THE MAPLE

LEAFA QUARTERLY PUBLICATION OF YOUR COMMUNITY COUNCILwww.mapleleafcommunity.org | mapleleafcommunitycouncil@gmail.comSP

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OUR COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO The Maple Leaf Community Council aligns our

efforts with local, national, and international guidelines to combat the spread of the Corona Virus. Here are some tips and actions:COVID-19

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1 DO THE FIVE

REMAIN VIGILANT

PRACTICE SOCIAL DISTANCING BUT STAY CONNECTED

We are all neighbors here in Maple Leaf and we take pride in caring for one another. While still observing appropriate guidelines, we encourage you to “watch out” for one another, especially the elderly and those most susceptible by COVID-19. Support your local business, again, while adhering to health and safety guidelines.

1 HANDS Wash them often2 ELBOW Cough into it3 FACE Don’t touch it4 FEET Stay more than 6 ft apart5 FEEL Sick? Stay home

(Source: World Health Organization)

We strongly encourage our community to follow the directives and guidelines from our local agencies regarding community events. While it’s important to reduce the amount of activity and movement that may exacerbate the spread of the virus, we are also mindful of the need to stay “connected”. Find creative ways to stay in touch through “FaceTime” or electronic platforms.

OUR ACTIONS:CANCELLATION OF EASTER EGG HUNT In the best interest of public safety and after conferring with organizers of the event, we decided to support the cancellation of this year’s Maple Leaf Egg Hunt. We look forward to seeing everyone next year on April 3, 2021. Thank you all for understanding.

MODIFIED MEETINGS/INTERACTIONS As a council, we’ve limited our interaction with one another by holding meetings and gatherings online. Our spring general meeting is currently scheduled for April 22, but check the MLCC website for updates if the meeting is canceled or postponed.

CONNECTING COMMUNITY We are facilitating our community’s desire to offer help to those most in need within acceptable guidelines and directives from officials.

Maple Leaf Park, above the Maple Leaf Reservoir Vault, is only seven years old, but blackberries have already started to get a foothold, and trees are growing above the concrete vault where they are not allowed. Maple Leaf Park has the opportunity to be a jewel in the crown of the city park system with the incredible views and a popular loop trail. The Seattle Parks Department is interested in updating the park landscaping but needs to see enough community support before dedicating resources to the effort. Improving the “wave meadows” with a diverse selection of flowering native perennials could increase the beauty of the park and provide an improved habitat for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife. The vision is to reinvigorate the park with removal of the many invasive weeds in the tall-grass meadows and raingardens and replace those exotics with natives that are adapted to the well-drained soils above the vault or wet soils of the rain gardens. Some possible plants for the tall-grass meadows are goldenrod, lupine, and camas. In the rain gardens, we can

SEEKING MAPLE LEAF PARK STEWARDS

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BY ROB STEVENS, Community Member

replace the thickets of blackberries with redosier dogwood, pacific ninebark, hardhack, black twinberry, mock orange, red flowering currant, and goatsbeard. I have already begun conversations with the Parks department but need to recruit advocates who are passionate about native plants in the park and who can volunteer to help invigorate the park with new plantings. Please contact Rob Stevens at robstevens5@comcast.net if you are interested in helping out or have any ideas how to improve the park. We hope to have work parties next fall to plant some select natives. (And don’t worry, we already have someone passionate about pulling blackberries!)

STEWARDSHIP: Let’s keep the beauty of our beloved park by helping maintain the lush gardens.

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Who doesn’t love a maple tree? One stood tall and lush in our front yard when I was a child. Its leaves grew to be enormous and green, then yellow and brilliant autumn orange, their sturdy stems becoming curled handles to pick up and twirl. Combing the woods across the street for trees to climb, we kids gravitated to maples. Big branches. No sticky pitch.Such notably Northwest nuances underlie the fondness bred in residents of Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood, especially for its sizeable symbol: the water tower and now-empty (!) tank at the southeast corner of Northeast 88th Street and Roosevelt Way.

Erected in 1949 to replace two smaller ones built in about 1915, the tank was painted by the city in 1986 with a pleasing pattern of interlocking white maple leaves on a sky-blue background. The adornment followed a national distinction secured by then-Mayor Charles Royer, the naming of Maple Leaf as Neighborhood of the Year over 2,000 other contestants by Nashville-based Neighborhoods USA.The Seattle Times editorially saluted the honor, appropriating the melody of “Seattle,” the Perry Como hit, with substitute lyrics that included “full of houses, full of trees / full of homespun families / and an absence of yuppies …”Certainly “yuppies,” a term emerging in the 1980s, were scarce when our “Then” photo was taken, not long after 1949 and looking southeast toward the tank as it presided over an enormous, open-air, ground-level reservoir completed in 1910. The image evinces a nearly rural air, with scattered structures and byway businesses offering garden supplies and gasoline, supplemented by a low billboard for General Tire downtown.

In fact, one could – and still can – stand near the foot of the tank and see downtown, for Maple Leaf, at 446 feet above sea level, is essentially tied with Queen Anne as the third highest hill in Seattle.

The neighborhood’s boundaries, distinct on the sides (Interstate 5 and Lake City Way), are fuzzier south to north (roughly from Northeast 80th to Northgate). But its soul is singular, says Donna Hartmann-Miller, who worked at legendarily friendly Maple Leaf Hardware and for 10 years led the local community council’s shaping of the modern, 16-acre Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, a $55 million project dedicated in 2013 that included covering of the reservoir.Meanwhile, worried that the tank – which held eight million pounds of water 100 feet aloft – would falter in an earthquake, Seattle drained it in 2009. Today, a nearby antenna tower generates city revenue.

Anything but empty is the tank’s imposing civic appeal. “It’s balanced and symmetrical – it’s Americana,” Hartmann-Miller says. “Everybody talks about it with affection.” Just like, perhaps, a maple leaf.

EMPTY TANK HOLDS A RESERVOIR OF AFFECTION IN MAPLE LEAF BY CLAY EALS, Community Member

THEN & NOW

THEN: Our auto informant Bob Carney identifies a 1942 Nash awaiting a fill-up in this photo looking southeast from Northeast 88th Street and Roosevelt Way. Likely taken shortly after 1949, the image features the recently erected Maple Leaf water tank and, to its right, a sliver of the open-air reservoir.

NOW: Standing next to popular Cloud City Coffee and in front of the yellowing deciduous leaves of early fall is Donna Hartmann-Miller, who led input of the community council, www.mapleleafcommunity.org, for the design of Maple Leaf Reservoir Park. Pointing to the park’s icon – its illustrated and now-empty water tank – she says, “I like getting the community involved in things. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” JEAN SHERRAR

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column was first published Nov. 3, 2019, in Pacif-icNW magazine of the Seattle Times. Please visit www.pauldorpat.com for more information and to read more interesting articles and tidbits.

Hey Maple Leaf business owners and managers!

I am the second generation owner of Math ’n’ Stuff, looking to carry on my mother’s legacy and continue improving our relationship with the community. I have talked with several other businesses already and I feel there is a huge opportunity for us to connect with one another and to collaborate in order to serve one another as well as the neighborhood in bigger and better ways than any of us could do on our own.

My idea is twofold: a forum for news updates and business connection, and a commerce committee that would partner with the MLCC on various initiatives and events. I see this as a great way to strengthen our relationship with one another and with residents, as well as to expand our business opportunities through the exposure of events that draw people here from outside our neighborhood. All forums and activities will be on an opt-in basis. I will reach out to business members with an email invitation before the April general meeting. Looking forward to building on the great community we already have!

A LETTER FROM THE CO-PRESIDENT:CONNECTING COMMUNITY BYBRYAN HELFER, MLCC Co-President Dear neighbors,

Hi, this is Bryan, writing again as Co-President of our Maple Leaf Community Council (MLCC). I often gets asked what we do on the MLCC. The short answer is that we connect our community.

The long answer is that we are a small group of volunteers who have worked hard to restart our neighborhood newsletter, keep the summer social alive and well, hold quarterly general meetings at Olympic View Elementary, and support our neighbors with community events such as the Egg Hunt and Costume Parade. We even got our website revamped and learned how to communicate to community members via email - big steps!  One of the most important goals for us is to provide an opportunity for all neighbors to have their voices heard - in this newsletter you will find neighbors who are working to improve their community and get the word out about the neighborhood we all share. We are amazed by the continued support of our local businesses and everyone volunteering or contributing as a donating member - every dollar we receive goes right back to the community and we hope you all feel a little more connected as a result. Please consider becoming member if you have not already done so.  

BY MIKAELA WINGARD-PHILLIPS Community member

CONNECTING BUSINESSES OF MAPLE LEAF

For anyone interested in further involvement, we would love to grow our small board as we have open seats to fill and work to get done. Board membership is open to anyone in the neighborhood willing to show up and work with us - we meet on the second Monday of each month in the basement of the Eagles on Lake City Way at 7:30pm. Attendance at least two meetings is required before a vote by the Board of Directors.

We also have a need to store a filing cabinet that contains historical documents for MLCC - this filing cabinet is currently sitting in our former president’s garage and we are long overdue to find another home for it. If there is a business or home that might have additional space to house these documents containing Maple Leaf history, we would really appreciate you reaching out to us and letting us know.  Thanks again to everyone for their efforts in making Maple Leaf such a special place. If anyone is interested in board service, offering a home for our historical documents, orjust curious with any questions, please do not hesitate to attend one of our boardmeetings or email us at MapleLeafCommunityCouncil@gmail.com.  Thanks!

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A coalition has formed to ask the City of Seattle to rename “Maple Leaf Reservoir Park Baseball/Softball Fields #1 and #2” as “The Will Stacey Fields at Maple Leaf Park.”

Will Stacey was a fixture of Seattle youth baseball at these fields. A lifelong resident of the Roosevelt neighborhood and an outstanding baseball player, Will was an all-star for the Roosevelt-University-Green Lake (RUG) Little League every year from 1998 until 2003. He played varsity baseball for Roosevelt High School, earning all-KingCo Conference honors his senior year.

Will was an extraordinary Marine Corps leader who touched many lives. He joined the Marines six months after graduating from Roosevelt. In his five years of active duty, he served four combat tours to Afghanistan and deployed with a United Nations force bringing aid supplies to Burmese refugees. Highly decorated and meritoriously promoted three times, at 22 Will became one of the youngest sergeants in the Corps. As an embedded journalist who accompanied Will’s squad wrote after Will’s death, “there is no doubt in my mind that his cold competence, his charisma and cool under fire, his wisdom so beyond his years…kept the men under his command alive.” Will gave his life in 2012 while going ahead of his Marines to check for explosive devices.

To learn more about Will and how you can help our effort in naming the fields for him—including by lending your name to a community letter—please visit https://www.staceyfield.com.

BY PAUL OTAL, Community member

A PROPOSAL FOR THE WILL STACEY FIELDS AT MAPLE LEAF PARK

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Will Stacey was a lifelong resident of our neighborhood and served his country in the Marine Corps. He was an all-star with RUG Little Leage every year from 1998-2003.

MAPLE LEAF PHOTO CHALLENGE Calling all neighbors with a camera! Yes, even the small kind that fit into your pocket that you occasionally use to make a phone call with. We’re excited to announce our first ever Maple Leaf Photo Challenge! The theme is “Maple Leaf at its Best”.

Everyone is eligible to participate – kids, teens, and adults alike! The MLCC Executive Board will vote on the top three photos, and the three winning photos will be featured in the Summer newsletter, our Facebook page, and on our website, mapleleafcommunity.org. The first place winner will receive a gift certificate to the Maple Leaf restaurant of their choice.

Submission deadline:

Friday, May 8, 2020

Here are the rules:

• One submission per person

• Email your photo to mapleleafcommunitycouncil@gmail.com

• Provide a few details about your photo (e.g. where was it taken, who is in it, etc.) and why you think it represents Maple Leaf at its Best.

• Try to size your image to be between 1-5 MB

• Photos will be judged based on: adherence to the theme, originality, creativity, artistic expression, quality, and audience appeal

BECOME A MEMBER OF THE MLCCSupport our efforts to keep Maple Leaf a great place to live, work, and play. You will also receive emails to stay up-to-date on our efforts. Become a member at www.mapleleafcommunity.org (preferred) or by mailing in this membership form.

We rely on membership fees to pursue activities and projects including Community Meetings, the Summer Social, the newsletter, various community projects, and other operating expenses. We appreciate your support!

Below are recommended membership levels based on your household. Please choose the one that fits best for your personal financial situation. We also appreciate any additional donation you are able to make to support our efforts.

Your membership in the Maple Leaf Community Council is important, and we aim to be the best stewards of the money we receive. We use it to cover the costs of printing this newsletter (subsidized by our awesome business ads!) hosting our annual neighborhood Summer Social, hosting General Meetings at Olympic View, and for other important administrative and operating costs such as hosting our website, having a PO mailbox, purchasing insurance for events we host, etc. To become a member go to: mapleleafcommunity.org/become-a-member/ or fill out the form on the back of this newsletter and mail it in.

Become a Member of the MLCC! Support our efforts to keep Maple Leaf a great place to live, work, and play. You will also receive emails to stay up-to-date on our efforts. Become a member at www.mapleleafcommunity.org (preferred) or by mailing in this membership form.

We rely on membership fees to pursue activities and projects including Community Meetings, the Summer Social, the newsletter, various community projects, and other operating expenses. We appreciate your support!

Below are recommended membership levels based on your household. Please choose the one that fits best for your personal financial situation. We also appreciate any additional donation you are able to make to support our efforts.

Name:

Email*: *email is necessary for us to track membership and send communications. If you have one, please provide it. We will never sell it or spam you.

Household ($40) Individual ($25)

Student ($5) Senior ($5)

Business ($75) Other ($______)

Additional Donation

($______)

Would you like to volunteer your time to any of the following?

Transportation and Land Use

Public Safety and Crime

Fundraising efforts

Communications, Website, Social Media

Newsletter – writing, distributing

Event planning (e.g. Summer Social)

Emergency Preparation and Response

Join the MLCC Board of Directors

Other: ___________________________

Please make your check out to “Maple Leaf Community Council.” Send it, along with this form, to: PO Box 75595, Seattle, WA 98175. OR (preferred): visit mapleleafcommunity.org/become-a-member/