Reminiscing on the Vashon of 50 years ago

Published 9:09 am Thursday, September 22, 2016

Fifty years ago my parents were able to afford home on the beach in Paradise Cove. I started first grade at Burton Elementary. As a 7-year-old child, I didn’t want to leave Mercer Island, thought I’d miss my friends. I was wrong, Vashon was magical.

As the years went by, my family moved to several different places on the island. Life on the beach in Paradise Cove was the best. I never took Vashon for granted; it was so much better than the city.

I didn’t really appreciate Vashon until after I started college at the UW. When I graduated in 1984, Ronald Reagan was running for his second term and Booth Gardner, who would become Washington’s governor, was running for his first. It was in the early 1980s when we became a culture of consumption. Pro-family and growth were the rage. Gardner advertized and sold Vashon Island to the world. He sold Washington’s old growth forest to Japan and then justified the sale on the premise of school construction.

Growth didn’t really ramp up on Vashon until the late 1980s. My mother used to chide me for being depressed about the future. I knew the island I loved would be overwhelmed with housing and money. If I hadn’t purchased my cabin when I did, I wouldn’t be able to afford it now.

In the last 25 years Vashon has been assaulted. We got a foot passenger ferry, island businesses blatantly push to get ‘more money’ to move to Vashon and other islanders advertize Vashon on major television channels.

It’s sad how wealth becomes a threat. Vashon lives in my memory, but is no longer a place where anyone can live. All the nice places are taken.

Good luck if you’re 7 years old now.

Thank you Vashon for what you were; now you’re socked with growth.

— Jeff Schnelz