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Stefanie Pettit

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News >  Washington Voices

Instructor, conductor puts spotlight on accordion’s versatility

When the Spokane Accordion Ensemble performs Friday night as guest artists at the Old Time Accordion Championships in Kimberly, B.C., it will be a happy and nostalgic event for Patricia Bartell, the ensemble’s conductor. Some years back when Myron Floren, the famous accordionist from The Lawrence Welk Show, was the featured artist at the same festival, he brought up several accordionists from the Northwest to perform with him – Bartell being one of them. So warm is that memory that the ensemble will open its performance with a medley of hoedown pieces from music Floren once gave to the young artist.
News >  Washington Voices

Spokane policing pioneer honored

As part of an ongoing historical remembrance project, each May the Fairmount Memorial Association commemorates Law Enforcement Week by erecting a monument to honor a law enforcement officer from Spokane’s past. This is done with the help of the Spokane Police Department History Book Committee and Spokane Law Enforcement Museum, its partners in the project. This year’s honoree, William H. Lewis, was a man whose impact on law enforcement and the Spokane Police Department was especially significant. The monument to this pioneer in law enforcement is located at Greenwood Memorial Terrace, where Lewis was laid to rest in July 1944.
News >  Washington Voices

Stefanie Pettit: Fame found in borrowed feathers

Back by popular request – Chicken. I’ve written about her before and hadn’t planned on writing so soon again about this barnyard bird who appeared in our driveway around Christmas time and set up housekeeping under our deck. But things have changed. For one thing, everyone I meet wants to hear about her. And for another, she has gotten to be a bad, naughty girl and I don’t know what to do about it.
News >  Washington Voices

Overarching tradition survives

Arguably the most spectacular entrance to any high school in all of Spokane – maybe even in the whole state – is at West Valley High School in Spokane Valley. It’s the archway, a 26-foot granite and marble piece of history lovingly preserved, stored and eventually put back into place a few years ago through the efforts of retired West Valley Superintendent Dave Smith. It was originally the entrance to the 1924 West Valley High School on Trent Avenue and Argonne Road, where it remained when the new high school building was erected at Vista Road and Buckeye Avenue in the late 1980s and the old structure became a junior high school.
News >  Washington Voices

Despite cancer, Jennifer Becker kept grades up and plans to become a nurse

Every year of high school has been a challenge for Jennifer Becker – especially the two years in which she fought and beat cancer. Becker, 18, who plans to graduate from Lakeside High School, moved to Spokane with her parents, Christina and John Becker, and brother Caleb, now 9, in 2006, when her father retired from the Air Force – and just as she was about to enter her freshman year. Quiet and reserved, Becker found it hard that first year to find her place in the close-knit high school community, where many students had known each other since kindergarten.
News >  Washington Voices

Katalina Colon’s mom sought hope

When Katalina Colon receives her diploma from Rogers High School this spring, she will embark on a journey no one in her family has yet taken – she’s off to college. And not only that, this 17-year-old will be attending the University of Washington on a Gates Millennium Scholarship, a full-ride scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that rewards low-income, minority students with good academic credentials and leadership abilities.
News >  Washington Voices

Shadle Park student changed directions – and thrived

It’s going to be a busy commencement season for the Mohr brothers of Spokane. Johnathon, 23, is graduating in computer science from Western Washington University; Joshua, 21, is graduating in business from Eastern Washington University; and Caleb, 18, is getting his diploma from Shadle Park High School. It’s an especially sweet moment for Caleb Mohr, considering that a year ago, he was failing just about everything and was on the brink of dropping out.
News >  Washington Voices

Refurbished mascot has a storied past

As landmarks go, the big elephant atop the White Elephant store at 12614 E. Sprague Avenue in Spokane Valley is pretty distinct. Unique, in fact – and with quite a story. Made in Germany, the 10-foot-tall pachyderm is the remaining one of a pair that used to be owned by the Armour Meat Packing Plant out on Trent at Mission. Along with its twin, it was taken to various grocery stores as part of Safari Days promotions. There was a basket on top in which children could sit, as if out on safari on a real elephant.
News >  Washington Voices

Listening, remembering help offer some comfort

How do you comfort someone whose child has died? I can’t imagine any words or deeds or anything at all that can lessen the pain, whether the lost child is very young or an adult. For any parent of any age, outliving a child causes a sorrow beyond description. Our children are supposed to bury us. It was never intended in the grand scheme of things that we bury them.
News >  Washington Voices

Spokane’s ‘Red Brick Hose’ a hidden tribute

Monuments, historic sites and pieces of public art are ordinarily readily accessible and easily visible by the public, but not always. There’s one in Spokane that’s a little hard to come across unless you’re specifically looking for it. It’s a piece of public art – the Red Brick Hose at the Spokane Fire Training Center at 1618 N. Rebecca Street. Just past the east side of Spokane Community College, it stands on the north side of the north building in the fire training complex. Sponsored by the Spokane Arts Commission and Spokane Fire Department, it was constructed in 2003-’04 for just under $20,000 when the new building was being built there.
News >  Washington Voices

City’s pride stands tall

Landmarks are normally objects of long standing, places or things commemorating people or events of long ago. However, there is a brand-new one in Spokane – a specialty monument – that touches on the past and welcomes the future. The new Welcome to Spokane monument is at the base of the Interstate 90/Division Street eastbound off-ramp at Fourth Avenue and Division Street. The project of the Associated Garden Clubs of Spokane, the monument and surrounding garden “show our pride in Spokane,” said Charlie Parsons of the organization.
News >  Washington Voices

Tough job navigating old age

“Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” – Actress Bette Davis Boy, did she get that right. Never mind those fuzzy-focus ads on TV with handsome senior citizens holding hands in adjoining bathtubs (a concept I never did get) or vigorous octogenarians playing tennis. It’s tough out there, baby.
News >  Washington Voices

Welcoming monument expresses Lilac City pride

Landmarks are normally objects of long standing, places or things commemorating people or events of long ago. However, there is a brand-new one in Spokane – a specialty monument – that touches on the past and welcomes the future. The new Welcome to Spokane monument is at the base of the Interstate 90/Division Street eastbound off-ramp at Fourth Avenue and Division Street. The project of the Associated Garden Clubs of Spokane, the monument and surrounding garden “show our pride in Spokane,” said Charlie Parsons of the organization.
Stefanie Pettit
Opinion >  Column

Front Porch: Opportunity arises for tea and sympathy

I have a good friend from high school who is a member of the tea party. I am not. We are certainly aware that we swim in different directions politically, and we are still able to talk about certain current events without ideological diatribes emerging. But mostly we keep away from hot-button political issues. I was polite about the Bush administration; she’s been polite about the Obama tenure. There are, after all, so many other things to talk about after a lifetime of being friends.
News >  Washington Voices

1890 explosion killed 26 at railroad site

The intersection which divides the city into north and south, east and west – is Division Street and Sprague Avenue. It is not a happy place. A lot of unfortunate things have taken place there, from numerous fender-benders and trucks getting stuck under the railroad viaduct to the March 1 hit-and-run accident which took the life of Spokane bicycle rider David Squires. Sadly, that intersection has an especially dark claim to fame in the city’s history – it is the location of what has been called Spokane’s greatest human tragedy, an explosion which claimed the lives of approximately 26 men on Sept. 6, 1890.
News >  Washington Voices

Chicken is roosting comfortably

An update: I wrote here a few months ago about the free-range (feral?) chicken who arrived at our home just before Christmas. When I drove into the driveway, there she was, pecking at the crackers my husband was tossing out to her. Inventive people that we are, we named her Chicken. We never found out where she came from. She took up roost under our deck, and thus began the daily ritual of appearing out front for food, then retreating to wherever vagabond chickens retreat to during the day. We feed her daily, as does our neighbor, Marilyn. Although we’re puzzled that Chicken has hung around so long, my husband points out that the chow, service and accommodations are pretty good here, so why move on?
News >  Washington Voices

Unmarked grave part of Spokane’s justice history

There’s an open area behind the main office at Greenwood Memorial Terrace, back by the hillside and beyond the upright headstones, where an unmarked grave contains the remains of Charles Brooks, the first man officially hanged in Spokane. The site is unmarked because at the time of the execution – Sept. 6, 1892 – no one came forward to pay for a marker. It will remain unmarked, according to Duane Broyles, president of the Fairmount Memorial Association, Greenwood’s parent company, because they don’t want to attract disrespectful curiosity seekers to the site.
News >  Washington Voices

Doll eyes final frontier

Next week when the space shuttle Discovery begins its mission to the International Space Station, a Spokane passenger will be on board – Flat Marie, all seven inches of her, tucked neatly in the crew notebook of astronaut Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger. Flat Marie is the paper cutout emissary of 5-year-old Marie Plowman, a preschool student at Spokane’s First Presbyterian Christian School, whose class has undertaken a Flat Stanley project.
News >  Washington Voices

Unmarked grave part of Spokane’s justice history

There’s an open area behind the main office at Greenwood Memorial Terrace, back by the hillside and beyond the upright headstones, where an unmarked grave contains the remains of Charles Brooks, the first man officially hanged in Spokane. The site is unmarked because at the time of the execution – Sept. 6, 1892 – no one came forward to pay for a marker. It will remain unmarked, according to Duane Broyles, president of the Fairmount Memorial Association, Greenwood’s parent company, because they don’t want to attract disrespectful curiosity seekers to the site.
News >  Washington Voices

Word fads are not amazing

It’s time once again for whining about words. There is just so much fodder out there, how can I resist? I do tend to go on and on about bad word usage, which, to the uptight wordies among us, is like squeaky chalk on a blackboard. Surely, people still remember chalk and blackboards – and I know some readers remember and care about speech and words and writing as well. I know because they tell me they do.
News >  Features

Finding relief from little-known neuromuscular condition

A few years ago Pam Piro got together with a group of college friends, as she did every 18 months or so, this time for a week in Washington’s Methow Valley. But on this trip, she had to stay behind when the women went out to enjoy the scenery, the pain in her feet making day hikes unbearable. That was a low point for her.
Stefanie Pettit
Opinion >  Column

Front porch: Parenting never comes to an end

I recall a young woman some years ago who, having just outlined an ambitious list of things she wanted to do with her life, shrugged and said about her impending motherhood, “Well, it’s just 18 years and you’re done.” Ha.
News >  Washington Voices

Pettet may have met Donner Party

The tens of thousands of participants in Bloomsday, Spokane’s annual 7.5-mile springtime race, pretty much dread the same thing – that long uphill grind along Pettet Drive, known as Doomsday Hill, which comes about two-thirds of the way through the race on the city’s North Side. And while the runners might not be thinking of this at the time, it might be interesting to know who is this Pettet fellow whose three-quarter-mile-long hill causes such pain, and why does it bear his name?
News >  Washington Voices

Pettet may have met Donner Party

The tens of thousands of participants in Bloomsday, Spokane’s annual 7.5-mile springtime race, pretty much dread the same thing – that long uphill grind along Pettet Drive, known as Doomsday Hill, which comes about two-thirds of the way through the race on the city’s North Side. And while the runners might not be thinking of this at the time, it might be interesting to know who is this Pettet fellow whose three-quarter-mile-long hill causes such pain, and why does it bear his name?
News >  Washington Voices

This darned Skype thingy is so handy

As an old fogy, I’m supposed to hate all these smart phone, iPod, BlackBerry thingies that so intrude into our public spaces, private conversations and – God help us – stalls in the restrooms in just about any restaurant in town. And I do. But I confess it’s developed into a love-hate relationship. And I hate that, too.