73 from 38

Best Regards

I am going to buy a tile and here is what I will have inscribed upon it:

IN MEMORY ROBERT HELM
MY STADIUM LIFE LONG PAL - 1939
ALLAN G. -BUDDY-EMMONS

Here is how it all started. My father was transferred to Tacoma from
Seattle. We moved to Tacoma the day before school started. I knew no
one here. Never saw Stadium before, didn't know how to get there from
our new home on North Lawrence Street.

I took the Sixth avenue street car to the Roxy Theatre then transferred
to the Pt Defiance Street car and finally found my way to Stadium High
School. First person I met there that took any interest in me, was Bob
Helm. He helped me around and introduced me to some of his friends.
After school I met him again and he invited me to walk home with him and
some of his friends. Eddie Blake, Steve Smith were a couple of them, who
became very good friends until I lost track of them during World war II.
But I always wrote and visited with Bob. After that first day We walked
back and forth to school together every day.

Bob died a year ago last April. He and I had lunch together in Spokane
just a couple weeks before his passing.

I had quite a life. Went to the U of W for one year. Migraine
headaches drove me crazy. Jobs were scarce . I knew enough about
railroad station work and telegraph to go into that field, but there
were no openings. I spent six months "breaking in" on my own time and no
pay. Finally was hired by the Northern Pacific Railroad part time extra
work at 67 cents an hour working seven days a week and no overtime..
That was union wages. .

Radio was my hobby and by this time was a pretty good Morse and
International code operator.

I enlisted in the army in 1943 and spent two years in Italy as Net
control radio operator handling fire missions for the 91st Infantry
Division Artillery. All front line duty. Our gun batteries were always
located a couple miles to our rear.

Went back to work for the NP Railway and BN, and made one heck of a good
living repairing the new invention, Television, but always kept my RR
job.

Have been retired now 27 years. Thanks to television and a good railroad
pension my wife and I have a very comfortable living.

And so it goes. Guess it all started at the Castle.



First we went to the 100th anniversary of Stadium High School Get
together. We couldn't believe the turn out. Thousands and Thousands.
We couldn't get parked closer than half mile away. Think the class of
1922 had one person there. Our class of 1938 there was about 15. I knew
three of them Getting in and out of the renovated, at a cost of 100
million bucks, school was not easy. The outside of the school was not
touched. The original 115 year old "Hotel" had every original brick that
the Northern Pacific put together.

A little history. In the late 1880s, Tacoma was thought to be the big
city in Puget Sound and the NP Railway bet their shirt on it. Being a land
grant railroad, they owned most of Tacoma down to McCarver Street, (Old
Tacoma) including all the tide lands and waterways. The NP was to make a
bundle selling this free land granted by the US government to the lumber
companies and others who would pay the price asked by the NP. Along comes
Jim Hill and his Great Northern Empire Builder and makes his terminal in
Seattle, Ha, says Jim Hill. You are going to see grass grow on your
Pacific Avenue, Mr. NP RY. Seattle is going to be THE City on Puget
Sound. and Seattle offered the tide lands free to the developers. The
rest is history and Here stands this beautiful hotel that the NP invested
in and going broke. So the NP, in 1904 or 5 , sold the hotel to the city
of Tacoma for a "song." Tacoma made a high school out of it and first
class was 1906. Many presidents visited Stadium, made speeches from the
stadium itself and many famous people graduated from Stadium, Bing Crosby
was one and I was another.

OK. We had a fun day at Stadium High School. It doesn't look anything
like the interior. used to look, and it now offers many classes in arts
and crafts. All we had there was wood shop, a metal shop, and I think a
print shop where we learned to set type.

The Puyallup Fair was fun. We had one of the famous hamburgers, and a
couple ice cream cones. Looked over the animals and walked a couple
miles around the place.

73 ( Best Regards... RR code talk)

Love,

Buddy & Frances Emmons
Class of 1938

Memories@CelebrateStadium.com

CelebrateStadium.com