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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Stefanie Pettit

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News >  Washington Voices

Learning from elders never stops

A person is never too old to learn something important from one’s elders. Me included. I returned recently from a trip back home to Florida, where I visited with friends and family, putting on 1,000 rental-car miles as I made the rounds along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts and through central Florida.
News >  Washington Voices

Farm honors Spokane legacy

If you’ve ever floated down the Little Spokane River between St. George’s School and the Rutter Parkway Bridge, you’ve probably seen the Montvale Farm house. It’s the tall white home along the bend of the river, on your right, just before you get to the bridge. Listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places, the Montvale Farm was home to some of the area’s most famous citizens, and it continues today as a family legacy – though it nearly didn’t.
News >  Washington Voices

Landmarks: Grave belies author’s fame

A survivor of the Whitman Massacre of 1847 lies buried in Spokane. Not only was she a survivor of one of the most written-about events in the history of the territory that would become the state of Washington, but she was the author of “Across the Plains in 1844,” an account of her family’s journey across the plains and her life with Marcus and Narcissa Whitman – a work considered by many to be one of the most authentic firsthand descriptions of America’s westward migration.
News >  Washington Voices

Stefanie Pettit: Beauty is in the eye of the I-90 motorist

I’ve been driving back and forth across the state a lot recently, and I realize I’ve really had a change of heart about the view along Interstate 90. It would be fair to state I was a landscape snob, one of those people who thought the trip was best made at night because the view was so uninteresting. Ah, the folly of youthful myopia.
News >  Washington Voices

Marketplace may thrive again soon

The building is all boarded up now and pretty run down, but if the owners’ plans come together, the old St. Paul Market building at 2023 W. Dean Ave. will again become a lively “third place” in the city’s West Central neighborhood. Third places are locations within residential areas where neighbors can get together – first places being peoples’ homes and second places being work sites. Third places were much more prevalent within neighborhoods in the early 1900s.
Stefanie Pettit
Opinion >  Column

Front Porch: At odds, last wishes pose dilemma

I’m going back home to Florida in a few days to visit friends and family, and I know the dilemma will be upon me again. I know because it’s already beginning to bubble up in my consciousness – what to do about my parents. I hope I honored them appropriately while they were alive, but one unfinished or unresolved matter makes me wonder if I’ve done the best I could after their deaths. Most of the time the matter sits at the back of my brain, but I know that when I go to the cemetery in Miami, where my father was buried in 1971, there it will be again, front and center.
News >  Washington Voices

Direct line to history

There are so many buildings in Spokane, especially in the downtown area, that contain interesting and little-known tales about the development of the region. They may look like just so much brick and mortar, with maybe a little filigree out front, but they are veritable history books. Take, for instance, the Home Telephone and Telegraph Building at First Avenue and Howard Street . Built in 1907, it was designed by Spokane architect Albert Held, famous for such structures as the Holley-Mason building, the James Glover home and Lowell, Grant, Webster and Lincoln schools. The builder was John Huetter, also a noted Spokane pioneer, who got the contract for $60,700 – though there was a $1 million capital outlay earmarked for construction and implementation of the phone company’s operations in Spokane.
News >  Washington Voices

Death of friends leaves sharp pain

Sometimes death just slaps you in the face. Sure, we know people who die, but when death hits close to home, close to your own age and unexpectedly, then there’s a gasp that comes with the news.
News >  Washington Voices

Man’s grave marker is a piece of history

There is an unremarkable, flat grave marker in a section of Greenwood Memorial Terrace in Spokane where the trees and shrubs grow as they did a century ago. No manicured lawns, no sprinkler system, just typical Inland Northwest landscape where loved ones can still be laid to rest in a natural setting just inside the cemetery gates along Government Way. The stone marking the site where Benjamin Patrick Brierley was buried in 1935 might have forever gone unnoticed were it not for the notation stating that he was the grandson of Sgt. Patrick Gass. Gass was the carpenter on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the man whose journal was the first published work about the famed expedition to and through the western territories of America in the early 1800s.
News >  Washington Voices

Odyssey event offers help to parents

A first-of-its-kind conference in Spokane from July 24 to 26 is expected to attract up to 500 parents, teachers, service providers and youth, all focused on the goal of helping gay and lesbian young people make safe and healthy transitions into adulthood. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the conference is a renewed focus on parents of gay youth, said Sandra Williams, executive director of Spokane’s Odyssey Youth Center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning young people and their straight allies. The parent track at the conference is sponsored by the local chapter of PFLAG, or Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and will include presentations by Caitlin Ryan, whose research has shown how family behaviors affect LGBT children’s health, including mental health.
News >  Washington Voices

The grumpy train is full and leaving the station

Since venting here two weeks ago about things that irritate me, many of you shared that you, too, are stowaways on that express train to Andy Rooney-land. It does my grumpy heart good to hear from you and to know I am not alone when I don my conductor’s hat, stoke up the locomotive and drive the curmudgeon train down the track. As a thank you to my fellow rail riders, I now share some of your contributions and a few more of my own (from my unending supply) as I take the train out of the station for one more little trip.
News >  Washington Voices

Pillar in park reveals story about heritage

No matter where you go throughout Spokane, you’re likely to come across a sculpture by Sister Paula Mary Turnbull – from a garbage-eating goat at Riverfront Park to a Sasquatch at Spokane Community College to a “Fish On” sculpture at the Spokane Water Reclamation Facility along the Spokane River, a tribute to worker Mike Cmos, who was killed there in a sewage tank accident in 2004. Her works vary in theme and style, from the religious to the whimsical, but perhaps one of the most intriguing – and surely the most collaborative – is the 10-foot carved pillar that stands at the east side of Indian Trail Park near the intersection of Woodside Avenue and Fleming Street on Spokane’s North Side. The piece, sponsored in 1967 by the North Spokane Rotary Club and the Spokane Parks Department, looks something like a totem pole, but is in fact a story pillar, Turnbull said.