Kent Hricziscse changed his last name when he was a touring musician and comedian.
Howard, his middle name, was a bit more catchy on stage.
The Everett man’s last name is from what was once Czechoslovakia and is pronounced Her-cheese-chuh.
“My great grandparents brought it to the United States in the early 1900s,” Hricziscse says. “I was told by my grandparents that the name was not uncommon in Czechoslovakia, and that the pronunciation was just a little different.”
We won’t get into the Czechoslovakian pronunciation. The photographer (www.rdvphotographic.com) lives at Silver Lake.
When he was a performer in the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, his agent and management company even changed Kent Howard.
At the end of his career, he was simply “Big K.”
“Now in my second career as a photographer, I am finally able to be who I am again,” he says. “That gray-haired old dude with the last name that nobody can pronounce.”
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All Aboard is a perfect name for an organization that provides activities for those with disabilities.
It is offering a beginning reading class, starting Monday morning, four days a week.
Director Gene Rogoway says his son, Mike, has Down syndrome and dyslexia. He has searched for a good reading program for Mike.
“It has been a dream of mine to find a teacher with the skills to teach him and his adult friends to read,” Rogoway says. “Like Mike, our children with severe disabilities are taken out of the reading programs and put into a Life Skills program for the six years following junior high when they go to high school.”
Mike is 29. He still wants to read, his father says.
The new reading class is for those who didn’t learn to read in school.
For more information, call 425-327-5533.
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Every year at ForestFire Paintball in Lake Stevens, they reenact D-Day, including a beach landing with wooden boats on a sparse area of grass.
The June 27 reenactment was the this year’s big game at ForestFire, says owner Ezra Frenzel.
This year, more than 200 folks, including some from Idaho and Oregon, came to the field to fire colorful ammunition around simulated landing craft.
“It makes it like D-Day,” Frenzel says, “but then they go into the woods and around the five acres.”
There was a poignant feature this year.
A new castle was dedicated at the facility. It’s named “Canham Castle,” in honor of Dustin Canham from Lake Stevens, who died in Africa while on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a 2004 graduate of Lake Stevens High School.
Canham loved paintball, Frenzel says.
“He spent most of his weekends at it and captained for one of our teams. He also ran my field when I was away at school. Great kid.”
Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451, oharran@heraldnet.com.
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