History buffs working on documentary of Lynnwood

LYNNWOOD

By next spring, history buffs and curious residents should be able to watch from their home how Lynnwood and Edmonds Community College have changed during the last 50 years.

Lynnwood city staff, the city’s historical commission and Edmonds Community College students are preserving the past with a documentary to commemorate the city’s 50th anniversary.

Lynnwood Senior Planner Gloria Rivera said she is hoping longtime residents, developers and those involved in the history of Edmonds Community College will step forward to be interviewed for the documentary.

“We want people to share their thoughts,” Rivera said.

Rivera said the documentary will include an opening narrative, still shots of the city and interviews with past college and city officials. She also wants to focus on the property prior to it becoming a college and compare maps to see how the area has changed.

“It gives us a chance to talk to people,” she said. “It’s nice to have people share what they saw in the past to help us see what could be in the future.”

Four months into the project, the group is lining up interviews with former city and college leaders, including college board members that served during the 1970s and the college’s first student body president, and writing drafts for the opening narrative script.

The next three months will be devoted to interviewing people and, ideally, the project will wrap up in April.

“It’s a parallel project; the history of Lynnwood and the history of the college,” Rivera said.

The project is estimated to cost at least $10,000 to cover the price of film production and photography copyrights.

Lynnwood resident Sue Hall recently joined the project and is spearheading the project’s research side.

Hall said it would be great to entertain audiences with the documentary, but she would prefer to capture history before it’s gone.

“There are links of how things came together,” she said.

An employee with the University of Washington, Hall has experience compiling research and oral history projects for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Enrolling in Edmonds Community College’s Students in Service program landed her the job of compiling research for the history project.

So far, Hall said she has uncovered that around the time the college opened, there was a push in the county to open a two-year community college each year.

Hall said she wants to learn more about how the college came to be and why the site was chosen. She wants to meet with early college board members to hear their stories.

“It’s easier to dig up facts,” she said. “But stories are so valuable and put facts into context.”