The Craigslist ad was from the Turner Publishing Co. looking for an historian who could write the text for a book of historic photos of the Puget Sound.
Author and historian David Wilma looked at that ad and knew he could meet the challenge. He was a University of Washington history major after all. And for seven years he'd been one of the primary researchers working alongside the late Walt Crowley on Historylink.com.
So he answered the ad and Turner gave him the gig. In less than two months, he pored over pictures Turner had amassed from the UW Special Collections department, the Library of Congress and Seattle Municipal Archives. He began writing captions and introductions for each chapter. The material began to illuminate the places and lives of those living in the Puget Sound region from the mid 1800s to today, from Seattle's earliest days, to the construction of the Capitol dome in Olympia, the Century 21 World's Fair in lower Queen Anne and plenty of faces. Lots of faces.
"I like the ones with the people in them," Wilma said. "Toward the end of the book there are ones with people in logging camps and towns, and I like those the best. You look at their clothing and their hands and it's the best picture of the community."
Among the near 200 photos, several detail the region's strong relationship with the Sound. There is a picture of late Sen. Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson navigating a log on a beach in 1972. There's a 1931 photo of the George Washington Memorial Bridge (Aurora Bridge) in its final stages of assembly. There are numerous photos of ships people used for cargo, pleasure and war. There's a 1910 group photo of shingle weavers of the Carbon River Shingle Co. of Fairfax, Pierce County, most wearing workmen caps and overalls but smiling and welcoming. Some are holding children. The photo comes to life in a way as one child is a blur, unable to hold still as the photographer squeezed the button.
And there's another photo from 1942, capturing a more somber note in Washington and American history. It's of a Japanese child looking unimpressed at a soldier equipped with a rifle, a soldier charged with escorting the boy, his family and other neighbors of Japanese descent from their homes to internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho.
Pictures toward the end of the book bring to the foreground the ultimate modernization of Washington, particularly with the Century 21 World's Fair in Seattle. The state's ability to harness hydroelectric power was best illustrated at the fair's Pavilion of Electric Power where visitors were greeted by a 40-foot replica of a dam, its relief valves spewing a frothy waterfall.
Though Wilma spent years in San Francisco as a criminal investigator with the Drug Enforcement Agency and later with the Environmental Protection Agency, history has always been his passion. Books such as his "Historic Photos" allow him the latitude to explore history in a very real way.
Prior to "Historic Photos," Wilma chronicled a history of Seattle Children's Hospital. Beginning with the hand-written minutes of the 1907 board meetings of the trustees for the then named Children's Orthopedic Hospital (then located atop Queen Anne hill), Wilma gained a stunning and authentic perspective into Washington's unique past.
"I went through every one of their bi-weekly meetings, all hand-written minutes until 1947," Wilma said. "You see the trend of Seattle history and world history reflected in these minutes."
The hand-writing detailed the moment when a child was evacuated from Britain in 1940 after the London Blitz and how donations to the hospital that had been coming from Norway were suddenly cut off as a result of the German occupation there. There were notes detailing the influenza epidemic of 1918. And during the 1930s, when the nation was in the throes of the Depression, the hospital managed to stay afloat thanks to $5,000 and $10,000 anonymous donations.
"It wasn't until I came into it that it was revealed that it was Bill Boeing doing that," Wilma said. "It took 40 years for that story to come out."
Wilma is currently shopping for publishers for a period novel he has written called "Down the River" based on a real family story in which two of his ancestors were murdered over an argument over slaves. He is also talking to Turner Publishing about writing a history of the Columbia River.
Wilma will be on hand to sign, read and answer questions about "Historic Photos of Puget Sound" at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 11 at Queen Anne Books at 1811 Queen Anne. Ave. N. For more information visit www.queenannebooks.com.
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