This day in history: Jack Benny keeps it young for Expo ‘74

From 1975: James E. Chase, the co-owner of the Chase and Dalbert Body and Fender Shop, announced plans to run for a Spokane City Council seat.

Chase said he wanted to “strengthen Spokane’s role as a supply and service center” and address the problems of crime, juvenile delinquency and unemployment.

At the time, Chase was a relative newcomer to Spokane’s politics. He had run for a council seat in 1969 but lost.

Yet he would go on to win this 1975 election and soon became one of the most popular and influential civic leaders in Spokane history. He was elected the city’s first Black mayor in a landslide in 1981.

Health problems prevented him from running for a second term, although he would have been an odds-on favorite.

Today, his name lives on at the Chase Middle School, the Chase Art Gallery and the Chase Youth Commission.

From 1925: Leonard Funk, the city’s commissioner of public works, proposed that Spokane build a $1 million municipal auditorium.

Business leaders were quick to back the idea.

“It will mean we can bring in conventions, that we are not now able to handle, and other attractions that would bring thousands of dollars to the city,” F.R. Culbertson said.

Banker F. Lewis Rutter noted that a big auditorium would not just bring in conventions, but also become a community center. It could host school pageants, school concerts and “high class attractions,” said a local department store owner.

Yet Spokane would not build an auditorium of the proposed magnitude until 1954, the Spokane Coliseum.