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WOLVES GRADUATION Top 10 Students of 2014 pg. 7
Thursday, JUNE 5, 2014
VOL. 19, NO. 43
Kayakers perish off coastline
Farewell
By Jessie Stensland Editor
Two young Navy men drowned over the weekend in a kayaking accident in the waters off Central Whidbey, according to the Island County Coroner’s Office. Coroner Robert Bishop identified the two men as Vinson C. Ya, 25, and Joseph T. Lee, 21. Both men were with VAQ-129 at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. The two men left to go fishing at about 4 p.m. on Saturday, said Bishop. They rented two kayaks and borrowed a pickup truck from a friend, Bishop said. The two men went into the water in sep-
See KAYAKERS page 16
Resident takes aim at flashing Teacher says goodbye after 22 years traffic signs Ron Newberry photo
L. Dee Eller, science teacher at Coupeville High School, goes over instruction with a student during a recent chemistry class.
Chemistry with husband will endure from a distance until he retires, too By Ron Newberry Staff Reporter
Tom Eller admits that he will probably feel a little lost next school year. His lunch breaks won’t be the same because of a notable absence in one particularly spacious classroom at Coupeville High School. L. Dee Eller, a science teacher, is retiring this month after 22 years at Coupeville. Tom Eller, a woodshop teacher, will wait another year before he joins his wife of 41 years in the next chapter of their lives. “It’ll be different,” Tom Eller said. “We’ve been doing this for 22 years. We’ve had lunch together for 22 years and we’ve been riding the
bus together for 22 years.” In Coupeville’s 2013-14 yearbook, a page is devoted to the lady who’s gone by “L. Dee” since she was in the fifth grade. In class, she is addressed as “Mrs. Eller,” a name familiar to the parents of some of her students. “Some of my 15-year-old sophomores have mothers and fathers that I taught biology to when they were 15,” L. Dee said. She looks around Coupeville and sees many familiar faces, from firefighters to park rangers, and recognizes that she and her husband have been lucky to have found this place. The rural, country feel of Whidbey Island reminds them of home. She is from the Arkansas border town of Siloam Springs, which is about 44 miles east of where her husband grew up in Tahlequah, Okla. “We both grew up on farms,” L. Dee said. “It’s comfort.” The journey west led them both to Washington State University and to the Tri-Cities, where Tom became a welder at Hanford Nuclear Reservation. L. Dee wound up teaching biology at Columbia Basin College in Pasco. “This is my third career,” L. Dee said of
being an educator. “I started out in nursing. Then I went to a medical tech school and worked at a clinical lab.” The experience at Columbia Basin made her realize how much she liked teaching. When work started to slow down at Hanford, Tom started looking at other options and learned of an opening for a shop teacher at a school called Coupeville. “When I was called to come interview, we had to get the map out,” said Tom, whose credentials included degrees in chemistry and physics. “We didn’t know where Coupeville was. We kind of knew there were islands over here but we didn’t even know it was on an island.”
See RETIRE page 16
By Megan Hansen Editor
Coupeville resident Ray Gillett says he wasn’t happy with flashing school signs installed on South Main Street two years ago, and he’s still not happy. And while he’s made his unhappiness known — both then and now — local officials say there isn’t an issue. The signs in question are located just before Prairie Center and near the school district bus barn. They alert motorists to drop the speed limit to 20 mph when flashing. They were installed in early 2012 through a grant received by the Town of
See SIGNS page 16