By Julie McDonald
Like hundreds of parents and grandparents over the past two weeks of March Madness, my husband and I drove across Snoqualmie Pass to Spokane to watch the ninth annual Washington State Championship Basketball Tournament. – for children from the fourth to the eighth grade.
Until my granddaughter Brooke from Woodland played there, I had never heard of state tournaments for young basketball players – many of whom are taller than me. During the March 11-13 women’s competition, which drew 250 teams from across the state, Woodland faced fourth-graders from Morton-White Pass, and saw sixth-grader Onalaska Logger girls as well. and a team from Toutle Lake in the tournament. Players from around 250 men’s teams played last weekend.
We filled our tank at Centralia’s Safeway, paying $4.43 a gallon, but when we stopped at Moses Lake to refill it, the cost at the Conoco station was $4.59 a gallon. Ouch.
Another Conoco station near our Airbnb in Spokane had a price of $4.19 one morning when we left for the game but $4.39 when we returned. On a quick trip across the state line to see Lake Coeur d’Alene, I noticed a price of $3.99 per gallon.
When we left Sunday morning, I spotted a station with a price of $4.19 a gallon and filled it up. Who would have ever thought that I would be happy to find a station charging $4.19 a gallon? When I stopped in Toledo the next day, I only put in a little gas because the price was $4.79 a gallon.
That’s life. At least we are not in Ukraine dodging missiles and bombs or burying loved ones because of Russian aggression. It is amazing, however, to see the variation in prices even within a block or two. The other day when Safeway in Centralia was charging $4.43 a gallon, the price was $4.59 at Chevron across the street and $4.69 at the Mobil station a block away .
As we were driving to one of the venues for a game, we passed the Glover Mansion, which reminded me of my favorite trailblazer – Matilda Jackson. Why? Because “Spokane’s father,” James Glover, was her nephew as well as her first husband’s. When Matilda Glover was around 10 years old, her older brother, Phillip, married Nicholas Koontz’s older sister. Sixteen years later, she and Nicholas were married, and in 1847 crossed the Oregon Trail. Unfortunately, Nicholas drowned in the Snake River in early September, but Matilda and her boys continued on to Oregon City, where the following spring in 1848 she married John R. Jackson and moved in with him to his estate. on what is now Jackson Prairie. in Lewis County.
In 1849, Philip and Sarah Glover crossed the trail with their family, including their 11-year-old son, James Nettle Glover, and settled near what is now Oregon’s capital, Salem. When James was older, in 1872, he stood by Spokane Falls and envisioned a great city. He had $6,000, which he spent to buy 160 acres on the south side of the Spokane River. He built a house, a mill, and a bank, and sold property to others who would help build the city of Spokane. In 1888, James and Susan Glover hired architect Kirtland Cutter to design a 12,000 square foot English Tudor with eight bedrooms and five bathrooms on the town’s south hill. After losing the house and over $1.5 million in the economic panic of 1893, he moved to a smaller home in Spokane, where he died in 1921, two decades after his aunt Matilda. The house later served as a Unitarian church.
RIP Robert Schaefer
“A giant has gone to join the Lord.”
Washington Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck spoke the words March 19 to begin his eulogy for a Democratic Party icon, a man who left his mark on Clark County and Southwestern Washington.
If you’ve ever crossed the Columbia River on Interstate 205, you can thank State Rep. Robert McMaster Schaefer, a lawyer who in 1965 became the second-youngest man elected Speaker of the House and laid the groundwork for the construction of the bridge.
If you’ve ever visited the Vancouver branch of Washington State University, you can thank Schaefer who, along with Senator Al Bauer and Reps. Joe Tanner and Joe King (all Clark County Democrats), worked hard to see the campus. of the branch built in Salmon Creek.
And if you’ve ever spent time at Battle Ground State Park or stopped at a venture in Cascade Park east of downtown Vancouver, you can thank Schaefer, who played a huge role in their development.
When we moved from Colorado to Vancouver in 1974, my father got a job as a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital, now known as PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center. At this time, the hospital was located on the outskirts of town, with mostly farmland and only the old Evergreen Airfield to the east. When the Vancouver Mall opened in August 1977, I wondered why they had built it in the middle of nowhere.
Decades later, we are enjoying what visionaries like Schaefer saw as potential for growth as they shaped the county across the Columbia River from Portland. He was dubbed one of Clark County’s most influential people of the 1980s, and he and his wife, Sally, were honored as Clark County’s first citizens (Sally in 1984 and Bob in 2013). I had the honor of meeting Bob and Sally at the twilight of their lives when I helped them write their book, “Footprints of Our Lives”, which was published last year.
People filled the Church of the Good Shepherd on Ellsworth Road in Vancouver on March 19 to honor Schaefer.
“All roads led to Bob’s law firm,” said Heck, a five-term state representative, congressman from the 10th district and friend of Schaefer’s for 50 years. “It was an office with an incredibly intimidating environment, leather chairs, big desks, law books on the shelves. … We would hang on his every word. … But how did we meet? For each of us, with kindness and patience, encouragement and often yes, support, but always a touch of wisdom.
Democrats seeking election often consulted Schaefer, a man Heck described as “at the top of a pyramid of elected officials and key decision makers.” He said dozens of people “trace their political line directly or indirectly to Bob, myself included.”
Schaefer treasured his faith in God and in Sally, his wife of 68 years, as well as his children and grandchildren, Heck said.
“Bob was a giant who is now with the Lord, and we are all the better for his life.”
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Julie McDonald, personal historian of Toledo, can be contacted at [email protected].
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