A Gathering Place For All -- Northwesterners Have Long Trekked To Seabeck To Recharge Their Spirit And Sense Of Community

For more information on the Inn Restoration Campaign, call the Seabeck Christian Conference Center at 1-360-830-5010 (or toll free from Seattle, 842-0346), or write to the center at P.O. Box 117, Seabeck, WA 98380.

SEABECK, Kitsap County - The first hint something's askew might be the door leading into the kitchen of the old Seabeck Inn.

Shaved so many times to fit the shifting and settling of the building, the door no longer is rectangular. It is a trapezoid.

There are other signs of the inn's aging: the cracked walls of the lobby, the floor of the dining room that sags and buckles at certain points, the building's draftiness.

But tear it down? No way, say generations of Northwesterners who have come to this bucolic setting overlooking Hood Canal. There are too many memories, too much history, too many friendships made around the inn's stone fireplace to fathom that possibility.

So friends and supporters of The Inn at the Seabeck Christian Conference Center have mounted a $1.06 million campaign to restore the historic building, erected as a hotel and saloon in 1869 when Seabeck was a bustling mill town and shipbuilding center.

The mill burned to the ground in 1886. Since 1915, the 90-acre Seabeck grounds have been used for camps, conferences and retreats by the YMCA, YWCA and myriad religious groups, schools and nonprofit organizations from throughout the region.

"It is a place to go to be at peace," to foster family togetherness and to build community, said Dr. John Rieke, a Seattle cancer specialist and member of the restoration campaign's volunteer steering committee.

Of all the turn-of-the-century buildings that still dot the retreat center, none is more meaningful than the Inn, said Rieke.

"The Inn is just absolutely the focal point of the Seabeck experience. It provides the touchstone for everyone there," said Rieke, whose grandfather, the late John E. Rieke, was secretary of the West Seattle YMCA and one of the founders of the conference center.

The Rev. Dale Turner, emeritus pastor of University Congregational Church in Seattle and honorary chairman of the Inn Restoration Campaign, described the brown clapboard building's lobby, front porch and family-style dining room as the spots where friendships are made and deepened, common meals are shared and songs of joy are sung. He said repairs need to be made now so the inn "can go on for another 100 years."

Some $525,000 in cash and pledges have been raised so far. The campaign, with its goal of $1,065,000, is due to cut off at the end of this summer, said Larry Hill, the Seabeck center's executive director.

The Inn's needs are obvious. Not only are there large cracks in the walls, but there are only two restrooms and four showers for a sleeping area that can accommodate 32 people. The building's post-and-beam foundation is weak and bug-infested, said Hill. There are no fire sprinklers. And the upstairs sleeping quarters are not wheelchair-accessible, a major hitch for a center that prides itself in welcoming all.

Plans call for pouring concrete into portions of the building's foundation. A first-floor guestroom and bathroom are to be added for people with limited mobility. A fire-sprinkler system will be installed. And a hallway between the lobby and dining hall is to be built so guests won't have to stand in the rain waiting for meals.

What will not change is the Inn's unique, maybe even quirky, charm.

"People were pretty strong that when they came across the bridge (over the lagoon that fronts the conference grounds), they didn't want the Inn to look any different," said Hill.

So the huge porch, with its rocking chairs, will remain. So will the stone fireplace.

Hill said he hopes to retain the funny doors on the upstairs bedrooms, with their very low doorknobs, a feature he cannot explain. His favorite legend is the knobs were low so loggers, after they got rip-roaring drunk, could crawl down the narrow hallways and still get into their rooms.

This is the conference center's first capital campaign, said Hill. For years the center was sustained by the generosity of Kenneth Colman, grandson of the timber pioneer, James Colman. Kenneth Colman died in 1982.

Seabeck got its start as a conference center in the early 1900s when Arn Allen, general secretary of the Seattle YMCA, shared his dream of finding a place for summer conferences with several people, including Kenneth Colman's father, Laurence. Allen and Laurence Colman scouted out various sites until they came to Seabeck Bay and discovered the abandoned mill town.

Colman and his brother George bought several hundred acres of waterfront property and timber land, part of which is now the Seabeck conference grounds operated by the non-profit Seabeck Corporation.

Since its first YMCA and YWCA camps beginning in 1915, the center has hosted 300,000 to 400,000 people, Hill estimated. It is now open year around and draws some 10,000 guests annually, he said.

Folk singer Joan Baez attended a Fellowship of Reconciliation conference on peace and justice issues there in the 1970s, said Hill. Best-selling author Robert Fulghum spent a week at Seabeck last year.

But perhaps more notable are the legions of families and individuals who return year after year for spiritual and community nurturing.

Jean Hanawalt of Federal Way is one. Her grandfather was Arn Allen; he managed Seabeck from 1915 to 1943. Her father, Arn Allen, Jr., worked at Seabeck and met her mother, Genevieve Piatt, while Piatt was attending a YWCA conference there in the early 1920s.

Hanawalt's brother Arn Allen III worked on the grounds. Jean herself was waiting tables at Seabeck when she met her husband-to-be, Frank Hanawalt, who was speaking at a gathering of the University of Puget Sound Student Christian Association. Frank Hanawalt is a former principal of Garfield and Franklin high schools in Seattle.

As you cross over the wooden bridge above the pond where logs once were floated to the old Seabeck mill, you can see the old Inn, and all the people gathered in and around it.

"It is," said Jean Hanawalt, "a gathering place for everybody."