School board's clumsy act embarrasses and annoys

CASPAR Sharples has disappeared.

That name had been attached to a middle school in south Seattle since 1952, but the district decided he had to go.

Sharples, a physician who died in 1941, used to be a big name in town. He helped found Seattle General Hospital. He led what became Children's Hospital.

As a Seattle School Board member, he personally supervised construction of Garfield, Roosevelt and Cleveland high schools, four junior high schools and four elementary schools.

Sharples represented a great phase in Seattle's history, when prominent families considered it a duty to donate time to the School Board. His generation built the schools that this one struggles to maintain.

Last November, Sharples' successors on the board, without discussion of his place in history, renamed the building after Aki Kurose, a peace activist and teacher who died in 1998. The board acted in good will, but clumsily.

They showed ignorance, a preference for marketing over tradition, and insensitivity to the Sharples' family. Staff failed to thoroughly vet the issue.

The board's attempt to honor a deserving teacher, a star of the generation that followed Sharples, has annoyed those who care about history, angered Sharples family members who didn't know about the name change and, most sadly, embarrassed the Kurose family.

Just this week, Superintendent Joseph Olchefske said he was sorry for the embarrassments. He said the district staff did what it could, and in retrospect could have done more. "We called all the Sharpleses in the phone book. We did everything at our disposal," he said.

Olchefske, like the board, may have been misinformed.

I called the four Sharpleses in the Seattle phone book and reached two households, who say they weren't called.

They didn't reach Monica Sharples Hill on Mercer Island, a granddaughter. "I find it disrespectful," said Hill. Nor did they contact her half brother, Caspar Sharples, of Coos Bay, Ore., whose phone number and location can be found in seconds through a simple Internet search.

"The evidence suggests they did not want to contact us," says Gloria Sharples of Emeryville, Calif., another granddaughter.

The effort to honor Kurose began more than eight months ago and coincided with an effort to dissociate the building from a troubled history.

When the renaming came to a vote on Nov. 3, the board had been told that the community had been notified, 1,000 people had signed petitions, an effort had been made to contact the Sharples family, and no one expressed opposition.

The famous Seattle process had been extensive but clueless.

"Your affirmative vote tonight will send a message that you value and support, one, the procedure; that you value and recognize the outstanding work of one of our many outstanding teachers; (and) that you value and appreciate the community coming together to help a school," said Al Sugiyama, a former board member and a leader in the renaming.

"I know Al has always been a stickler for process, so I'm sure he's gone through every step in that process," said board member Michael Preston.

Only board member Ellen Roe opposed the change.

"I have never been inclined to change the name of schools," said Roe, who has since retired from the board. "I think Ms. Kurose was a wonderful teacher. She could have been honored by (naming a) library or something, but I do not believe in changing the names of school buildings. . . . It becomes very confusing to the public (and) to the history of the school district."

After the vote, Olchefske got a letter from several civic lions asking for a delay in the renaming. The group described Sharples as "one of the truly great figures in Seattle's history" and said they, too, wanted to honor Kurose. They asked for an opportunity to quietly work out a proposal to "do justice to all concerned."

The named group included Joseph "Bill" Baillargeon, Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt Collins, Carey Donworth (since deceased), Jim Ellis, Tomio Moriguchi, Hubert Locke, James Rolfe, Meade Emory, and Robert Denny Watt. Baillargeon, the organizer, is former chief executive of Seattle Trust and Savings Bank and a descendent of a family that settled here in 1881.

Baillargeon, 69, has faint memories of Sharples, who once treated him for a cut face, but his main motivation was preserving history. Baillargeon thought he had agreement for delay and was outraged when the district recently told critics a group had been formed to sort out the issue. Baillargeon and others have never heard of the group.

Moriguchi, who leads the family-run Uwajimaya stores, said he withdrew from the issue after district officials told him the renaming involved hearings, press coverage and contact with the Sharples family.

Told that members of the Sharples family insist they were not contacted, Moriguchi says, "I'm not going to run for the School Board. That was their ultimate responsibility."

Much as he "feels bad about the Sharples family," Sugiyama says he's not sure consultation with them would have affected the outcome. He says the name change has triggered new volunteerism at the school, and now the community needs to move forward.

After so many fumbles by the district, it might help if Olchefske himself called the Sharpleses, offered a way to repair the damage, and restored their ancestor's name to a place of honor.

No one regrets the controversy more than Aki's daughter, Ruthann Kurose. She'd like to see the focus get off buildings and back to helping kids, a goal she says was shared by her mother and Caspar Sharples.

"When all is said and done, who cares about a name?" she asks. "A legacy is keeping the work alive. Both of them believed in a very good thing."

O. Casey Corr's column appears alternate Wednesdays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: ccorr@seattletimes.com