INSIDE: NorthSouth tie... Sports, A8
Record South Whidbey
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2012 | Vol. 88, No. 72 | www.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.com | 75¢
Remarkable women nurtured Good Cheer
Building sustainability
Ladies led food bank during early years By Michaela Marx Wheatley Special to the Record
Joe Novotny photo
More than 30 children helped mix cob to build the cob playhouse at Tilth Sustainability Campus. Some kids who helped are Birdie Holtby, 8, of Langley, Hazel Holtby, 6, of Langley, Aaliyah Kois, 6, of Freeland and Liam Adadow, 5, the son of Eli Adadow, pictured at right, who taught the kids how to build the cob house.
Kids build cob playhouse at Tilth Campus By REBECCA OLSON Staff reporter
After two months of hauling rocks, constructing walls and mixing cob with their feet, these students’ efforts have yielded a cob playhouse at the Tilth Sustainability Campus, with just one part remaining. The kids of Calyx Community Arts School need to put a roof on their playhouse, and to do that, they’re asking for donations of cedar shingles. The goal is to create a kids’ art garden at Tilth, with the cob playhouse as its nucleus. “The desire is to create a magical space where kids can learn practical skills for growing food and a way to build the mind and spirit,” explained Lisa Kois, a founder for Calyx. Eli Adadow, a natural builder, guided the children through the process of design and building the cob playhouse, which is a round structure 12 feet in diameter. “They studied bird nests and
natural structures in nature,” Kois said, adding that then the children experimented with clay to see which structures worked. The kids chose the location for the playhouse, broke ground and mixed the cob with their feet. Cob is a mixture of clay, sand, straw and water. “We had these kids just covered from mixing with their feet,” Kois laughed. Since the area is used as an outdoor classroom for Calyx and other students, the playhouse will serve as protection from the elements, Kois said. It will be the center of the sensory section of the art garden, which will feature stations for children to explore the five senses. There will be nature sounds, colorful, scented flowers and stations for experiential learning like an insect atrium. Work is also being done to create a food garden nearby for children to gain experience gardening. Hanson’s Building Supply donated the posts for the garden.
Calyx staff hope to develop curriculum for other home school groups to visit and use the garden, Kois said. “We’re creating a space that encourages kids to be out in nature and experimenting with nature. To be outside and get dirty and wet and learning, playing and creating,” Kois said, adding that that’s a goal of Calyx. Twenty-five adult mentors have been working with 33 children over the summer to build the cob house. “The process of creating it is as important as creating it,” Kois said. There’s a shift away from outdoor play in this society, Kois said, but projects like this seek to bring it back. Projects like this also support Calyx’s “community village” model of teaching, which brings generations together to teach and learn, Kois said. “It’s how villages existed and thrived for centuries, but we’ve See Playhouse, A9
As the saying goes, “If you want to get something done, leave it to a busy woman.” Good Cheer was founded in 1962 through the efforts of several remarkable women. “As we look back to our beginning it is our founding mothers that were not only instrumental in the establishment of Good Cheer, but also in the origination of the idea of being selfsustaining which is why we are now celebrating serving the community 50 years,” said Kathy McLaughlin McCabe, Good Cheer’s executive director. “Those were committed, determined and caring women with a vision that is as important today as it was when they first began the Good Cheer journey.” When organized in 1963, Marian Howe became Good Cheer’s first president, Ida DeArmand served as vice president, and Tommy Double was treasurer. Little is known about DeArmand, but Howe and Double are fondly remembered as the women who gave birth to the vision.
Marian Howe
Howe had a rare talent to organize and start nonprofits. “Mother had a knack for starting charitable organizations,” daughter Cheri Howe told Good Cheer volunteers in a 2007 interview. “She was happiest being involved with starting nonprofits such as Good Cheer.” Born in 1922, Howe became an adult during
World War II. Her first husband, a navigator in the Pacific theater, was killed in 1942 when his plane slammed into a mountain in New Guinea. Its wreckage was found 48 years later. Howe found herself a young widow with an infant daughter. In 1944, after a whirlwind 17-day courtship, she married Capt. Norman Howe. Tragedy struck again as Howe’s B-24 bomber was shot down over Germany. The crew parachuted to safety, but Howe stayed behind to help a frightened crew member. He survived the crash with a broken back, but was in a prisoner of war camp until the end of the war. Howe became her husband’s advocate as he had his back re-broken and reset in military hospitals. Her family recalled that once she even went toe-to-toe with a general, threatening to go to the newspapers unless her husband received the care he needed. In 1951, the Howe family moved to Whidbey Island. Howe left a legacy not only as one of Good Cheer’s founders, but as a driving force behind Senior Services of Island County, the Meals on Wheels program, the senior Cambey apartments in Coupeville, Help House and Shalom Circle, a children’s singing group. Howe again served on Good Cheer’s Board of Directors in the 1980s. She moved off the island to live with her daughter in 1992, but still kept busy with charity work until her death in 2002.
Hanna “Tommy” Double
While Howe was a great See Good Cheer, A6