Martin Luther King Archives

Chair Upthegrove and Members of the Council –

**Approaching the lectern to address the King County Council.**

Way back in the fall of 1970, before several of our Councilmembers were even born, I was a high school senior in my hometown of Enumclaw. I’d enrolled in the Humanities course taught by Mr. Worthington. He provided a good introduction to higher education.

During our section on ancient Greece, Mr. Worthington suggested that much of Greek philosophy dealt with answering four basic questions:

Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?
What is the meaning of life?

He advised that we needn’t write these questions down as we’d be answering them for the rest of our lives. That this particular high school lecture stuck with me is no doubt part of the reason I’m standing before you today – thankful for this award to which I was nominated by Councilmember Dunn, and appreciative of our shared passion for exploring and preserving the historical past.

Studying history is always about asking questions. How did this award come to be named for Martin Luther King? Why am I standing before a council of nine rather than three or 13? When was this Courthouse built? Who owned the land beneath it before 1851?

Did you know that if you go back just 20 generations in your family tree, about 600 years, there will be over one million couples whose actions led to your creation? And if you add the 19 generations in between, your mom and dad, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on, the total is 2.1 million humans who unwittingly conspired to see you born.

Ponder that for a moment – an unscripted series of fate and chance, dates and rejections, marriages and divorces, unplanned births and sibling deaths. Yet through it all, those 2.1 million people survived to procreate and punch their DNA ticket to the next generation. How many saints and scoundrels, peasants or princes do we count among our ancestors? Where indeed did we come from?

Malcolm Muggeridge, an English journalist once claimed that “All new news is old news happening to new people.” The teacher in Ecclesiastes put it more simply, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” What both were trying to say is that it’s all happened before. But, what makes current news so fascinating in our lives is that it’s happening to us!

And George Orwell observed that, “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before, and wiser than the one that comes after.” So it is a remarkable time we find ourselves in with Artificial Intelligence threatening to supplant the human brain, while some speak as if they represent the wisest generation humanity’s ever known.

This is why I view the past with a healthy dose of humility. As John Stewart sang, recalling forgotten generations in his song, Mother Country, “They were just a bunch of people doing the best they could.” Maybe that’s who we are.

So, I go forward with thankfulness – for the parents who loved me, the aunts and uncles who guided me, the friends with whom I played, the teachers who taught and inspired, the mentors who encouraged, the jobs that tested me, and for those who corrected my errors. And to my wife, Jennifer for the gift of children, as we now count ourselves among those 2.1 million ancestors who came before our three sons.

And I’m thankful for a previous Council who had the wisdom to rename our county after Martin Luther King, and relegate Rufus to the historical footnote that befalls most vice presidents. And a heartfelt thanks to this body for your support to historical preservation, archive retention, the Association of King County Historical Organizations, local museums, and the 4 Culture funding that benefits them all.

**I didn’t realize it when composing my remarks, but the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote I chose to conclude my remarks appeared on the back of my new medal.**

In his new biography of Martin Luther King, Jonathan Eig speaks of King’s Radical Christianity upon which his dream was built. So I end with a quote from our county’s namesake, that might be the answer to the queries those ancient Greeks were looking for. Here’s how King put it, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is this: ‘What are you doing for others?’”

Below is the video of my June 13 speech before the King County Council:

And next is a short broadcast produced by Kimberly Hill and Brian Starr for King County TV, as I showcase Black Diamond, Sherrie Evans, and the rich history preserved at its museum.

And finally, links to an Enumclaw Courier-Herald news story and the column, When Coal Was King:

Bill Kombol honored with county MLK Medal of Distinguished Service

https://voiceofthevalley.com/category/features/when-coal-was-king/

**MLK Medal of Distinguished Service presented to Bill Kombol, June 13, 2023**

In the fall of 1968, Dion released a song that touched my soul. About the same time, I started working Saturdays at a job that defined my life. I still work there today. This is the story of the song, that job, and a 15-year-old boy.

The Beatles’ single “Hey Jude” backed by “Revolution” dominated the airwaves. The Detroit Tigers, my favorite baseball team would soon play in the World Series. A presidential election heated up following a deadly political year culminating in riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Kris Galvin and I were freshly minted sophomores. Each day after school we played a board game called Mr. President. Two players strategized their way to victory by assembling a majority of votes in the Electoral College. In the real election, Nixon did just that, defeating Hubert Humphrey while George Wallace carried five states.

In late September, I began a new job at Palmer Coking Coal as their Saturday boy. After a day of training, I was in charge of the Black Diamond office from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., though typically worked longer. I didn’t yet drive so Dad dropped me off each morning, picking me up a little after noon.

**The mine office of Palmer Coking Coal on Highway 169, about the time I started working there.**

The work consisted of sacking coal, answering phones, and operating a scale—but mostly selling nut and stoker coal to old guys driving pickup trucks. It was quite a thrill to command an office, poke about in drawers, make change, and run the store. I earned $1.00 per hour, paid with money drawn from the cash drawer and replaced with a handwritten receipt.

Dad signed for my wages and I’d take a $5 bill out of the drawer. Three years later when I left this job, I was earning $2 per hour. (I found this old receipt 40 years later in a box in the attic at the same mine office where I first started).

It wasn’t always busy so after reading the P-I, I tuned the radio to KJR-95. My youth’s mind remembers where and what I was doing when certain songs played. That October, I heard Dion DiMucci sing a gentle folk tribute to the assassinated heroes, “Abraham, Martin and John.” The final lyrics delivered a stanza for Bobby Kennedy.

“Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John.” – Dick Holler

**Dion’s single next to Bill Kombol on his first day of high school, Sept. 3, 1968.**

I was a fervent reader of newspapers and convinced Mom to buy a subscription to U.S. News & World Report. On the last day of March 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced he wouldn’t seek re-election to the presidency. Martin Luther King was shot dead in Memphis four days later.

On June 6^th, the Kombol family checked into the Hotel Austria on Fleischmarkt Street in Vienna. The tragic news of Robert Kennedy’s assassination splashed across the front pages of every paper on the newsstand. The photo of 17-year-old, Juan Romero cradling the head of a fallen senator in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel has haunted me ever since. An old Austrian woman draped in a black shawl stood in the lobby hissing, practically spitting the words out, “Johnson, Johnson!”

**Kombol family in Austria, L-R: Jeanmarie, Pauline, Bill, Barry, Dana. June 1968.**

Dion’s song was poignant and melancholy. It tugged at my heart while coaxing a tear. Soon the three-minute radio broadcast was over. It might be hours until it played. I wanted to hear it time and again.

Work ended and I was home in the afternoon. I usually fixed tomato soup and cheese-toast for lunch then listened to the Huskies on the radio. Only the rarest of U.W. football games were broadcast on television. Later friends and I might play a game of touch football at the Kibler school playground. Time passes quickly in adolescence and evening came soon enough. Dinner was promptly at 6 p.m. Mom always made hamburgers on Saturday night.

While the song was introduced my first months of high school, “Abraham, Martin and John,” made a cameo appearance shortly after graduation. A collage by Tom Clay joined “What the World Needs Now Is Love” to live broadcasts of the assassinations introduced by snippets from Dion’s hit. That summer of 1971, I worked long hours selling popsicles east of Kent and often drove home listening to the six-minute spoken word hymn.

I never really left Palmer Coking Coal. During college, I spent summers as a laborer. I worked the afternoon shift at the Rogers No. 3 my senior year. It closed a few months later, the last underground coal mine in Washington. After graduating, I joined Palmer for employment stints of two and three months when no other adventure called.

On of my stints working for Palmer involved relocating parts of the Stergion cement plant in Enumclaw to Black Diamond With money made from those three months, I traveled to Hawaii with my high school buddy, Wayne Podolak, Jan. 1976.

In August 1978, I began full-time employment at PCC, back on the picking table. A decade of college, loafing, banking, odd jobs, and traveling landed me back where I’d begun 10 years earlier. Four years later, I was appointed Manager of the company. The following summer we celebrated Palmer Coking Coal’s 50^th anniversary. I was 29-years-old.

In early 1979, I was brought into the office to learn how to run the business. I sat across my uncle Charlie Falk who snapped this picture. I continued to sit at the same desk for the next 44 years, Summer 1979.

It’s now 40 years down the road. I’ll soon be leaving full-time employment at PCC. It’s where I’ve spent all but two years of my working career. Of these things I’m certain––this job and that tune will forever remain in my heart, intertwined in a romantic ballad where the only constant is change.

I look back with nostalgia yet forward in anticipation. How these next adventures unfold will be the continuing story of my life.

* * * * * * *

Post Script: Here’s the short story of Dion’s life and the song that changed mine. Dion DiMucci was born in 1939 to Italian-American parents in the Bronx. Teaming with friends from Belmont Avenue, Dion and the Belmonts scored their first hit in 1958 with “I Wonder Why.”

While on the 1959 winter concert tour with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper; the bus’s heating system gave out so Holly charted a plane to their next venue. Dion balked at paying $36, his share for the flight because it was the rent amount his parents struggled to pay each month. The plane crashed, killing all on board.

Dion split from the Belmonts in 1960, pursuing a solo career with hits like “Run-Around Sue” and “Donna.” After continually humming Dion’s rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from the Disney movie Pinocchio, Brian Wilson composed the Beach Boy’s ballad, “Surfer Girl,” in 1963 It was his very first composition.

**Dion Now & Then is how I titled my Dion tribute CD compilation.**

Dion was one of only two rock artists to appear on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Bob Dylan was the other. With changing tastes from the British Invasion and a growing heroin addiction, Dion started recording blues numbers in the mid-1960s. His records failed to sell so he lost his contract.

In April 1968, Dion experienced a powerful religious awakening. He gave up heroin and his label agreed to re-sign him if he’d record “Abraham, Martin and John.” The single was released that August, reaching #4 on the charts in October. It was written by Dick Holler, composer of the Royal Guardsman’s novelty hit, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”

In the 1980s, Dion became a born-again Christian, releasing five albums highlighting his evangelical convictions. In June 2020 at age 81, Dion released his most recent album, “Blues with Friends” featuring a range of artists including Jeff Beck, John Hammond, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen.

* * * * * * *

Coda: On a warm summer evening in the early 1960s, Billy Kombol stood at the door of the open-air dance pavilion at Barrett’s Lake Retreat resort, mesmerized by the sight of teenagers dancing to the jukebox sounds of Dion and the Belmonts.

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