Bayview photos transformed into book, DVD
The Bayview that wooed Linda Hackbarth was sepia, from the forested hills around Lake Pend Oreille to the wooden hotels and stores along the waterfront to the logs clustered behind tugs on the water. Even the bearded loggers gathered on the docks were sepia, and so were the women with their determined faces and work dresses.
The Bayview that snagged Linda’s heart was older than her grandparents and captured in snapshots Roy and Ethel Ellis collected from neighbors for years. Those photographs didn’t show Bayview’s glorious summer color or its striking winter white. But they showed a Bayview that Linda ached to know and share. So she went to work.
First Linda produced a compact disk of priceless photos, then a coffee table picture book, then a history book. Her latest accomplishment is a DVD of Bayview’s history.
“She did all the hard work, the research, the writing,” says Peter Balbi. He’s the technical half of Linda’s projects. “She did a super thing, talking to all those people, getting little pieces of history. When these people die, they take their memories with them. She’s saving them and that’s a major thing.”
“Bayview – The Early Years” hit televisions last month. It’s a 38-minute DVD that chronicles Bayview history through photos from its earliest days as Squaw Bay to the U.S. Navy’s arrival during World War II.
Linda was a sixth-grade teacher in Pullman when she discovered Bayview in 1976. She wanted a place to sail her sailboat. She had a house built overlooking Cape Horn and escaped to it weekends and summers until she retired in 1996.
With time on her hands, she decided to get to know the townspeople, maybe start a historical society. People were plenty willing to tell her stories, but they weren’t interested in research or writing. Even the Museum of North Idaho had little history collected on Bayview. But, the museum steered Linda to the Ellises.
Roy Ellis had piloted the mailboat out of Bayview since the 1930s. He and Ethel loved history and had collected photos from families in the area. They’d even typed descriptions of many of the photos.
Linda wanted to copy the photos onto her computer and return the photos to the Ellises, but she didn’t know how. Barbara Balbi, a friend, offered Linda her husband Peter’s computer expertise.
“He’s been a godsend,” Linda says.
Peter suggested Linda put the photos on a CD and sell them at Bayview’s big Fourth of July bash. People without computers encouraged her also to put them in a book. Peter was one step ahead. He’d already begun laying out the pages.
The picture books were a big hit. They had 200 photos, each filling a half page. Linda kept descriptions to a minimum, particularly after she found mistakes in the information the Ellises had given her. Researching for information to correct those mistakes hooked Linda on Bayview’s history.
She wanted to know why people settled in the area, which led her to steamboat companies and gold rushes. She found Indian settlements and busy limestone quarries, homesteaders and a railroad line. By 1910, Bayview was showing enough life that a development company in Spokane saw its potential as a getaway from the big city. A railroad line fueled the construction of hotels and stores. Bayview evolved into a happening spot.
The Museum of North Idaho helped Linda with the costs of producing a book on the history of Bayview and Lakeview across the lake. The book was popular, but Linda wanted more.
“I wanted to go to groups, have a program,” she says.
Peter suggested a DVD which could relate Bayview’s history through photos while Linda told the story. “Bayview – The Early Years” came out last month and Linda already has sold 60 at $15.50 each. She and Peter have shown the program at libraries in Rathdrum and Sandpoint and at the Timberlake Fire District. Hastings and the Bonner County Museum in Sandpoint are selling the DVDs. Linda ordered 100 but may need more to meet the demand for Christmas.
The project has pointed her in so many directions that she’s not sure which road to travel next.
“I want to begin research on the Farragut years from the viewpoint of the community rather than the (U.S.) Navy perspective,” she says. “I’m also looking for someone into fishing. They used to pull out 200 kokanee a day here. And I want to do a story on the old boats on the lake, the old Pend Oreille Yacht Club.”
So much for retirement.
Some more Samoa
Apparently Samoans are a growing population in North Idaho. Laura Laumatia, who shared her story in Sunday’s column, mentioned that when she was in the Peace Corps on Independent Samoa’s biggest island, Savai’i, locals tended to deny problems such as suicide and out-of-wedlock births. Those births, she believes she should clarify, were not populationwide but among youths. Laura was pleased to hear about all the Samoans in the area and doesn’t want to insult them.