Ethel Eveline Gould (1910 - 2000). This photo was taken in 1975, the year she was the founding president of the Sno-Valley Seniors organization.
"It is something that we’re really proud of," says Sno-Valley Senior Center Director Amara Oden, adding that it has always been a goal of the board, specifically to serve seniors "by creating this vibrant community place where everyone feels welcome… There’s all this kind of liveliness and community that bubbles out of these walls."
That’s why Marge Qualls, a former Sno-Valley Seniors president and daughter of the organization’s founder, Ethel Gould, wants to spread the word that everyone – really – is invited to the group’s 35th anniversary celebration, Saturday, Aug. 28.
"This is for everyone, not just seniors," said Qualls, who is co-sponsoring the event with her husband, and her sister and brother-in-law, Dee and Marie (Gould) Wolslegel of Toledo, Wash.
The "Blue Hawaii" celebration will include an open house from 5 to 6 p.m., followed by a Hawaiian-themed dinner, a performance by Elvis (aka Steve Songura, a professional impersonator from Las Vegas), and a powerful sense of community that springs from the earliest days of the Sno-Valley Seniors organization.
It really began in in 1973, when retired teacher Ethel (Beieler) Gould had the spark of an idea that Carnation and the surrounding community helped her nurture into the Sno-Valley Seniors. Ethel was caring for her 95-year-old mother, Cora. Ethel’s father had "just kind of rested away in a nursing home," Qualls recalled, and Ethel "…wanted something better for her Mom."
She also wanted a social outlet, says Sno-Valley Seniors charter member Norma Pearson, who still visits the center almost every day from her home in Fall City. "We were talking about how all the men went to coffee, and she said ‘It’s too bad we don’t have a place,’" said Pearson, laughing. "Then I guess Ethel went and started it!"
Ethel pulled together a hobby club that welcomed seniors, and met in members’ homes. It was an immediate success and before long, Ethel enlisted the help of Eastside Mental Health Director Jo Costello, and social worker Debbie Anderson in creating and coordinating events. Senior patients from Eastside Mental Health began joining the events, and by 1975, it was clear the organization had matured.
Qualls noted that Costello and Anderson "were really key in getting the formal structure going." The two suggested that Ethel look for a more permanent meeting place, and helped her to charter the Sno-Valley Seniors, serving Carnation, Duvall, Fall City and Preston, in November, 1975. Ethel took on the initial leadership responsibilities for the organization – board chairperson, center director, and newsletter editor – but was quickly joined by other community leaders including Les Stroming, Bill Baxter, Edna Wallace, Frances Michaud, Rollin Speer and Sandy Hymmen, all of whom served as president.
Twenty-five years after her mother was president, Qualls started her term of service as president of the Sno-Valley Seniors, but she is far from the only child to follow a parent’s example on the board. Oden noted that Pearson’s daughter Pat Busser is the current board president, and "I can list a couple more parents and children who are both serving."
Sno-Valley Seniors charter member Norma Pearson visits the center almost every day.
In the mid 1980s, the organization started a migration that did not end until the Sno Valley Seniors bought the Odd Fellows Hall July 21, 1992. Led by president Ruth Goffe, and directors Dorcus Smith then Nan Harty, the group moved to the River Ranch Girl Scout Camp and the Carnation Elementary cafeteria, while staff offices moved from a Catholic church to a dentist’s office, and eventually, the Tolt Congregational Church, where the entire organization was re-united.
The Sno-Valley Seniors relied even more on the community once President Barbara Amos Haugan signed the purchase papers for the Odd Fellows Hall, with the help of a $50,000 grant from Weyerhauser and other community donations.
The building, although sound, needed a lot of work, and volunteers put in countless hours to create what is now the Sno-Valley Senior Center. Some members were specifically called out for their hard work, including Gordon Leland, Wes Larson, Hap Berg, Jackie Middleton, Charlie Connor, Mary Amos, Jean McNeill, Hilda Reichman, Huntley Berg, Joan Ragan, Ben Jones, director Nan Harty, Gay Guasman, Isabel Jones, Alfa Platt, Willow Guptill, Bob Hoflin and his son Jim, Ray Burhen, Chris Loutsis, and Weyerhauser employees, Max Hales, Dick Ryan and Earl Parmeter.
Oden, the 7th director (following Joe Wolf, Pat Grant, and Lisa Yaeger) of the center, credits these early volunteer efforts for giving the center the important role it plays in the community today. "That kind of grass-roots oomph has really carried through to today," she said.
With an annual budget of more than $400,000 to provide everything from daily meals to adult day health for dementia patients, Oden said most of the center’s funding comes from community-driven fund-raisers, and the volunteers who think of them and run them, such as the steak dinners that began in the mid-80s. Or like Oden’s own unique fund-raiser this year, an Olympic-distance triathlon that she will complete in September.
"It’s to honor the perseverance and grit I see in these people I see every day at the center," she said. Like the sisters Delores Ulrich and Margaret Denton, who work tirelessly for most of the July 4 weekend to put on the July 3 spaghetti dinner and the next day’s strawberry shortcake feed. "If they can do that," she says, "I can do this."
Qualls truly appreciates the service of all the volunteers to the center over the years, and hopes that all of them realize what they are getting in return for their service.
"I find that this is an organization that people love," she said. "I think people just love to be involved in something."
She certainly does, which is why, even as she climbed the corporate ladder at Puget Power (now Puget Sound Energy) she always made sure the center got some of her time – and some corporate donations from her company. Her retirement in 1997 hasn’t changed the company’s donation policy, either.
Although she hasn’t lived in Carnation in decades, Qualls says she will always be connected to the center. She sees people come to the center every day, both seniors and volunteers, and thinks "that’s a subtle way of saying they need the center, too."
Oden agrees completely. "We’re here because the community wants us here," she says. So while other senior centers may struggle to make themselves relevant to a new, younger generation of seniors – the Baby Boomers – the Sno-Valley Senior Center just keeps doing what it’s done from the start.
For information about the anniversary celebration and to buy tickets online, visit www.snovalleysenior.org. |
