“It’s not a river! It’s a slough!” Hilda Barrie said when I described my painting 365 watercolors – one for each day of the year – of the Sammamish River. Hilda married into to the Lake Washington High School Class of 1958. They meet regularly at the Olive Garden in Totem Lake. “It moves too slow to be a river,” she said with spunk. Hilda is from Bellingham. For her a river is a rough and rugged, fast-moving body of water, something that the Sammamish just isn’t. I made the case that it has a subtle, slow-paced beauty but she wasn’t buying it.
Hilda met Grant Barrie at a bar, not a tavern because she wouldn’t have gone to a tavern with a stranger. They danced and fell in love and the rest is history. Now they live on Camano Island. Grant grew up in Kirkland. Like many of his classmates he attended Kirkland Junior High before going to Lake Washington High School. His father was for many years a Tulip Farmer until that got too hard to make a living. Then he went to work in the Kirkland shipyards. His roots go deep in Kirkland. His mom’s stories are featured in Matthew McCauley’s book Early Kirkland.
Even though Dad moved to Plain, WA, in the Cascades before his junior year, and graduated from Cascade High School in Leavenworth, the Lake Washington High School (LWHS) class of 1958 graciously allowed him – and me – to join them for lunch on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. I felt honored to be invited in to their long history. To my right was Mick Sarver, who played baseball with Dad. He was a notable athlete. Their LWHS football team didn’t loose a game for many years. He went on to be a baseball and softball coach with notable success. He and his wife live on Camano Island too.
I sat across from Sharon Weston. Her family moved to Kirkland before her junior year of high school, right when Dad’s family moved away. They came from South Dakota, her dad looking for work in the Pacific Northwest. He took a job as a custodian in the Bellevue School District. At LWHS Sharon’s classmates came from Kirkland and Redmond Junior Highs. She followed her father, working for the Lake Washington School District, as an Executive Assistant to the Superintendent then moving over to Human Resources, becoming an administrator there. The best part of that job was hearing the stories of the teachers and administrators she recruited making an impact in kid’s lives. She worked for the LW school district for thirty years, retiring in 2008. For the last ten years, their office was in Redmond, just across the street from the Sammamish River. She enjoyed taking walks on the river trail during her breaks, listening to the birds, watching the baby ducklings swim, “nature at its best,” she says.
Lorna married Chuck Diesen, who was an attorney in Redmond for fifty years. She remembers being fascinated by the windmill at Marymoor farm, but didn’t spend much time on the “slough” till the trail that ran along it was developed in the seventies and eighties. She and Chuck were bicyclists, and enjoyed rides along the river trail as it was being developed. They brought their kids to the river in September, to see the salmon migrating; they wanted their kids to know the place where they lived.
Lorna was a Midwest girl, from Wisconsin on the Mississippi River. Her family moved to Oregon in the 1950’s. The went to junior high and high school in Eugene, and graduated from the University of Oregon with a nursing degree. She moved to Seattle with a college roommate, and met Chuck at a party. As bicyclist, they enjoyed the annual Derby Days with its parade and race. Their were two parades: first a kid’s parade. The kids decorated their bikes, and at the end of the route would get a dollar. This was followed by the adults parade, with floats and bands. The bike race around Lake Sammamish was the highlight of that weekend.
There were many at the lunch that I didn’t get a chance to talk to, like Patsy Rosenbach, who volunteers for the Redmond Historical Society. Many of them still live in, and love, Redmond and Kirkland. Their roots intertwine.
At lunch Dad met one of his old friends that he hadn’t seen since he moved in 1956, Jon Magnussen. Jon’s brother-in-law was Paul Taylor, who married his younger sister. Paul was one of the outstanding three-sport athletes at LWHS and went on to play at Washington State University. I met Paul years ago when our church’s Men’s Prayer Group met on Wednesday mornings at Victor’s Coffee shop in Redmond.
These east-side old timers have seen a lot of change. Change is “inevitable,” Chuck Diesen says. But their friendships live on, rooted as they are in place and people. They’ve been part of the common good of the east side, each in their own way. Their welcoming me and sharing stories was passing on the legacy of this place, encouraging others to put down roots and care for the place where they are planted.
One of the favorite things for Sharon now is to hear the laughter of children. There is a day care and preschool program behind her house. Sharon says that “there is no greater sound than hearing the laughter and joy of kids. One of the blessings of life.” Our lunch together was a reminder of how our lives are intertwined, and how each generation, the children that are becoming responsible adults, are, as Sharon puts it, “the hope for our future.”
The goal of my Bridges of Redmond project is to build bridges between the diverse neighbors of Redmond, between people and the place they live and the history they are a part of, and between the generations.
If you are a member or the LWHS class of 1958 and have stories you want to share, please reach out to me at Jason Dorsey, 317.209.6768.