Sunday, Feb. 16 at 3 p.m. at the Senior Center
— from Bill Buchan —
What was it like growing up around Orcas Island’s iconic West Beach Resort in the 1950s?
Orcas Island Historical Museum presents Gerry Todd and Dave Resch telling the story about how they interacted with tourist kids that visited the islands back then. Other related topics will be the large whale that lived around Orcas for several years, the Cramers, early owners of the resort, and the Kimple brickworks located nearby.
Come listen and learn at the Senior Center, Sunday February 16th, at 3 p.m.
Wish I could be there for that! I worked for Curly and Blanche Cramer at West Beach Resort the summers of 1956 and 1957. And the whale was called Old Shatchel mouth. I remember square dances in the boat house Wednesday nights. This should be a fun walk down memory lane!
Judith Owens-Lancaster (nee Gaskill)
My parents Ruth and Cliff Watson owned West Beach Resort in the 1970″s. I attended Eastsound School (12 grades in one school and was there when Kennedy Was shot. We took the ferry on school busses to other islands for high school basketball games, and with my step brothers Jim, Bob Easterly lived an idyllic life. I remember well the Halloween storm in 1963 that raged over the island and took out much of our piling bulkhead. My first kiss ever was on the point between the resort and camp Orkila. My dream was always to come back as “a grown up” and but a place, even a small cabin in Orcas Heaven. But when I returned with my husband in 1989, I found that I, like all of the islanders couldn’t afford the property there. My heart still aches and I return often to the internet just to see the views of Waldron Island and the sunset, remembering watching the Orcas sound and the fishermen curse, changing the sheets with my stepmother in the cabins, the long bus ride to school and the best memories of my life.