The Mercer Island Reporter’s Andy Nystrom reports that the city has issued a demolition permit to the East Seattle School purchaser (paid $6 million), who plans on putting 14 residential lots on it. As an alumni who lived nearby, especially in 1945 as a first-grader, memories waft back. One cold November day, Ms. Quigley, our teacher, said that since my desk partner Johnny (we sat two to a desk) had his grandfather coming to see him that day, I could go out with Johnny. Well, big deal.

Anything to get out of class. Soon, stern men knocked on our schoolroom door and nodded to Ms. Quigley; she and Johnny knew what was happening; not me. So we went out under the school’s road overhang entrance (still there) where a black limo with more stern men standing by, and one opened the door for Johnny who introduced me to his grandfather, FDR. When Winston Churchill said that meeting FDR was like your first glass of champagne, he was right.

Now, in 2020, 75 years later, I think I will stop by the overhang and perhaps see and hear ghostly voices and images. A couple of years ago I saw a $5,000 bottle of red wine at Costco and considered buying it, putting my fold up chair on the East Seattle playground, drinking it and watching the demolition. That plan, due to age and frugality, have vanished along with East Seattle Elementary.

Don Gulliford, Mercer Island