Section A • Page 4 • tacomaweekly.com • Friday, March 15, 2013
Kettle Corn for Kenya sets up shop Saturday By Kathleen Merryman
It was such a success, Caillier said, that he is going back in April. Caillier is not rich. He works at the South Tacoma Grocery Outlet off of South 56th Street and South Tacoma Way. But he is ingenious, and he has a way of getting people to jump into his plans. This weekend, that could include you. He and a corn-popping friend will host Kettle Corn for Kenya outside the store on March 16. The plan is simple. You make a donation. They give you saltysweet-sinful kettle corn. The store owners, David and Jessalynn Greenblatt, match the take. Caillier sees the potential for raising $2,000, enough to change dozens of lives for the better in one of the worst places in Kenya when he heads back April 10. To read more about Caillier’s work, click onto www.KettlecornForKenya.org.
Kathleen@tacomaweekly.com
ALBUM COVER COURTESY OF PNWBANDS.COM PHOTO COURTESY OF JERRY JOHNSON
PASSAGES. Paula and her
husband/best friend Jerry Johnson.
Arts community mourns loss of Paula Tutmarc-Johnson AUG. 5, 1950 – MARCH 5, 2013 By Matt Nagle matt@tacomaweekly.com
The Tacoma arts community lost a vibrant and loving advocate on March 5, when Paula Tutmarc-Johnson, former owner of Two Vaults Gallery downtown, passed away. Her death came as a surprise to many, for to know Johnson was to know a woman whose energies seemed endless when it came to anything having to do with the arts and all things artistic. This – coupled with her genuine warmth, sharp sense of humor and deep compassion for all people – made Johnson a lady whom her friends, family and colleagues feel blessed to have known. Johnson’s inquisitive and open mind was one of her best qualities. She craved new ideas, new perspectives and boundless beauty as evidenced by the art that hung on the walls at Two Vaults, her home away from home. From realist to impressionist paintings, from jewelry to foundobject sculptures, and everything in between, Johnson’s tastes embraced all genres and mediums as long as high creativity was evident. Her Two Vaults Gallery was a fun gathering hub for those embarking on Tacoma’s monthly third-Thursday Art Walk (now called Art Mingle), and she was in her element inviting people into her gallery to show off the newest artist whose works she was featuring. Even after she sold the gallery, Johnson remained active in the downtown arts scene by hooking gallery owners up with artists she knew had to be seen by the public. In addition to being an arts advocate and curator, Johnson possessed great musical talents as well. Upon learning of her passing, author, historian and musician Pete Blecha wrote the following about her at www.pnwbands.com: “Freedom’s Child has found her freedom. “Just got word that my friend, Paula Johnson, after months of struggling with a surprise cancer diagnosis last summer, passed away peacefully this morning in the arms of her loving husband Jerry. Sweet Paula was the daughter of Seattle music royalty: 1950s country/pop music star Bonnie Guitar and 1930’s electric guitar pioneer Paul Tutmarc. “Longtime West Coast music fans will recall the 1966 regional Top-10 folk-rock hit, “Freedom’s Child,” that Paula recorded under her stage-name of Alexys. Backed by the Puyallup band Third Generation, Alexys enjoyed her moments in the sun – playing big gigs at the Seattle Center Coliseum on the same bills as the Yardbirds, Beach Boys, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Sly & the Family Stone, and other touring stars. Her band cut demo sessions downtown at Kearney Barton’s (RIP) Audio Recording studios, and then she and her mother (as producer) finished the “Alexys” LP [Dot Records #16994] with session heavies down in Hollywood. Paula also recorded for Jerden Records, Paramount Records, and 4-Star Records. “In the late-‘60s she resurfaced with the Maple Valleybased band Peece, and then gigged around further under the stage-names of Iris Hill and Irene Cookie. In more recent times Paula toured through Europe singing R&B, and ran her own Two Vaults Art Gallery in Tacoma. Freedom’s Child will be missed by many…” Delightful in every way and a true renaissance woman, Johnson’s influence will live on through the works of all the artists she encouraged and in whom she believed. Plans are still in the works for a celebration of her life in April. Those who wish to be part of the event are invited to contact Johnson’s daughter, Amy Carpenter, at aljc911@ yahoo.com or (360) 229-0915; and Jerry Johnson at jerryjohnsonn@comcast.net.
Chris Caillier is a oneman foreign aid program. He had read and heard about the slums of Dadaab, Kenya, and felt called to help the people there. The question was how to do it with a personal impact and sidestep corruption. Last July he connected with friends in Tacoma and on the Internet and set out to Dadaab to help one resident, one school, one enterprise at a time. He posted films about what he saw, and what the people needed, and followers back home donated on-line to meet that need. They grubstaked a business for the Salat family, paid for supplies for the Amri School and formed the plan that, for $20 a month, got a teenage boy out of his glue-sniffing life on the streets and back into his family and school.
From page A1 numbers and made an offer then, this week, backed out on the $1 million building. There is still time to dream about its next role in Tacoma’s history. It would make a great brewery, said Amocat Café owner Morgan Alexander. It would be a great space for law offices, say most of the attorneys who practice in the County/City Building just down the hill. “I’d think a nice little theater, or a casual night club, a jazzy, casual nightclub,” said Cristine Gunderson, who works at the parking lot kiosk next to it. “This little neighborhood could use something like that. It’s such a beautiful building. I hope someone good buys it.” So does Washington National Guard Captain Keith Kosik, who, with Robert Wren, led a fourfloor tour of the building that once housed cavalry horses, welcomed presidents and sent high school graduates off to their futures and guardsmen and women off to war. “I wish you guys could have seen it a couple of years ago,” Kosik said, standing on the 20,000-square-foot drill floor and looking up at the balconies and arched wooden ceiling. “This was magnificent for over 100 years.” Before the Guard decommissioned the building in 2011, the flags of every state hung from the balconies, with the United States flag at one end of the building and Washington’s at the other. The floor, dusty as it is, still gleams in the sunlight more than a year after the power and water were turned off. It is made, Kosik said,
PHOTO BY CEDRIC LEGGIN
INSIDE. The Armory’s 20,000-square-foot interior is crowned with balconies and an arched wooden ceiling. The flooring is made of old-growth pine two-by-sixes standing on their narrow edge. Even horses have galloped on these floors and left them unscarred.
of old-growth pine two-bysixes standing on their narrow edge. Horses, including those of three costumed cavalry officers at the decommissioning ceremony, have galloped on these floors and left them unscarred. The Armory, said Kosik, was the jewel of Tacoma in 1908, when it was built for $95,000. The city celebrated its completion with a New Year’s Eve ball, followed by the dedication on New Year’s Day, 1909. Even before the Guard commenced the building’s service as an armory, it shared it with the community. Still, it was primarily a military installation. Infantry trained and drilled there during World War I. A few years later, Guardsmen responding to labor riots to the south and west came through the Armory. Nearly a century after that, The Guard deployed from there to the World Trade Organization riots in Seattle. “In 1916, when we sent troops down with General Pershing to chase Pancho Villa on the original southwest border mission” Tacoma’s soldiers mustered at the Armory, Kosik said. “There were stables,”
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PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS CAILLIER
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Kosik said, for Cavalry Troop B. “And there was a horse swimming pool,” said Wren, who tended the building for 38 years and is a maintenance mechanic at Camp Murray. The streets of Tacoma were a poor place for warhorses to get exercise, so the Armory had a pool where they could work out. It is the boiler room now, on the lowest and darkest level, not far from the gun range, arms vault, small parking garage and the sunless quarters where the caretaker lived. “When my unit was here, we used to do urban battle drills in these rooms,” Kosik said of the warren of small, low-ceilinged rooms. He will take that training with him when he deploys to Afghanistan this spring. The airier ground floor is short on history and long on practicality. It is divided into rooms large enough to house a small business or law practice, maybe even a shop or a bail bondsman, convenient as they are to the jail. It was that convenience that put prisoners in the Armory in the 1990, when Pierce County Jail was chronically overcrowded. With the crowding leading to lawsuits, Pierce County set up chain link fences on the drill floor, set out beds and transferred lowrisk prisoners there. “That’s when they installed the sprinkler system,” Kosik said. “In the 1970s and ‘80s, the lawyers would come in every day and play basketball,” Wren recalled. The hoops are still there, but the stage and podium from political rallies are gone. When presidents came to Tacoma, it was most often to the Armory to give speeches. “Three sitting presidents have come here,” Kosik said of William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman. During World War II, the Armory saw troops off, and the community in. It hosted dances, Christmas celebrations and dances for troops on leave. It was an ideal venue for high school graduations and
weddings, Wren said. “My brother and I went to dances here, and boxing and wrestling.” And, oh, the concerts. “Giant Band Battle Dance,” “Battle of the Bands,” “Big Five-Hour Dance and Show” the ads and handbills read during the 1960s. Teens by the thousands rocked out to The Wailers, Viceroys, Sonics, Solitudes, Intruders, ElCaminos, Dynamics, Furies, Galaxies, Marshans, Noblemen and Paul Revere and the Raiders. That was the rocking. The Dockside Derby Dames brought the rolling. The roller derby team practiced on that drill floor, and also failed to damage it. That all ended when the National Guard ruled that the building no longer met its needs. There was not enough parking. There are other, more practical spots. It dismantled what it could, removing every piece of furniture, every appliance. Wren helped pulled four pallets of carpet tiles and shipped them east to other armories, where they matched the flooring. When they were done, they turned off the lights and water. Decommissioned, the building reverted to the state. When local governments did not want it, the state put it on the market. “Our phone has been ringing,” said Stefanie Fuller, acquisition and disposal manager for real estate services with the state’s Enterprise Services. “One interested party talked about redeveloping it and making it into housing units. People from Bates toured it. I have a spoken offer of $475,000, but, no, we’ve got time. This is not going to be a fire sale.” After 105 years, the Armory has earned better than a bargain price. It merits a quality future in the city it has served so well, and in so many ways. “I was a soldier here,” Kosik said. “As somebody who appreciates the Washington National Guard and Tacoma, the Armory connects our combined history. When I look at it, I hear the voices of many generations.”