<Begin Segment 8>

AI: We'll just continue on, because as you were just saying, you wrote a letter and many people volunteered to help. And then what were you saying about people in the suburbs?

EH: The letter eventually hit some suburban acquaintances even, and they wanted to participate. We ended up calling this program Enrichment Program, and it, we got started before Head Start got started. So, but at the end of the first -- well, within the first year, I think, Diana Bauer, who happened to be, who was president of a board that we selected, came up with the idea of, "Let's have a holiday fair," and so Madrona was, had just been renovated, and it was spanking new. We had a black sculptor who had gone to Rome to study; a guy that lived in the neighborhood. There was a Madrona tree, and the tree was saved to do something significant for this new addition. And so he was asked to do a sculpture, a fitting sculpture, and he came out with a very elegant, oh, high as the ceiling, 8, 10 feet high, of a mother and two or three children, done in Madrona wood. And the problem was, after I don't know how far he got -- I think it was up, but Madrona does not survive well in a sculpture job; it cracked. And they had to redo another one, or what. But those were very exciting times for this school that was so well-integrated.

The other thing we did was, there was a Tom Patello, and we were always discussing how to solve problems. And Tom came up with, "You know, you ladies are always here, but I never see fathers. I never, I never get a chance to talk to fathers very much. How about a father and son dinner?" And we thought that was great, and Nobi Kodama, Nobi Kodama... what's her second, her married name? She married a Chinese judge. I should remember that name. But anyway, she was in the PTA, and she volunteered to, "Okay, I'll do the teriyaki chicken, you guys have to do everything else." And she spent all day in that hot Madrona, brand-new kitchen, and I walked in and she had, two big ovens were going, just loaded with beautiful bronze teriyaki chicken at four o'clock. And I remember I said, "Okay, I'm (going to) ask ten Asian families to donate a pot of rice, big pot of rice," and things just fell in place. Other people brought two-pound bags of peas and they just dunked 'em in hot water, and that was the vegetable. We probably had Dixie cups for dessert. But it was just for fathers and sons, and it was very interesting because the women were all in the kitchen or setting the table and this kind of thing. It was this sea of fathers and sons. And for the ten-year-olds, for a lot of the boys, it was so exciting to have... just fond memories. But for probably twenty-five cents a plate -- chicken was maybe twenty-five cents a pound in those days, so, but to see all these -- and Tom Patello was great.

We talked about the kinds of messages we want to put up, and we had come up with the idea that it's time to get homework assignments registered in and signed by parents. Get the parents involved in homework. And so every Friday night, they had Pee-Chee folders, and the kids had assignments in there, and the parents had to review each major assignment for each day, and sign it. And if there are corrections to be made, or if the teacher made corrections, the parents then had to know about it, and there were steps to correct that kind of thing. But those, in, let's see... '50s and early, early '60s, those were exciting, innovative ideas.

AI: Well, about when was it that the enrichment program got started for the, the preschool-age kids before kindergarten?

EH: Let's see. Mark was about two... no, let's see. Mark was two, and he is, he was born in '59, so again, early '60s. My goodness, talking about suburbia participating, when we decided to do that holiday fair, art teachers and artists just flooded us with free artwork. The Swinomish tribe up in La Conner donated boxes of hand-carved canoes. Small, and we couldn't sell much beyond, couldn't charge much beyond five dollars, no matter how elegant the artwork was. But some company donated wreaths, because it was holiday fair, and I think at one point, I made... I know at some point I've made sushi a couple of times, and we would sell two slices of sushi and a cup of tea for ten cents. [Laughs] Now, it might, we might have charged a dollar. But there was just all kinds of innovative... and people were so excited, they would come from -- and the place was so crowded, you couldn't move around.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.