History can be awfully boring, especially as it’s taught in most school systems.
Ditto for a lot of books.
And the History channel isn’t much better.
But I can’t get enough of history as told by real people. The people who lived it. Or the relatives of the people who lived it.
I got a hefty dose of that good kind of local history last week at a fundraising dinner for the Everett Fisherman’s Tribute Committee, the group trying to keep history alive for the community’s once-vibrant commercial fishing industry.
They were selling a new book “Everett Fishermen,” hats and prints by the late Bernie Webber of his painting “The Last Set.” And of course there was the dinner, salmon donated by Trident Seafood. Those things were nice, but what fascinated me was the people. Some 265 of them crammed the dining room at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Everett; that’s all that the fire codes would allow.
Most of the 265 had a connection with the history of Everett’s fishing industry — even the keynote speaker, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson. He talked of going fishing in eighth grade, helping the late state Sen. Jack Metcalf run a beach seine. He said his dad let him go to Alaska to begin commercial fishing the summer he was 15. “My mom didn’t talk to my dad for the entire summer,” he said, noting her fears of what he might get involved in were well warranted. The stories must be good. He said he wouldn’t tell them while The Herald was present.
Stephanson talked of being from a long line of commercial fisherman in Iceland, noting his relatives there still live on the same land they have owned for 800 years.
That’s some history.
“It taught me how to work,” he said of fishing, adding, “If I could have made my living as a commercial fisherman, I wouldn’t be doing what I am today.”
The other speaker was Kay Zuanich, whose family has a long fishing history. Zuanich and Barbara Piercey, who also has many fishermen in her family, came up with the idea of a fisherman’s tribute, and Zuanich explained that it happened five years ago when they heard the Port of Everett planned to raze the net sheds on the waterfront that had been used by fishermen for more than half a century.
The sheds were the only physical sign of a strong fishing industry that has dwindled to almost nothing today. Razed a couple weeks ago, the sheds are entirely cleared out now. But Zuanich and Piercey and group of volunteers are working hard to ensure that their tenants aren’t forgotten.
George Secor is glad to hear that.
He talked at the dinner of how his dad was a port commissioner who allocated money to build the net sheds in 1950. “I hated to see them go down,” Secor said. “They will probably just sit there (vacant) now for two or three years.”
Jerry Solie was also thinking about the sheds at the dinner last week. His grandfather, Hans Solie, was another of the port commissioners who approved building the sheds so that fishermen had a place on the dock to store their gear and repair it between fishing outings.
Solie had trouble expressing succinctly how he felt about losing the net sheds. “It was a part of me,” he said of the area. “It was like my whole childhood.”
He talked about riding his bike to the docks daily. “That was my playground,” he said. “I used to fish there (as a child).”
As an adult, Solie has fished a lot of places. He’s in the book, on page 39, sitting in Bristol Bay in a small rubber boat piled with salmon. As the photo cutline explains, it was a set net close to the shoreline that was a one-man operation.
Ron Rochon isn’t in the book, but a number of the boats he crewed on are, like the Lemes, owned by his grandfather, and the Point Defiance, which he fished under Butch Barcott. What did Rochon learn from his effort?
“It showed me there had to be an easier way of life and that I’d better go to school,” he said, noting he was encouraged by his grandfather to do exactly that.
Rochon is a Seattle architect. As a member of the tribute committee, he hopes to have a role in making sure people don’t forget about the net sheds, and more importantly, the people they represented.
After the dinner last week, I went down to the pier and walked around the area where the sheds had stood for more than 50 years. It’s just concrete and asphalt today, encircled by a chain link fence. It’s near the area where a number of waterfront condos are planned.
I found a bit of irony in a new sign installed by the port in what had been the parking area for the net sheds. “NO FISHING” it says.
Solie hopes that Zuanich and Piercey can come up with something better for people to look at than the sign.
“We need something,” he said. “We really do.”
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.
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