Historians – help?

[WSB]

Was just caught up in a Twitter conversation about Clint Eastwood apparently having some roots here. Multiple references that he worked for Bethlehem Steel in Seattle, which seems to be the old Nucor Plant, after getting out of high school and joining his parents for a while in Seattle. But did he live in West Seattle? Can’t find any references to where in Seattle his family lived … I know some awesome oldtimers and history buffs are among the Forum community so asking you all. My Web research has to go on hold while I work on a couple more news stories for the main page … thanks in advance … TR

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[JanS]

Have no knowledge of Clint Eastwood, but yes, Nucor used to be Bethlehem Steel. Hence, the Star of Bethlehem, which was started way back then with them, and carried on by Nucor..

Gina?

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[pattilea]

….. ………’s profile photo

….. ……… – Apr 13, 2011 –

Google Reader

– Public

Clint Eastwood swam here – The Sammamish Review – News, Sports, Classifieds in Sammamish, WA

New: April 13, 10:17 a.m.

Ever hear that Clint Eastwood taught lifeguard training classes at the National Red Cross Aquatic School held at Beaver Lake one summer? It’s true, and a little research not only adds details to the story but provides pictures of a young Eastwood at Beaver Lake just before his leap from obscurity to celebrity.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco in 1930. He graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949, about the same time his parents moved to Seattle. He opted not to follow, instead working various jobs up and down the West Coast, including working as a lifeguard and later teaching lifeguard training classes.

Clint Eastwood, kneeling third from right, kneling, taught lifeguard training classes at Beaver Lake in 1953. Courtesy King County Archives

But he did spend some time in Seattle. He was a lifeguard at Renton’s Kennydale Beach in the summer of 1949 or 1950, and even then he had no trouble attracting women. George Wyse, the athletic supervisor for King County who hired Eastwood for the Kennydale gig, explained years later in an interview: “He was a nice-looking young kid, well-built. He drew quite a gang of young ladies around him.”

Eastwood was drafted into the Army some months after the Korean War broke out in the summer of 1950. But he stayed stateside during the war, and by the summer of 1953 was back in Seattle and living with his parents at 1917 33rd Ave. S. in Seattle, near Colman Park. In June 1953, he taught lifeguard training at the Red Cross Aquatic School at Beaver Lake.

It was quite a coup in 1939 when Gus and Lulu Bartels, owners of Beaver Lake’s Four Seasons Resort, successfully negotiated with the Red Cross to select Beaver Lake as its permanent Northwest location for its aquatic school. (In 1954, the year after Eastwood’s stint at Beaver Lake, the Issaquah Press reported that there were only five such schools in the country.)

Ten-day classes were held at Beaver Lake in mid-to-late June for many years between 1939 and 1956, though it’s not clear if they were held there every single year.

The 1953 aquatic school began on June 16 and ended on June 26. Thirty-nine trainees from as far away as Utah participated, representing police departments, Northwest industries, and youth groups. Participants plunked down $45 ($375 in 2011 dollars) for the course.

This also covered room and board at the resort, which had been purchased in 1950 by Dick and Ruth Anderson and renamed Andy’s Beaver Lake Resort (usually just called Andy’s). Trainees could choose to specialize in first aid or water safety work.

Eastwood evidently taught both classes, and two pictures of him at work appear in the Seattle Times on June 27, 1953. One shows him demonstrating artificial respiration with a group of other instructors, while the other is a pleasing close-up of Eastwood demonstrating a pair of “water wings,” wet knotted pants with its legs filled with air, that serve as an effective flotation device in the absence of a life vest.

Water safety instruction at the school also included survival techniques using a dishpan, and using heavy boots.

The weather was cool and rainy for nearly the entire course, and the classes weren’t easy. The instructors were “lifebuoys” and the trainees “scum,” and the lifebuoys kept the scum on their toes, for example delighting in keeping them out in a cold wind and rain for almost two hours while drilling them on the intricacies of canoe instruction.

But it wasn’t all work and no play. A couple of evenings both lifebuoys and scum joined together for costume parties, and meals were occasions for joking and singing. Another evening near the end of the course the lifebuoys initiated the scum, officiated by a freshwater King Neptune. The school may have also put on a public demonstration of water safety and first aid techniques on Sunday, June 21. Press accounts describe such Sunday public demonstrations during other years, including 1954, but don’t mention it in 1953.

Eastwood returned to Kennydale Beach after the aquatic school ended and worked as a lifeguard there for at least some part of the summer of 1953. But his life soon changed. By the end of 1953 he was married and living in Los Angeles — and you know the rest of the story.

And what otherwise would be a long-forgotten Red Cross training course at Beaver Lake instead became a singular thread in the tapestry of Sammamish history.

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[metrognome]

“Meanwhile the war’s end had brought new prosperity, especially along the rapidly growing Pacific coast, where jobs were plentiful, wages generous, and mobility upward. Clinton Sr. found work with the California Container Corporation, was quickly caught up in the flow of automatic promotions, and soon was offered a major managerial post in the company’s main plant, in Seattle. Together he and Ruth and fourteen-year-old Jeanne packed up the house and loaded the car for the drive to Seattle.

Clint didn’t want to go, and because he had graduated, he said he didn’ t have to. Harry Pendleton’s parents agreed to let him stay with them for a while. Harry and Clint had been friends since junior high school and long hung with the same crowd. With his family in Seattle, his education finished, and no clear plan for the future, Clint was, in his own words, “really adrift.” He found a job on the night shift at Bethlehem Steel, tending the blast furnaces, then moved to the day shift at Boeing Aircraft. For the next two years these hard and charmless jobs kept him in cars, girls, and music, allowing him to roam aimlessly through his early twenties unfocused and unconcerned, the perfect West Coast rebel without a care.

Then, in 1950, border hostilities broke out in Korea, and the United States began a massive buildup of forces in Seoul. Knowing his A1 military status made him a prime target for the draft, Clint’s unlikely next goal was to go back to college, to get a student exemption. He moved up to Seattle and in with his parents to enroll at Seattle University. He figured he might major in music, since nothing else held any appeal. But his grades weren’t good enough, and he was told he’d have to attend junior college as a nonmatriculated, part-time student, which would not be enough to earn him the draft exemption. He then moved back to Oakland and made a last-ditch personal appeal to his local draft board, to convince them he had every intention of attending college full time.”

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/american-rebel-marc-eliot/1102340104

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[WSB]

Found that last one … not the one with the address. Thank you all! – TR

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[metrognome]

Eastwood left Fort Ord in the spring of 1951 and moved back up to Seattle where he worked as a lifeguard for some time. However, as he had little money and few friends in Seattle, he moved down to Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_work_of_Clint_Eastwood (the info is from a book by someone named McGilligan, but Wiki does not provide an entire citation that I can find.)

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[metrognome]

found it: Patrick McGilligan, Clint: The Life and Legend, St. Martin’s Press: New York (1999)

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[metrognome]

HistoryLink reprinted the article in post 3 with pictures and reference citations

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9803

http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations/archives/exhibits/athome12.aspx

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[pattilea]

I loved reading this, I had no idea his was fairly local!!

Happy Christmas to all

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[hopey]

I find it interesting that King County has no public records regarding ownership or sale of the home at that address. The only exception is a deed of trust related to an unrecorded/unavailable sale in 2007. So it’s entirely possible that address was Clint’s parent’s home. He has been such a huge celebrity for so long, it sorta makes sense that the county would have long ago made the decision to shield those records. But of course, that also means we have no way of proving whether or not it’s true.

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[WSB]

The county actually doesn’t shield famous people’s homeownership that I can tell. I did note one currently prominent person’s case in which eventually the home was transferred to a “trustee” so the megastar’s name no longer appeared on the rolls. – TR

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[hopey]

Agreed — if true, this would be the first case I’ve run across. (And I think you know about my little “hobby.” ;) ) However, it is suspicious that there are no county records at all save the one deed from 2007. With most celebrities you can still find historical records for the properties. For this property, there is nothing. I sort of wonder if it’s a remnant of an earlier policy, or a one-off request to shield the records. Clint Eastwood has been a megastar for decades longer than any of our local, more recent celebrities.

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