Auction Benefits Highway 395 Project Barbecue, Music Part Of Event To Help Fund Four-Lane Highway
Now there’s Highway 395 barbecue to go with your Girl Scout cookies and your Camp Fire candy.
The treacherous truck route will join this area’s tummy-tempting charities Sunday with a “Stayin’ Alive Barbecue and Auction.”
The event will be from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Deer Park Fairgrounds. Proceeds will benefit Project 395, a citizen group that is fighting for a four-lane highway from Spokane to Kettle Falls.
Admission to the auction and a concert by several musicians will be free. The barbecue dinner will cost $7 for adults and $3.50 for children 12 and younger.
Entertainment will feature Nashville musician Earl Wear, a former Deer Park truck driver who was seriously injured in an accident on U.S. Highway 395.
Other performers will include Charisse Williams, performing contemporary Christian music, the Spokane Falls Community College Jazz Combo and Jazz Express, and Spokane-area singer Vernon Thurman, whose style resembles Stevie Wonder.
Also, the Highway Dancers - 20 local fifth- and sixth-graders - will dance to a new version of a Bee Gees’ hit:
“When the city starts breakin’ and the traffic starts shakin’,
“You’ll be stayin’ alive on 395.
“Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, on 395.”
Speakers will include Mary Beth Nethercutt, wife of U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Spokane, and Linda Tompkins of the Washington State Transportation Commission.
The keynote speaker will be Loon Lake resident Karen Raftis, who was told she’d never walk again after an accident 18 months ago on Highway 395. Like Project 395, she beat the odds and walked down the aisle at her wedding six months after the accident.
Loon Lake resident Teresa Waunch founded Project 395 at the time of Raftis’ accident. The campaign has cost more than $4,000 so far - three-fourths of which has been paid by Waunch and her husband, Steve - but was instrumental in securing $3.9 million in federal and state money to make the highway safer.
Work is to begin this summer on eight left-turn lanes and a passing lane. Four more turn lanes and another passing lane are planned for 1996.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Stayin’ alive The event will be from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Deer Park Fairgrounds. Proceeds will benefit Project 395, a citizen group that is fighting for a four-lane highway from Spokane to Kettle Falls. Admission to the auction and a concert by several musicians will be free. The barbecue dinner will cost $7 for adults and $3.50 for children 12 and younger.