Distance from big city has drawn transplants aplenty

By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

One might expect such an old and comparatively isolated community to be populated almost entirely by descendants of the pioneers. But on a ramble around town, odds are you'll meet more transplants than natives.

Ron Bodamer, a realty agent at Whidbey Lifestyles Real Estate, is a native of Mississippi who discovered Coupeville while he was stationed with the Navy in nearby Oak Harbor.

"I feel safe here," he said. "I like the school system. It's the perfect place to raise a family. It has easy access (to Seattle) but is just far enough away."

At the town's other realty firm, Windermere Real Estate Center Isle, owner Sandy Roberts jokes that he "had the wonderful luck of having parents who bought a beach cabin when I was 11, and I never left, except to go to college."

Mary Ellen Puck and her husband had lived in Everett, and decided Coupeville was the place to retire in 1979. "We'd been out here many times, with our children on excursions, so we were familiar with it."

Puck said she couldn't think of any drawbacks to retiring in Coupeville, except possibly the increasingly long ferry lines on the Mukilteo-Clinton run.

Ferry lines also are a top complaint of Bill Thrailkill, who remembers "when you could leave here, and in about 35 minutes drive on a ferry."

Waits of an hour are now common during peak periods, and on holidays the wait may be two or three hours to get on or off the island. The ferry route is the second busiest in the state, after Seattle-Bainbridge, and carried 4.2 million vehicles and passengers last year.

Thrailkill's wife, Carol, is a Coupeville native. The couple bought her parents home 30 years ago, rented it while Bill Thrailkill was working as an executive in the Seattle area, and moved in after he retired.

Carol Thrailkill, who had taught knitting and other fabric arts for many years, opened Coupeville Yarns as a retirement business three years ago. Her husband helps in the business, and is active in civic affairs.

So far, the retirement plan has worked perfectly, the couple said. "We're away from the city and urban sprawl," Bill Thrailkill said. "It just got to be too much, with the traffic and hubbub."

When he retired from the Navy and left San Diego 12 years ago, Tom Strang and his wife, Gerri, spent two years traveling around the country and Canada looking for a new place to live.

One day, a friend asked them to house-sit in Coupeville. "We wandered into town and fell in love," Tom Strang recalls. "It's like stepping back in time 30 years. It's the first place we found where you didn't worry about getting hit by traffic.

"You can stand out in the middle of the street right there, and nobody will hit you. They'll stop and wave."

The Strangs own a business, Woodcrafts of a Simpler Time, which sells work by about 20 local artisans and others.

Jan Ford, who works for the county commissioners, is a native who has lived in Coupeville all her life and said she has never thought about leaving.

While walking home for lunch, Ford surveyed her environment for a moment and said, "Obviously I love the scenery and the climate."

Any downside to life in Coupeville?

"The only downsides are balanced by the good sides," Ford observed. "Everybody in town knows your business, but that's balanced by the fact that the same people who know your business will be there for you when you need them."

Josh Russell, 17, sees one glaring fault: "It can be fun sometimes, but it can be boring sometimes. It's more like an old people's town. There are a lot of things for seniors, but not a lot of teen programs."

Coupeville doesn't have a movie theater, or any kind of place where teens can hang out, Russell said.

But at least it has a good transportation system, he said. The Coupeville High School senior takes Island Transit to his after-school job at Wendy's in Oak Harbor, which with 20,000 residents is Whidbey Island's largest incorporated area.

The free buses also take tourists from the Clinton ferry dock to downtown Coupeville, the starting place for any exploration of Central Whidbey's rich history.