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It was while selling doors for a living that Heather Fakkema realized doors were also opening for her to pursue a career in school administration. She had by then already spent two years as a teacher before stepping away from the classroom to start a family and engage in several other ventures, including a children’s ministry. The light bulb flicked on during her time with a family-owned window and door distribution firm in Seattle. Business management introduced Fakkema to concepts her t...
The future is now for La Conner football. Youth league players who someday hope to fill the ranks of La Conner High’s grid program have kicked off yet another season of their own. And done so in divine fashion. The La Conner juniors, coached by Charlie Edwards, Sonny James and Kyle Ryan, defeated Concrete 6-0 with a Hail Mary pass as time expired in the team’s recent season opener. “It was pretty amazing,” said Edwards, who is also the league’s vice president. The winning play was set up by a Co...
On the radio dial, 95 is often the golden oldies station. For La Conner’s Fred Mesman, the number 95 sends a totally different signal. Sunday it had less to do with his age than it did with being a good reason for the sage nonagenarian to party. Which is exactly what he did, enjoying birthday cake, music and a bountiful pig roast on a beautiful sunlit afternoon complete with spectacular views from his and wife Arlene’s unique straw bale insulated Pleasant Ridge home. But more than anything, Fre...
Whit was born in Seattle on November 6, 1930, to Willard Milton Hansen and Marjorie Whitney Hansen; he passed away at his home in La Conner on August 2, 2019, surrounded by his loving family. Whit grew up on Hunts Point in Bellevue, WA, where he learned to love everything about being on the water; boating, camping, swimming, water skiing, and fishing. He graduated from Bellevue High School in 1948, where he excelled academically and in sports. He accepted an appointment to the United States...
The La Conner School District Board of Directors doubled the high school student representation on the Board to two, approving Yareli Lopez and Domenic Wilbur to start their year-long term in September. They approved raises of 3.8% for the five administrators. For seven exempt employees, raises ranged from 2.1% to 18.4%. Documents are on the school district website. They accepted $5,000 from the Town of La Conner to support the after schools Braves Club and approved an agreement with the Swinomish Department of Environmental Protection for...
First a retreat, then some tentative steps forward. That’s the path upon which La Conner Schools Superintendent Dr. Whitney Meissner and leaders of two staff union groups that have rebuked her management skills now find themselves. All parties vow to move in the same direction, serving the best interests of students, but whether they can do so side-by-side remains unclear. The unions have issued votes of no-confidence in Meissner and called for her ouster, alleging she has created a negative work environment, concerns that arose last spring and...
Dear Editor: I am saddened by the ongoing turmoil within our school district. In my teaching career, in another school district, we had a divisive situation. I believe the lessons from that experience could be useful in La Conner: Our elementary principal died suddenly one morning, discovered when he didn’t show up for school. A retired principal was hired to finish out the year, and then a new, and unknown to us, principal was hired for the next school year. What the staff didn’t know was that “Mike” was hired to make some significant changes...
Warm weather made for warm memories at the 115th annual Pioneer Picnic in La Conner Thursday, drawing a festive group ranging from toddlers to local centenarian Joyce Johnson. A good time was had by all, especially those who have attended regularly through the decades. Don Wick, one of the more recognizable personalities in Skagit County, has marked the Pioneer Picnic on his calendar since the early 1970s. Wick, then working for radio station KBRC, was assigned to set up the sound system for...
A new Skagit County Historical Museum exhibit highlights the area’s hometown sports heroes. Matt Thurmond, the reigning Pac-12 Men’s Golf Coach of the Year, fills a unique category in that regard. He’s a Hometown Hero 2.0. A graduate of Burlington-Edison High School, Thurmond is also claimed by La Conner, and rightfully so. His parents, Joe and Kathy Thurmond, are La Conner High alums, as are other of his family members. His sister and brother-in-law, Kate and Dr. Brandon Atkinson, recen...
Almost one year after collecting weapons from the public – aiming to transform guns into art, a group of local artist has crafted an emotionally powerful exhibit dedicated to gun violence. Their memorial stones, piled into a cairn, is now on its first public display at the Anacortes Arts Festival. The Memorial Cairn installation is part of the Anacortes Regeneration Project and includes the work of several dozen Skagit Valley artists. La Conner’s Tracy Powell is among those artists, as wel...
The Fisher family name is synonymous with home, commercial and industrial construction in Skagit County. Frieschknecht is a less familiar name, but one that remains vital to bridging the county’s rich history and its present status as a model for balancing economic opportunity with environmental preservation. The Frieschknecht legacy, in fact, is a key chapter in the Fisher family story, which will be shared as part of the 115th annual Skagit County Pioneer Picnic in La Conner Thursday. Their s...
La Conner teachers and support staff are focused on what’s best for our students, which is why we firmly believe that our school district needs a new superintendent. The La Conner School District staff have lost trust in its leader. We cannot achieve our highest result of excellence as an organization if we do not have a foundation of trust in our leadership. Superintendent Dr. Whitney Meissner is ineffective and cannot successfully lead our district when 80% of our community’s teachers and 79% of support staff have voted no confidence in her....
Danny Hagen stays in shape the old-fashioned way. The 6’-6”, 255-pound La Conner High assistant basketball coach is no stranger to the gym, but his workouts this time of year are done without benefit of the modern sports equipment found in health clubs and fitness centers. That’s by design. Hagen opts instead to break a sweat each spring and summer with heavy stones, large poles and hefty hay bales. In a way, he was born to exercise that way. Hagen reconnects with his Celtic heritage by compe...
Lillian Cushner Steinberg passed away peacefully on June 15, 2019, one week shy of her 92nd birthday. She was a well-known watercolor artist in La Conner, Washington, who exhibited her paintings at several local galleries, including Art in a Picklebarn at several annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festivals. She and her husband, Maynard Steinberg, lived in Shelter Bay, La Conner in their retirement. Some years after his death, Lillian moved to Portland Oregon to be near her youngest daughter, Emily Orth, her son-in-law Alan Orth, and grandson Benjamin...
Eagle Scouts rock, though none more so than La Conner’s Ian McCormick. Few can forget his stirring guitar solo of the Star-Spangled Banner before a La Conner High basketball game last winter. Now, six months later, there’s something else for which the 14-year-old incoming freshman will be long remembered. He has earned his Eagle badge before entering high school. Eagle is the highest rank attainable in the Boys Scouts of America program, and only about four per cent of its members reach that lev...
Forrest Eisen Jr. was born June 26, 1942 in Mount Vernon, Washington to Anita and Forrest Eisen Sr. He attended grade and high school in La Conner until his senior year. He joined the Army in 1961 and was medically discharged due to a shrapnel injury losing his left eye. He later moved to Oregon and worked in the logging industry. Later he moved to Bremerton. He attended an apprenticeship at the naval shipyard as an electrician. He worked 29+ years, then retired in 1989. Boating, fishing, camping, working in his yard kept him busy. He also...
The Fourth of July is still a week away, but there were early fireworks aplenty when the La Conner School Board met in a tense, sometimes heated session before a standing room only audience Monday evening in the district’s administrative building. The two-hour meeting dealt mostly with issues related to second-year Superintendent Dr. Whitney Meissner, the subject of recent no-confidence votes taken by members of the district’s two employee unions, who allege her management has been ine...
I wanted to write something light, this being the first week of summer. Alas. Observers and participants agree that tempers are running high, some people are hurt, others are wounded and discord rifts the La Conner School District. If only the board of directors and administration’s biggest problem was 12 hours a day of way too loud drumming and horns from a marching band rental. To name the elephant in the room: the vast majority of school staff, teachers and support employees, want Superintendent Whitney Meissner gone. The La Conner Education...
Donna E Zimmerman 87, a long-time resident of La Conner passed away in Seattle on June 12, 2019. Donna was born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota on August 5, 1931 to SR (Bob) and Mina Green. She lived in the Avon-Fredonia area, working on farms. Donna attended school in Avon and Burlington and graduated from La Conner High School in 1949. She was married to Boyd Zimmerman for 68 years. Donna worked for the post office as a rural mail carrier, retiring in 1991. Donna was a member of the La Conner Methodist Church and Billkens Club. Donna loved...
Students and staff vacated La Conner campuses for summer break last week. They weren’t alone. The 25-year-old cedar totem pole that is the signature landmark at La Conner Elementary School was removed for summer restoration during special ceremonies Thursday morning. The weathered but still grand pole will be refurbished by La Conner Schools’ staff member Kevin Paul, who was involved in its initial carving in the mid-1990s. Paul, a master carver whose work has been profiled on national TV bro...
The beat goes on – and will for the next couple weeks. That’s because the Seattle Cascades Drum & Bugle Corps, a world class competitive junior musical group, has returned to La Conner to prep for its upcoming national tour this summer. Comprised of top youth musicians ages 14-21, the Cascades is practicing here daily before going out on the road for an 8,000 mile swing that ends with an appearance at the World Championships at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in August. The Cascades w...
During his more than a quarter-century at La Conner High, Mike Carrigan has tackled a wide range of teaching assignments – from algebra to U.S. history to industrial arts. Turns out, he was a big-time tackler long before arriving here in the early 1990s. A native of Orting, southeast of Tacoma, Carrigan played defensive back at Stanford University, where he squared off against the likes of future Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren and 1968 Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson. His...
Much planning has gone into developing a safe routes to school program here and elsewhere. But, statistically, the safest way for children to get to campus is riding one of those familiar yellow buses, reports La Conner Schools Transportation Supervisor Kim Pedroza. But it’s not as easy as her drivers make it look. Those drivers safely deliver hundreds of students each day to and from school, on field trips near and far, and to an assortment of extra-curricular events through the full breadth o...
La Conner High seniors went out with a bang Thursday night. Near the end of the school’s 125th annual commencement exercises the large audience at Landy James Gymnasium was briefly shaken by a loud celebratory confetti blast. The surprise dramatic send-off for the Class of 2019 seemed a fitting salute to a student group noted for having done a bang-up job, reflected in numerous academic and athletic successes and devotion to public service and civic projects. Class speakers had earlier, t...
Governing is hard. In the middle of governance are policy making and administration of that policy and direct responsibility for the executive staff of the organization, here the La Conner School District’s. For a school district’s board of directors, governing starts with a personal vision as well as endorsement of the district’s vision. Each director starts with an election – or an appointment until an election. School board directors represent the district’s residents, overseeing the school system for them. It is not a paying job, bu...