.

The Navy Reserve didn’t have a presence locally until Naval Air Station Seattle ceased functioning as a home base for the area’s air reserve arm in the spring of 1970.

The Naval Air Reserve moved to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station into a pre-World War II building at Ault Field, serving as the hub for Naval Air Reserve programs in the Pacific Northwest. In 1989, it moved to its current location on base, and in 2006 it became a Naval Operation Support Center.

Today, there are three reserve squadrons on base: VAQ-209, the Star Warriors, fly EA-18G Growlers; VP-69’s Fighting Totems fly the P-3 Orion; and VR-61, the Islanders, is a logistical support wing with three C-40A (737) aircraft. Each of those squadrons is considered its own command. A fourth reserve unit is assigned to VAQ-129, the Electronic Attack training squadron.

Navy Reserve celebrates 100

HISTORYCONTINUED FROM B4

Oak Harbor incorporated in May 1915By RON [email protected]

Remnants of Oak Harbor’s quiet, rural country charm of decades past

are harder to find these days in a city that is cele-brating its centennial anni-versary this year.

Founded in 1851 as one of Washington’s earliest white settlements, the city wasn’t incorporated until May of 1915.

Yet, it was an event a quarter century later that impacted Oak Harbor most, and literally altered the city’s landscape, with the arrival of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, and the growth that ensued.

“It’s definitely grown,” said Carl Freund, the great-great nephew of Ulrich Freund, one of Oak Harbor’s founders.

“I’ve seen it grow up from almost nothing,” said Earle Darst, 96, a retired bulb farmer and descen-dent of an Oak Harbor pio-neer.

“I remember when it was a little town like Coupeville, and then it grew up after the Navy came.”

Oak Harbor’s popula-tion hovered around 400 in the 1920s and 1930s when boat travel was the only way to reach Whidbey Island.

The Deception Pass bridge was completed in 1935, ending the reliance on ferries to get to and from the mainland.

A major shift in Oak Harbor’s rural landscape came in the early 1940s when the United States government purchased land from farmers near Crescent Harbor, Maylor Point and Clover Valley and began construction of a naval seaplane base and air field.

“That was the turning point in the history of Oak Harbor,” said Peggy Darst Townsdin, who’s written three books abou the city’s history.

Oak Harbor continued to maintain its small-town character, however, for sev-

eral decades, and in some respects, still does to this day.

Some of the city’s insti-tutions such as the Kow Korner, Blue Fox Drive-In Theater and Roller Barn arrived on the scene in the 1950s.

The drive-in and roller rink still remain as fam-ily traditions while Kow Korner lasted until the turn of the century.

Fast food chains started arriving in Oak Harbor in the 1970s.

Walmart came in 1999.“My earliest recollec-

tions of Oak Harbor was this charming little farm-ing community,” said Rick Castellano, executive direc-tor of the Island County Historic Society.

Oak Harbor is currently a city of about 22,000 that still celebrates many long-time traditions and festivals from its Dutch and Irish heritage and makes it a point to recognize its con-nection to the Navy.

Staying connected to its history also is important to Oak Harbor residents and business owners, as is evidenced by the recent makeover of the city’s his-toric downtown and con-tinued efforts to revitalize that part of town.

However, growth and development has often won out over historic preser-vation in Oak Harbor as opposed to other communi-ties on the island.


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change, it seems.Another journalist whom Funk started on his way was

Keven Graves, the paper’s current executive editor and pub-lisher. Funk said he remembers that Graves was originally an intern in high school and returned for a job after college.

“I hired him on the spot,” he said.Funk also worked with another well-known News-Times

journalist and historian, the late Dorothy Neil. She passed away in 2004 at the age of 94.

She was an editor and a reporter, but the proud Irish lass was best known for her “Top O’ the Morn” column, which focused on island history.

The column appeared in the newspaper for nearly 60 years.Funk remembers her as a invaluable resource. She lived

next door to the newspaper office in Oak Harbor and had lived much of her life in the city.

Like Funk, she was a community advocate. She helped res-urrect the Holland Happening event and created the tiles that were sold at the event.

She was famously protective of the city’s namesake oak trees. When improvements were scheduled on Southeast Eighth Avenue, a thoroughfare shaded by numerous oaks, the city planned to cut down a large oak in the middle of the street.

During an interview years later, Neil explained that the city claimed the tree in the middle of the road was a hazard. Neil informed the city manager she would be at the tree with a shotgun to prevent any axing. Neil said she showed up at the tree with her shotgun, but no one from the city came. Today, Southeast Eighth Avenue still divides around the tree’s trunk.

Nellie Williams was another newspaper icon. The preternat-urally sweet proofreader with a playful sense of humor was at the newspaper until she passed away in 2009 at the age of 100.

She garnered international attention after she became a centenarian and continued coming to work regularly. News stations and newspapers across the world called her the oldest living proofreader.

Williams would proofread pages while eating a bag of Cheetos — her favorite snack — and often left orange smudg-es on the pages.

Williams started working at the predecessor Oak Harbor News in 1953 after owners Phyllis and Glenn Smith asked her to fill in as a proofreader.

City celebrates centennial

Photo courtesy of Peggy Darst Townsdin

A.W. Bash, at left, and family members admire their oat field, grown on the salt marsh. The land later became home to the Seaplane Base.

NEWS PEOPLECONTINUED FROM B1

An ad from 100 years ago, imploring chicken ranchers to give their trade and eggs to the Cash Store. As most things do change over time, advertising in what is now known as the Whidbey New-Times has changed over the last 125 years. Early ads seemed to blend into articles, being built primarily with words and no images. While the types of ads have changed over time from selling tonics and potions aimed to cure what ails you, grocery store or market ads have remained a constant presence over time.


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