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Drag Strip Reunion celebrates 10 years in Arlington Sept. 14

Rachel Brown showed off her father Joe Brown's 1940 Willys Coupe at last year's Drag Strip Reunion.— image credit: File photo. — Rachel Brown showed off her father Joe Brown’s 1940 Willys Coupe at last year’s Drag Strip Reunion.
— image credit: File photo.

Kirk Boxleitner, Arlington Times

ARLINGTON — For the 10th year in a row, the west side of the Arlington Municipal Airport will be revving with hot rod and classic car engines this fall, as the Arlington Drag Strip Reunion returns to the blacktop just off the airport’s 188th Street NE entrance on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Visitors will be able to get an eyeful of vintage vehicles and souped-up rigs for an admission fee of $3 for adults and $1 for kids, while entrants in the show will be charged $20 to pre-register or $25 at the gate.

From the 1950s to 1970, the Arlington Airport served as the site of the National Hot Rod Association-sanctioned Drag Strip event, which produced a number of national records in the early years of organized drag racing.

The first Drag Strip Reunion came about in 2004, when the nearby Arlington Boys & Girls Club revived the event to help raise funds for their programs. They received support not only from the city and the airport, but also from the former track manager and track announcer of the original Drag Strip.

Four years ago, Arlington Boys & Girls Club Director Bill Kinney approached the Port Gardner Vintage Auto Club about partnering on the Drag Strip Reunion, since the latter club had been putting on their own auto show to support local charities, including the Boys & Girls Clubs, for the past 31 years.

Jake Jacobsen, of the Port Gardner Vintage Auto Club, touted the show’s focus on supporting the surrounding community as one of its biggest draws.

“It’s all done by volunteers, so all the proceeds are able to go to those local charities,” said Jacobsen, who noted that the Marysville-Pilchuck High School Automotive Program has been among the regular beneficiaries of the show’s proceeds. “We select seniors who will stay in the automotive field after they graduate, and sponsor them to get tools, so they can get hired immediately out of school.”

According to Jacobsen, last year’s Drag Strip Reunion raised slightly more than $10,000 for various charities, and this year’s goal is to reach $12,000.

With as many as 500 vehicles on display and more than 2,400 spectators estimated to have attended last year, Jacobsen reminded those who will be gathering in Arlington for this year’s event weekend that there are no activities on Friday, Sept. 13, associated with the Drag Strip Reunion.

Indeed, while the city of Arlington welcomes the auto enthusiasts who will be coming to the community for the event, the Washington Traffic Safety Commission will be working with the Arlington Police Department to enforce the rules of the road by conducting additional patrols that Friday evening, with zero tolerance for any traffic violations.

“The Arlington Police have been very welcoming to work with on this,” Jacobsen said. “They’ve been totally open and cooperative.”

Jacobsen likewise praised the Arlington business community for its willingness to promote the Drag Strip Reunion.

“We’ve gotten lots of great local support, and our local businesses have been a big part of that,” Jacobsen said. “People become very cooperative when they hear that it all goes back to charity. A lot of local merchants just like supporting local events, and 95 percent of them have been very happy to talk to us.”

In turn, the Drag Strip Reunion will further show its support for the surrounding community by collecting non-perishable food items for local food banks, and will even incentivize those donations by rewarding those contributors with free raffle tickets.

The local charities which receive funds from the Drag Strip Reunion will have their own table, and the Burned Children Recovery Foundation’s fire truck will be featured among the hundreds of current and historic classics, street rods, customs and specially restored drag cars from the strip’s heyday in the 1950s and ’60s.

For more information, log onto the event’s website at www.arlingtondragstripreunion.com.

Qwuloolt restoration in its final phase

By Monica Brown Tulalip News Writer

State and local politicians along with environmentalists toured the estuary while learning about the extensive undertakings that are part of the complex project that will restore the estuary to it's natural function. Photo by Monica Brown — State and local politicians along with environmentalists toured the estuary while learning about the extensive undertakings that are part of the complex project that will restore the estuary to it’s natural function. Photo by Monica Brown

Tulalip, Wash. –

Restoring 400 acres of estuary land is not a mediocre task and has required years of dedication from many groups. The complexity of the restoration project has spanned fourteen years and is nearing completion. With just over a year left in the project the, the final stage is to lower the southern levee and remove the tide gate.

The tide gate and levee drain the fresh water from the land and prevent any water from flowing back into the estuary. With the completion this winter of the setback levee on the western side, the southern levee, which runs along the northern edge of Ebey Slough, will be breached and the tide gate removed allowing the saline and fresh water to mix.

The Tulalip Tribes, along with the City of Marysville, Army Corps of Engineers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Department of Ecology, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have collaborated on this project and representatives were invited along with local and state politicians to view the progress that has been made.

Visitors were led into the estuary and taken on a brief walk to view the channel opening. Afterwards they were invited to the Hibulb Cultural Center for lunch and a discussion the estuary project in its final stage.

The restoration’s completion is expected to increase the salmon and migratory bird population and bolster the native vegetation in the area.

The collaboration between tribal, local, county, state, and federal agencies will restore the natural water flow in the 400 acre estuary. Photo By Monica Brown

Mel Sheldon, Tulalip board chairman, reminisced during the lunch after the tour about when the project was just getting started 14 years ago. Photo by Monica Brown

34th Annual Puyallup Tribal Pow Wow, Aug 30-Sept 1

34th Annual Puyallup Tribal Pow Wow, August 30, 31 and September 1, 2013

Grand Entry Friday 7 PM sharp! Dance & Drum Competitions, Puyallup Tribal Royalty Contest, Native American Arts & Crafts, Native American Food Booths. Salmon Bake: Saturday 5-7 PM

Location: Chief Leschi Schools 5625 52nd St. E. Puyallup WA 98371

Information: Puyallup Tribe, 253.680.5730 or 253.405.2962 Mon-Fri 9am-4:30 PM

Tulalip on Lopez Island

Lopez-group — Tulalip youth at Lopez Island
Photo/Andrew Gobin

Lopez Island − Two aging piers, a bit of history and a lot of fun. Tulalip kids paid a visit to the tribes’ property at MacKaye Harbor on Thursday, August 22.

Tulalip Youth Services offers a plethora of activities during the summer to occupy kids, including movie premiers, whirly ball, and trips to Wildwaves. This year, youth services wanted to do something different.

“We usually do the same things, make the same trips, but those things are typically open year round,” said Tony Hatch, who organized the trip. “We wanted to do something special, something different. So we brought the kids up here to learn about the tribes’ fishing history.”

He and Ron Iukes reminisced about fishing and staying on the docks during the summer.

“It’s good that the kids see this part of our history, and where we fished off the reservation,” Hatch added. “Here, they also get to see some of the tribes’ property that has been put on the back burner.”

Tulalip fishermen used to fish the San Juan Islands more frequently, which led to the purchase of land. Today, four tracts of land are owned by Tulalip, the first purchased in 1986, two in 1993, and one in 2005, according to the San Juan County Assessor. They still fish there today, though not as often as the decades leading in to the 1980s and early 1990s.

The tribe did plan to renovate the docks, and began work on one in recent years, but the project has not progressed since.

Hatch said, “It is unclear what Tulalip will do with the land, but we’d like to plan an end of the year camp next year.”

Swәdx’ali, Huckleberry Hill

Traditional berry picking basket filled with black huckleberries and mountain blueberries.Photo/Ross Fenton — Traditional berry picking basket filled with black huckleberries and mountain blueberries.
Photo/Ross Fenton

Co-stewardship areas yield bountiful harvests

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News, with photo contributions from Ross Fenton

Tulalip − The Tulalip Forestry Department took their summer youth workers huckleberry picking in S^wәdx’ali on Harlan Ridge for the Hibulb Cultural Center on Wednesday, the 21^st.

The berry patch is one of many co-stewardship areas throughout the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest where tribes are collaborating with the Washington Forest Service to preserve and maintain natural flora. Along with gathering berries for the museum, the Tribes’ Forestry Department wants to make the tribal membership aware of S^wәdx’ali, and sites like it, where our people can go and harvest traditional plants and foods.

Staining their hands purple and red, the day was also intended as a fun and meaningful way to bring the youths’ time with the department to an end.

“Every year, we look for ways to take the youth out of the office, away from the reservation, and show them what we do, while having a little fun,” said Jason Gobin, Tulalip Forestry Manager. “And the museum will get a nice surprise because they don’t know they’re getting berries today,” he added.

Philip Solomon teaches his daughter, Sugar, what berries to pick and how to pick them.Photo/Andrew Gobin — Philip Solomon teaches his daughter, Sugar, what berries to pick and how to pick them.
Photo/Andrew Gobin

S^wәdx’ali, meaning the place of the mountain huckleberry, is on Harlan Ridge and is covered with berry bushes; the common huckleberry bush with the small red berries, the mountain blueberry bush, and the big leaf huckleberry bush that has the larger black berries. S^wәdx’ali is so named because of cultural and biological significance of the area, as the big leaf huckleberry naturally grows in the mountains, above 3,000 feet.

This area is one example of how the Tulalip Tribes is working to reclaim traditional areas. The co-stewardship with the state stems directly from the Point Elliot Treaty, which secured claims to usual and accustomed places, and the privilege of “gathering roots and berries in all open and unclaimed land.”

Reiterating the need to bring awareness to the people, Gobin explained, “These places of co-stewardship are open to all of Tulalip, but there aren’t many who know how to access them, or that we even have these resources available to us.”

For those who would like to access these sites, contact Tulalip Natural Resources at 360-716-4640 or Tulalip Forestry at 360-716-4371.

Big Leaf Huckleberry at varying ripeness, changing from red, to purple, to black.Photo/Andrew Gobin — Big Leaf Huckleberry at varying ripeness, changing from red, to purple, to black.
Photo/Andrew Gobin

John Lovick: ‘Dr. King’s speech … was a turning point in my life’

Photo courtesy of John LovickSnohomish County Executive John Lovick was raised by his grandmother in this house in Robeline, La. It had no running water when Lovick was a child. — Photo courtesy of John Lovick
Snohomish County Executive John Lovick was raised by his grandmother in this house in Robeline, La. It had no running water when Lovick was a child.

By Julie Muhlstein, The Herald

He was 12, old enough to know what it meant.

“Dr. King’s speech, frankly, it was a turning point in my life,” Snohomish County Executive John Lovick said last week.

Lovick grew up in the tiny town of Robeline, in Louisiana’s Natchitoches Parish.

He was raised by his grandmother, Elsie Lee Lovick. A mother of 11, she had picked cotton and scrubbed floors to support the family. Their house had no running water.

Robeline was far from Washington, D.C., where on Aug. 28, 1963, tens of thousands of people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march ended with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s history-making “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Many Americans watched the landmark events of the Civil Rights Movement in their living rooms. Lovick didn’t have that luxury.

“We didn’t have a TV. We would hear about it, or listen to the radio. Obviously, we knew these things were going on,” said Lovick, 62, who lives in Mill Creek.

Mark Mulligan / The HeraldSnohomish County Sheriff John Lovick speaks to the media about his intention to seek appointment to the position of Snohomish County Executive in front of the Snohomish County Courthouse Monday morning. — Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick speaks to the media about his intention to seek appointment to the position of Snohomish County Executive in front of the Snohomish County Courthouse Monday morning.

For a child in a segregated school, in a region that was ground zero in the struggle for racial equality, King was a towering figure.

“There were conversations about him in school — always Dr. Martin Luther King. He was the one black public figure you could really see,” Lovick said.

As Snohomish County’s top public figure, Lovick will join in a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of King’s speech at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Everett Community College’s Jackson Center. Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, former Everett City Councilman Carl Gipson and Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon are also scheduled to speak at the free event.

Lovick said that as a boy in Louisiana, “not in a million years did I imagine I’d be executive of a very large county — that level of success.” Yet he took to heart a message brought forth by King’s powerful words.

“As I watched him, as I listened to his speeches, he always said things were going to change. There will be opportunities. He wanted to make sure we were prepared, by staying in school, staying out of trouble,” Lovick said.

“Things were very, very tough growing up down there. But there’s a future out there. It was a message that always resonated with me,” said Lovick, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard, and as a State Patrol trooper, a state lawmaker and as county sheriff before being chosen in June to lead Snohomish County after Aaron Reardon’s resignation.

The systematic segregation of Lovick’s childhood is gone, but not the hurtful memories.

In all his years of school in Robeline, where Lovick graduated from Allen High School in 1968, he never had a white classmate. “It was just the way life was,” said Lovick, who remembers seeing school buses go past carrying white students.

Schools in his Louisiana town remained segregated long after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that found separate educational facilities are unequal. In 1957, King had taken a strong stand in the fight for integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

It wasn’t until the early 1980s, Lovick said, that Allen High in his hometown was ordered closed by a federal judge.

There was dismay in his voice as he described a visit to Robeline after finishing boot camp in 1970. “I went to a movie theater and had to sit in a segregated section — in my Coast Guard uniform. There was a sign, ‘colored,’ with a finger pointing in one direction,” he said. “That stirred up some terrible memories.

During his boyhood, the Ku Klux Klan was active. Lovick said his grandmother, who died three years ago at 97, feared for his safety when he would walk home. “She was always afraid of what would happen to me. At the time, there was a lot of hatred,” Lovick said.

He recently saw “The Butler,” based on the true story of a black man who worked 34 years, under eight presidents, as a White House butler. With its sweep of history, Lovick said the movie was a reminder that “a lot of people sacrificed and suffered for me to be here.”Lovick shared another painful memory. His grandmother, he said, would “crawl on her knees scrubbing floors, but she couldn’t walk in the front door of the house where she worked.”

Yet he chooses to turn away from bitterness, embracing King’s message of love and forgiveness. “Hating people is too much of a burden for me to bear,” he said.

When King spoke those words — “I have a dream today” — Lovick said he was a little too young to join in demonstrations for civil rights.

“I have tremendous admiration for those people who did the hard things,” he said. “I don’t know right now if I would have had the courage to do what they did.”

‘I Have a Dream’ event at EvCC

A free public celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Jackson Center on the Everett Community College campus, 2000 Tower St. Speakers include Snohomish County Executive John Lovick, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon and former Everett City Councilman Carl Gipson.

“The March,” a new PBS documentary looking back at Aug. 28, 1963, the day King delivered his landmark speech in Washington, D.C., will air at 9 p.m. Tuesday on KCTS, Channel 9.

Touch-A-Truck coming Sept. 14

The City of Marysville invites you to Touch-A-Truck on Saturday, Sept. 14, an event that puts your kids in the driver’s seat of Marysville’s biggest heavy-duty rigs. Honk the horns, set off sirens, kick the tires on a variety of big rigs – dump trucks, backhoe, vactor truck, police vehicles, street sweeper, Marysville Fire District fire engines, garbage trucks, an aid car and more. Come join the fun!

Marysville Noon Rotary Club will offer special activities for kids, and Marysville Kiwanis will have tasty treats for sale.

For more information please call (360) 363-8400. Please bring a donation for the Marysville Food Bank. No pets, please.

Read Event Flyer…

Foreigner kicks out their hits Sunday at Tulalip

InvisionMick Jones (left), Lou Gramm and the band Foreigner perform Sunday at the Tulalip Amphitheatre, followed by the Doobie Brothers and America on Sept. 7. — Invision
Mick Jones (left), Lou Gramm and the band Foreigner perform Sunday at the Tulalip Amphitheatre, followed by the Doobie Brothers and America on Sept. 7.

Ashley Stewart, The Herald

Foreigner will perform Sunday at the Tulalip Amphitheatre.

With 10 multi-platinum albums and nine top 10 hits dating back to the bands formation in the late ’70s, the band has become a fixture in classic rock.

They’re best known for hits like “I Want To Know What Love Is,” “Juke Box Hero” and “Waiting For A Girl Like You,” and will play selections from throughout their more than 30-year career.

The show starts at 7 p.m.; doors open at 5 p.m. You must be age 21 or older to attend.

Tickets start at $30, available at www.ticketmaster.com.

Next up are the Doobie Brothers and America on Sept. 7.

Tickets start at $35 for the upcoming show.

The amphitheater is at 10400 Quil Ceda Blvd. Tulalip.

For more information, visit www.tulalipamphitheatre.com.

Possible manhunt in progress on Tulalip

By Monica Brown, Tulalip News writer

TULALIP, Wa- A manhunt currently in progress on Marine Drive, Between 7th Ave NE and Maplewood Rd. (14th Ave NE).

A stolen vehicle was recovered and the suspects took off on foot into the woods behind Marine Dr and were believed to be headed towards Maplewood Rd. Tulalip Tribal Police and Snohomish County Sheriff’s are on the scene.

No description of the suspects were given, and they were not specified as dangerous.

Heading west on Marine Dr between 7th Ave and Maplewood Rd.

Photo by Monica Brown

Idle No More event in Seattle for Veronica Brown

The Idle No More Washington Facebook page has arranged a rally for supporters of Veronica Brown, the Indian Child Welfare Act and the 1839 Cherokee Constitution Signing. The rally is set to coincide with these happenings going on within Indian country and other rallies currently happening around the country. The event page states:

In solidarity with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma we are gathering to celebrate the signing of the Cherokee Constitution. The celebration pays homage to the tribe’s strength. It also pays tribute to the past, when the Cherokee’s were driven from the Deep South on the “Trail of Tears.” On this Signing Day, they’ll be saluting Veronica too.

Please join us to take a stand for the Indian Child Welfare Act and why the Supreme Court trying to overstep the sovereign rights of Native peoples must be stopped. Support the Brown family in the return of their daughter. This is a peaceful rally; bring your drums, songs, and prayers.

Idle No More Washington – Standing Our Ground for Veronica Brown

Monday September 2, 2013

From 1pm -3pm

Westlake Park

401 Pine Street

Seattle, WA 98101

Visit the Facebook event page here for more information-

https://www.facebook.com/events/1377084135854267/?refid=13