A class assignment
Published 6:25 pm Monday, November 24, 2008
Mary Grady
AROUND THE ISLAND
A letter came to the Reporter from Florida last week. The writer is on a quest, and he needs our help!
The fifth-grader is looking for postcards from our state and facts from real Washingtonians to help him on a class assignment. His letter took me waaaay back to my own state report for Mrs. Jones at Franklin School in the wheat fields of Whitman County. I was assigned to study West Virginia, although I had secretly hoped for the more hip state of California.
Needless to say, sources for information on exotic places such as West Virginia were primitive back then. We had the World Book Encyclopedia, and an atlas, but little else. We too, had to write to our assigned states looking for information.
It is a sign of hope that even in a world according to Google, teachers encourage students to reach out beyond the Internet and the bookshelf. Taking the approach of getting information from real people is an admirable and useful skill that will serve students well.
A measure of caution is also part of his letter, a wariness that is also part of life today. Here is his note:
I am a fifth grade student at Coronado Beach Elementary School in New Symrna Beach, Florida. I have adopted your state as a class project. Please send me one postcard from your state. Please do not send me anything but a postcard. We are unable to accept letters or packages due to safety precautions. I am writing in hopes of getting a postcard from as many different people as possible…telling me something interesting or special about your state.
I hope your readers can help me. I would like to become an expert on your state. Please accept my thanks in advance for your help.
Bryce Wassem
Coronado Beach Elementary School, 3550 Michigan Avenue, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, 32169.
Beyond being the home of Paul Allen, Mercer Island is rarely mentioned in the national press.
However, the impact of the presidential hopes of Sen. Barack Obama has rippled out to the Island. In October, Obama spoke at Bellevue Community College and told supporters that his mother graduated from Mercer Island High School. The Reporter ran a story the following week about his mother, Stanley Dunham, after talking with classmates who remembered well her intelligence and humor.
Tim Jones, a national reporter from the venerable Chicago Tribune newspaper, came to the Island this past week. His goal was to a get a sense of Obama’s mother who finished high school here in 1960. But beyond yearbook pictures and the memories of a few friends, Jones had found little evidence of the family here and the lives that they lived.
We drove together to Shorewood Apartments looking for the Dunham’s address listed in the 1960 Mercer Island Children’s Hospital Guild phone book. We found it at the end of the street on a high bluff above I-90, likely looking much the same as it did when the Dunhams lived there more than 40 years ago. There is huge cedar tree outside the front door, a patch of green grass in the back, and just steps away, a Northwest Coastal Indian totem pole stands at the cliff overlooking the freeway and Lake Washington.
Jones stood for a long moment, looking out toward breathtaking view. Although traces of the Dunham family were scarce, Jones was finally able to get a taste of our Island and the tiny part it may have played in the life of a man who hopes to be president.
