REPORTER
Mercer Island www.mi-reporter.com
MI | THIS WEEK
Serving the Mercer Island community since 1947
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2011 | 75¢
Citizens weigh in on need for new schools
Honoring a life with hope
MIHS football playoff game is Saturday The Mercer Island High School football team’s first game of the state tournament will be played on Saturday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. against Meadowdale. The Islanders will take on the Mavericks at Edmonds Stadium.
Overcrowding at elementary schools creates urgency for facilities solution
MI Directory updates Add, correct, change or delete your phone number or address before the 2012 Mercer Island Directory goes to press. Directory organizers especially want your new number if you have dropped your land line and now only have cell service. Contact JoAnne Jones at jojones@earthlink.net or (206) 232-3903. The Mercer Island Guild, an all-volunteer organization, publishes the phone book yearly. Donations and ad revenues from the directory support uncompensated care at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Pineapple Classic The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Washington/Alaska Chapter’s Winter Pineapple Classic is set for 9 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 12, at Mountain Meadows Farm in North Bend. The event is a race that features an array of “obstacles.” At the end participants are rewarded with a Hawaiian luau. Three-year-old Ryan Peterson of Mercer Island, who has been in treatment for acute myelogenous leukemia, is the 2011 Winter Pineapple Classic honorary chair. The event raises money to fight the disease. For more information or to register, go to www.winterpineappleclassic.org.
Election results Get the latest election results from Tuesday’s general election online at www.mi-reporter.com and at the King County Elections site: www.kingcounty.gov/elections.aspx.
By Linda Ball lball@mi-reporter.com
Contributed Photo
David Warner Kindergarten in A Xing, Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, was built by the nonprofit organization PeaceTrees. Warner, an Islander, was killed in Vietnam in 1968.
A life brought back ‘thread by thread’ By Mary L. Grady editor@mi-reporter.com
Islander David Warner died more than 40 years ago in Vietnam, one of more than 58,000 Americans who died during the grueling war in the jungles of Southeast Asia that consumed most of the 1960s. He was killed by gunfire on Feb. 17, 1968, on the porch of a house in the middle of Hue City during a dayslong battle called the Tet Offensive, one of the seminal events of war in Vietnam. Warner had been in Vietnam for just eight months when he was killed. He was one month shy of his 22nd birthday. He was survived by his parents and two sisters, Marci
HAPPY HOUR
and Sue, then just 7 years old. He had volunteered for duty in Vietnam. He was just the type of young man who was sent off by the hundreds to the jungles of Southeast Asia, never to return. Warner, a Marine, was born on March 22, 1946. He graduated from Mercer Island High School in 1964. He attended Central Washington University for a semester, came home and worked at various jobs, including a stint where his dad worked and at Seaborne’s Marina in Leschi. The Warner family had moved to the Island in the 1950s, where they lived near the high school.
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“From what I hear, it was ‘kidhaven,’” Warner’s youngest sister Sue Warner-Bean said. “Dave and his friends had a wonderful time playing in the ravine behind the house along Gallagher Hill Road.” An Eagle Scout, the athletic and fit Warner enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966. After boot camp he spent about a year in Hawaii, then — as he had hoped — was sent to Vietnam in August 1967. The bad news came to the family home just a few months later. Warner-Bean, then a first-grader, remembers the day well. It was a weekday afternoon. Her father was at work. She remembers the knock and the soldiers at the door. Just hours before, a letter had arrived from her brother. Her mother waited to tell her father the news until after he read the letter when he returned home from work. That evening, Warner-Bean thought
In a special meeting of the Mercer Island School District Board of Directors on Thursday evening, citizens voiced their opinions about the 21st Century Facilities Committee’s recommendations to the district. It is a fact that all three elementary schools are bursting at the seams, with West Mercer and Island Park’s portables even at maximum capacity. Only Lakeridge Elementary could accommodate another portable — a double, which is two classrooms.
SCHOOLS | PAGE 2
The Mercer Island High School volleyball team will begin the state tournament this Friday. See Sports on page 14 for details.
THREADS | PAGE 7
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