Frank Manowski operates the hoisting drum that pulled coal cars up the slag pile, January 1973.
Frank Manowski and the Slag Pile in Black Diamond
The year was 1960. A small boy was in first grade at Kibler Elementary. His teacher, Mrs. Lewis, distributed 12-by-18-inch sheets of light brown construction paper to her 35 students. She instructed them to draw a crayon picture of something they liked. Billy sketched a coal car climbing a steep incline, his dad, Jack Kombol operating a track loader, while a dump truck loaded with coal passed by. Little did that small boy know he would one day labor at that wash plant, working side by side with the man who built that mountain.
Billy Kombol’s first-grade drawing of the Mine 11 slag pile in Black Diamond, 1960.
Numerous old coal slag piles sit in and around Black Diamond, Ravensdale, and Franklin. Most are small, now swallowed by trees and wild blackberries. To many, they look like just another natural hill. The largest, however, contains over a million cubic yards of refuse and rises 140 feet above the surrounding landscape. It sits west of State Route 169, just behind Palmer Coking Coal’s mine office. This is the story of that mountain and the man most instrumental in building it—Frank Manowski.
Frank Manowski at Mine # 11 wash plant, January 1973.
During the era of underground mining, impurities such as shale, rock, and slack were inevitably hauled to the surface. Back then, old men and young boys toiled at picking tables, separating waste from clean coal by hand. Later, mechanical wash plants took over, cleaning the coal through a specific-gravity process using large tanks of pulsating water.
In both cases, the resulting refuse, called slag, had to go somewhere. Dumping the material downhill into a gully or low spot was always the first option, but even that method eventually required rail tracks once the ravines filled up. A mine located on flat ground needed a different solution for its waste dilemma. The most straightforward method was to build a stockpile utilizing the very same equipment found underground—coal cars on rail tracks.
A 1971 view of the slag pile looking west by McDonald & Lenggenhager from “The Look of Old Time Washington.”
In 1896, a new mine opened in Black Diamond. Named Morgan Slope in honor of the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company’s superintendent, Morgan Morgans, it was destined to become the largest and most successful operation in western Washington.
The Pacific Coast Coal Company purchased the mine and its accompanying company town in 1904. After 1913, Morgan Slope was renamed Mine 11, tracking the section of land where it sat. It eventually earned fame as the deepest underground coal mine in the United States. Before closing in 1927, Morgan Slope / Mine 11 produced nearly 7 million tons of coal over 31 years of operation, averaging an impressive 225,000 tons per year.
One of the most famous photos of Mine 11, July 15, 1917.
Morgan Slope tapped into the McKay seam, one of the state’s finest coal grades. This same rich vein was extracted in Ravensdale, Lawson, and Franklin. Geologists described the McKay coal as “pitch black with a vitreous luster, which compared very favorably with the better grades of bituminous coal obtained in the Eastern States.” Yet, like every coal seam, the McKay was laced with inferior coal plus bone mixed with clays and shale, particularly within the stubborn layer known as parting rock.
Workers separated mine-run coal into market-bound product, while the combined waste of coal, clays, and shale were destined for slag piles. Ignited by spontaneous combustion from the McKay seam’s high BTU content, the Morgan Slope slag pile smoldered for decades at temperatures approaching 2,000°F. The intense heat from burning heap fused the shale, sandstone, clay, and silt together, while iron pyrites turned the burned slag to shades of red. The pile functioned like a giant kiln, which some likened it to ‘nature’s brick.
The October 11, 1923, issue of the Pacific Coast Coal Co. Bulletin described the Mine 11 rock dump at Black Diamond as a growing mountain whose constant nocturnal fires resembled a “biblical Pillar of Fire”
“Thirteen years ago the present rock dump of Mine 11, at Black Diamond, was begun. Though the mine had been in operation for many years prior to 1910, it was then that the present dump was started when the old dump caught fire. This dump is today an imposing pile of rock and waste material brought out of the mine, and it is constantly growing.
Like a small mountain, it rises out of the wide expanse of the valley and is visible for a considerable distance. At night, the numerous fires which blaze constantly from its base to its summit makes it loom up much after the manner of the biblical Pillar of Fire.”
The future red cinder slag pile from the Pacific Coast Bulletin, October 11, 1923.
After the available fuel within the stockpile was spent, the towering heap of rocky material cooled, leaving behind a colored rock that locals naturally called “red cinders.” What was once discarded as useless waste found an unexpected second life as a surfacing material. The original Black Diamond–Ravensdale Road was paved with this very material, affectionately dubbed the “Red Top” road.
Finely crushed cinder was also laid down for high school running tracks; it proved to be an ideal surface, though generations of athletes remembered how a sudden spill left knees and elbows raw and bloodied. This striking red rock also found its way into countless Pacific Northwest landscape designs. To this very day, cinders from that historic stockpile are still being sold. Judging by sales figures spanning the past 70 years, the imposing landmark described in the 1923 Bulletin likely contained well over one million cubic yards of material.
The McNally-Norton Wash Plant
Though Mine 11 closed in 1927, the surrounding rail yard and preparation plant survived to support a new era of coal processing. In the following years, raw coal from nearby mines was brought to the Black Diamond facility, washed of impurities, and shipped to market. In 1945, Pacific Coast Coal Company modernized operations by installing a McNally-Norton jig-style wash plant, and a new mountain of waste rock began to grow.
However, because this new wash plant cleaned coal with more efficiency—and because quality standards had relaxed over time—less valuable material ended up as slag. By maximizing coal recovery, the McNally-Norton plant left less easily combustible fuel in the new dump. As a result, the current slag heap never ignited like its predecessor; instead, it smoldered quietly through slow oxidation.
The slag pile grew upward using the coal mining industry’s time-tested method. Dozens of times each day, a steel cable pulled a loaded slag car up a steep grade to the apex of the hill, where waste material was discharged from side-dump doors. Over the decades, this relentless cycle expanded the slag pile to an estimated 1.2 million cubic yards.
View of a coal car climbing the slag pile, January 1973.
Throughout its growth, one man shaped this manufactured mountain than any other: Frank Manowski. He was closely tied to the coal-washing operations at the Mine 11 plant, becoming an almost permanent fixture of the facility. As underground coal mining entered its twilight years in the early 1970s, Frank’s rugged, weathered presence made him a favorite subject for newspaper photographers, eager to capture underground coal mining’s final chapter in the Pacific Northwest.
During repairs to the wash plant, this article’s author was pictured with two cousins. L-R: Tim Morris, Bob Morris, and Bill Kombol, then an unskilled laborer, January 1976.
Frank Manowski
Frank Manowski was born on March 18, 1913, to Cornell and Anna Manowski, Polish immigrants who emigrated to Black Diamond in 1900. Frank was the youngest of 11 children, five daughters and six sons. Demonstrating how deeply coal ran in the family, four Manowski boys, Max, Les, George, and Frank, followed their father’s footsteps into coal mining, and two sisters married coal miners. Frank grew up in Black Diamond, graduating from high school in 1932, then earned an athletic scholarship to play baseball at St. Martin’s College.
Black Diamond Baseball 1931 – That’s Frank Manowski standing on left. Lying in front: Louie Zumek, catcher. Seated from L-R: John “Cut” Kravagna – catcher; Geno Paolucci – right field; Jack Mills – 2nd base; Steve Vernarelli – 1st base; Walt Sigmund – shortstop; Phil Sternig – 1st base; Frank Brennan – left field. Standing: Frank Manowski – pitcher and center field; Ed Winbeckler – pitcher and center field; Emilio “Meg” Pierotti – 3rd base; John Walsh – substitute; Tullio Fontana – substitute; J.K. Edson – coach
When his college days drew to an early close, Frank took his first job at a local sawmill. From 1934 to 1936, he toiled underground alongside his father for the West Coast Fuel Company at their Cedar Mountain coal mine. Frank soon gravitated towards surface work in preparation plants, first with Pacific Coast Coal, then Strain Coal Company, and finally Palmer Coking Coal Company. Over the next 42 years, Manowski labored tirelessly at preparation plants, spending the vast majority of his historic career at the Mine 11 yard in Black Diamond.
Yet Frank never lost his passion for sports. He continued playing baseball for 22 years, well into adulthood, and played 11 seasons as a soccer player. He mostly suited up for Black Diamond’s company-sponsored teams. In mining communities such as Ravensdale, Carbonado, Wilkeson, and Black Diamond, baseball was a large part of local entertainment. Weekends were made for sports, and baseball was the biggest draw.
At the old Black Diamond grandstands, near the present-day school field on Highway 169, Frank’s mother, Anna, held court in a special seat where unsuspecting fans were warned against sitting. After the final out, both teams, along with umpires and friends, routinely descended upon the Manowski home for an evening of shared food, camaraderie, and merriment.
In 1939, Frank married Helen Strom of Enumclaw. Two years later, they welcomed a son whom they named Frank. Though he shared his father’s name, young Frank was technically not a junior. In Black Diamond, the family lived on Lawson Street next to the Presbyterian Church. They relocated to Enumclaw in 1959 to a home on Wells Street, near the hospital. For 23 years, Helen worked as a claims secretary for the Mutual of Enumclaw.
The younger Frank Manowski carved his own lasting legacy in Enumclaw as the long-serving recreational coordinator for King County Parks. Based out of the historic Fieldhouse adjacent to Pete’s Pool, Frank championed youth sports for 33 years, from 1965 to 1997.
How a Wash Plant Works
At the Mine 11 preparation plant, the older Frank toiled day in and day out. Each day, dump trucks delivered raw coal to the plant for processing. Coal was first dumped in a hopper, where it passed over a vibrating screen. Material less than four inches fell through onto a conveyor belt. Larger chunks landed on the picking table. There, a laborer separated the large pieces of coal, which were sent to a crusher and joined the screened coal heading to the wash plant.
Jigging is an ancient mineral-processing method that uses specific gravity and water as a medium to separate materials by weight. The McNally-Norton washer was a Baum-style jig process in which pistons powered by compressed air produced the necessary pulsating motion. As the raw coal moved through the washer tub, air-driven pistons pushed plates up and down and agitated the mix of coal, slag, and water. Coal, being lighter than rock or shale, rose in the turbid river of water and was carried through a chute for further sorting.
Cut-away diagram of the McNally-Norton wash plant’s inner workings.
A bucket conveyor lifted the clean coal to the top of the bunkers where it was screened into separate bins of stoker, egg nut, and lump coal. The bins held hundreds of tons of coal ready for shipment by truck or train. Stoker coal made up the largest percentage of production and was used in large quantities by Washington state institutions such as schools and prisons. Homeowners typically used the slightly larger egg nut coal and lump coal for home heating.
Inside the McNally-Norton washer box, heavier impurities such as rock, sandstone, shale, and bony coal, collectively called slag, fell to the bottom, where a bucket conveyor carried them out of the wash box and into a hopper. Periodically, Manowski walked behind the plant and lifted a chute door, loading the waste slag into a 5-ton coal car. He then activated a hoist drum, which pulled a thick steel cable threaded through a bull wheel at the top of the pile, towing the coal car up the hill to its peak. There, two steel rails tripped the side doors, causing the slag to fall away.
The view from behind – Frank Manowski, to the right, as the coal car is pulled up the slag pile, January 1973.
A water pipeline parallel to the rail track hydraulically flushed the slag downhill. Introducing water also inhibited combustion of any carbon-rich material. After one section of the growing hill became too clogged with waste material, miners laid new ties and rails, extending the stockpile even higher. That’s how the stockpile eventually grew to a mammoth 1.2 million cubic yards. A nearby photo shows Archie Eltz, Charlie Falk, and Frank Merritt atop the waste dump working on the water pipeline that helped sluice waste down the stockpile.
Archie Eltz, Charlie Falk, and Frank Merritt atop the rock dump working on a water pipeline, August 1949.
Every mechanical plant is subject to breakdown, especially a processing mill that sorts coal from rock. Frank Manowski was practical and handy. He knew every belt and bolt in the plant, and had likely replaced every piece during his 33 years, coddling the machinery along. More than once, Frank noted that he’d repaired and reconfigured the wash plant more times than he cared to remember.
Frank Manowski can be seen in the upper center of the photo, climbing stairs to the top of the bunkers. The bucket conveyor to his right, carried the cleaned washed coal to the to storage bins above, January 1973.
The End of an Era
When Manowski turned 65 in 1978, it was his turn to retire. Bill McLoughry, another lifelong Black Diamond coal miner, stepped into the operator’s position until handing off the reins in 1981. Chris Kroha of Lake 12 next filled the vacancy, running the plant until the John Henry surface coal mine launched operations in 1986. At that point, Black Diamond local Doug Sikes took control. Doug earned his place in local history as the facility’s very last operator, keeping the historic gears turning until the washing plant finally fell silent in November 1990.
That year the McNally-Norton wash plant was decommissioned after 45 years of continuous operation. Once the surrounding bunkers, bins, corrugated sheet metal, and conveying equipment were dismantled and hauled away, only the large iron hull of the old wash tub remained.
In April 1991, five months after the Mine 11 wash plant fell silent, Frank Manowski passed away at the age of 78. His life neatly mirrored the machinery he so faithfully maintained. His wife, Helen, survived him by 22 years, passing away in Enumclaw in November 2013 at the age of 94. Their son, Frank, carries on the family name at his home in Bonney Lake.
Larry Abele captured many of the striking historic photos that accompany this essay in January 1973. Several of his images appeared in a feature story about coal mining in the Sunday, January 14, 1973, supplement, “Now,” distributed by the Renton Record-Chronicle, Kent News-Journal, and Auburn Globe newspapers.
June was my last of five months traveling through Europe. The trip started in early February 1978, several days before my folks flew to Paris to visit Danica. She was studying at the Sorbonne for a year abroad. I arrived in Luxembourg and made my way south to meet them.
Our first three weeks involved a rented car on a circular route around central Europe. At age 24, I was once again riding in the back seat with a sibling, as Dad drove, and Mom mapped the route along the south of France into Italy.
Jack and Bill Kombol enjoying a beer in our Lyon hotel, February 8, 1978. In just over a year, Dad would be dead.
Our primary stops would be in Croatia (at the time still part of Yugoslavia), to visit relatives on the Kombol side. After seeing kin in Pula, Rijeka, and Fužine, we traveled north to Zagreb, where Dad met his first cousin, Zdenko Kauzlaric, and wife, Ljubica, for the first time. They had one son, Dubravko “Woody” Kauzlaric, a second cousin and the same age as me, who became a lifelong friend. Twelve years later, Jennifer and I visited him and his wife, Zlata, in Zagreb while on our honeymoon. Then, several years later, Woody and Zlata emigrated to Washington, settling in Edmonds.
Jack Kombol with his first cousins, Marta (Kauzlaric) Hangi (left) and Zendko & Ljubica Kauzlaric. Saturday, February 18, 1978 in Zagreb.
After Mom and Dad left, I began my solo travels with one-month stays in Paris, rural Wales (including a side trip to Ireland), London, back through Paris and Amsterdam, then concluded with a getaway to a tiny island off the coast of Spain. By the fifth month of traveling alone, with no set destination, nomadic wanderings had become indistinguishable from a daily routine.
My budget was a frugal $10 per day, not including travel. It worked best with several-week or full-month stays, rather than two- and three-day stops in ten tourist dens. After finding free or very cheap accommodation, I was better able to immerse myself in one locale, limiting expensive travel.
Heading south to Barcelona
In late May, I left Paris on a train bound for Perpignan in southern France. My strategy was to hitchhike to Barcelona from there. It was a 120-mile trek, but thumbed rides were tough to snag. Most pick-ups dropped me a few frustrating kilometers down the road. By the first night, I was still in France. I decided to save money by sleeping outside a small village. Dumb idea! As thunderstorms crackled in the distance, I high-tailed it back to town and fortunately found a small hotel. Though it was late, they served me a simple dinner. After which, I watched the evening skies fill with lightning as buckets of rain poured down.
The second day of thumbing rides was more successful. I found myself in Tossa de Mar, just north of Barcelona. I chose a nondescript pensione and settled into my second-floor berth. Like typical cheap motels, their tiny rooms opened to an outdoor passageway. I took a walk, planning to find a cheap dinner. Passing by a room with an open door, I greeted the young man seated inside. The sandy-haired guy was about my age and welcomed me in. He introduced himself as Paul Nielsen from Denmark and spoke near-perfect English. He’d recently left the Cannes Film Festival and was traveling south to Barcelona.
We talked of earlier travels, likely destinations, and cultural differences. He popped a question about American baseball, saying he didn’t understand the sport or its appeal. I slowly explained the various positions, players, and rules, but words alone couldn’t capture the game’s essence or its flavor. Baseball is, after all, the only sport where defense controls the ball.
I decided to illustrate a mock game as a radio broadcaster reciting real names of players from a team I still admired, the Detroit Tigers. To fully simulate the real experience, I announced as if I were a broadcaster in an imagined booth. I further choreographed the pitcher’s wind-up, a batter’s stance, the mighty swing, a sharp drive to right field, with a slide into second for a two-out double. My mimicked broadcast lasted for 10 or 15 minutes, all the while answering Paul’s questions and clarifying the sport’s nuances. By game’s end, we were laughing out loud and planning our next adventure.
Paul had a fancy camera, so we walked down to the pensione owners’ apartment, where he took photos of the sweet old couple who spoke only broken English. In a letter from Paul that I received a year later (with photos he’d later take of me), he related how he’d printed and mailed the couple his 8” x 10” prints and, several weeks later, received “the biggest box of candy and cakes I ever saw.”
Paul owned an impressive single-lens reflex camera and prided himself on his photography. He shot this photo of me in a corn field on the edge of town. June 1978.
Spain’s second-largest city, Barcelona, is situated on the Mediterranean coast in the far northeast. It was my intended home for the next month. That was before Paul interjected and sold me on the charms of a little-visited island off Spain’s east coast. I’d never heard of Formentera, an island about the size of the Enumclaw plateau. Paul described it as a forgotten outpost populated by ex-pats, laidback travelers, working-class Spaniards, and a handful of hippies. It was the polar opposite of the touristy atmosphere in Ibiza, the party island with noisy nightclubs, or Mallorca, the biggest island in the chain.
Paul suggested I spend a few days checking out Barcelona, then head to Formentera. We promised to meet on Las Ramblas, a one-mile pedestrian boulevard lined with shops, restaurants, and nightclubs. If that failed, our backup plan was to reunite in San Francisco Xavier, the island’s largest town. Despite its grand name, San Francisco was little more than a village with a café and store. Paul advised me to lodge with a widow who rented rooms in a two-story building located across from the town’s central café.
The next morning, I hitchhiked to Barcelona and found a room in a hostel off the Las Ramblas. I spent three days in this Catalonian city, admiring the strange architecture of Antoni Gaudí, whose inspiration came from mimicking nature’s patterns. I marveled over this imaginative Cathedral with soaring Gothic spires, not realizing it was Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia, his greatest project. Construction started in 1882 and was still not finished when I returned to Barcelona with my wife, 48 years later, in 2026.
Jennifer and Bill in front of La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, May 2026.
After three days, I miraculously bumped into Paul while strolling along Las Ramblas. He’d been delayed by a case of the clap from a girl he’d hooked up with in Cannes. He was going to see a doctor, but promised to join me in San Francisco. We shared an evening meal. Then I boarded the ferry for the 12-hour ride to Formentera that sailed each night at 10 pm. I slept on a deck chair under starlit skies.
On Formentera, I made my way to San Francisco and spoke to the widow who rented upstairs rooms. Paul had stayed with her before. Her pensione was a nondescript two-story, adobe-walled building a stone’s throw from the town’s lone café. Using the three years of Spanish I’d learned in high school, I secured a room for the next several weeks. It was a decent-sized chamber with two beds and a small window. The outside shower and the toilet were downstairs and behind the premises.
The island’s population was small, somewhat less than 5,000 inhabitants. There were few hotels of size. Tourism was limited owing to a lack of destinations. Cars and trucks were rare, as most people used bicycles to get around. Life slowed to a crawl on Formentera.
Formentera fishermen dragged up this leatherback sea turtle, the largest turtle specie.
Paul arrived a few days later, and we spent our time leisurely hanging out at the small café, watching World Cup soccer on a small black-and-white television. It was 1978, and the quadrennial World Cup soccer-fest was underway. When important games were broadcast, dozens of men and boys crowded around the bar to cheer or groan at each missed goal. It was my first exposure to this worldwide sporting spectacle that has eluded most Americans until of late.
Discovering coffee’s profound pleasure
My love affair with coffee began in that Spanish café. At 24 years, I’d never enjoyed the taste, nor adopted the habit, having drunk but a few cups beforehand. All that changed when I discovered coffee’s profound pleasure after ordering a café con leche. The hot, scalded milk tamed the pungent taste of strong espresso, so I began ordering them with increasing frequency.
Bill Kombol with sunglasses as a chess game is played to the left.
Outside the café, chess games were regularly played. Having been on our high school chess team, I naturally joined in. Each morning, I played a few games, with the caffeine from coffee enhancing my concentration. With each successive win, I gained a reputation among the local talent, and every morning, a new challenger appeared. After a week or so without a loss, a game was arranged with one of the town’s best. A crowd of onlookers hovered about. Over 90 minutes, we battled until a natural draw was reached. We exchanged handshakes as locals patted us both on the back. Afterward, we approached the bar together and ordered two cervezas. It was an idyllic life.
In time, Paul and I met a Norwegian, also pronounced Paul, but spelled Pål, who had a bed in a nearby room. The three of us became fast friends, riding bikes, swimming, snorkeling, and taking long walks through the surrounding countryside. We explored together and had a jolly good time just goofing off. Formentera’s nightlife was practically non-existent, so we planned an overnight excursion to Ibiza Town, the capital of the island, Ibiza. On the appointed afternoon, Pål the Norwegian turned up sick, so Paul and I hopped the short ferry ride there.
Pål the Norwegian on the left with Paul Nielsen, the Dane on the right. On one of our bicycle explorations of Formentera.
Ibiza Town was party central. Crowded streets overflowed with hipsters, shysters, dropouts, and every kind of reveler. Following an early dinner, we found our bearings and wandered in and out and through dozens of clubs and bars. Everywhere we turned, neon signs and garish lights held the night in perpetual motion as we tripped the light fantastic. The partying never really stopped, though it slowed in the wee hours. The summer solstice was nearly upon us, so days were long and nights were brief. By sunrise, we were still awake, walking along the castle walls, while gazing down at the blue Mediterranean sea. Exhausted, we caught the first ferry back to Formentera and slept until late afternoon.
The postcard I mailed home when my travels neared their end.
I wrote one postcard home from Formentera.
June 23, 1978 — Dear Mom & Dad – This postcard has been a couple of weeks in the making, but nice weather and the slow pace of island life have prevented its completion.
Formentera is the most rural and least inhabited of those islands known as the Balearics, situated halfway between Spain and Italy. I’ve been living in this small pensione (with no running water) with this Danish guy and this Norwegian, both of whom speak impeccable English.
Our days are divided between sitting in cafes, playing chess, long bike rides, snorkeling, and several other non-strenuous activities. We live in San Francisco, the largest of the very small communities on this island. I miss you a lot and will enjoy recounting these times I’m having.
– Bill
Time to head home
After five months traveling through Europe, I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed my American life. As July approached, it was time to head home.
I was also aware of a creeping idleness. My carefree lifestyle, albeit frugal, had been funded by a year of working at Seattle Trust & Savings Bank. I was reminded of the short story, “The Lotus Eater,” by my favorite author, Somerset Maugham. The tale follows a London banker who abandoned his conventional career at a young age to live a life of leisure on a Mediterranean island. However, years of indolence and escapism erode his willpower. Constantly choosing the easy path atrophied the muscles required to overcome life’s difficulties. By trading meaningful struggles for hedonistic detachment, he eventually lost his spirit to live.
I set a goal to be back for our family’s annual Fourth of July celebration. Before leaving, Paul offered to take some pictures of Pål and me. I said goodbye to Paul early one morning and ferried to Barcelona.
Paul chided me about my T-shirt, claiming I looked like a Tour de France cyclist. The picture was taken in our room with light coming in from the window.
I boarded a northbound train, arriving in Paris the next morning. I met Danica, and together we saw Bob Marley & the Wailers at the Pavillon de Paris on the final performance of their three-night stand. I then flew to London and picked up the custom-made pin-striped suit I had been fitted for, a month earlier at Aubrey Morris Tailors, 24 Highbury Court. I still have that suit.
The following morning, I boarded a plane for Seattle, arriving at Sea-Tac by late afternoon. I telephoned home, and an hour later, my parents arrived. When Mom saw my new suit, tanned complexion, and dark sunglasses, she quipped that I looked like a rock star. Back home, she took my picture upstairs in the bedroom. It was good to be home.
I arrived home on June 29, 1978. Mom took this photo in my tailored pin stripe suit I’d bought in London.
A month passed. One Saturday night, while Dad and I were watching TV, the phone rang, and he answered. I overheard the conversation. The laborer at Palmer Coking Coal’s Black Diamond washing plant had just quit. Dad looked at me, and before he had a chance to ask, I replied, “Sure, I’ll do it.”
Monday morning, I was back at work on the picking table, the starting position at the mine – separating rock from coal. It was the same job I’d left over three years prior. As a teenager, I started as Palmer’s Saturday office boy, then college summers doing grunt work, and my senior year on the afternoon shift at the picking table. However, that Monday marked the beginning of my final employment stint with Palmer. It lasted 44 years.
Links to prior essays – travels through Europe, 1978
This is the sixth in a series of essays that I’ve published about my 1978 travels through Europe. Below are links to the other five:
Five years ago, in early May 2021, I came upon a recently fallen tree in Lake Sawyer Park. It blocked the trail, so a large chainsaw was used to remove a chunk, leaving a clean face for counting rings. I had time that afternoon, so carefully counted each ring with the tip of a pocket-knife keeping my place. I recalled doing the same thing with Bob Kuzaro 40 years earlier after he fell a large tree on the Lake Sawyer lot, we now call home. That tree dated to the 1780s, about the time our nation was founded.
Bob Kuzaro, 1982, falling a Douglas fir trees with Lake Sawyer in the distance.
On the tree in the park, though the center rings were tightly bound, the annual growth cycles were clear and distinguishable. I counted 210 rings, meaning this Douglas fir was born during the War of 1812. Its growth reminded me of a short newspaper article I’d written many years before.
* * * * *
Anyone who has planted a tree and watched it grow to maturity may have wondered, where does that considerable mass come from? In 1630, the Flemish physician Jean Baptista van Helmont conducted a now-famous experiment to determine whether the tree’s growth came from the soil in which it was planted.
Helmont planted a fast-growing, 5-pound willow tree in a vat filled with 200 pounds of dry soil. For five years, he regularly watered the tree, by which time the willow had grown into a 169-pound tree. Upon recovering only the willow tree and its roots, Helmont was amazed to discover that the soil, which he dried again, weighed only a few ounces less than the original 200 pounds. He reasoned that the tree material couldn’t have come from the soil, but must have come from the water instead.
Helmont was right that growth didn’t come from soil, but he was only partially correct in his deduction that water accounted for the full weight of the tree. Most of the tree’s weight is actually derived from retained carbon as trees breath in carbon dioxide from the air. CO2 comprises about 0.4% of the air we breathe
So, the next time you admire a stately tree, remember, it’s about one part water, three parts air, plus a spoonful of soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur – all created through the process of photosynthesis in the presence of sunlight.
The word photosynthesis derives from the Greek words photo, meaning ‘light,’ and synthesis, meaning ‘putting together.’ It’s the life process by which plants, algae, and even some bacteria convert the energy of light into chemical energy, creating food and biomass. Carbon dioxide and water are stored in the biomass while oxygen is released. And from that expelled oxygen, much of the animal world survives.
* * * * *
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I naturally gravitated toward trees. Climbing them as a lad, cutting and splitting firewood as a youth, falling 20 feet from one and nearly killing myself at age 22, and eventually directing logging and reforesting projects as manager of Palmer Coking Coal. Over my 42-year career as manager, our company planted well over one million trees.
If you’ve known me for a long time, you’ve likely heard a favorite quote: “He who plants a tree benefits the next generation” – Cicero. Each spring, I gather up seedlings and plant them where they may do some good. I did so 18 years ago on Franklin Hill, where this photo was taken by Kathleen Kear, and used to illustrate my Voice of the Valley article.
Bill Kombol on Franklin Hill, east of Black Diamond, planting a Douglas fir seedling for an article that appeared in the April 8, 2008 Voice of the Valley.
A Day in the Life of a Tree
While in college, the Beach Boys released an album, “Surf’s Up” (1971), that didn’t seem much like a Beach Boys album. The group was changing with the times. Brian Wilson and the their new manager, Jack Rieley, together wrote a song for the album, “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” on which Rieley sang lead vocals.
The song is a dirge, a sorrowful lament for a tree. It was inspired by the budding environmental movement. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, a year before it was written. Back then, I didn’t care for it. Very few even know it. Most who do find it depressing.
Years later, I found its mournful recitation of a tree’s fate somehow comforting. One music journalist, Ian MacDonald, claimed the song was “so radically at odds with pop music’s ubiquitous irony that you either laugh or become humbled by its pained candor.”
The Beach Boys’ 1971 “Surf’s Up” album cover.
Try on the lyrics for size, and if impressed, listen to the song with an open ear. It might take a couple of tries. For the patient listener, its poetry might even shine through its mournful message.
Song Lyrics:
Feel the wind burn through my skin
The pain, the air is killing me.
For years, my limbs stretched to the sky
A nest for birds to sit and sing.
But now my branches suffer
And my leaves don’t bear the glow
They did so long ago.
One day I was full of life
My sap was rich and I was strong.
From seed to tree, I grew so tall
Through wind and rain, I could not fall.
But now my branches suffer
And my leaves don’t offer
Poetry to me of song.
(Outro) Trees like me weren’t meant to live
If all this world can give
Is pollution and slow death.
Oh Lord, I lay me down
No life’s left to be found
There’s nothing left for me
Trees like me weren’t meant to live
If all this earth can give
Is pollution
Trees like me weren’t meant to live
(Oh Lord, I lay me down)
If all this earth can give
(My branches to the ground)
Is pollution and slow death
(There’s nothing left for me)
Oh Lord, I lay me down
My branches to the ground
There’s nothing left for me.
Pauline and Bill Kombol, summer 1972, photo by Barry Kombol
Mom died 15 years ago today. A few days later, a good friend placed his hand on my shoulder and told me, “You just lost the best friend you’ll ever have.” Truer words have rarely been spoken.
We knew it was coming. She had COPD – Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Like many of her generation, Pauline smoked. For years, make that decades, she tried to quit, and for the most part did, limiting herself to just a few smokes a day. In fact, for the longest time, even I didn’t know she still smoked. She hid it that well.
In her last year, grandchildren from far away came to visit. Thanksgiving weekend 2010, Mom wished to take a ride around Enumclaw and point out her old family homes. And that of her grandfather, Joshua Morris, whom she never really knew, as he died before she was two years old. She packed her oxygen tank, and though experiencing discomfort, we completed the several-hour trip around town and out to Osceola. A few weeks later, she called me at work first thing in the morning. For thirty minutes, she shared her Christian faith journey and how proud she was to have passed it down to her children, in different iterations.
A week before Christmas, she fell. How many times have falls lead to death in older adults? First stop was Enumclaw Hospital, then a Federal Way rehab center, where we visited her on Christmas Day. She seemed to be getting better, but a setback landed her in Swedish Hospital. On New Year’s Day, many of the family visited. Mom convinced the doctors to pump her up on steroids, then put on makeup, so that when we visited, she was sparkling and appeared to be years younger. I was amazed by her remarkable recovery – right before my eyes. She was vibrant, almost perky. She held a great-grandchild in her arms, looking angelic. I imagined she’d somehow been cured. Foolish me, for I didn’t know of the doctor’s trick.
At Swedish Hospital, Pauline and her great-granddaughter, Nina Marie Clooke, age two months, January 1, 2011.
Pauline left Swedish for the Kline Galland nursing home near Seward Park. It’s a lovely place in a forested setting. And for the next three weeks, she slowly proceeded to die, under the gentle care of hospice personnel who calibrated the precise dose of morphine to keep her both conscious and free of pain. On the last few nights, we rotated sleeping beside her.
The fateful call came Monday afternoon, January 24, 2011. We were in Auburn at the Celebration of Life for Jill Alverson, Cal Bashaw’s daughter. Mom and Cal had joined their lives in partnership a decade earlier. Cal and his family became a part of our family. Were two daggers purposely thrown that day?
The following week was a whirlwind. We organized the funeral at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and coordinated with Enumclaw Funeral Home, just like we did for Dad, 32 years earlier. Father Bill Hausmann, one of Mom’s best friends and the priest who married Jennifer and me, came to perform the service. Mom wanted to be buried, so I chose a coffin, the simplest, bare pine box available, like those of earlier generations. Mom was never showy; she always practiced modesty but never pretension.
Our job was made easy as Mom had written down most of what she wanted after life. Father Hausmann graciously guided us through assembling the funeral service. Old family friends filled the pews. “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace” were sung. The 23rd Psalm was read, as were Corinthians 15:51-57 and Luke 12:48-49. Each of her four children delivered remembrances, as did two grandchildren. Following the Celebration of Life in the Parish Hall, the immediate family journeyed to the cemetery where Pauline was buried next to her husband, Jack. Flowers were tossed on her pinewood coffin. Her gravestone read, ‘Morte in Vitam,’ Latin for ‘death into life.’
Pauline (Morris) Kombol’s funeral program.
Thirty-two years earlier, Dad’s end came fast, dying a little over three weeks after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. One night before he died, he called me to his bedside and set forth a task: “I want you to take care of your mother.” Both daughters lived far away, while Barry and Cathy had three toddlers and a fourth on the way next year.
That was the easiest job I ever had. There was one simple way to take care of Mom – I let her take care of me. I was single, unattached, and living in their Lake Sawyer summer cabin, a mere 10 miles away. I came frequently for dinner. She hemmed my pants and sewed buttons on my shirts. And always sent me home with food: casseroles, lentil soup, scones, and blackberry pie.
We became pals, going to concerts and plays. With Danica, we drove to Pasadena and attended the 1981 Rose Bowl. I encouraged her to purchase a condo in downtown Seattle and joined as a 20% partner. We jointly managed Dad’s affairs, sharing the bookwork and undertaking investments. Each summer, she joined me at her lake house until I moved out after purchasing a Maple Valley condo. Even then, we accomplished a remodel that doubled the size of her lake home while maintaining its chalet character and style.
Together, we undertook projects. We sorted through piles of family photos, identifying faces whose names I wrote on the back. She guided me through family genealogies, from which I published several Morris and Kombol family histories. Those endeavors inspired me and led to a second-act writing hobby. Mom remained an essential part of my life until the end.
Knowing she was gone, I conjured ways to keep her alive. During the first nine months of my life, in utero, I shared everything with her. After leaving the womb, a baby carries maternal cells for decades, possibly for life. It’s called maternal micro-chimerism. There was my hook, my hold – deep down in the cavity of my soul, a few of Mom’s cells may still reside in me. On a molecular level, she was still with me. Just as during her life, I was still part of her, as mothers continue to carry cells of their infants for years, even decades after birth. Maybe I was grasping at straws, a drowning man trying to save a sense of self by clutching the DNA of flimsy reeds. But it worked.
Memory is a curious sort of history. The past in your head becomes the present. You step through its walls to the days and months of yesteryear – the way it used to be. We conjure snippets of recall from faraway events, hoping to make them real again. And then we’ll see each other and speak as we did before. There’s an element of magic at work. Like the alchemists, trying to change one element into another, we hope against hope that our leaden memories might somehow be turned to gold.
Some questions remain long after their owners have died, lingering like ghosts searching for answers never found in life. On this side of heaven, all we possess is the present. But the present endlessly dissolves into the past. There I am, a little boy of three or four. One of my earliest memories, in Elk Coal, with Barry. We’ve planned a performance to show off our skills to an audience of one – Mom.
On the edge of the yard where the tall trees grow, there’s a vine maple tree with a branch growing horizontally from the ground. Barry, two and one-half years older than me, flips upside down, hanging by his knees, grinning broadly. I jump and grab the branch and hang by my arms. Mom claps wildly, as if it’s the most incredible show she’s ever seen. Barry continues to hang. I drop from the branch and run into her outstretched arms as she squeezes me tightly. I’d never felt so proud.
That’s what Gary Habenicht meant when he advised, I just lost the best friend I’ve ever had.
Grandma Pauline with 13 of her 14 grandchildren on the occasion of her 80th birthday celebration in Arizona, March 31, 2007.
After receiving several of my CD compilations, a fraternity brother, Brad Caldart, suggested creating one with my top ten songs. I took his challenge to heart and began compiling lists of possible entries. That was well over a year ago. I’ve promised several times to quit producing CD collections, only to do so again and again.
So, I beg forgetfulness and share my latest anthology. To no surprise, it’s more than ten songs. The profundity of the occasion demanded no less than XIII. And like the Super Bowl, I chose Roman numerals to convey their renown. I searched for songs that say something, and to no surprise, many have appeared on previous compilations. There are several new ones. As is my custom, what the songs mean to me, and why they matter, is explained below. They carry one common theme – nostalgia.
I. Big River (1995) – This song first came to my attention in October 2021. On an early Saturday morning, I prepared to watch the Tottenham soccer match played at Newcastle. The home team celebrated their new Saudi owners by playing over the stadium loudspeakers Jimmy Nail’s wistful remembrance about growing up in Newcastle. It’s focused on the collapse of the Newcastle shipbuilding industry on the River Tyne where his father worked. The Neptune shipyard was the last to go, Jimmy heard on the radio, and then they played the latest No. 1.
It took several listenings, before I heard the line, “that was when coal was king,” the name of my newspaper column since 2007. Sting grew up nearby and expressed similar sentiments in his 2013 album, The Last Ship, which spawned a 2014 musical of the same name with Sting in the starring role. Through blind luck, we caught his performance in L.A., a month before Covid shut down the nation.
II. Tambourine Man (1965)– I listened to this song continuously during college. Why – the poetic lyrics, the storytelling parable, and conclusive end, “let me forget about today until tomorrow.” This song appeared on my first cassette compilation, The Best of December 6, 1978.
III. Superman’s Ghost (1987)– Growing up, I was a huge fan of Superman, the comic books, the TV show, and all things to do with superpowers. After school, found me planted at home or with a friend in front of a TV watching Adventures of. Though George Reeves’ death by suicide came in 1959, my innocent ears didn’t hear about it until several years later – in the school yard when this silly joke was offered, “Do you know why George Reeves shot himself? – He thought he was Superman.” Don McLean captures more than just his death in his poignant song.
IV. Questions (1976) – I was so enraptured by Mannfred Mann and Chris Slade’s lyrics that my sister, Danica inscribed them for me in calligraphy on old-fashioned parchment paper. I’ve kept it in my Webster’s Third International Dictionary under the letter Q. Another song from the collection of Dec. 6, 1978.
V. The Last Campaign Trilogy (1974) – Several years back, upon asking Siri to play John Stewart songs, this tune from his live double-album Phoenix Concertscame on. From its opening lyrics (“It was more than Indiana, more than South Dakota, more than California, More than Oregon”), I immediately understood the reference to Bobby Kennedy’ ill-fated run for president. Stewart traveled with the campaign playing songs before Kennedy took the stage.
A political junkie in the 9th grade, I followed each primary and was fascinated by the three-way races in both parties: D’s – McCarthy, Humphrey, Kennedy; R’s – Rockefeller, Reagan, Nixon. Stewart’s allegorical song is about much more. Our family was in Vienna that fateful morning, where the newspapers’ front pages showed a Hispanic waiter by his side, offering comfort to the fallen senator. In the hotel lobby, an old Austrian woman, her greying hair wrapped in a black scarf, hissed, “Johnson, Johnson!”
VI. A Winter’s Tale (1982) – This song was written for David Essex and spent ten weeks on the British charts peaking at No. 2. I discovered it on the Moody Blues’ 2003 album, Tim Rice, famous for Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita wrote the lyrics. Great lyricists invest heartfelt meaning into a mere 156 words.
VII. I Was Only Joking (1978) – Rod Stewart released this song as a double-A single. Its flip side, Hot Legs was played heavily the U.S. I spent most of the first six months of 1978 traveling in Europe, where this introspective side was regularly played. I fell in love with his autobiographical lyrics and confessional delivery.
VIII. ‘39 (1975) –Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen’s mammoth hit from A Night at the Opera, is a song that might just as well been included here. Brian May, the group’s lead guitarist, wrote ‘39. The song is about space travel and the dilation of time in Einstein’s theory of relativity. A century has passed when the explorers return, but they are but a year older. Their contemporaries are dead, and the space travelers encounter only their aging grandchildren. May achieved his doctorate in Astrophysics in 2007.
IX. The Way Life’s Meant To Be (1981) – Another time travel song, where ELO’s Jeff Lynne discovers a disappointing future world, filled with ivory towers and plastic flowers. It’s not the utopia he imagined, symbolized by a wish to be back in 1981. I had never heard this song until 35 years after its release, when Spencer used it as the fadeaway in a short film project at Chapman University.
X. Going All the Way –A Song in 6 Movements (2016) – This song appeared on Meat Loaf’s final album, Braver Than We Are. While Meat Loaf was the front-man, all his best songs were by Jim Steinman, who also wrote and produced No. 1 songs for Bonny Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Sun; Air Supply – Making Love Out of Nothing at All; Boyzone – No Matter What; and Barry Manilow- Read ‘Em and Weep. Steinman joined Andrew Lloyd Webber and wrote the lyrics for their 1996 musical, Whistle Down the Wind. Meat Loaf and Steinman died within months of each other during Covid.
XI. God Only Knows (1966) – Opens side 2 of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album. Paul McCartney summed it up best, when he described it as, “The greatest song ever written.”
XII. See Me Through (Part II) Just a Closer Walk (1991) – Van Morrison takes this 1941 gospel-jazz standard way back to Hyndford Street, where he grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Morrison reflects back on his childhood memories about 80 seconds in with a spoken-word poem that describes a Sunday afternoon in winter . . .
And the tuning in of stations in Europe on the wireless, Before, yes before this was the way it was, More silence, more breathing together, Not rushing, being, Before rock `n’ roll, before television, Previous, previous, previous.
XIII. All the Love I Have (2000) – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, The Beautiful Game(soccer) is centered on a Belfast Catholic team during the Troubles of 1969, the deadly conflict between Protestants and Catholics (watch the 2021 film “Belfast”). Ben Elton wrote the lyrics.
The star soccer player, John Kelly has joined the IRA, as his wife, Mary, pleads for him to reconsider leaving their marriage and abandoning his young son. It’s a stirring finale to this fine musical.
Note: The finale is actually two songs, All the Love I Have and Beautiful Game Finale, thus two video are shared below.
The Beautiful Game Finale:
XIII – December 2025 is also available on WJMK90 Spotify or as an Apple Playlist. Message Bill Kombol for a mailed CD version or a text of the Spotify or Apple playlists.
There’s a hole in my heart. Slowly, inexorably, depressingly, one by one, my literary heroes pass away. The latest, Tom Stoppard, generally regarded as the greatest living English playwright, died November 29, 2025, at age 88. And before him, Tom Wolfe (2018), Terry Teachout (2022), and Paul Johnson (2023).
Tom Stoppard had a way with words and cherished them. In his play The Real Thing, the playwright character utters this plea, “Words … They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more … I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.”
Those who value Stoppard’s words will be quoting him long after his death.
Stoppardian
A dramatist and Czech-born, Englishman, Tom Stoppard is far from a household name in America. He wrote intellectual plays of wit and humor, and farcical plays of intellectual intrigue. He didn’t write musicals or comedies, so many, probably most, have never seen his plays in theaters. Stoppard wrote plays, “because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.” Contradiction and conceptual enigmas were his stock in trade, though always delivered with dry comedic wit to drive the story. The adjective, Stoppardian, entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978.
I first encountered Tom Stoppard 50 years ago – with a pair of offerings at Seattle’s Second Stage. I was enrolled in The Living Theater, a class whose students were expected to attend at least seven live performances on campus or off. I invited my Mom to join me for a double-feature of two short Stoppard plays, After Magritte and The Real Inspector Hound. What we saw was both surreal and absurd, which led me to write a lengthy review trying to capture in detail the experience of the event. Stoppard believed that theater is an event, for which words and script are but a movable and changing part.
With each new Stoppard play I saw, The Real Thing, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia, Rock ‘n Roll, Leopoldstadt, or audio-plays I heard, Darkside, The Hard Problem, In the Native State, Albert’s Bridge, or Professional Foul, the greater my admiration grew. His most accessible work is no doubt Shakespeare in Love, the 1998 film whose script won Stoppard an Academy Award.
My collection of theater playbills from Tom Stoppard plays I’ve seen.
But for me, his 1993 stage play, Arcadiatakes the cake. I’ve seen it staged three times and listened to several audio versions. Set on an estate in rural Derbyshire, England, the play examines its owners, the Coverly family, in both 1809 and their present-day descendants. Arcadia is an exploration of determinism and chaos theory, love and literature, Lord Byron, lust, and the falsity of biography. As with all of Stoppard’s plays, it’s really about the characters who inhabit the stage, delivering lines that help the audience to first think, then understand, and later feel. It’s a multi-layered drama filled with romance, humor, tragedy, sorrow, science, rice puddings, and a tortoise. The L.A. Theatre Works audio staging of this nearly three-hour play will introduce you to entropy and mathematics, but in a way that is fun and cleverly explained.
One of Stoppard’s most intriguing and accessible pieces is Darkside, a radio play that conceptualizes one interpretation behind the meaning of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Stoppard received the band’s blessing to use their music at the soundtrack for his drama. Darkside was released in 2013 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a best-selling album that stayed on the Billboard 200 for almost 15 years. The story follows Emily McCoy, a philosophy student as she travels through a series of thought experiments vividly brought to life by the characters she encounters, and seeks to answer the question, “What is the good?”
I could share a dozen quotes to conclude this tribute, but have settled on just one, fittingly from his 1967 breakthrough hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.”
And my collection of Stoppard biographies and copies of scripts.
Afterword and Looking After
Theaters were really devastated by Covid-19, and as a result, fewer plays are staged, with musicals and crowd-pleasers the staple. Tom Stoppard’s works are still occasionally performed in England, but not often in the U.S. Jennifer and I were fortunate to have seen his last play, Leopoldstadt, the story behind his Jewish roots on Broadway in 2022. But locally, there hasn’t been a staging of any of his plays since 2014, that I’m aware of.
Yet there are ways to listen to his dramas, foremost among them, Tom Stoppard – A BBC Radio Collection featuring 14 plays. His 54-minute radio play, Darkside, is easily found on YouTube and elsewhere. L.A. Theatre Works has staged audio versions of three productions, including excellent adaptations of Arcadia,The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. They are available through Libby or your library. Only one of his plays has been filmed, a 1990 version of Rosencrantz, starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss. Plus, there’s always the film, Shakespeare in Love, while not totally his own, it’s a satisfying representation of the Stoppard style.
Prized Possession
The autographed copy of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern at Dead” that I bought by pure chance.
Several years ago, we stopped at the Half Price Books in Tukwila and browsed. I found this used copy of Rosencrantz at an attractive price of $8.00, so bought it. For a couple of years, it collected dust on a nightstand filled with other volumes I haven’t yet read. It wasn’t until I packed it along on an extended trip and finally read it. Enthused, I began to read it again but was struck by the introductory page. Was that a real autograph, or just stamped artwork? Felt pen stain-marks bleeding through to the opposite side proved it was real.
Unwittingly, without trying, and by pure chance, I purchased an autographed copy the U.S. printing of the 1967 play that launched Stoppard’s career.
But of course, Tom Stoppard said it best as a line in this very play, “Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
Growing up on the West Coast, the Pacific Ocean was our natural draw. During my early years, before memories even formed, our family made its annual summer trek to Grayland. We always stayed in the same 12-room motel, a long walk across sandy dunes and scattered beach grass to glimpse the ocean, which was still a couple of hundred yards further west. Early memories find me playing in the sand – enveloped by the ocean’s roar, razor clams, and cool breezes. We vacationed there every year, always with the Louie & Joanne Cerne family, until my mid-teens.
The Great Lakes didn’t even register. Sure, we learned about them in school, but if pressed to name all five, I’d struggle. My first encounter came in 1976, the summer of my 23rd year. I’d fallen from a tree late that June, crushing three vertebrae; then spent a week in a hospital bed, sleep-watching the bicentennial Fourth of July on television. Chris Coppin visited before flying back for his summer law program in London. Upon release, my doctor suggested I read James Mitchener’s epic novel, “Centennial.” At 909 pages, it lasted all summer.
My prognosis was uncertain. I could walk, with pain; and sit, with pain; and lie down, in pain. It would take time for the muscles to strengthen and my vertebrae to recover. I wore a back brace, best described as a corset tightened by strings, like Victorian-era ladies used to achieve thin waists. For the next month, I moved slowly and spent lots of time swimming. Water’s buoyancy and lessened gravitational pressure reduced the lower back pain. My planned summer of fun was decidedly unfunny.
I exchanged letters with Chris, informing him of our high school class’s five-year reunion slated for July 31. Rob McLean organized that impromptu affair at Lynne Puttman’s father’s ranch, where our best junior high parties were held. I was the only one to swim in the pool I’d enjoyed as a kid. By mid-August, I was going stir crazy.
Chris had Pan Am flying privileges, thanks to his father, George, a flight engineer. He took advantage of the airline’s non-stop service between London and Seattle, sometimes flying home on weekends. Chris arrived back in Washington, preparing to leave for his second year of law school at Notre Dame. Would I like to join him on the cross-country drive? I had nothing going on in my life except a bad back that hurt most of the time, so a buddy road trip was set in motion.
We left the morning of August 17th, heading east on I-90. Chris drove a light-blue 1968 Plymouth Fury, a four-door, on loan from his dad. The car’s engine ran hot, so we opened the windows and turned the heater to full blast to drain off excess heat. Driving mile after endless mile through sunny Montana made it uncomfortable, but we were young. No air conditioner either, so with windows open and Chris’ arm resting on the driver’s side door, he sported an impressive sunburn by day’s end.
Chris Coppin drives his 1968 Plymouth Fury along I-90, somewhere in Montana, on the first day of our road trip to Notre Dame.
We stopped at a cheap motel somewhere east of Billings. Our next day’s goal was Hermann, Missouri, where Chris’s girlfriend lived. Which meant we’d be driving past Mount Rushmore. Back on I-90, we approached Rapid City, and signs to Mount Rushmore began to appear. The colossal faces of four great American presidents, carved in granite, beckoned. The short ride wasn’t North by Northwest, but required a southerly detour, which cost us some miles and minutes. But how many times in our lives would we be that close? Only once . . . so far.
I asked Chris if we could visit. He said, “No.” I begged and pleaded, but he was in no mood for sightseeing. It was late morning, and we still had 900 miles in front of us. A compromise was finally struck. Chris drove to the park entrance and dropped me off in view of the monument. It was an epic sight. I snapped a photo while Chris looped back around the lot, picking me up two minutes later. I jumped in the car, as Chris gleefully announced, “There, you’ve seen Mt. Rushmore.” We headed south toward Kansas City.
Kansas City, Here We Come!
The ’68 Plymouth came equipped with an AM radio. Stations faded in and out. After finding a good one, we rode it until it was too scratchy to enjoy. Our Missouri destination, where Cathy Rhoads lived, was still hours away. We passed through Kansas City late that night, listening to live broadcasts of the 1976 Republican National Convention. I had a personal interest.
Six months earlier, I was chosen as one of three Enumclaw delegates pledged to Gerald Ford. We represented him at the King County Convention held that May in the Seattle Center. But my hopes of attending the national convention in Kansas City were dashed when Ronald Reagan’s delegates dominated the district round, so our Ford delegation didn’t advance to state.
The contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan was so tight that multiple ballots were expected. It was the last political convention where the nominee wasn’t known until the votes were cast. Yet, through pure chance and circumstance, there I was, driving by the convention hall while listening to the live broadcast. We passed in the early hours of August 19, just after West Virginia’s delegation put Ford over the top.
Onward to Hermann we pressed through the night, arriving early the next morning. We spent a few days with his girlfriend’s family. Cathy’s father and brothers were auctioneers, so we joined them for one of their auctions. It was a peculiar affair, akin to a giant yard sale, with items like garden hoses and old lawnmowers sold in quick succession for a couple of dollars here and ten dollars there. I called it backyard entertainment.
At the Six Flags amusement park with Cathy’s family. From left to right: Bill Kombol, Chris Coppin, Cathy Rhoads, her youngest sister, Sharon, and Suzanne.
Hermann was a charming German town and still is. We enjoyed 35-cent burgers at a drug store counter, saw “Taxi Driver” in the movie house, toured the Stone Hill Winery, and visited Six Flags amusement park near St. Louis. Cathy was quite good at shuffleboard bowling, so we spent time at a local bar playing this game we’d never seen before. Here’s how I described Hermann in a postcard mailed home: “A nice small town, pop. 2,500. Middle America with a hillbilly accent.”
Land of the Fighting Irish
In half a day, we arrived in South Bend and settled into Chris’s digs. I hung out with his law school buddies for a bit, but didn’t fit in. They had ambitions, I didn’t, so did my own thing. I borrowed Chris’s car and drove 35 miles to Warren Dunes State Park on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan. I walked hundreds of yards through massive sand dunes to catch my first glimpse of a Great Lake. The waves were as big as the ocean, and the water stretched beyond the horizon. I spent most of the day sunbathing and body-surfing while marveling at the wonders of this inland sea.
I took Amtrak to Chicago, passing through Gary, Indiana, whose distressingly ugly steel works forever stained that tribute song from the “Music Man.” I caught a Cubs game, courtesy of two old guys in their 70s, who, seeing me approach, asked if I needed an extra ticket. In their box seats near third base, they told stories of Al Capone and grand adventures from their youth. I bought beers for all, poured fresh from bottles into cups – the Wrigley Field way. I toured the Art Institute, the Museum of Industry, and a half dozen other sites, and by luck caught an E.L.O. concert at the Amphitheater, and a few days later returned to Notre Dame.
That’s me in the pink shirt at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with my benefactors, who gave me a ticket.
Back on campus, I spotted a poster that KISS was playing at Joyce Center. Since tickets were only $6.00, I asked Chris and his buddies if anyone wanted to join me. Their smirks and snickers informed me KISS wasn’t part of their law school pretensions. I went alone. KISS’s opening act was the yet unknown Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band. One month later, they released “Night Moves,” kick-starting their rise to stardom.
A Song is Heard
I can’t remember when I first heard “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” But it was during that trip. The single was released in August and cracked the charts over Labor Day. The song’s haunting intro and storytelling lyrics are sung by a seasoned voice who blends Chippewa legends and Great Lakes lore. Every line advances the narrative, and each of its 458 words stirs the soul. Gordon Lightfoot admitted the tune was based on “an old Irish folk song.” The night the great ship sank, Lightfoot was in the attic of his Toronto home, trying to work out that Celtic melody he’d first heard as a child.
Despite its six-minute length, Lightfoot’s song peaked at #2 on the U.S. charts, behind Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” And hit #1 on Canadian charts, fittingly, one year after the November 10, 1975, disaster. Sadly, folk-rock ballads fade in time, while beat-based anthems dominate Classic Rock stations. The song came briefly to mind in May 2023, following Lightfoot’s death at age 84.
It’s wistful to be reminded that, save for Gordon’s song, the demise of the Edmund Fitzgerald might be largely forgotten, remembered only by “the wives and the sons and the daughters.” Nearing the 50th anniversary of the great ship’s sinking, I caught its bug while cruising the Great Lakes.
Tanya Turns 85
My mother-in-law turned 85 this past March. She was born in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, while her late husband, Gary Grant, was born 95 miles north in Chippewa Falls. Both families moved west to Washington when they were young. Tanya and her family briefly relocated to Minnesota, where she spent four years before returning to Tacoma for high school.
When asked what she wanted for her 85th birthday, Tanya hoped her four children and spouses would join her on a Great Lakes cruise. Only the two daughters and their husbands could, so a plan unfolded to board the Victory Cruise Lines for its 10-day sailing from Toronto to Milwaukee. With tickets in hand, my first goal was to memorize the five lakes’ names, instead of stumbling over which I’d forgotten. Midwestern schoolchildren are taught the acronym HOMES—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Check!
A frivolous moment for the Great Lake Cruisers on Victoria 1. Clockwise from lower left: Helen Feldmeier (Gary Grant’s cousin), Tanya Grant, Bill, Jennifer, Leah Grant, and Mike Royston – Group selfie by our irrepressible waiter, Aug. 21, 2025.
Jennifer and I also planned a trip to Minneapolis to visit our youngest, Henry. We scheduled that Midwest jaunt for the end of May, since our cruise wasn’t until mid-August. It was our first journey to Minnesota, a Great Lakes state to boot. There’s no handy abbreviation for the eight states bordering the Great Lakes—from east to west—New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Canada’s one province is easier—Ontario.
After a few days in Minneapolis, we drove two and a half hours northeast to Duluth, a port city on Lake Superior’s southwest shore. That day’s chilly weather chilled Henry and my hopes to swim in my second Great Lake. Plus, the discovery that the world’s largest freshwater body of water is damned cold on June 2nd. We settled instead for Gooseberry Falls and Betty’s World-Famous pies.
Henry, Jennifer, and Bill at Betty’s World Famous Pies in Two Harbors, Minnesota, June 2, 2025.
Just across the bridge from Duluth lies its twin harbor, Superior, Wisconsin. We crossed the border, and each checked another state off our lists. Our immediate goal was the Wisconsin Point Lighthouse, which guides ships into and out of the harbor. Jennifer was driving, and I navigated using Apple Maps. Heading south along East Second Street, the longest pier I’d ever seen came into view. The map identified it as Burlington Dock No. 1, and below, noted, “last port of call for the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Across Allouez Bay, on Wisconsin Point Road, I filmed a video of the nearly half-mile-long, 86-foot-tall ore dock. That’s where the Fitzgerald loaded 26,200 tons of taconite pellets on November 9, 1975.
Cruising Towards the Big Lake They Call Gitche Gumee
Ten weeks later, we stepped off a Toronto pier onto the Victory I cruise ship. It accommodates 190 passengers with a crew of 95. It was our first cruise. We sailed across Lake Ontario bound for Niagara Falls, after passing through the impressive Welland Canal, whose 27-mile connection to Lake Erie features eight locks, each climbing 40 feet for a total elevation gain of 320 feet. What amazed this history buff even more was discovering that the first set of 40 locks, each eight feet tall, was completed in 1829, five years after construction commenced. My ignorance of our own country’s history is immense.
Our cruise found us crossing Lake Erie to Cleveland, and then up the Detroit River, through Lake Saint Clair, along the St. Mary’s River to Huron. To reach Lake Superior, ships pass through the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, where Victory I berthed for the day’s activities. Nearby was the Valley Camp freighter, built in 1917 and converted into a maritime museum in 1968.
The Valley Camp is a generation older and half the cargo size of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yet our guided tour of this freighter provided a firsthand look at the operations of these hulking ships. The belly of this beast, where 16 million tons of cargo were transported a collective three million nautical miles over 49 years of sailing, is now a massive 20,000 square foot museum. The far end hosts the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Exhibit, where the remains of two lifeboats from the stricken vessel are housed. Very few artifacts were recovered after its tragic sinking. What we saw was chilling. One thick metal lifeboat was torn in half, like a piece of paper. The other, fully intact, was never launched, but freed from its cables when the ship sank rapidly.
In the cargo hold of the Valley Camp Edmund Fitzgerald exhibition. Only the front of this Fitzgerald lifeboat was found. The metal boat was ripped in half.
A 12-foot-long scale model illustrates the freighter’s extended length and narrow breadth, built to haul enormous loads of cargo while still fitting through the skinny locks. To get a grip on its size, the Fitz was 729 feet long—nearly 2.5 football fields—and only 75 feet wide, slightly broader than an average road right-of-way. Its nearly 10:1 length-to-width ratio, imagine an old-fashioned ruler, mimicked the Chippewa’s tribal canoes, which French fur trappers adopted to navigate the Great Lakes. Though it weighed 13,600 tons empty, the Fitz regularly carried 26,000 tons.
On that fateful run—the last of her season—the Fitz was carrying taconite pellets, marble-sized, hardened balls typically containing 35% iron combined with sedimentary rock. Six crew members, including the captain, were set to retire after delivering the cargo. In the photo below, I’m holding a jar of taconite as a freighter in the background prepares to enter the Soo Locks.
Holding a jar of taconite pellets as a Great Lakes freighter enters the Soo Locks in the background.
The Pride of the American Side
Launched in 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald truly was the pride of the American side. The Fitz was the biggest and best and most luxurious freighter on the Great Lakes. The ship attracted the top crews and sailors. Captain Ernest McSorley, a 44-year veteran, was widely regarded as the best skipper on the Great Lakes. The Fitzgerald regularly set records for the most tonnage hauled each year and round-trips completed. It was commissioned by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, which also held interests in iron and mineral industries—among the first such investments by American life insurance companies.
The firm’s president and chairman of the board, Edmund Fitzgerald, came from a long line of Irish Great Lakes sailors and captains. Fitzgerald vetoed several Board attempts to name the ship after him, but it was done against his will at a meeting he couldn’t attend. Initially called Hull 301, the ship was built at the River Rouge shipyard, just outside Detroit. The shipbuilding company adopted a new process using welds rather than rivets to produce a more flexible boat. Every bridge, building, and boat is designed to bend, but how much bending is acceptable?
An artist’s rendering of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the pride of the American side.
15,000 spectators, more than the Tigers’ average fan base that season, attended the ship’s launch. Edmund’s son recalled, “The day the ship launched was probably the happiest day of my father’s life.” Chairman Edmund Fitzgerald retired two years later, a thoroughly contented man.
The Gales of November
Seventeen years later, Sunday, November 9, 1975, was just like any other. The weather in Superior was unseasonably warm as the Fitzgerald loaded taconite from Burlington Dock No. 1. Unbeknownst to the captain and crew, two storm systems were gathering. A low-pressure system from the Kansas plains moved northeasterly over Iowa towards Superior. At about the same time, an Alberta Clipper gathered steam and moved southeasterly, intensifying conditions.
Freshwater’s lower density causes Great Lakes waves to grow taller and form closer together during intense storms. A host of factors regularly conspire to create perilous conditions, but Great Lakes captains, crews, and freighters are familiar with wild winds and rough waters. Stoicism is the chief characteristic of Great Lakes sailors.
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank the next evening, Monday, November 10, around 7:15 p.m. Discovering what happened has produced scores of detailed reports filled with thousands of pages, yet no final answer has emerged. The probable causes have been vigorously debated, but none have proved conclusive, so the speculation continues. The most credible answers focus on the ship’s design, its hatches, rogue or record waves, navigational errors, Six Fathom Shoal, and fatigue. The simplest explanation that explains nothing but accounts for everything—the Fitzgerald arrived in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.
The Fitzgerald was universally thought to be the finest ship on the Great Lakes, and it had operated safely for 17 years in fair and foul weather. So why did it sink this time? The mystery lives on from the Chippewa on down.
The Legend Lives On
Newspapers write the first draft of history. Magazines add seasoning. Artists and poets create works that trigger emotions. The first news release, recounting basic facts of the Fitzgerald’s sinking, was wired to 6,500-member newspapers of the Associated Press. Two weeks later, Newsweek magazine ran a story on page 48 titled, “Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month.” That half-page article credits James Gaines with Jon Lowell in Detroit. From the beginning, the story Gaines wrote practically sings, “According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.’” The article concludes on this somber note, “And in the stone Mariner’s Church in downtown Detroit, a minister offered prayers for the lost seamen and tolled the church bells twenty-nine times in grim tribute to the unslaked furies of Lake Superior.”
An artist illustrates the gale-torn waters of Superior that the Fitzgerald might have faced that fateful night.
Gordon Lightfoot first read the AP story and weeks later, Gaines’s piece in Newsweek. He was moved. But it struck him that 29 fallen sailors deserved more than 534 words in a magazine. With the AP, Newsweek, and other accounts laid out, Lightfoot began writing the lyrics that he teamed with the “old Irish dirge” he’d been humming. He completed the song but was deeply uncertain, particularly about his lyrics, given the subject’s sensitivity. He feared appearing corny, inaccurate, or profiting from tragedy. Still, Lightfoot couldn’t put the song out of his head, so he tinkered with it for months.
In the spring of 1976, Lightfoot gathered his regular band for a five-day session at a Toronto studio for the album that became “Summertime Dream.” Months earlier, they’d rehearsed ten songs, but not the sea shanty ballad, since Lightfoot hadn’t played it for them in its entirety. Towards the end of each session, he’d start strumming the new song, abruptly quit, then insisted, “It isn’t ready.” By 3 p.m. Thursday, they’d finished recording ten songs and had plenty of studio time remaining. Gordon again resisted, but the studio engineer told him that since he had already paid for the session, why not try that shipwreck song?
Lightfoot relented, and the lights turned low to set the mood. He turned to his guitarists and said, “Do your thing.” The drummer, who had never played a note on the mystery song, asked Gordon when he should come in. Lightfoot said, “I’ll give you a nod.” At precisely 94 seconds, Gordon gave the nod as he sang, “the wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound.” Just then, the drummer struck the tom drumbeat. It wasn’t just the band’s first take on this song – it was the first time they ever played it together.
There were several more attempts that afternoon, but all agreed to come back the next day to do it for real. On Friday, they cut three or four more takes, trying to make it better. But when the various versions were played back, all agreed that the first one on Thursday was their best. It had a creative tension the others lacked. Gordon and the band were pleased with the result and felt they’d created something special. But no one in the room thought it would be a hit.
No Chorus, No Hook, No Bridge
At six minutes, the song was too long—there was no chorus, no hook, no bridge—it didn’t check any of the boxes for a hit. After the album’s release, Warner Bros. Records’ president, Mo Ostin, met with Lightfoot and told him the shipwreck song was getting some reaction on FM, and they planned to release it as a single. Neither Gordon nor the band believed what they were hearing.
Gordon Lightfoot was shocked upon hearing Warner Bros. Records thought his sea shanty ballad should be the album’s single.
His folk-rock ballad became a defining part of Lightfoot’s career. He later declared, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is my greatest achievement. It’s a song you can’t turn your back on.” Nor did he turn his back on those most affected by the tragedy. After playing the song at the Mariner’s Church in Detroit, the Reverend Richard Ingalls, the pastor who rang the bell 29 times, approached Lightfoot to thank him. But then pointed out that Mariner’s wasn’t a “musty old hall,” but a clean and bright church. Lightfoot agreed and changed the lyric for subsequent concerts to “rustic old hall.”
And when later investigators sent submarines to examine the ship’s hull 530 feet below Superior’s surface, they found that all the hatches were properly clamped. Gordon didn’t want any blame unfairly cast upon deckhands, whose job was to secure those hatches. So, he changed the famous line delivered by Fitz’s cook, Bob Rafferty, to: “At seven p.m., it grew dark, it was then, he said, Fellas, it’s been good to see you.” After the ship went down, Raffery’s family received the postcard he wrote several days earlier, which read, “I may be home by November 8; however, nothing is ever sure.”
Lightfoot and his bassist, Rick Haynes, attended the 40th anniversary of the sinking in 2015 at Whitefish Point. When Gordon learned that Ruth Hudson, the mother of Bruce Hudson, a 22-year-old deckhand on the Fitz, was on her deathbed, he called Ruth on the phone, as the two had met numerous times at events to commemorate the lost sailors. A few hours later, Ruth Hudson passed away hours before the 40th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, joining her only son and child in heaven.
On the Good Cruise Ship, Victory I
The Victory Cruise Lines’ literature promised its passengers a visit to all five lakes. Anchored at Sault Ste. Marie for the night, we passed through the Soo Locks into Lake Superior early the next morning. The itinerary description sounded lovely: “Embark on a journey of tranquility amidst the vastness of Lake Superior. Let the gentle waves and endless horizon lull you into a state of peaceful contemplation, where the grandeur of North America’s largest lake inspires awe and introspection.”
As Victory I entered the MacArthur lock to ascend 21 feet from Huron to Superior, I went to the bow, curious if we’d reach Whitefish Bay and possibly sail the 17 miles to the wreck site. Alas, it was not to be. Maybe our ship was behind schedule, or perhaps the author of the cruise line’s itinerary was excessively florid. After traveling several hundred yards into Superior’s vastness, Victory I promptly came about and sailed back through the locks. Oh well, if you’ve seen one great lake, you’ve seen ‘em all.
Epilogue
A 1994 expedition named “Deep Quest” conducted seven dives over three days and obtained some of the best filmed footage of the sunken Edmund Fitzgerald, including a video where one of the 29 bodies could be seen wearing a life jacket. In response, “the wives and the sons and the daughters” rose in protest and petitioned the Ontario province to declare the area a legally consecrated gravesite, which cannot be visited without the approval of the Canadian government. Their hard work and heartfelt pleas came to fruition five years later in 1999. The captain and crew may safely rest in peace.
This remembrance ends with the final radio communication from the Edmund Fitzgerald, uttered by Captain McSorley during a conversation with its sister ship, the Arthur A. Anderson: “We are holding our own.”
By Gordon Lightfoot (original recorded lyrics, 1976)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore, twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang
Could it be the north wind they’d been feeling?
The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
‘Twas the witch of November come stealing
The dawn came late, and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came, it was freezin’ rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven p.m., a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put 15 more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed ‘til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early
Sources:
“The Gales of November – The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by John U. Bacon, 2025
“Edmund Fitzgerald – The Legendary Great Lakes Shipwreck” by Elle Andra-Warner, 2006
“The Song of Hiawatha” – An Epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1855
Anton Kombol, upper left , pouring a beer from a bottle with a group of Croatian friends.
Growing up in the extended Kombol clan meant at least four family gatherings each year – Easter, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, and Christmas Eve. Occasionally, there was a wedding, an anniversary, or a Sunday assemblage added to the mix. Grandma (Lulu) and Papa (Tony) had five children. For me, that meant four sets of aunts and uncles, a total of eleven grandchildren, seven of them cousins. Only Frank and Dana Zaputil were childless, but they always brought their good friend, Art, and the de facto twelfth grandchild, Pierre, a full-size French poodle, fully accepted into the family. Pierre was probably the favorite.
Tony & Lulu’s 50th Anniversary party, Aug. 2, 196. L-R: Nadine, Tony, Nola, Lulu, Dana, Jack, Bernell.
Like most family parties, talk often turned to events of the second generation’s youth. My parents, aunts, and uncles all grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Kangley, Black Diamond, or Enumclaw. Anytime one of the Kombols told a story, there was sure to be a dispute about the facts or the event. There were often two or three different versions of what happened, to whom, and how. There was even uncertainty regarding the date of my father, Laverne Shercliffe Kombol’s birth in 1921. He was born at home in the small coal mining town of Hiawatha. Some said July 17, others July 18, while July 21 was offered as the birthdate, according to his grandmother, Jennie.
And as to when Jack contracted polio and missed several years of school, no one could agree. Though it was some time after Tony’s fateful day. As to that tragic event, no one remembered the month or year, but all agreed it happened in a Kangley mine. But which one?
Maybe this is why I started researching and writing history, especially about the coal industry. It’s no doubt helped having two grandfathers who were coal miners and two grandmothers who were school teachers.
Papa Kombol spoke in a thick Croatian accent. Back then, the term Yugoslavian was still in use, or Austrian, as Austria ruled both. His face and hands were speckled with purple freckles owing to a coal mining accident in the 1920s. He wore thick, I mean thick, glasses and typically read his Croatian periodicals, mailed from the old country, held close to his face. He had a hearty laugh, and when we were young, he always invited us to sit on his lap.
Anton Kombol was born January 6, 1885, in Fuzine, Croatia, to Anton Kombol (1849-1911) and Franciska Mihaljevic (1857-?). Croatia had been a part of the Austrian Empire since the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The first Kombols emigrated from France during the Napoleonic era, and successive generations of Kombol men married Croatian women. The local industries were woodworking and furniture-making, which attracted the original French immigrants. According to Leo Gregorich, Anton grew up in a place called Vrata, which means “gate” in Croatia. It’s within walking distance of Fuzine.
As Anton approached adulthood, woodworking was in his future, if the Austrian army didn’t call first. At age 17, Anton obtained an Austrian passport, issued on November 12, 1902. He made the 20-mile journey to Fiume, then part of Italy (now known as Rijeka, Croatia), and sailed December 8 on a ship bound for Southampton, England, by way of Le Havre, France. Anton arrived in New York on December 22, was processed through Ellis Island, then boarded a train on December 23, arriving in Roslyn, Washington, five days later. It was nine days before his 18th birthday.
Two older brothers, John (Ivan) and Matt Kombol, both living in Roslyn, welcomed him. Within days, he began work at the Northwestern Improvement Company’s coal mines that supplied fuel to power the locomotives of its corporate parent, Northern Pacific Railway. Anton soon changed his name to the Americanized moniker, Tony. For the next six years, Tony Kombol worked underground and saved his money. He later moved to Cle Elum.
L-R: Matt Kombol, John Kombol, Anton Kombol, early 1900s, Roslyn.
In May 4, 1908, Anton Kombol filed his Declaration of Intention to become an American citizen. He described himself as 5 feet, 6 inches, weighing 165 pounds, with brown hair, grey eyes, and a mustache. That September, a 23-year-old woman named Lulu Shircliffe accepted a teaching position in Ravensdale as her pay in Centralia “was not sufficient to our tastes.” She and a friend “landed in the hinterlands in Ravensdale, where the pay was tops, a coal mining town not far from Seattle.”
Sometime over the next two years, Tony Kombol moved to Ravensdale, whose mines were also operated by the Northwestern Improvement Co (NWI). Tony found room and board with William and Hanna Joseph, while Lulu lived at the home of Stephen and Lottie Weston, and their son, William. Stephen Weston was the hoisting engineer at the Ravensdale mine.
Tony Kombol, second from top with Croatian friends, likely near Ravensdale, circa early 1910s.
On November 11, 1911, Tony Kombol filed his Petition for Naturalization. Matt Starkovich, a fellow Croatian and Deputy Sheriff for King County, and Frank Ludwig, a Ravensdale liquor dealer signed as witnesses stating, Tony “is a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and is in every way qualified to be admitted as a citizen of the United States.” Tony declared his Oath of Allegiance on June 27, 1912, and received his Certificate of Naturalization on July 16, 1912. After ten years in the U.S., Tony became a citizen.
Lulu frequently returned to Chehalis to visit and stay with friends. It isn’t clear how or when they met, but at the time Ravensdale’s population was just over 700, so it would be natural for two eligible adults to know each other. In her job as a schoolteacher, Lulu was well-known and highly respected. And in a town with 230 coal miners, many of them single, she would have been one of the best catches around.
Lulu Shircliffe with her class of Ravensdale students, 1913. She would marry Tony Kombol the following year and retire from teaching . . . until circumstances dictated a return.
On June 18, 1914, John and Marguerite Carnero agreed to sell a 7,250 square foot lot to Tony Kombol for $160, due on or before December 31, 1914. Tony went to work building a house. Tony and Lulu were married in Seattle on August 4, 1914, and enjoyed a ten-day honeymoon before returning to their new Ravensdale home. As was the custom for young schoolteachers of the day, Lulu quit her job and went to work making their house a home.
Tony Kombol stands in front of the home he had built for his fiancée, Lulu Shircliffe, 1914.
On Tuesday, November 16, 1915, a blown fuse knocked out the hoisting machinery at Ravensdale No. 1. One hundred miners were sent home until the problem was fixed. Tony Kombol was one of them. Hours later, 31 men were killed by an explosion that destroyed the mine. It was the third-worst coal mining disaster in Washington state history. Many of the deceased miners were buried in the Ravensdale Cemetery, while others were sent back to the homes of their youth. The tragedy hit Ravensdale hard, and the townsfolk suffered. Merchants closed shops and miners left town seeking greener pastures. It isn’t clear what Tony and Lulu did with their home; they probably sold it cheaply. It survived and still stands at 27521 S.E. 271st Street in Ravensdale. The Kombols’ next two years would be hectic.
Shortly after the Nov. 16, 1915, explosion that claimed the lives of 31 coal miners and ended mining in Ravensdale for the next several years.
At the time of the tragedy, Lulu was three months pregnant with their first child. In late December 1915, Tony traveled to Ray, Arizona, with a fellow miner, Charley Canonica, where they found work in a copper mine. Several Ravensdale miners and their families followed. Lulu shipped their belongings a couple of months later. Bernell Kombol was born there on June 3, 1916.
After leaving Arizona, Tony found work in an Aberdeen, Washington, sawmill, while Lulu moved to Billings and joined her mother. That’s where their second child, Dana, was born. After rejoining the family in Montana, where he spent time working at the copper mine, Tony set off for Alaska, where business was booming. He was determined to make a small fortune or return. On his way north, Tony stopped off at Ravensdale to see William Reese, the Superintendent of the Northwestern Improvement Co.’s mines. A new mine, called Hiawatha, located halfway between Durham and Kangley, opened in 1917. Experienced coal miners were needed. Tony accepted the offer, and Lulu returned to Washington and found lodging in Durham, where their third child, Nola, was born.
Tony Kombol and his first son, Bernell, circa 1918.
As Tony labored building the new Hiawatha mine, NWI built cottages west of Kangley-Kanaskat Road to house their workforce. Some homes were transported by rail from Ravensdale, which hadn’t yet recovered from the disaster. Superintendent Reese was fond of the Kombol family and offered them one of the choicest homes, next door to him. Jack Kombol was born in that Hiawatha home, which still stands at 27723 Kanaskat-Kangley Road S.E.
The company needed that house back, so their fifth and final child, Nadine, was born in new quarters. Sometime later, William Reese made it possible for the Kombol family to return to the nicer home and secured a 100-year lease for them. They lived in that home until Tony died. Lulu remained several more years before moving in with Nola for her final season of life. There, she wrote a striking autobiography, a testament to her writing skills and a treasure for her family.
In the forests above Tony & Lulu’s longtime home on the Kanaskat-Kangley Road, their grandson, Bill Kombol, explores the artifacts and surface structures around the old Hiawatha mine, Nov. 28, 2023
NWI’s Hiawatha mine proved to be a colossal failure. The coal seam was subject to faulting, so production was frequently interrupted. Plus, higher wages being paid at the nearby Durham mine caused Hiawatha’s miners to hold out for wages of $15 – $20 per day, compared to the $8 daily rate paid at NWI’s mine in Roslyn. The Hiawatha mine temporarily shut down on November 1, 1920, then opened and closed on and off until its permanent closure in 1924.
For the measly amount of coal produced, Hiawatha had one of the worst records in the state, as measured by deaths per ton mined. Joseph Ripoli, an Italian, age 43, was instantly killed by a gas explosion on the evening of July 7, 1918. Ripoli left a widow and four children. Then on May 12, 1923, a Greek miner named John Panotos, age 42 and single, perished in the mine after a slab of coal fell from the chute, striking his head, and causing instant death.
While we don’t have Tony Kombol’s work records, he probably kept working through closures owing to his close relationship with Superintendent Reese. Even an inactive mine needs someone to run pumps to prevent flooding and start fans for ventilation. William R. Reese was appointed State Coal Mine Inspector in 1923 and left NWI. So did Tony Kombol.
In 1922, George Parkin and associates reopened the Kangley mine. A year earlier, they started mining in nearby Elk Coal. The new Kangley portal was on the Alta seam, but no shipments were made that first year. It isn’t known when Tony started work at the Parkin Kangley Coal Company. It was located less than a mile from his home. At the time, automobiles were a luxury, so most laborers lived within walking distance of work.
Life trundled along for the Kombols. Lulu stayed busy raising five children, all under the age of ten, while Tony labored underground. After more than a year of development work, the Parkin Kangley mine began shipping coal, just over 20,000 tons, in 1924. They employed 32 underground miners, while another four processed and sorted coal in the top works. The following year, production tripled to 64,000 tons, with 56 underground miners and twelve on the surface. The addition of so many new miners, many of whom spoke different languages, coupled with a push for higher yields, may have weakened safety protocols. We will never know.
The morning of Sunday, August 7, 1925, began like any other. Most mines operated seven days a week, so Sunday work wasn’t unexpected. It was a pleasant day with an expected high of 77°. Rain hadn’t fallen in over a month. I still haven’t found the accident report that documents exactly what happened and how. I did, however, by chance review an old envelope in Lulu’s collection of memorabilia, where I discovered the accident date, the coal company name, and the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) claim number 329482.
The Labor & Industries letter I discovered in an old envelope from Lulu’s collection of memorabilia.
But my attempts to find further evidence and information have thus far been stymied by arcane Department rules, communicated to me in a terse email dated June 20, 2024:
RE: Anton Kombol Records Request ID 154566
We have received your request for workers’ compensation claim records. However, Washington State law prohibits us from releasing confidential claim records to anyone who is without express written authorization from the injured worker or the employer of injury. At this time, the Department has to deny the request.
With Anton Kombol dead and the Parkin Kangley Coal Company closed over 98 years ago, I’m not exactly sure from whom I must seek written authorization. Right now, L & I have blocked me from seeing the file until I figure out an angle, or a kindly bureaucrat bends the rules. The search continues.
The only detailed description of the accident came during a September 2008 interview I conducted with Leo Gregorich, a close family friend and fellow Croatian. At the time, Leo was 96 years old, but sharp as a knife with a keen storytelling ability. My interview was fortuitous, as Leo Doran Gregorich Jr. died the following May.
Here’s how Leo described Tony’s Kombol debilitating accident:
“Tony told me about the accident. He was in the hospital for 30 days, but he was always confident that he would get his eyesight back. The accident happened when he was working in a coal mine. He was working in a ‘room’ of a ‘room and pillar’ mine. They were mining a ‘room’ in a pitched coal seam, in the crosscut. They were using dynamite. Tony has set some dynamite shots by lighting the fuses. The lit fuse burned at a set time per inch and would ignite a cap that caused the sticks of dynamite to explode.
When Tony set his shots, there were miners working in the next room, and they were shooting their dynamite shots at the same time. Tony set three shots to go off. He thought he heard his three shots go off and then returned to his working area (room) and was met by his last shot, which exploded near his face. Apparently, one of the three shots that he’d heard explode came from the miners in the next room.”
The explosion blinded Tony and permeated his face and hand with tiny specks of coal that in time became purple-colored blots. After several years, Dr. J. Thomas Dowling, an associate in the Virginia Mason Clinic, performed an operation that restored Tony’s eyesight so he could read and perform chores around the house. He was 40 years old. His second act lasted 41 years. As a side note, the clinic’s founder, James Tate Mason, was formerly Black Diamond’s company doctor. As King County Coroner, Mason also led the investigation into the 1915 Ravensdale explosion. Mason’s daughter was named Virginia, and that’s how the organization was named.
Ten months after the accident, Anton Kombol’s L & I claim was approved, and he was awarded a $40 monthly pension. The three older children, Bernell, Dana, and Nola, were each awarded $5 per month. Jack, at age 5, was given $7.50, and Nadine, age 3, received $12.50 per month, totaling $75 per month for the family of seven. The Kombols also received an immediate payment of $3,955 for Tony’s lost vision and partial hearing loss.
The Dept of Labor & Industries accident report and calculation of benefits under Claim No. 329482, for Anton Kombol, his wife, Lulu, and their five children, Bernell, Dana, Nola, Laverne (Jack), and Nadine.
The Kombol family’s troubles were not yet over. Two years after the accident, likely in 1927, when polio saw its worst outbreak since 1916, their second son, Jack, contracted the devastating disease. It landed him in bed for more than a year and kept him from attending school. At home, Tony cared for him, as Lulu taught during the school year.
Then, their second daughter, Nola, became a very nervous, tense, and active child. So much so that she developed fevers, which would last a week, and was bedridden. Lulu took her to a child specialist who advised, “Keep her away from other children as she wears herself out keeping up with them or excelling them.” A decision was made to send Nola to live with William Reese and his wife in the Mount Baker area of Seattle. Nola lived with the childless Reeses until about 1930, when Mr. Reese, still the State Coal Mine Inspector, died.
The first year after the accident, Lulu was hired as a teacher in Cumberland through the influence of a friend. It had been twelve years since teaching in Ravensdale. Lulu started teaching 3rd and 4th grade on September 3, 1926. She was paid $100 per month, or $1,200 for the school term. Lulu Kombol continued teaching full-time for another 40 years until 1965, the year she turned 80. She remained a substitute teacher several years thereafter.
In 1937, Mrs. Lulu Kombol was teaching grades 1 & 2 in Selleck.
Tony never again found gainful employment. He played an early version of a house husband, taking care of the animals and performing household chores. From my second to fifth birthdays, our family lived in Elk Coal, one-half mile from Grandma and Papa. Sometimes I’d be dropped off with Papa for babysitting. I remember following him during chores, napping in their bedroom, and Papa making me tomato soup for lunch.
Tony lived to the ripe old age of 82, spending the final weeks of his life with Jack and Pauline and their four children, to be closer to medical services in Enumclaw. Lulu survived him by ten years, passing away in January 1977, at age 91. They are buried together at the Enumclaw Cemetery near three of their children.
So, on this, the one hundredth anniversary of that fateful day, we salute brave Anton Kombol with a solemn adieu, farewell Papa, adieu.
Bill Kombol, June 14, 1975 at the start of the annual Cedar River Boat Race. The plastic wrapped around my torso helped keep water out of our boat.
The spring quarter of college, 1975, was upon me. I needed one more credit to graduate. A new life was opening after 17 years of schooling. I had no interest in grad school, getting a job, or even thinking about one. My ambition was to embrace a newfound freedom and focus on learning outside the classroom. My immediate goal was to live the good life. Let’s call it spring fever with one foot in and one foot out.
That spring brightened my life in several ways. Being discharged from the night shift, picking table job at the coal mine opened up 45 hours each week. I supercharged my liberation by only scheduling classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, eliminating two travel days between Enumclaw and Seattle. After being laid off, I applied for unemployment, but the $93 weekly checks wouldn’t start until school ended.
In addition to a new appreciation for live drama detailed in a previous essay, “My Living Theater,” I took up tennis for an easy credit (only three P.E. credits counted toward a degree, and two were in the bag). Two finance classes and one Home Ec rounded out my schedule.
My Spring Quarter, 1975 schedule.
I also aimed to improve my vocabulary by studying the dozens of handwritten pages gifted to me the prior summer by Uncle Evan Morris. With plenty of extra time plus proficiency on my Olympia portable typewriter, I typed nearly 2,000-word definitions, plus pithy aphorisms and quotations from the notebook Evan kept by his side at Washington State during the early years of World War II. Whenever he came across an unfamiliar word or catchy phrase, he wrote it down and later looked up and copied a short dictionary definition. I set forth to assimilate all of them.
I’d been interested in healthy eating, so took a class in nutrition. During my first years of college, with little awareness of the food sciences, I experimented with different diets. After convincing myself milk was the closest thing to a perfect food, over four days straight I drank nothing but, until a constipated intestinal system convinced me otherwise. Next, I dined only on eggs with similarly baleful consequences. For the most part, I ate well enough, but needed a better understanding of dietetics.
Collaterally, a class in the Home Economics department meant a preponderance of students would be girls. I hadn’t had a girlfriend during college. And with so much extra time, I wasn’t averse to finding one. I didn’t!
The two-credit Home Econ class was right up my alley. Judging by my notes, I spent an inordinate time focused on all aspects of food – digestion, carbs, fats, proteins, calories, vitamins, minerals, additives, and metabolism. I became fixated on food quality and ordered all manner of free pamphlets and information from the Department of Agriculture.
One assignment was to record everything we ate for two consecutive days. Looking back on my food intake for May 13 and 14, 1975, it’s surprisingly similar to my eating habits five decades later – a large breakfast of fruits and cereals, then a light or skipped lunch, concluding with a hearty assortment of meats and vegetables for dinner. And even back then, I always rewarded myself with dessert.
Cedar River Boat Racing
Outside the classroom, that spring steadily became dominated by boat racing on the Cedar River. My cousin Bob Morris, whom I’d worked with at the mine for the past nine months, needed a first mate and asked me to join him.
The narrow boats he and others raced looked like two-man canoes on steroids. I was planted upfront, wielding a double-bladed paddle and scouting downstream waters, while Bob faced backward and pulled oars from a sliding seat that fully engaged his arms and legs in propulsion.
Bill Kombol in front, with paddle, and Bob Morris in back, with oars, Cedar River Boat Race, June 14, 1975.
I chose the route and barked orders back to Bob, “Left – right – steady – pull hard.” Bob knew the river well and taught me the best lanes. He’d raced the two prior years and practically knew it by heart. His former partner, Jim Thompson joined a new boat with Jim Bain, so Bob asked me to sign on as a rookie. I had lots to learn.
The Cedar River Boat Race was the biggest event of the annual Maple Valley Days celebration. It’s always held on the second Saturday in June. This year it celebrates its 75th anniversary, marking a milestone that began with its 25th commemoration in 1975.
The festivities’ origins centered around a group of Maple Valley men who built flat-bottom boats and organized a race to determine which team could post the fastest time navigating the wild Cedar River from the Landsburg Bridge to Cedar Grove. The race was conducted using staggered starts, as many currents were only wide enough for one boat to pass at a time.
This photo is from a different stretch of river and appeared in the Voice of the Valley the following week. The caption was wrong – Bob and I finished second. Our boat was sponsored by TRM Wood Products, which is still located at Four Corners.
Spring flows present the perfect challenge. Successful racers need to avoid boulders, log jams, and cross-currents while choosing the fastest navigable waters. Getting caught in the wrong eddy or whirlpool might flip your boat sideways or even capsize it. Hidden snags beneath the water’s surface are an ever-present danger. Choosing the fastest rapid is tricky and fraught with error.
Two or three days each week, Bob and I practiced by running the river. Bob was still working day shift, so our trial runs were in the late afternoon. Bob kept his boat in the mine office basement at Palmer Coking Coal. During our spare time, we patched cracks and leaks with fiberglass and applied fresh varnish for a frictionless bottom.
The boat was transported atop a homemade pickup rack. Bob’s girlfriend, Rafaela Wright rode between us to the Landsburg Bridge. After setting sail, Rafaela drove to the Cedar Grove finish line to pick us up. After practice, we’d have dinner in their tiny travel trailer off Maxwell Road or at the Four Corner’s E-Z Eatin’ café. Rafaela was one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever known.
The E-Z Eatin’ Cafe at Four Corners, though at the time of this 1973 photo it was called Grace & Eddy’s.
The 11-mile route typically took 70 to 90 minutes to navigate. It all depended on how much water Seattle Public Utilities released from Chester Morse Lake to fill their Lake Young reservoir. As water flows changed, so did currents and channels. Every river day was different. Last week’s log jam might be this week’s causeway. If the river were three inches lower, a boulder we previously passed over smoothly might slow us down or hang us up.
Maple Valley’s newspaper, Voice of the Valley provided comprehensive coverage of the race and M.V. Days activities. This photo was taken during the 1976 race.
Race day coincided with Maple Valley’s festival, which included a parade, country fair, and community picnic. That year’s event was slated for June 14, the same day as U.W. commencement ceremonies. I skipped graduation. My diploma arrived in the mail four months later. By then, I was loafing in Lincoln City and wouldn’t see the signed parchment for another month. It didn’t really interest me – I’d left that world behind.
The race started at 2 p.m., two hours after the women contested a shortened course. Many families living along the Cedar River threw parties each year to coincide with Maple Valley Days. As we paddled downstream, cheers arose from the shore as intoxicated revelers raised beers and drinks in salute.
Crowds gathered beneath the old RR trestle across the Cedar River (near SR 169) to watch the boats race by. One boat is visible. – June 14, 1975.
The 1975 race featured 13 teams. Only nine of the 13 boats crossed the finish line. The previous year’s winners, Bill Niord and Bill Furlong, broke an oar and pulled out to protect their craft. The Last Chance, manned by Terry Morris and Ted Turpin, crashed into a rock and sank under the Maple Valley Bridge. As they made their way safely to shore, chunks of the boat and gear floated haphazardly downstream.
For the 14th time in the past 15 years, brothers Bob and Ben Soushek captured the title. Bob and I finished second with an elapsed time of 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 12 seconds, a full three minutes behind the perennial winners. The trophy presentation was at Royal Arch Park at 5 p.m.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol, right, accept their trophies after the 1976 race.
I raced the following year with Bob, and in 1976, we placed third with a time of 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds. Two weeks later, I fell 25 feet from a Douglas fir tree in front of my parents’ Lake Sawyer cabin while trimming branches. I landed in Valley General Hospital for eight days with compressed vertebrae and a digestive tract that shut down.
I spent the Bicentennial Fourth of July watching televised coverage of the historic celebration from a hospital bed. I turned 23 the next day. My back would never be the same. I gave up Cedar River boat racing, but not my friendship with Bob.
Bob Morris
If I were to name the most important role models in my life, Bob Morris would undoubtedly be in the mix. Bob was four years and four days my senior. I looked up to him. We worked together for nearly a year at the mine. During slow nights when no coal was being pulled for me to process, I’d wander down to the hoist room when Bob was working the night shift. During dinner break, we often listened to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell, and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end. After graduating from Tahoma in 1967, Bob worked for several months before enlisting in the Marines in January 1968. He deliberately chose the toughest corps because that’s the kind of guy Bob was and has always been. After his San Diego boot camp, Bob shipped out to Vietnam in April 1968.
He ended up about 30 miles south of Da Nang. During the first three months, he was a grunt, but soon rose to corporal and became the platoon radioman, always close to the unit’s lieutenant. He was later promoted to company radioman and assigned to the captain. Though generally out of harm’s way, a number of times Bob’s company found themselves under fire. One battle found them in extreme danger, probably the closest he came to death.
At the end of a 13-month tour of duty, Bob returned to the U.S. in June 1969, just as anti-Vietnam War demonstrations peaked. Anyone who lived through those days knows that returning servicemen were not treated with respect.
While working at the mine or later during our boat racing days, I frequently spoke with Bob about the war. When it came to an end, I asked him how he felt. To Bob, the fall of Saigon didn’t mean much. He’d served his country, done his job, and for him, “The war was in the rearview mirror.” To this day, Bob meets annually with his Marine brothers. There is much to admire about Bob Morris.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol right during their lunch break, January 1976. The photo was take in Enumclaw when the two were helping Palmer Coking Coal Co. move Stergion Cement’s storage bins to PCC’s mine yard in Black Diamond.
Three years later, in August 1978, I rejoined Palmer Coking Coal, once again. I was back at the picking table, the lowest job at the mine. I worked beside Bob, who taught me most of what I learned about operating equipment, running the mine yard, and getting jobs done.
I liked working under Bob. He was a good teacher and a practiced taskmaster who imposed a tough workload not only on others but on himself. Bob was no slouch and expected the same from those who worked with him. Yet, he usually found ways to make dull tasks competitively fun.
Though I was neither as strong as Bob nor as knowledgeable, I thrived under his exacting foremanship. He was one of the best teachers a future Manager of the company could have. Seven years later, Bob asked me to be the best man at his July 1985 wedding to Jill Kranz. For the past six years, I’d worked side-by-side with Jill as she was Palmer’s bookkeeper and all-around office gal.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol, right, at a retirement party for fellow coal miners, July 21, 1981.
In addition to boat racing, I began writing poetry. It provided a release from the blue-book blues of college midterms and finals. I also accepted an invitation from another older cousin, Dave Falk, for a 500-mile summer bicycle ride from Lincoln City north along the Oregon and Washington coasts to Canada. A few weeks after the boat race, I purchased a 10-speed Motobecane touring bike and began preparations on the backcountry roads between Enumclaw and Selleck for our big ride.
Epilogue
The day I heard news of Saigon’s impending fall, I wrote this poem. It was an early effort at verse and not particularly good. But somehow it seemed a fitting way to end this essay about spring fever, Cedar River boat racing, and how Bob Morris helped shape my life.
One Too Many Times – 4-29-1975
The last two young Americans have perished in the war
They’ve lost their lives for nothing, like fifty-six thousand before.
My heart goes out to all the dead and oh so many more.
But then, one too many times is not enough.
I hate to do it to you, but then how can we forget
You’ve almost got to brood and cry about these past events
I hate the war and every minute spent in useless argument
But, one too many times is not enough.
Sometimes I dream of the wonderful creations in this world
Of green plants flowing to the stars in some fantastic mural.
And standing in the middle, uncorrupted boys and girls
I hope, one too many times was quite enough. – WJK
The original poem in pencil from my notebook of poetry.
April 1975 – the final quarter of college and the end of 17 years of schooling. My afternoon job at Rogers No. 3 coal mine conveniently came to an end. Six months of 17-hour days driving from Enumclaw to Seattle, attending classes at U.W., studying, then on to Ravensdale for eight hours of grimy work, showering in the washhouse, with a half-hour drive back home, to bed by midnight, only to repeat the process six or seven hours later. It wore me down. I wanted to retire. Spring break was my last week, thankfully on the day shift.
That quarter provided a fresh beginning. Though only one college credit shy of graduating, I took a full schedule of 14 credits, including two finance classes to round out my Economics degree. Expanding my interests, I chose a two-credit Home Ec class in nutrition, one credit for tennis, plus a three-credit class called The Living Theater.
Growing up I had zero interest in theater and never even went to a school play during high school. I did attend one musical my senior year – the Who’s Tommy, presented at the Moore Theater, with a little-known, Bette Midler as the Acid Queen. In May of my freshman year, I saw a touring company’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Program cover from the Who’s Tommy presented at the Moore Theater, 1971.
My true interest in theater grew one Sunday afternoon during the summer of 1973 while reading Rex Reed’s movie reviews in the Seattle P-I. Reed highlighted a just-announced collection of filmed plays to be presented in movie theaters, on a limited basis, and only by subscription. The American Film Theatre, produced by Eli Landau filmed eight stagings of top theatrical works all featuring notable actors. Each film would be shown just four times, and exclusively at 500 select movie theaters across the nation.
I convinced Mom to subscribe and Dad joined, as well as Aunt Betty and Uncle Charlie Falk. The local showings were at the Crossroads Theater, east of Bellevue. I was a junior at the U.W. and each month drove my 1967 Renault across the I-90 floating bridge to meet the folks with an occasional dinner beforehand.
In the “don’t trust anyone over 30” atmosphere of the early 1970s, a sentiment, I roundly rejected, it was a thrill to hang with my parents, aunt, and uncle, all comfortably in their late 40s and early 50s. I took pride in having launched this event to see the best of Broadway. The ushers even handed out real playbills!
Among the plays we saw: The Homecoming, A Delicate Balance, Butley, Rhinoceros, and Three Sisters. But, the greatest theatrical event in my estimation was The Iceman Cometh starring Lee Marvin as Hickey, a traveling salesman in an all-star cast of Robert Ryan, Frederick March, Bradford Dillman, and a young Jeff Bridges. The Iceman Cometh was four hours long, three acts, and two intermissions. It showcased Eugene O’Neill’s story of dead-enders with delusional pipe dreams who stayed drunk in Harry Hopes’ last chance saloon and boarding house to avoid facing the world.
That introduction to serious drama couldn’t have come at a better time. We subscribed for the second season that featured Galileo, In Celebration, and The Man in the Glass Booth. Unfortunately, the major Hollywood studios pressured local theaters to cancel American Film Theater screenings and the enterprise thereafter collapsed.
But I was now hooked on stage productions. The Living Theater class, in the engineering department of all places, was my new ticket to more serious drama. In addition to learning about the structure of plays and the various venues where they’re presented, students were required to attend seven live plays at the three theaters on campus, including the revered Showboat, a floating auditorium moored in Portage Bay. I saw three off-campus productions including Death of a Salesman at Tacoma’s U.P.S. and a pair of Tom Stoppard offerings at Seattle’s Second Stage.
Theater of the Absurd – Which performance?
The Living Theater class sharpened my prose as we were required to write reviews of the required plays. One performance wasn’t on the syllabus but piqued my imagination. It was a double-feature of two short plays by Tom Stoppard, After Magritte and The Real Inspector Hound at the Second Stage theatre. The Second Stage was affiliated with the Seattle Repertory Theatre and typically presented more experimental shows.
The Second Stage theatre program for Tom Stoppard’s, “After Magritte” and “The Real Inspector Hound” – April 28, 1975
Both Stoppard offerings were from a dramatic style called the Theatre of the Absurd – plays that reject traditional storytelling by focusing on what happens when narrative communication breaks down. In late April, I took Mom to see the double feature and wrote the following review, trying to capture the surreal and absurd nature of what we saw, both on stage and off.
“Reality”
We come on the sloop John B my dear mother and me.
We entered the Second Stage arena well before show time, found two second-row seats, and proceeded to experience the sights and sounds of the theater.
I pointed out all the Seattle luminaries listed as Second Stage supporters. Behind us, a woman in her middle fifties, whom we were going to encounter frequently as the night progressed, made the same observation. Our eavesdropping skills were in top form so my mother and I proceeded to monitor this woman’s conversations the rest of the night.
“Oh, look here, Christopher Bailey is on the list of supporters. I wonder what night he comes?”
Accompanied by two other women (from their conversations, I assumed the talkative one to be a grandmother with her daughter, and a friend), Mrs. Chatterbox, which my mother appropriately christened her, spoke, “There’s Lori.”
Lori was one of three girls of high school age who were ushers. Lori, it turned out, was also the garrulous grandmother’s granddaughter.
“Now why doesn’t she seat those people over there, plenty of good seats right there. I was shopping today and . . . oh, look, who is that? Isn’t that Jean Enersen?”
The daughter replied, “Yes, that girl on Seattle Today. No, that isn’t Jean Enersen, it’s that Shirley, yes Shirley.”
“Isn’t that Jean Enersen, the blonde one on King Newservice,” the loquacious grandmother butted in.
“Now where is Lori going to seat her? Look, Lori is putting that Jean Enersen in those good seats. I wonder why SHE gets those seats. Just because she’s on TV.”
“That isn’t Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley.”
“Well, whoever it is, there’s seats over there, Lori,” the grandmother commands as if she’s talking to her granddaughter who must be fifty feet away.
The play begins. After Magritte is a delightfully surrealistic, satirical takeoff on something resembling a mystery or Sherlock Holmes type of script.
At intermission, the fun continues. Lori, the usher comes over to visit with her mother and grandmother. Mrs. Chatterbox asks, “Wasn’t that Jean Enersen you seated, Lori? Why did she get such good seats?”
The mother responds, “That’s Shirley, the girl on Seattle Today, not Jean Enersen.”
Lori tells her tale of what the ‘snobby’ Jean Enersen or Shirley said. In a mock voice, she repeats, “We don’t want THESE seats, I would prefer being seated there.”
“Who does she think she is?” the grandmother retorts. Lori and her two usher friends giggle and tell of their other experiences as ushers.
Mrs. Chatterbox again, “Look now, that Jean Enersen is leaving, what, doesn’t she like the play? I can’t stand her anyway. Did you see her show yesterday when they had that psychologist who talked about symbols? I absolutely detest that show.”
“That’s not Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley on Seattle Today.”
“Well whatever, look, she’s not coming back. After getting those good seats, she goes and leaves in the middle of the play. I can’t stand her show. That psychologist explained what it means if you like . . . uh, I mean, uh . . . relate to a circle, a square, a triangle, or a Z. I draw circles and that means . . .” as she proceeded to give a lengthy pop-Freudian interpretation to drawing circles.
The Real Inspector Hound was another trip into the fantasy world of the absurd. Eventually, the critics attending the supposed play were involved in the fun, murder, and intrigue as critics became players and the players became critics.
Leaving the theater at the end of the plays, I turned to my mother and asked, “Well, what did you think of those shows? Rather unreal, huh?”
She replied, “Which performance?”
By William Kombol
April 28, 1975
HSS 451, Jack Leahy, Assoc. Professor
Professor Leahy gave me an ‘A’ for the class, writing, “
Great! You ought to be a playwright. This is a funny paper. I don’t quite know why, but the Repertory seems to attract these kinds of audiences – try opening night at a regular Rep presentation – it’s downright awesome, but very much a part of theater. The Elizabethans were the same. And that’s what makes it fun. Very much enjoyed reading this paper.”
The first page of my review, titled “Reality” with the professor’s handwritten comments.
My interest in theater grew.
My interest in theater grew with each new play I saw. I kept programs and playbills from most performances and usually stapled the ticket stub to the cover. While writing this essay I made a quick count of the collection which totals over 300, though some were lost. In the early years, I primarily saw dramas. Back then only the biggest musicals yielded touring companies. But any musical with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s name attached found me attending.
Through all of them, Tom Stoppard remained my favorite playwright. And with each new play of his I saw, so did my admiration. Stoppard’s plays are first produced in the United Kingdom, and only his most successful make it to the U.S. Still, I’ve been able to see most of his best including the breakout hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Leopoldstadt, his most recent.
With the advent of audio plays, I’ve listened to the lion’s share of the rest, including the mesmerizing Darkside, inspired by Pink Floyd’s 1973 album. Stoppard is generally considered the greatest living English language playwright. His most popular film adaptation is Shakespeare in Love.
In addition to seeing live performances, these days I’m more often listening to the likes of L.A. Theater Works or other recordings found on Libby and Audible. It may not be for everyone, but when you’re hooked on live drama, an audio play will do quite nicely.
Below are some of my favorite audio plays:
Broadway Bound– In my estimation, Neil Simon’s concluding comedic drama of an autobiographical trilogy, may be one of the finest works of the 20th century. It mixes humor with pathos and when you’re not laughing you might just find yourself shedding a tear. The L.A. Theater Works audio production is superb.
Copenhagen– This weighty play explores the ethics and morality of developing the atomic bomb. Michael Frayn, one of England’s leading playwrights explores the real-life 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist, and Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s leading nuclear scientist. There are two audio versions – pick the one starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Heisenberg.
The Real Thingis generally considered Tom Stoppard’s best. Its focus is broken marriages, adultery, and the nature of love, more specifically the real thing, interspersed with two plays within the play we’re seeing.
Arcadia, another Stoppard favorite explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty, plus the nature of evidence and truth in history, mathematics, and physics. It’s a complex play that requires several listening’s to fully understand.
Darksideis probably Stoppard’s most approachable audio play, as it was written as such to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It’s 45 minutes long with philosophical dialogue interspersed with music from the album. It’s a play you can listen to time and time again and still hear something fresh.
Post script: Ian Hunter’s 1981 song, “Theater of the Absurd” doesn’t really rise to what playwrights of that style are trying to achieve. Still it’s an amusing song and Hunter, former lead singer in Mott the Hoople is one of my favorites, so here’s a video link with lyrics:
