Record South Whidbey
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 2012 | Vol. 88, No. 49 | www.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.com | 75¢
INSIDE: Garden tourists, Island Life, A10
Dozens celebrate, mourn end of Bayview School BY BEN WATANABE Staff reporter
Kathy Reed / The Record
Will Holbert, left, and Jameson Gavac from South Whidbey Boy Scout Troop 57 prepare to place a U.S. flag into the fire during a flag retirement ceremony at American Legion Post 141 in Bayview.
Island flags go up in flames of glory BY KATHY REED Staff reporter
Hungry flames devoured more than 100 United States flags at the American Legion Post 141 in Bayview Thursday, June 14, curling orange and yellow tongues around the red, white and blue symbol of our nation. “Retiring flags by burning is the honorable way to get rid of those that are no longer serviceable,” said Americanism chairman for Post 141, Andy Campbell. “Rather than throw them in a landfill, this is the proper way, the American way.” Campbell is quite correct. The National Flag Code was approved and adopted by the National Flag Conference in 1923, but it wasn’t adopted by Congress until 1942. The code states, “The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” Members of Boy Scout Troop 57 helped perform the ceremony, which was held on Flag Day and supervised by American Legion officers. The first order of business was to sort through all the flags that had been collected over the previous year. Any flags that were found to be too soiled, too faded, too worn or ripped were folded properly and took their place in line for
Kathy Reed / The Record
Jameson Gavac, left, and Will Holbert from South Whidbey Boy Scout Troop 57 place a U.S. flag into the fire during a flag retirement ceremony at American Legion Post 141 in Bayview. destruction. “We do this as a community service, to honor the institution of the flag and to show respect,” Campbell said. According to Campbell, members of the American Legion are always keeping their eyes open for flags in need of retirement. “We look for them and recover them and ask people if we can take
them down,” he said. “Most of the time they’re willing to let us do that.” More than just Legion members are getting involved in retiring flags. “Ace Hardware put out a collection box, so we’re getting the community involved in turning them in,” said Post 141 Adjutant Jim Knott. “Ceremonies like this are good, too, See Flames, A6
BAYVIEW — Bayview School passed into history Tuesday, June 19 2012. The alternative high school was 17 years old. With a ring of the old school bell, former and currents teachers, tutors, students and directors gathered around the bell Monday to mourn and celebrate the storied white school house. About 40 people circled about the bell and a shallow symbolic grave where they were encouraged to toss in their memories and favorite things from the South Whidbey School District’s alternative high school. “Bayview’s not dying, but the program’s changing,” said Bayview history and social studies teacher Eddie Mulcahy. The ceremony was an extension of one of the school’s purposes. It allowed students, both current and former, to express their feelings in a productive and healthy way, said Charlene Ray, the school’s counselor for the past 12 years. “We try to teach (students) healthy ways of dealing with those feelings,” said Ray, who will not follow the alternative program to its new location at the South Whidbey Primary Campus. “I will certainly be supporting it. I’m a firm believer in alternatives for learning.” This summer, the 117-yearold building will be emptied of school district property and personal affects. Even the bell will move to the new location on Maxwelton Road, where the alternative school will become South Whidbey Academy, a kindergarten to 12th school. Programs will split along traditional school grades: Explorer for kindergarten to fifth grade, Discovery for sixth to eighth
Ben Watanabe / The Record
Jean Shaw, former arts teacher at Bayview School, laughs as some alumni share stories about the alternative school. grades and Pathways for ninth to 12th grades. The loss of the Bayview name and the location in Bayview, for which the school was named, grieved some former students. Visitors were asked to leave a message about and for Bayview School in a journal placed among dozens of photo scrapbooks and yearbooks in the building’s basement. Tiffany Roszel, a student who graduated in 2007, brought her 5-year-old niece Selena and 1-year-old daughter Natylie and showed them pictures. “I’m so sad. I don’t want them to move,” said Roszel, adding that she was unaware of the symbolic grave, but would have put in a tree ring she received on her first day of her junior year because it “symbolized being part of Bayview.” Added Ryan Desrosiers, a 2011 Bayview graduate, “This building feels very learned and wise. It feels like the See Bayview, A6