Fielding A Phalanx Of Family Some Transform Bloomsday Into Opportunity For Generations To Spend Time Together

The gap between four generations of Drovdahls should be only a few feet.

That is, if the six family members have their way at this Sunday’s Bloomsday. They’re hoping to walk the race as a family, even if that means reining in the runners and pushing the 6-year-old in a stroller.

Gladys Drovdahl, 76, and her daughter, Betty Weber, 54, are plenty excited about it. Drovdahl’s done seven Bloomsdays. Weber’s done 10.

“I love everything about Bloomsday,” said Weber, who’s an assistant nurse manager at Sacred Heart Medical Center. “There’s just such an exciting atmosphere about it. Such a feeling of good will.”

For families across the Northwest, Bloomsday is a chance to get together, share the 7.46-mile jaunt and eat some good food.

“Pretty much every year it’s just been exciting and fun,” Weber said. “We get together afterward for strawberry waffles.”

Drovdahl is a firecracker in white Reeboks and last year’s Bloomsday T-shirt.

She worked for 22 years as a cook at Gonzaga University’s snack bar. She retired in 1990, cleaned and painted apartment units for six months and then got involved in the state’s Elderly Services program. She lives with an 82-year-old woman and takes care of her.

Drovdahl walks a steady half-hour a day, and also strolls up and down her block with the woman she cares for at least six times a day. She loves Bloomsday.

“What I like the best about the whole race is when you get to the top of Doomsday Hill and you say, ‘Yea! I made it,”’ said Drovdahl, punctuating her sentence with a shout and a jump off the couch.

This year’s special. Weber’s daughter, Kathy Weber, is coming from Seattle as usual. But for the first time, another of Weber’s daughters, Barbara Running - yes, that’s her real name - and granddaughters, Sydney, 9, and Rory, 6, are coming from Brownsville, Ore.

“They’re really excited,” Betty Weber said. “They’re telling all their friends.”

Delbert and Barbara Winnett also are planning a Bloomsday family reunion.

Delbert Winnett usually volunteers at the race as part of the Community Radio Watch Club, helping with communications and yelling out times for runners as they go by.

In those years, his Bloomsday has started at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 3:30 p.m. Barbara Winnett also has volunteered with Bloomsday, inputting times at Medical Service Corp. This year, the Winnetts are taking a break from their volunteer work. They want to enjoy family. And Delbert Winnett wants to run the race.

Their four sons and one daughter are coming, from Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Corvallis, Ore., and Spokane. They’re bringing their families - 20 people in all.

One family sleeps in a camp trailer. Two families sleep in the basement. Everybody else fills up the home’s four bedrooms. They take turns in the two bathrooms.

“It’s a huge family,” Delbert Winnett said. “We enjoy them every Bloomsday. They all stay with us. We have a big barbecue, the whole back yard. In the past, they take over the house, they take over everything.”

Tom Berg registered 10 Bloomsday runners last year from his home in Inchelium, Wash., but they weren’t all family members. Berg, his wife, his five children, a foreign exchange student and two of his son’s friends ran the race.

The student, Anita Svenstad, came from a town in Norway so small that her mailing address was her name and the name of the town. The almost 60,000 runners in Bloomsday overwhelmed her, Berg said.

“She was just awed by the amount of people that would do it and have fun doing it together,” he said. “We asked her if she’d like to come back next year, and she wasn’t so sure. But she enjoyed it.”

Six of the Bergs plan to run this year.

“It’s just one more thing to do together,” Berg said.