Longtime SPU
Friendships
Thrive at
Warm Beach
"Many of Us
Grew Up
Together; Now
We're Growing Older
Together"
By Alice
Kalso '72
Alice Kalso is the
director of
community
relations at Warm
Beach Senior
Community
When Merlin Belcher '34 (right) visits Warm Beach neighbor Cliff Roloff '30, a favorite topic of conversation is Seattle Pacific. |
Long before computers, faxes and espresso stands, Seattle Pacific students and professors forged friendships which bloom today in retirement. At Warm Beach Senior Community near Stanwood, Washington, 95 of the 362 residents are alumni, former students, retired professors or retired staff of Seattle Pacific - arguably the second largest concentration of SPU "family" in the world.
Professor Emeritus Cliff Roloff can't walk outside his Warm Beach mobile home without hearing the familiar greeting students used for 30 years: "Hello, Prof Roloff." And when fellow alumnus Merlin Belcher appears in his doorway, the talk inevitably turns to Seattle Pacific.
Roloff recalls how as a small child he watched grown-ups pitch a tent on Seattle Pacific grounds for the Free Methodist annual camp meeting. That was during World War I. Another milestone, he says, happened at a camp meeting in Oregon in 1944, when Seattle Pacific President C. Hoyt Watson asked Roloff to return to teach at his alma mater.
Belcher's stories are set in the '30s, when he attended "normal" school in preparation for teaching. He tells of the nights he and his buddies sneaked out of the dorm to sleep on the beach at Golden Gardens; and the fall and spring revivals, with students accepting Christ and making renewed commitments. "From the time I was 12 years old, I heard the phrase, 'When you go to Seattle Pacific. Not if you go to Seattle Pacific, but when," he says.
Now Roloff and Belcher live 100 miles to the north on a ninety-acre "campus" where eagles nest in Douglas Fir trees, and deer saunter across the lawn. Residents of the senior community, located close to the Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center, range in age from 65 to 90. Some live in mobile homes, others in apartments, and still others in an assisted living facility and a skilled nursing center.
What draws so many Seattle Pacific alumni and professors to this place? In part it's the close community that mirrors college life in the '30s, '40s and '50s, when Seattle Pacific's enrollment was between 120 and 350 students.
"Many of us grew up together. And now we're growing older together," explains Belcher.
In the Garden Room, where he eats his main meal of the day, Belcher is likely to see Vic Macy, longtime missionary to Africa, and Lyle Northrup, who at 90 is the oldest living graduate at Warm Beach. Today Jeanne (Snodgrass) Kreider, who worked at SPU before retiring in 1987, is the volunteer waitress. She is taking beverage orders for Professor Emeritus Don McNichols and his wife, Lydia, long-time Seattle Pacific registrar.
"People think Warm Beach is a group of older people with one foot on a banana peel, and the other on a grave," says Margaret Hanlen Breitenbach, whose Seattle Pacific memories take her back to the late '30s and early '40s, when her Warm Beach neighbor Esther Hammer Helsel taught the girls' physical education class. "But this is actually a very active community with lots to do and interesting places nearby."
Breitenbach works alongside alumnae Lu Gilbert and Anna Overholdt to plan the Annual Bazaar, which raises thousands of dollars for the facility. Dellno and Jeanne Kreider head to Mexico in the spring to do missions work, often joined by Bob and Yvonne McDowell, Arlo and Della Tiede, Walter and Esther Helsel, and other alumni. They work on building projects at Rancho Betania, a Free Methodist campground.
As busy as these Warm Beach residents are, they love to talk about their lifetime connections to SPU and each other. For Della Tiede, who studied nursing at SPC and later headed the School of Nursing, her college days built her faith. "I was raised in the Free Methodist Church and really hadn't grown up until I could get away and develop my own faith. Seattle Pacific equipped me to do that."
Professor Emeritus Gustave Breitenbach, a 1941 graduate and husband of Margaret, tells of the honor of having Professor Philip Ashton ask him in 1958 to return there to teach. He stayed 22 years, beginning in 1959. "The school had done so much for my wife and I. It had molded us and we felt like we wanted to give something back. I've never regretted the decision."
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