sammamishreview071812

8

l

July 18, 2012

COMMUNITY

SAMMAMISH REVIEW

$1 million charity preserves memory of Joshua Williams

By Lillian Tucker

At age 16, Sammamish’s Joshua Philip Williams died in a snowboarding accident. Ten years later friends, family and strangers have raised more than $1 million in his name.

“This has been a very cathartic thing for our family to do,” said his mother, Debbie Williams. “It’s healing. It’s a vehicle for recovery.”

After their son’s unexpected death, friends and neighbors of the Williams’ set up the JPW Foundation Golf Tournament and Dinner Auction to support programs that had been significant to Josh.

The 10th annual event was held July 10 at the Plateau Golf Club, where foundation President Bruce Wotherspoon said there were just as many in attendance as day No. 1. The only difference were the volunteers’ faces.

“Ten years ago it was all of us adults working on it and now it’s Josh’s friends,” said Josh’s father, Phil Williams. “Our 10th year is sort of a tribute to everyone that has supported us.”

One of those stepping up was Brandon Hemphill. Now living

Photo by Lillian Tucker

Darrin Erdahl of Sammamish kneels down to study the green while teammates, left to right, Alex Wotherspoon, Bill McKay, Dave Grosby and John Gunning offer advice July 10 at the JPW Foundation Golf Tournament. in Seattle, the 26-year-old grew up in Sammamish with Josh and took over this year as cochairman of the golf tournament.

“Josh was a friend of mine.

That event had an impact on my life and a lot of my friends’ lives,” he said. “I knew that once I got done with school and got a little bit established I wanted to get

involved…It’s a great way to give back to the community I grew up in.”

The golf tournament kicked off earlier that day with an 11 a.m.

shotgun start. The 160 players that spread out over the course in a five-person scramble format included 31 celebrities.

Among the retired NFL players and local television presenters was Jordan Allyne.

The University of North Carolina player scored a holein-one on the sixth hole. ESPN Radio personality and bogey golfer Dave Grosby, didn’t have Allyne’s luck but said he wasn’t too bothered.

“It’s a real pleasure for me to get to be involved in this thing.

I do a bunch of these things, but there is something different about this one,” said Grosby. This was his seventh year in the tournament. “I never miss it. Once they invited me I told them I was never leaving.”

Playing alongside Grosby was Bill McKay, who has participated in the event since he moved to his house on the course four years ago. After each member’s putt, the five men, including Grosby and McKay, would discuss the particular characteristics of a green and suggest different putting strategy.

See GOLF, Page 9

Visit Eden in the city during garden tour

By Lillian Tucker

Once a month, the Pine Lake Garden Club meets for breakfast and settles in to listen to a guest speaker. That’s been the flow of things since it was founded in 1943. Come July 28, however, the club is breaking tradition and opening up to the public with a garden tour.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. the private gardens of 10 different members will be open for the selfdrive tour along 228th Avenue.

Featuring garden art and water features, while incorporating vegetables and even chickens, the gardens come in all shapes and sizes.

“They are not all huge estates,” said Barbara Flynn, who is chairing the garden tour. “The rest are normal-sized lots and people have done extraordinary things with them.”

Tickets for the tour are being sold to raise money for the Lake Washington Institute of Technology Environmental Horticulture Program.

The Pine Lake-based club

already provides scholarships for the horticulture program.

Its founder, Don Marshall joins the group every September as its guest speaker. This year, the local green thumbs wanted to do more.

“Last September the cuts had been so deep that he was practically in tears,” said Flynn. Many of Marshall’s students, she added, are older, changing careers and don’t have the support that younger students first starting out do. “When you start reaching the 40 plateau, time is sort of running out a bit and you need a lot of confidence building – that this is the right time to get on this path.”

Flynn’s own garden, which is reminiscent of the English countryside she once adored every day, is included on the tour.

The space includes rare plants, original art and more than 100 containers, she said. Among the flowers and near her fountain, visitors will find a concrete sculpture of a man’s large left foot in a roman sandal that Flynn picked up on one of her many trips to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Contributed

Elaine Keehn stands in her garden that she cultivated on the land that used to be Stone Hollow Farm.

Vickie Stratton’s garden, also on the tour, surrounds a farmhouse from the turn of the 20th century that the avid gardener and her husband restored.

Besides showing off all her landscaping, Stratton will also have an array of quilts on exhibit.

“It’s just absolutely delightful,” said Flynn. “She has such a sense

of design. It’s an incredible work of art.”

The garden of the club’s See GARDEN, Page 9

12

l

SportS

July 18, 2012

SAMMAMISH REVIEW

JAMFEST takes over Eastridge Church

By Matt Carstens

Photo courtesy of Jenny Jenson

From left to right on the bottom row Ryan Knapick, Trent Paulson, Cooper Safon, Jake O’Donnell, Grady Robison, Jason Bryant and Calvin Kirchoff smile for the camera. Standing, from left to right, Garrett Carney, Cade Peterson, Nick Lewis, Logan Wehrman and Carter Jensen hold up their champions’ banner while Coaches Britt Wehrman, Rob Carney and Tom Paulson bring up the rear.

Two sets of Little Leaguers bring home a district trophy

By Lillian Tucker

Sammamish’s small sluggers have a lot to smile about after bringing home the District 9 title in two different age divisions.

Both the Eastlake Little League 9 and 10-year-old All Star team and the Sammamish Little League 11-year-old All Star team won their district championships last week.

It was anyone’s game July 9

as Eastlake was tied 0-0 with the Bellevue East team for the first four innings. As the fifth inning drew to a close, the teams were still tied this time 1-1.

Eastlake had already beaten Bellevue once before and it was determined to do it again. Calvin Kirchoff pitched for Eastlake until Logan Wehrman relieved him at the end of the fifth inning.

Together, the two only gave up three hits.

After scoring two runs at the top of the sixth, Eastlake secured the championship with a 3-1 finish.

“They were thoroughly excited,” said Jenny Jensen who watched her son’s team light up with the knowledge that it had won the district title. “It was a well played game.”

Meanwhile, in Kirkland at Big See BASEBALL, Page 13

we’ll do is a backpack giveaway to families that could use a Eastridge Church will be little bit of help,” Jamison said. filled with hoop dreams next “And we’re looking to give month as it holds this summer’s away about 750 free backpacks.

JAMFEST Aug. 11.

The substantial investment on JAMFEST will include a the part of the church is to help 3-on-3 basketball tournament, families.” a kids’ bicycle show and other Jamison is excited to expand family activities. the church’s footprint on help“We’re just wanting to creing the community. ate a fun family event with a “We have done this at differgreat cause ent times attached in the past,” If you go to it,” Jamison Executive JAMFEST said. “Every Team u 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 11 ThanksPastor Steve u Eastridge Church giving, we Jamison u 24205 S.E. Issaquah-Fall City give away said. “And Road bags of groour plan is u Registration for the basketceries, so to kind of ball tournament costs $40 and this is just create a fun ends Aug. 6. Register online another festival feel at www.eastridgetoday.com/ way for our with a lot jamfest. church to Other activities at the summer of different reach out to festival are free. activities people and going on provide a during the little bit of day.” encourageThe main event of the day ment and a little bit of help.” will be the basketball tournaEastridge Church has put on ment, which will have brackets festivals like this in the past, ages 9 and older, along with including larger events on the brackets for different skill East Coast. levels, including Top Gun, “We did a tournament a few Competitive, Recreational, years ago,” Jamison said. “In Older Than Dirt and Below the the past, we’ve actually put Net. on large events all around the For those with above the rim country. We’ve put on major talent, a slam dunk contest is tournaments on Pennsylvania also scheduled.

Avenue in Washington, D.C., That $40 will help the to Lower Manhattan and a few church with its main charity years ago, we did a small tourevent, helping families in need nament out by the Issaquah get ready for the upcoming Community Center. We had the school year.

See BASKETBALL, Page 13 “One of the big things that

Where did the Lake Sammamish kokanee salmon go?

The Fish Journal

By Dallas Cross

For 5 million years, an ancient class of salmon has been swimming in lakes and streams once connected to the Pacific Ocean.

They are kokanee, a small species of fresh water salmon.

Kokanee live in Lake Sammamish and spawn in its creeks. Their scientific name is Oncorhynchus nerka. It is a combination of hooked-nose in Latin together with a complex, LatinPolish name for red salmon.

They share the nerka name with their ancestral, but genetically distinct, sockeye salmon. The name, kokanee, comes from the

Okanagan-Salish language and means red fish.

Lake Sammamish kokanee embrace their red fish name when they return in November through January to their birth creeks to spawn. In the lake, they are mostly silver with small scales, not spotted like trout, and have a distinctively forked tail.

At spawning time, the bodies of males turn a bright red with green heads and a hooked nose.

The females’ bodies turn red with a faint green stripe.

Spawning pairs seek gravel beds in the same streams where they were hatched. In these streams, they move gravel around making redds in which the female lays eggs to be fertil-

ized by the ever-attendant male.

The eggs incubate in the gravel redds for three to four months during which an alevin with an egg sac forms. Alevin then absorb the sac and mature into kokanee fry. The fry wait for a stream temperature of about 52 degrees and a dark night to leave their gravel beds and make a run downstream to the lake.

In the lake, the kokanee fry start feeding on small animals collectively called zooplankton.

In Lake Sammamish, a zooplankton called daphnia, or water flea, is the main diet of kokanee fry and also a significant portion of the diet of mature kokanee. The daphnia in turn rely on algae for their food.

May is significant in that it is when populations of algae and grazing daphnia increase in response to light and temperature. It is also the month in which kokanee fry complete their journey to the lake to start feeding on daphnia. Mature kokanee also eat insects and the larger ones occasionally prey on minnows such as coho fry.

Kokanee in Lake Sammamish are threatened. Tens of thousands ran in the creeks feeding the lake in pioneer times. Recent counts of spawning kokanee in the fall and winter are in the hundreds at best, and often only in the teens. Most notable is absence of spawning kokanee in Issaquah Creek, the main tribu-

tary that feeds the lake.

The development of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery in the 1930s doomed the early run of kokanee in Issaquah Creek with a diversion dam and fish weirs to prevent kokanee returning to their traditional breeding gravels.

This was to prevent them from carrying fish diseases upstream into waters supplying the hatchery. Hatchery personnel were instructed to remove any remaining spawning kokanee and this contributed to the early run in Issaquah Creek run being officially declared extinct. But there are still kokanee in the lake.

Fortunately, some kokanee See SALMON, Page 14