A tribute to community

Published 10:25 pm Friday, March 26, 2010

DARRINGTON — Scott Parris remembers well the first basketball game ever played in the Darrington Community Center gymnasium.

Parris was 18, it was January 1954 and the people of Darrington had just finished building the 15,000-square-foot community center.

“It was unreal,” said Parris, 74. “The stands were packed and it just made you want to play your best. The gym was such a great improvement over what we had before. ”

A year later, the Darrington High School Loggers won their first state basketball championship.

The same gym floor from which Parris and his teammates shot hoops 56 years ago is still in use. The 7,000 board feet of beautiful old tongue-and-groove Douglas fir has been refurbished a couple of times, but the wood is worn, missing in several places, and nail heads pop up here and there.

Just as the community did in 1952 to get the center built, people in Darrington are rallying now in an effort to replace the old gym floor and the center’s aging roof. The restoration could cost as much as $200,000. That’s a lot of money in this town, which was hit by the decline of the timber industry long before the nation’s recession began.

To raise the funds, people are hosting dinners and dances, running flea markets and garage sales and compiling and selling a cookbook. Flocks of pink plastic flamingos that appear in front yards around town under the cover of darkness can be removed for a donation to the community center repair fund.

“There’s a camaraderie, a renewed enthusiasm and an excitement we haven’t felt here for a long time,” said community center board member Diane Bryson Boyd. “People are really stepping up. Everybody is on board.”

So far, about $7,300 has been raised.

In addition, Mount Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest officials, under a special administrative option, were able to donate some fallen Douglas fir trees for the new gym floor.

“The (national forest) had provided the wood for the floor when the center was first built,” said Darrington District Ranger Peter Forbes. “So this was a tremendous opportunity to partner with the community once again.”

The town of Darrington officially owns the community center, but it is operated by a nonprofit board of directors. The board receives rental income from many groups, but there’s never enough money for major repairs, Boyd said. Darrington School District, located next door, leases the gym and pays the heating bills.

Knowing that bake sales won’t provide all the money needed for the restoration project, the board recently applied for a federal Department of Agriculture rural development grant to help with the installation of the new floor, Boyd said. Since the center provides a place for kids to exercise and play, it’s well within the guidelines set up by the USDA, Forbes said.

The gym is considered by some to be one of the finest old athletic facilities in Western Washington, with its all-wood interior and built-in seating for 1,200 people, who all look down on the action.

Darrington Community Center also has been the venue for countless baby showers, high school dances and graduations, wedding receptions, anniversary celebrations, funeral dinners, senior lunches, Red Cross shelters, Sauk-Suiattle tribal events and the high school’s annual Thanksgiving dinner for the town’s elders.

“It’s very much our community’s centerpiece,” Mayor Joyce Jones said. “This town can have its little squabbles, but when it’s time to get together to do a project, people work like troopers and give generously.”

The current effort to get a new gym floor and new roof is no exception, Jones said.

“There is a lot of emotion involved with this because many people have relatives who built the community center,” she said. “Most of the people living in town back then helped out, whether it was by swinging a hammer, pushing a wheelbarrow or serving dinner to the crowd.”

A crew of more than a dozen volunteers recently salvaged the logs donated by the Forest Service. Now the wood is being cut at local sawmills owned by Danny Rankin, Doug Bradley and Bruce Blacker. Boyd’s husband Bob has helped mill the logs. It’s been fun for him to be involved, because as a boy he helped cut the cedar shakes for the original roof of the community center, she said.

The high school shop class plans to cut the tongues and grooves into the new boards, and other volunteers are coming forward to commit to the project, Boyd said.

The board hopes to replace the gym floor during the summer of 2011.

“The vision people had for this community center back in the 1950s was unreal,” Boyd said. “It’s a tribute to the faith, generosity and community spirit that you can still find in rural America. Darrington has had more downs that ups lately, so we really need this project to work.”

Gerald Green is looking forward to the restoration, too. Now in his early 70s, he was a member of the Darrington’s first championship basketball team.

“I loved playing in that gym. It was great, and I feel that way even more so as I get older,” Green said. “A lot of boys helped build it, alongside all those the loggers who donated their time and money. The gym floor needs to be replaced, but even after all these years, it’s still pretty good.”

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.

How to donate

To donate to the Darrington’s community center restoration fund, send checks payable to Darrington Community Center, P.O. Box 263, Darrington, WA 98241.