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In March La Conner schools were told to close their doors by the state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction due to the coronavirus. A great challenge was placed in front of all to teach and establish logistics through Zoom meetings and Google Classroom while maintaining a fluid stream of communication with the entire school district community. Not easy. But through the positive efforts of students, teachers, staff, administration, and families the 2019/2020 school year was successfully completed. The State Superintendent, Chris R...
Skagit County is on its way to week three of being in Phase 2 of the state’s four phase Safe Start plan for reopening our economy while keeping new cases of the coronavirus at bay. Our beginning-to-open tourist town – and every community and county in Phase 2 – is taking baby steps along a carefully prescribed route. Businesses and cultural institutions: schools, churches libraries and art centers, must follow guidances issued by the state’s Departments of Health and Labor and Industry. Residents – whether as customers, visito...
The La Conner Chamber of Commerce is back in business. It’s just not business as usual. The Chamber office has moved from its Morris Street office venue to the Fireside Room at Maple Hall. Director Heather Carter dons a face mask while tending to much of her work on-line. And the local business network must make do without its loyal corps of volunteers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Carter is thankful. With La Conner and Skagit County now in Phase II of the state’s Safe Start Plan, offices...
Arjuna Adams - Rupert Anderson Memorial STEM scholarship, Swinomish Tribal Scholarship, La Conner Community Scholarship Foundation Award. Riley Banaszak - La Conner Soroptimists Violet Richardson Community Service Award, Vince Sellen Community Service Recognition, George and Lillian McMillan Scholarship: 4-year scholarship for tuition, room and board and books Joanie Benson - Kenyon and Sissy Knopf Memorial Scholarship, a four year continuing award, Foundation Award, WWU Merit Scholarship....
The 126th annual La Conner High graduation ceremonies were truly the first of their kind. With the COVID-19 pandemic having nixed traditional indoor commencement exercises marked by large crowds, celebratory music, tossed mortar boards and release of balloons and confetti, the school’s Class of 2020 still wasn’t denied fanfare. La Conner High seniors were honored Thursday evening with a drive-thru graduation event outside Landy James Gym followed by a car parade through town led by fir...
La Conner’s High School seniors, every one of them, graduate with this distinct honor: Never has anyone, or any school class, been rocked and roiled by a spring like this one. Before March it was impossible to imagine finishing school without going to class. Every ritual and tradition vanished: their senior trip, prom and graduation ceremony are just the tip of the iceberg of their losses. The one lesson, perhaps learned, usually takes years to master: Life is not fair. La Conner’s seniors got a crash course and were force-fed that coarse mat...
Modify and adjust. It’s a common mantra in education and one the La Conner School District has tapped often while developing its graduation format amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The newest – and final – high school graduation plan allows the most people to hop along for what has been a wild ride navigating the uncertainties of the virus crisis. After first opting for virtual commencement exercises, school officials and senior class members have decided to instead hold a drive-thru graduation ceremony tomorrow (June 11) at 5 p.m. in the...
Through the years Janie Beasley has been lauded locally for having shown an enduring spirit while working on the Swinomish Reservation, in Skagit County and at La Conner Schools. Now that enduring spirit is being recognized by the Seattle-based Native Action Network. Beasley, a former longtime La Conner School Board member, is among four recipients of the organization’s 2020 Enduring Spirit Award. Becky Bendixen (Unangax), Renee Swan-Waite (Lummi), and Sondra Segundo (Haida/Katzie) have also been selected for the honor. “The Enduring Spi...
The coronavirus pandemic has created a climate of uncertainty, but La Conner High seniors still have firm plans about what they will do beyond the summer. As in years past, the school’s next crop of graduates will pursue dreams taking them to diverse and in some cases distant destinations. All this despite the virus crisis that has left schools closed since March. “Our Class of 2020 remains optimistic in spite of COVID-19,” La Conner Middle and High School Counselor Lori Buher told the Weekly News last week. Buher said 32 students are earni...
La Conner High seniors and their parents have fretted for weeks that there may be no graduation ceremonies this year due to the coronavirus. Now there may be two. La Conner Superintendent Dr. Whitney Meissner raised that possibility during a briskly paced one-hour video-conferenced school board meeting last week and later in remarks to the Weekly News. She said plans are in the works to broadcast a “virtual” graduation in June and hold a scaled-down in-person commencement later in the sum...
Joseph Wenzel Wohleb, Jr., age 96, a five-year resident of Skagit Valley passed away peacefully on May 7, 2020 in Burlington, WA. He was born on Aug. 6, 1923 in Olympia, WA the youngest son of renowned Olympia architect Joseph Henry Wohleb and Matilda (Gresl) Wohleb. He graduated from Olympia High School in 1941 and went on to attend the University of Washington when he decided to enlist in 1942. He proudly served in the U.S. Army Air Corp. during the Second World War as a waist-gunner on a...
It hasn’t been the best of springs for seniors at La Conner High and other campuses around the country. The coronavirus has wreaked havoc with sports, prom and commencement exercises. But La Conner Schools has come up with a clever way to honor its Class of 2020 graduates. La Conner Middle and High School Assistant Principal Kathy Herrera went on-line last week to introduce the district’s “Celebrate the Seniors” project, scheduled through June 12, which was the date originally chosen for graduation ceremonies here. For “Celebrate the Seniors,...
Names are sacred, some more than others. On both sides of Swinomish Channel, the name John K. Bob has been revered for more than seven decades. Bob, who had been a popular La Conner High student from Swinomish, was a U.S. Army Medic Tech Sergeant when killed in battle in Germany near the end of World War II. The Swinomish Tribal Community baseball complex, developed in 1938 through the Works Progress Administration, was named for Bob during special Memorial Day ceremonies eight years later....
Recently, the La Conner School District administration decided to not renew the contract of one of our beloved teachers. This decision was not only damaging to student morale but also detrimental to student learning. In direct defiance of a petition containing the signatures of 73 high school students and letters of support from other staff members, our principal and superintendent chose to let go of the only math teacher in the high school. A dedicated, hard-working teacher who loved La Conner and gave countless hours of her free time to help...
When La Conner pioneer Isaac Dunlap came west by mule train nearly 160 years ago, he could not have imagined a descendant crossing the country in jetliner cockpits nearly a century later. Nor could he have envisioned his great-grandson, longtime United Airlines pilot Clair “Toby” Dunlap, being joined by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in the cockpit of a private plane en route from Salt Lake City to a 1960 campaign appearance in southern Oregon. Yet, even in the eyes of his contemporaries, the veteran commercial airline captain liv...
An avid jogger, Todd Torgeson is about to set foot on a new career path. Torgeson, in the third year of his second tour at La Conner Schools, announced in a district-wide email on Monday his resignation as middle and high school principal in order “to explore other options.” La Conner Superintendent Dr. Whitney Meissner confirmed during a video-conferenced school board study session Monday evening Torgeson’s decision to step down at end of the academic year. She said Torgeson earned a reput...
The coronavirus nixed her senior year track meets, but Morgan Herrera had already shown University of Washington throwing coach Andrew Ninow enough for him to invite the La Conner High standout to the Montlake campus. Herrera will join the UW track program, once the COVID-19 crisis has passed, as a preferred walk-on to compete in the shot put and hammer throw. As a preferred walk-on, Herrera is guaranteed a spot on the Husky roster. “I had my sights set on the UW for a few weeks,” Herrera tol...
It wasn’t so long ago that Hilary Edwards was walking the halls of La Conner High School. Now the halls of Congress are in her future. The 2013 La Conner grad, a first-year law school student at Arizona State University, is one of 12 applicants nationwide to have been selected for a Native American summer congressional internship through the Udall Foundation. The foundation honors the legacies of brothers Stewart Udall and Morris Udall, whose careers fostered the causes of American Indian self-governance and healthcare as well as stewardship o...
At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary as La Conner High seniors received their graduation caps and gowns Thursday afternoon ahead of this year’s commencement exercises. There was laughter, smiles, and time set aside for photos to last a lifetime. Class members shared future plans. School counselor Lori Buher showed pictures of her newborn grandbaby. Softball coach Loran James offered encouragement to La Conner’s college sports recruits. Cheer sponsor Theresa James con...
The spring sports season at La Conner High went from being virtually cancelled to being resumed virtually. La Conner teams are using technology to remain active and take part in virtual competitions even as schools across Washington state are closed for the rest of the academic year due to the coronavirus outbreak. It was initially thought the La Conner High spring sports calendar wouldn’t flip beyond a just-for-fun mid-March scrimmage between the school’s baseball and softball teams, tho...
Five months after a crossroads election that saw the defeat of two La Conner School Board incumbents, the district panel has elected to continue down the path of change. The board on Monday chose Amanda Bourgeois to fill the Swinomish director district seat vacated by Marlys Baker’s move to Mount Vernon earlier this year. Baker had upset longtime board member Janie Beasley last November. Beasley was seeking a return to the board, but members without comment voted unanimously in favor of Bourgeois in a roll call vote during a 45-minute v...
It is not a war. It is a health care crisis. A nationally mismanaged healthcare crisis. How do we deal with the uncertainty of it all? We are lucky to be in a state that follows the scientific consensus of how to fight this virus, lucky to be in La Conner where there is enough physical elbow room to walk about, lucky to connect with our friends and neighbors for human warmth. The difficult part is accepting those new rules while we seem to be doing all right. Massive loss of freedom. Businesses closed. Keeping distance in the grocery store. Not...
It was a rare bright shining moment last Friday for a La Conner High senior class whose school hallways remain darkened by nationwide campus closures through the rest of the academic year in response to the COVID-19 threat. The stadium lights at Whittaker Field were turned on for 20 minutes at 8:20 p.m. – 20:20 military time – to honor the Class of 2020 whose members won’t walk the stage in traditional commencement exercises in June. The “Be the Light” event, which began in Texas...
Technology is helping bring people and ideas together even as social distancing has become the norm in response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The latest example was an hour-long remote panel discussion conducted on the Zoom video conferencing platform in La Conner Thursday afternoon. Town, school and civic leaders logged on to share ways in which they are moving forward in the midst of a pandemic that has ground the economy to a halt. One theme that emerged is those not laid off or furloughed at present are actually working harder outside the...
Terrence Lee “Makah” Bobb passed away March 28, 2020 at Providence Regional Medical Center. Terry was born on September 1, 1948 in Mt. Vernon, WA, to Leonard and Rachel Bobb. Terry was raised on the Swinomish Reservation, attended the La Conner Schools and graduated Class of 1967. After high school Terry moved to Tacoma, WA to attend vocational welding school along with other Swinomish young men. His first employer was Pacific Car and Foundry in Tacoma, WA. He also worked for Skagit County Department of Transportation-Road Construction Div...