The player piano is silent. It was once a fixture at Everett’s old North Junior High School. Now it sits surrounded by hundreds of items, with a sign attached: “Make offer.”
Debbie Galuska walked through the three-level building on Rockefeller Avenue where her cousin had spent most of his lifetime. On the top floor is a studio, cavernous and quiet, its oak floors well-used by countless feet. Mirrors and ballet barres line the walls.
The main floor once housed the Snohomish County Museum. Today, the lower level is as packed as the top is empty.
There are stage sets and audio equipment; couches and coveralls; water skis and tire chains; woodworking tools and wine glasses.
“This was not just a dance studio,” Galuska said. “It was Mike’s entire life.”
For decades, Mike Jordan ran the Betty Spooner Creative Arts Foundation in downtown Everett, a dance school founded by his mother 78 years ago. Jordan died in May at age 69. For nearly 40 years, he had taught ballet, tap and jazz dance to hundreds of local children.
Starting today, his family is holding a three-day estate sale in the studio building at 2821 Rockefeller Ave.
“We are hopeful that many of Mike’s friends, acquaintances and former dancers will stop by to pay their respects and perhaps find a bit of history,” said Galuska, 53, who took ballet as a child from her great aunt, Betty Spooner.
“To me she was like an Auntie Mame, elegant and flamboyant,” the Everett woman said. Spooner’s son followed in her footsteps as a dance teacher and community institution.
“Just about every family in Everett had somebody come through here,” Galuska said. “Mike truly was one of a kind. He was involved in every charitable thing, anything he could do for Everett.”
People who knew Jordan have responded in kind. During the summer, a Friends of Mike Jordan group began raising funds to commission a life-size bronze statue of the dancer.
Ed Morrow, whose friendship with Jordan dated to their Everett High School days, said Thursday that more than $46,000 has been raised. Thanks to “the kindness of everybody,” Morrow said, “we have pretty well reached the goal.”
“It shows how much influence Mike had. He was an incredible soul,” said Wendy Becker, cultural arts coordinator with the city of Everett.
Becker said the city will add $5,000 for installation of the statue, which will be placed on Wetmore Avenue at the Everett Performing Arts Center. “We’re happy to support it,” she said. “We loved Everett’s dancin’ man.”
A selection panel will choose an artist, and by next November the bronze should be in place, Becker said. “We want it to be recognizably Mike Jordan,” she added.
Those who knew Jordan through dance might be surprised at the skis, bicycles, tools and kitchen equipment up for sale. Galuska said her cousin loved to cook “a mean corned beef and cabbage.”
Morrow remembers his friend as an athlete. “He’d take all these kids skiing. He’d also go anyplace on his boat,” he said.
Their memories live on, but not the school.
When Jordan died, there were as many as 250 students in Betty Spooner dance programs. Galuska said her family talked about saving the school, perhaps with her 23-year-old daughter, Jessica, doing the teaching.
In the end, they decided to sell the building once its contents are sold. “Seventy-eight years was a heck of a run,” Galuska said.
Pak Nakornthap, who taught ballet at the school for 25 years, now works in New York, she said.
In the chilly building, there is no sound of little feet climbing 30 wooden steps to the dance studio.
“This place was always hopping,” Galuska said. “It’s full of stories and memories. Without Mike and the kids, it’s very quiet.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@ heraldnet.com.
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