Our Leschi Stars
Once a year we honor Leschi Stars, those folks or groups who have made a big difference in Leschi. This year we honored four individuals and one group at our June meeting. (Star photos courtesy John Barber.)
First (and long overdue), we accepted the nomination of Henrietta Price, who has been the crossing guard at Leschi Elementary School for over 2 decades. She not only walks the kids safely across busy streets, she takes a personal interest in the students, giving them the encouragement that we all need to do better. Also known as The Hat Lady, Mrs. Price is known for her artistic millinery creations. Her actual career has been as a nurse, but she has also been a volunteer at important places in her community. She currently volunteers at the Central Area Senior Center where grown-ups can benefit from her bright smile!
Steve Mullen, Grocery Outlet manager, was also honored for his generosity to the community and his hiring practices in which he reaches out to those who could use a second chance. In his acceptance speech, he said his family has been in this area since the 30’s when his grandfather was living in a tent in Georgetown, one of the many “Hoovervilles” that dotted the national landscape during the Depression. We suspect this event played an important part in developing his social conscience. Thanks for being a part of our community, Steve!
Dr. Michael Bilikas, our community dentist, has been instrumental in bringing more children’s activities into the ArtWalk event. He supplies the slide and ensures that we have a face painter and some sort of craft the kids can make and take home. It is his tent that gives us a dry space for our Halloween Spooktacular each year.
Bart Evans, owner of the BluWater Bistro, has been a big supporter of the ArtWalk, offering his space for our many meetings and feeding us in the process. He hosts the ArtWalk orientation gathering each year in which the vendors gather to hear last minute instructions and ask questions…he feeds them too! Bart is the master of those random acts of kindness, sending an urn of hot cider to our Halloween tent on a chilly evening and putting an urn of hot chocolate outside on one of those early surprising snowfalls.
The group we honored was Keller Williams for giving us their day of giving! The huge crew from all their Seattle offices turned up in Leschi Park and put in a day of weeding, mulching and general maintenance that awed the Parks staff, as well as the rest of us! Our president, Janice Merrill Brown, arranged for this to happen and she was delighted to take the Star award back to the head office for all to see.
And this IS an actual award: it’s an acrylic upright piece engraved with a shooting star! If you know someone who deserves to be recognized as a Leschi Star, pick up a form at the Leschi Community Council booth and get the process started!
~Diane Snell