Even more so than in summer, Discovery Park in winter is a wild and magical place.
Grasses and plants, parched from summer drought, revive in time to settle under their mulch of soggy leaves. Winds play through bare branches. Winter birds forage, and migrant stragglers make dark patterns in the trees as they seize another rest period before the next leg of their flight.
There are places in the park where only the most strident of city sounds penetrate. Noisy school groups tumble out of buses at park headquarters, then grow quiet as they discover what feels like a different planet.
As parks go, Discovery is relatively new. But a whole generation has grown up since the federal government turned the sprawling old military reservation over to the city of Seattle. Most of this generation knows that the original Fort Lawton had a long, if somewhat undramatic, history. But few know that it was once destined to become an anti-missile base with huge silos and support buildings.
Or that members of United Indians of All Tribes Foundation once climbed the fences and occupied the property, demanding ownership of the entire acreage.
Or that in the years since the property was declared surplus, an estimated 125 demands have been made for all or a piece of it.
Or that the same threats still exist.
In a house just over the rise from the park, in a room he calls both office and refuge, Robert E. Kildall is making sure future generations will know and remember.
"I don't think I have ever changed my ideas about Discovery Park," said Kildall, a lifelong resident of Magnolia and Queen Anne and a champion of Seattle parks in general.
At 83, Kildall is almost the last of a small group who - 30 and 40 years ago - dreamed, researched, studied, questioned, argued, prodded and literally fought to bring about this vast wilderness area for Seattle.
"As the city grows," he says, "as traffic worsens, as values change and urban stress increases, we need the tranquility of Discovery Park and its 'critters' to keep us whole."
Perhaps most of all, Kildall is concerned that Seattle's Parks and Recreation system remains a balanced one: "Discovery Park - and parks like Lincoln, Carkeek and Seward - should not be asked to [serve] too many functions to people. They should be left as places of quiet, places to actually feel and experience nature."
From the onset of discussions in the 1960s on "what to do with old Fort Lawton when it comes to us," Kildall has seen predominantly as a gatherer and disseminator of solid information - facts, figures, research, histories of other parks, urban studies.
Today all of this information is amassed on disks, collected in files, packets, boxes and books that line his office. Ring binders hold history and vignettes about Kiwanis Ravine, Commodore Park, Friends of Discovery Park, Magnolia Boulevard, madrona trees and information about Seattle parks in general.
Kildall has been involved in all of them, either through his years as president of the Seattle Board of Park Commissioners (1975-76, and a member before and after) and of the Magnolia Community Club, as founding president of Friends of Discovery Park and a member of other groups, or as a private citizen. His complete but concise history of Discovery Park appears in the "Magnolia History Book," published in 2000 by the Magnolia Community Club.
So where did this passion for city parks begin? If heritage has anything to do with it, it may go back to agrarian and seafaring roots in Norway.
Kildall can trace his family line back to 1619, in the area of Boda and the Lofoten Islands, above the Arctic Circle, and Trondheim. Like many Norwegians, the family was part of the great emigration to America in the late 1800s.
"My father's father was a pioneer in Washington state, arriving here in 1883," Kildall said. "My father's mother, Mary Jenkins Kildall, was born in California in 1872 of Welsh parents from Pennsylvania; she arrived in the Whatcom County area as a 6-month-old child. My mother was born in England of a Norwegian father and an English mother; they came here around 1911."
An interest in nature
Growing up a city boy on Queen Anne, Kildall read copiously, fueling his interest in nature and the outdoors. The books on his shelves today reflect that same interest: Thoreau, John Muir, Ben Franklin, several books on Frederick Law Olmsted of park-design fame.
And there is his favorite, Rachel Carson: "Carson pointed a direction, and I have bought into it," he said.
A graduate of Queen Anne High School who attended the University of Washington, Kildall and his wife, Ruth, have lived in Magnolia since 1965. They have three children: Katie, Maria and Kristian. Katie and her husband, Tom Bucy, have two sons, and Maria and her husband, Orson Bonilla, welcomed a daughter on Oct. 6. Son Kristian and his wife, Makiko, live in Taipei, Taiwan, where Kristian translates Chinese to English for the Taiwanese government.
Kildall first met Ruth at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962; she was a lead receptionist in the Danish Exhibit.
Ruth, too, has been a dedicated activist over the years: animal rights, gun control and opposition to the death penalty. Kildall owned and operated Olympic Distributors company - a copy machine sales and service - for nearly 50 years, having started it in the basement of his home on Fifth Avenue West.
Robert Clubine, another Queen Anne High School graduate, became a partner in the '70s, buying the balance of the business in December 1999.
A 'jewel of a park'
Besides Discovery Park, there is another - a small park in Magnolia that is dear to Kildall's heart.
A "jewel of a park," he calls Commodore Park, tucked into the Magnolia side of the Chittenden Locks. It opens a whole new approach and viewing area to the busy Locks traffic.
It started with an announcement of a rezoning to permit development of a large apartment building on the site. Kildall and Dr. Roger Thompson, a Magnolia optometrist, went to the city to prevent the change from going through.
"We won that battle," Kildall remembers, "but had absolutely no money to buy the property for a park."
It so happened that 1967 marked the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Locks. For Kildall, Thompson, Howard Vierling and other members of the Magnolia Community Club, that seemed an ideal opportunity to showcase this south side of the Locks.
The Corps of Army Engineers cooperated, and a three-day celebration - held over the Fourth of July holiday - brought Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson as a speaker and crowds of visitors.
The original money for the anniversary celebration came when four Community Club board members, including Kildall, each signed a $500 interest-free note at a Magnolia bank. Vierling had proposed the idea of selling souvenir medallions, and the club threw its support behind the sale.
The bank advanced the money; later, additional funds came from the Forward Thrust fund, the Army Corps of Engineers and Washington state. Enough medallion-sales money was raised that club president Pat Cook was able to present Mayor Norm Braman a check for $2,000 as "seed" money for the new park - which, of course, became a charming, much-used one. (Other medallion funds created three triangle parks in Magnolia.)
Crucial dates
In the "Magnolia History Book" is a six-page chronology of Discovery Park's history, starting with 1896, when the Secretary of War announced that Magnolia Bluff was to be the location for a new Army fort, and ending with the death of Indian leader Bernie Whitebear in 2000.
When Kildall is asked which dates are most crucial, he pauses.
"Most crucial?" he repeated. Then, after some thought, he said: "I would have to say the Christmas of 1968 and what I like to call 'the arrival of the Three Wise Men.'"
On Dec. 18 of that year, the Department of Defense announced that the former Fort Lawton in Seattle was no longer one of several sites favored for an anti-ballistic missile site. Beside the site's proximity to a large urban area, the plan would have meant construction of huge silos and a large number of support buildings on a completely flattened 300 acres.
Three University of Washington scientists - Dr. Greg Dash, Dr. Phil Ekstrom and Dr. Ed Stern - played a significant role in the federal decision to abandon the ABM base at the Fort. Dr. Stern was sent back to Washington, D.C., to meet with Pentagon officials. The combination of the scientists' knowledge, the citizens' efforts and Sen. Jackson's support convinced the Department of Defense to make the Christmas week announcement.
Another milestone came in February 1972 when Dan Urban Kiley, recognized as the foremost landscape architect in America, presented his Master Plan for Discovery Park to the city.
And what about the occupation of the fort by the United Indians of All Tribes?
"It was not exactly crucial, but it certainly was dramatic," said Kildall. "Actually, Bernie Whitebear and I became good friends even though I told him early on I could not support any of his demands. But we respected each other."
He remembers well that morning in March 1970. "When I realized they were actually climbing the fences and occupying the grounds, I called Bernie: 'Why didn't you tell me you were going to do it?'"
"It was a secret," Kildall remembers Whitebear replying.
"Secret?" demanded Kildall. "You've got every TV channel out there, there are reporters and photographers from every newspaper and the place is swarming with police and soldiers from Fort Lewis. Some secret!"
"Well," retorted Whitebear, "there was an Uncle Tommyhawk in the group."
Kildall recollects: "I told him that if he'd called me, I could have told him that the Indians climbing the bluffs on 40th West would only reach the homes above. The park was the other direction!"
Memories and vignettes swirl among facts and dates; all are painstakingly recorded. Some of Kildall's papers from the early days are in the University of Washington archives. So are papers of Thomas O. Wimmer, for whom the state Thomas O. Wimmer Award for Long Term Environmental Excellence is named (Kildall is a recipient), and those of Donald S. Voorhees, whom Kildall credits as "father of Discovery Park."
Voorhees "led the fight" to establish the park. Kildall added that "the first time I met him I thought, 'I have never met an angel before.'"
The future
Perhaps better than anyone, Kildall knows the dangers that lie ahead for Discovery Park. "The biggest danger is the city itself."
He pointed to New York's Central Park. "It is a great park, but it could have been a magnificent park if the city hadn't gotten careless and chipped away at it for so many uses."
Kildall believes writing letters to newspapers and city officials is an effective means of communicating one's concerns. "Even if letters prompt negative replies," he said, "it's still good, for it may prompt more letters from others in reply."
Kildall's hope is that generations to come will find the same inspiration and motivation he draws from these words from the introduction to the Kiley Master Plan for Discovery Park: "The site is one of breathtaking beauty ... [its] seclusion ... the magnificent vistas, the stretch of tidal beaches, the stands of native trees, the meadowlands - all combine to make this site one of surpassing beauty and serenity. As a park site, its potential is bounded only by the vision and resolution of those into whose hands it is entrusted."
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