Dreams Developing The Motion Picture

Longview today remains a city of contradictions and compromises. Much of the last century has been transmitted to us by voice and recollection, recorded in stories not in stone. Research and interviews uncover diverse tales and divergent opinions. Longview doesn’t seem to agree unanimously on much of anything, except voicing a familiar comment that “people here don’t much like being told what to do.”

Its politics have changed dramatically in the last 50 years. A city full of churches is struggling with dwindling congregations. Idyllic Lake Sacajawea reposes mere miles from screaming neon signs and fast food joints run riot. A town built by loggers and sawyers now teems with accountants, occupational therapists, clerks and engineers.

In short, Longview is alive and well, but elusive, hard to pin down. For all its memorials, snapshots, commemorations and dedications, Longview remains reluctant to stand still for its portrait. It’s a town built on energy, enthusiasm, salesmanship and sweat — a motion picture, not a still life.

This place still tries to be good and to do good. But it’s a changed world with fewer certainties, greater risks, and relentless, disruptive change.

Change Agents

The only constant is change. That’s a cliche, of course. But it permeates this tale of two cities, Longview Then and Longview Now. Change and challenge have been as much a part of the Longview landscape as the Cowlitz and the Columbia.

Consider Avery, Chansol, Aayilah and Isabella — members of the Class of 2023, Longview’s centennial year high school graduates. This June they celebrate a huge milestone and uphold a proud tradition, relying on their ability to adapt, flex, and change.

This is the COVID-19 Class. The children of the pandemic. For three years, their entire high school experience, the best years of their lives, have been a fight for their lives. And an assault on their spirits: classes disrupted; games and sports seasons canceled; social life curtailed; stress at home, work, and school. All with a drumbeat of global catastrophe thrumming in their ears and masks covering their faces.

And yet…

WE HAVE SO MANY DIFFERENT RESOURCES TO GET THINGS DONE, TO ADAPT

“I actually feel really optimistic,” said Avery Moon, of R.A. Long High School. “We have so many different resources to get things done, to adapt.” Zoom meetings and phones and social media are positive, powerful tools for the Class of ’23, not the bane they can be to their elders. “Yeah, we all went virtual, but our teachers did a great job keeping it real for us, too.”

Moon feels gratitude to the faculty — R.A. Long’s graduation rate has gone up dramatically in the last five years — and intends to major in elementary education herself. She’s enjoying freedom from mask requirements and celebrating her historic school in her final days. “They’ve done a great job keeping all the history that’s here, but keeping it modern, too.” cont page 26

To donate, please mail your check payable to: Mark Morris High School Foundation, P.O. Box 1674, Longview, WA 98632 Or donate online at mmhsfoundation.org

The Mark Morris Foundation was created in 2008 in honor of the 50th anniversary of the school. An independent, nonprofit organization, it welcomes tax-deductible donations for the benefit of Mark Morris students for scholarship programs and projects at the school.

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“I’m from Seoul, South Korea, so Longview is a big change for me,” said Chansol Park, of Three Rivers Christian School. “I love Longview. I tell my relatives in Korea it’s an hour from the mountain, an hour from the beach, an hour away from any adventure.”

“I love the smaller city, the way everybody knows each other,” he said. And he’s especially happy with the way classmates and friends regard his disability. Chansol has cerebral palsy, but now walks with a single crutch after beginning the school year in a wheelchair. “They don’t see me different or treat me different. This was something I faced in South Korea.”

His goal is to attend a Christian College and come back to teach at his alma mater. “My faith will be a big part of how I choose a college, I want a chance to share it and talk about it.”

Aaliyah Zimmerman knows very well what she doesn’t want to do after high school. “I just can’t see doing anything behind a desk all day. I’m much more a hands-on person.” The senior at Longview’s Discovery High School has made up missing credits thanks to flexible scheduling and Running Start classes. “I like the fact that this is a small school, a small group of people. And everybody has a pretty good idea what they want to do.”

Aalilyah is exploring a career in the trades, and is impressed with the offerings and career pathways at LCC and other community colleges. “Maybe an auto-mechanic? Just so long as I’m up and moving around! No desk jobs.”

“I’ve really got my heart set on Northwestern, but I’ve been offered some other good scholarships, too.” Such are the difficult choices for Isabella Merzoian , of Mark Morris High School. “I loveconnecting with people,” she said. What she’ll remember best about her high school days is “how close this community is around their kids. There is total support. I never want to regret not doing something I had a chance to do.”

Other college application results await Isabella, who continues to think the sky’s the limit. Asked what her ultimate career plan might be, she doesn’t hesitate. “I’d like to go into medicine. I want to be a surgeon. And I want to come back here to the Pacific Northwest.”

People +Place Then and Now HISTORY REGISTERED

According to local architect Craig Collins, “Longview is unique in that so many of its historic buildings were built at the same time,” which gives it a particular character even among cities of the same vintage. “Three of our most architecturally prominent buildings, the hotel, the library and the R.A. Long High School, were each built near the same time, in the same Georgian Revival style.” Collins is surrounded in his Longview office by brilliant photos of projects completed over the last four decades in the region, including major government buildings and extensive improvements at Lower Columbia College.

For a relatively small “industrial” town, Longview has an unusual number of buildings and spaces located on both the National Register of Historic Places and the Washington Historic Register. The three most familiar are probably the Civic Center and its surrounding buildings, the Monticello Convention Commemoration site, and the entirety of Lake Sacajawea Park. The notable Historic Structure is the Columbia River Longview Bridge, renamed the Lewis and Clark Bridge in 1980. Collins’s favorite more contemporary structure is, despite “The 70s not being a great decade for civic architecture,” Longview City Hall, which he predicts will remain timeless and well regarded.

Since Forbes Magazine a few years ago included Longview among America’s 10 prettiest cities, it seems the city has held its own quite well, dubbed as early as 1956 by writer Stewart Holbrook,

…as attractive a city as can be found along the Columbia; and there are many nonresidents who consider Longview to be the most beautiful town in either Oregon or Washington.”

Stewart Holbrook

The Columbia, 1956

Opposite page: Longview’s citizens have always aspired to the good life. Shots from Longview’s 2023 Arbor Day planting with support of local Rotarians, LCC’s fitness center, Mint Valley Golf Course, the Old West Side neighborhood, and Lake Sacajawea.

City Beautiful

Longview’s charms are many. The main streets are wide, many of them graced with huge trees now fully mature and leafy. Street surfaces are grooved with diamond shaped lines, which actually are the expansion and contraction joints for the concrete, but double as decoration.

Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander

Exploring Washington’s Past, A Road Guide to History

If Longview can lay claim to physical beauty and aesthetic charm, its epicenter is surely the extraordinary Lake Sacajawea. Were the founders transported forward from their own century, it seems likely the lake might be the feature deemed most the same and most highly evolved — what they’d built and what they’d imagined, all in one.

From its very beginnings the town seems to have had a special feeling about this undistinguished piece of low water known then as Fowler’s Slough. Maybe because it seemed to have no immediate commercial value — located more in the center of things than on the periphery — it might serve a higher purpose, as an ornament, perhaps, a centerpiece at the

Firework and military versions of early rockets have existed for millennia, but we have moved from the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 to the moon landing of 1969 very quickly! Today with SpaceX dramatically bringing the cost down with reusable, re-landing rockets, we’ll soon witness the next revolution of human exploration and innovation.

In the past month, SpaceX Starship finally conducted its first orbital test and while the results were mixed, Elon Musk said that anything clearing the launch pad would be a success and the follow-up version already has 1,000 changes, combined with all they learned from that day.

Musk expects several more test flights before 2024 and cargo

Proud town’s busy table. Unfortunately for the historic Fowler family, the townsmen were certain they’d never lose “Slough” unless they changed the entire name. The Daily News responded with a contest and the young Shoshone interpreter who’d accompanied Lewis and Clark — Sacajawea — became the namesake.

Drive Kessler Boulevard between Washington Way and Ocean Beach Highway — and adjacent streets — for a windshield tour of homes that are stately although not opulent. Combined with adjacent churches and the beauty of the park, the neighborhoods’ effect seems to achieve Long’s belief in the orderliness of life.

Kirk and Alexander or even manned missions to Mars to create a 1,000,000-person, self-sustaining colony, to begin within the decade, and an 8-person civilian moon flyby within five years. The colony will take decades to complete, using 1,000 starship rockets carrying 100 people each, every two years when the orbits of Earth and Mars are closest.

Starship will be able to increase the rollout of their global internet service, Starlink, by almost 7X, with greater satellite payload vs the current Falcon 9 rocket.

Hal Calbom is a third generation Longview native and R.A.Long High School graduate. He works in public affairs television and educational publishing. This month he begins his sixth year photographing and writing Columbia River Reader’s People+Place feature. Co-founder of Columbia River Reader Press, he may be reached at hal@halcalbom.com.

Wilbur and Winston love to explore a revitalized Downtown Longview. Beautiful sculptures on Commerce Avenue, wonderful restaurants, breweries, wineries, cute boutiques; even an artisan chocolate shop. Although chocolate is off-limits, Wilbur and Winston love visiting Pet Works!