Young athletes, senior dancers gather at new center

By LYNN STEINBERG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

It is not unusual to find residents who spent their childhoods around Bitter Lake and never left, or came back after a brief time away.

Hal Schlegel, 57, is among them. As a boy, he swam or fished in the lake almost every day during the summer, and he skated on it when it froze during the winter.

He still has a special affinity for the long-gone Playland, where he worked on summer breaks. That sweet sense of nostalgia eventually led him to visit in 1994 the Shoreline Historical Museum, which featured an exhibit on the amusement park. There he met his wife, Kay, who helped develop the show.

She shared his passion for Playland and had spent years researching a book on the subject.

They were married last June.

Today, where Playland once stood, is senior housing and a city park. There is a new playground, a playfield, tennis courts and a wading pool.

Next to it is the Bitter Lake Community Center, which opened in 1997 and also includes a "family center" that offers classes in parenting, citizenship and English as a Second Language.

The new community center replaced a much smaller building now used as an annex. It is there that more than 200 roller skaters gather each Friday night.

The main center, an attractive building with racks of newspapers and bulletin boards blanketed with notices, serves as a neighborhood gathering spot, a defacto town center that also draws residents from the surrounding areas.

"There is nowhere else to go," says assistant coordinator Cynthia Etelamaki, who grew up in Bitter Lake and still lives in the neighborhood.

The community center offers a full complement of programs for children and adults. There are classes in cooking, yoga, arts and crafts. Youth basketball, which draws more than 600 children and teens, is by far the center's most popular program.

On Saturdays, Seattle Childrens Theatre holds drama classes there. And on Thursday afternoons, a dance for senior citizens routinely attracts about 100 people.

The dance starts promptly at 1 p.m., but there are some regulars who show up nearly two hours early and pass the time playing pinochle.

By 12:30 or so, the coffee is brewing, the lights in the gymnasium have been dimmed, and a three-piece band, the Pep-Tones, is warming up.

Doris Doak, who recently celebrated her 89th birthday, is on piano; Clare Gerring, 86, plays drums, and Ralph Worden, 83, is on horns.

They're a popular combo that performs at least three times a week.

They do the senior dance circuit, which is mostly ballroom and pattern dancing. They do birthday parties. "And we do quite a few 50th anniversary parties; I don't understand that," Worden says, grinning.

Doris Odegard, 82, comes to Bitter Lake every Thursday to hear the Pep-Tones. "Dancing for me is therapy," she says. "Mentally, physically, everything. I've been dancing my whole life."

She used to go seven days a week. She's cut back to five. "Monday is my day off," she says. "Tuesday I go to Greenwood, Wednesday I go to Spice or sometimes to Bothell. Thursday I come here. Friday, I go to Shoreline. Saturday, I stay home and Sunday I go to Edmonds."

She takes a breath and smooths her black skirt, which she has smartly accented with a red belt, red shoes and a crisp white blouse. Then she's on her feet, in the arms of her partner, swirling across the floor.

"I'm a celebrity," she tells him.

"Then I'll dance with a celebrity," he says.

The seniors come from Shoreline, Edmonds, Ballard and from the apartment buildings just up the street. There is the seven-story, Four Freedoms House, on the lake. And the Henry M. Jackson apartments. Together, they provide low-income housing for 425 senior citizens.