By?Monica Wooton,?Board member
Books: Fifteen years in December since Book One: Magnolia: Memories & Milestones was published. A great volunteer effort!
Magnolia?s award winning history book: Magnolia: Making More Memories, worked on 15 years ago and published before Christmas of 2000 was the beginning of a massive volunteering effort over the years that literally has changed Magnolia history.
Magnolia Community Club Board members, all volunteers, procured two Department of Neighborhood Grants which required volunteer matching hours; and, that got the ball rolling. The MCC asked me, just retiring as a MCC Board member, to design a process to collect Magnolia history in a book format that could be published. Unlike the previous history they had published, Magnolia: Yesterday and Today, a slim volume of folksy stories and urban legends by Aleua Frare, I wanted more. So I gathered a corps of 13 Magnolian residents, all volunteer writers, who set about to put together a substantial, well-documented history with reliable first person narrations and archival photographs. All those writers enlisted many other volunteers who spent countless more volunteer hours being interviewed, producing scrapbooks, recollections and images never before published.
Hal Will was the first to join the endeavor and became an enthusiastic force. He was struck by polio at in his 20?s and was a paraplegic. But, that did not stop him in life nor in participating in the book process. Will had already written his memoir of Magnolia memories and had ready ideas and a work ethic for long hours of volunteering. He was responsible for 2 chapters; Dumb Stunts??his writing of a boy?s life in the 30?s is a classic. He insisted the book needed a thorough index and single-handedly produced it. Many others stepped forward – Rick Malsed, Sam Sutherland, Joan Santucci, Patty Small, Scott Smith, Nancy Worssam, Rob Hitchings, Roy Scully, Bob Kildall – all donating monumental energy, their own money and volunteer time to the over year-long intensive process.
Front to back, left to right.The first corps of volunteers. 1st row: Joy Carpine (and
Petey), Hal Will, John Hendron. 2nd row: Scott
Smith, Monica Wooton, Patty Small, Roy Scully.
3rd row: Jonathon Wooton, Joan Santucci,
Rob Hitchings, Shirley Will, Betty Ivie. 4th row:
Gail Perterson-Martini, Cindy Howell, Rob
Wilson. Back row: Steve Erickson, Nancy Worssam,
Dan Kerlee. Invisible: Claudia Callan, Bob Kildall, Rick Malsed,
Sisi Sedgewick, Mimi Sheridan, Sam Sutherland.
Photo Paul Dorpat.
From that group, the Magnolia Historical Society was founded in 2001. In 2007, a second award nominated history book: Magnolia: Making More Memoires was written with 32 volunteer authors.
In 2010, The Society, commissioned and worked with Magnolia artist John Leglar producing with the MHS Board, for in its 10th anniversary, a beautifully hand-carved bas-relief sculpture that sits in outside Windermere today and also documents Magnolia History. Magnolian Art Van der Well, volunteered to place it outside his building and pay the required yearly insurance.
Will, Small, Santucci, Scully, Malsed, Van der Well and Kildall have passed on leaving a huge gap of ready workers and first-hand knowledge of Magnolia?s history. Most small organizations are having problems getting volunteers. In an age of virtual facetime, texts and tweets if seems as if volunteering is itself becoming history?a thing of the past. Without new residents and young Magnolians stepping up, this community stands to lose a lot of its residential feel and memories of a past that will give us a strong sense of place and help us create the future we want to make.
A photo that was found and published for the first time in Magnolia’s first history book. Salmon Bay Charlie and what appears to beofficials shortly before he was taken to one of the reservations. Photo by Clarence Langstaff. Circa 1900.
Today, the books are available at Magnolia?s Bookstore and through the Society; but, sales are lagging and their use as fundraisers to do more Magnolia history is compromised. MHS is seeking seasoned volunteers, new residents and young leaders to carry on important work that defines Magnolia?s past and future. We are a good group and meet once a month, do events we think folks will enjoy, have 2 free memoir writing workshops a year and take the summers off.
Go to www.magnoliahistoricalsociety.org to order books and volunteer. The stories of the past and the future of this place we call home – Magnolia are truly at stake. Our Annual Meeting will be held April 16th, Magnolia Lutheran Church, 7-9pm, Free: In Magnolia?s Backyard: Fort Lawton – Then and Now
(The History of Fort Lawton and How The Historic District Came About and It?s Future.)
Our next writing workshop will be May30th, Magnolia Library, 12-4pm, also free. Space limited for that RSVP through website, president@magnoliahistoricalsociety.org