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This Northshore
Citizen column was designed as a series of segues beginning with an
exciting month’s visit for a 15-year old from France and ending with
some favorite late summer reading suggestions.
Pierre Mosse arrived from Caen, France late at night on
July 3, the next day to be swept up in the Bothell Fourth of July
festivities and capped with a view of American fireworks from the 40th
floor of the Columbia Tower in Seattle. What to do for encores over the
next 30 days? The teenager was here for a look-see at America, his dad
hoping he might be interested in following in his footsteps in a couple
of years as a Rotary exchange student.
Pierre’s father, Yves Mosse, will be returning to
Bothell in September for his 40th Bothell High School class
reunion, for those who graduated in June 1965. Yves was one of the first
exchange students hosted by the then Bothell (now Northshore) Rotary
Club and has kept in close touch with friends in this area ever since.
After leaving Bothell, Yves completed degrees in law and political
science at the Sorbonne in Paris. He later served as aide-de-camp to the
president of France before taking his present role as the appointed
governor of the province of Lower Normandy.
Son Pierre appears to be following in his father’s footsteps in
other ways – in particular in his interest in American politics.
Pierre favored Kerry in the last U.S. presidential elections while his
relatively conservative father was all for Bush. Education is important
to the Mosse family. With great pride, Yves emailed his son his grades
for completion of his “juniors” – our equivalent to junior or
middle school. Pierre’s sister Marie will complete her “seniors”
next year and has been studying German for a possible college major in
that field.
Pierre has had a grand look at America (his third visit to the
U.S.). In addition to John and Gracy Karp of Bothell, he
was hosted by two Woodinville Rotary families – Rick Pisani and
Carol van Haelst of Woodinville and their four children, and by Gunther
and Tana Baumler of north, north Bothell. Dr. Pisani and older
sons Patrick and Paul took Pierre to the Winthrop area for a weekend of
hiking and fly fishing. He had an evening of indoor “rock” climbing
with Art Haines of Bothell. A salmon fishing trip with John Karp was yet
another new experience. John’s father, Julian Karp, was
superintendent of schools when Yves was here in the 1960s.
At the Baumlers, Pierre helped (“observed” might be a better
verb) coach a soccer team of 15-year-old girls and learned about
exceptional community service from Tana who was preparing 7,500
“bites” of food samples from her Maltby Café. Tana and her crew
were participating for the first time in the highly popular weekend Bite
of Seattle with all the proceeds from the Maltby Café booth going
directly to Food Lifeline.
Another highlight of his stay was a flyover of the Cascade
Mountains with Don Fitzpatrick Jr. Here I segue to the
Fitzpatricks, noting that the death earlier this year of Donald
Fitzpatrick Sr. brought a certain closure for four generations of a
family engaged in the business of recycled auto parts under the banner
of Fitz Auto. Don Jr.’s grandfather started the business when he moved
to Seattle from the East Coast years ago. The business thrived and moved
way out in the country to Woodinville. Many a car buff visited one of
the four units specializing in foreign and domestic auto parts. Don’s
son, D.L. Fitzpatrick was manager of the business and represented
the fourth generation when the operations in Woodinville and Graham were
sold to Ford Motor Co. a few years ago and the Fitzpatrick family’s
interest remained solely as property owners.
When King County began exploring the need and suitable sites for
a new wastewater treatment plant – now known as Brightwater – the
Fitz Auto yards at Highway 9 and SR 522 became a prime target for most
of the 110-acre project and the county swooped in to acquire the Fitz
property as its southerly anchor. Ford Motor became discouraged at the
prospects of finding another location and closed out Fitz Auto
altogether. The Brightwater move is still subject to change,
but not for another business located smack-dab in the middle of the
site. And, this then, becomes the segue to the subject of Stock Pot
soups and its highly publicized and pungent onion soup aroma noticed
many mornings from Maltby south to the Sammamish River. Stock Pot’s
owner announced at the end of July that it was grabbing a $23.45 million
county buyout of their plant north of the Fitz property and will
relocate to an 18-acre culinary campus in Everett to occupy 220,000
square feet of production space. The $80 million project will increase
the firm’s output by 50 per cent and employ 400.
But some still downwind in these parts ask if that is far enough away to
completely eliminate an odor some regard as annoying and extremely
unpleasant. On that note about onion soup, we could segue back to the
French connection, but we won’t.
Instead we’ll just report what two
voracious Bothell readers are enjoying for their summer “escape”
this year. Friends of the Bothell Library leader Betty Green and
her son Jamie devoured the latest Harry Potter release over two days.
Adds Betty, “I just finished reading HMS Surprise, the
third story in the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian.”
Bothell Library Board member Susan Elliott checked in as follows:
“I would like to recommend “Locked Rooms” by Laurie R. King
… the eighth novel in a series featuring the unique twist of pairing a
retired Sherlock Holmes with the incomparable American, Mary Russell.
Their adventures have it all; mystery, intrigue, history, and romance. I
admit I'm addicted to this series, a delicious guilty pleasure.” My escape, of course, was “Murder at the Vicarage Redux”, by Agatha Christie Fats, every word posted on the Grace Internet site, and bound to receive a nomination for the esteemed Pullet Surprise for fiction. Go ahead, and groan.
For an array of photos taken during Pierre's visit.....
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The Previous Columns July
20, 2005 July
6, 2005 June
18, 2005 June
4, 2005 May
18, 2005 May
4, 2005 April
20, 2005 April
6, 2005 March
16, 2005 March
2, 2005 February
16, 2005 February
2, 2005 January
19, 2005 January
5, 2005 December
15, 2004 December
1, 2004 Nov.
17, 2004 November
3, 2004 October
20, 2004 October
6, 2004 Sept
15, 2004 Sept.
1, 2004 August
18, 2004 August
4, 2004 |
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John
B. Hughes |
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Hughes
serves
as grand marshal |
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Hugo
and (425) 482-4076 |
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