50 years like yesterday for Eckstein's students
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It was a gorgeous Seattle day, and hundreds of past and present students and faculty filtering into Nathan Eckstein Middle School on Northeast 75th Street yesterday got the full benefit.
Passing through the big doors for the school's 50th-anniversary party, they glimpsed the Olympic Range out west, then took in sun-washed halls, brightly painted lockers and art-bedecked rooms inside.
As the school's student musicians played a Corelli concerto in the lobby, Principal Lynn Caldwell greeted visitors in the windowed lunchroom that resonated with laughter and spoken memories.
Toni Magelssen, in an Indian-inspired vest and earrings honoring her Cheyenne River Sioux heritage, flipped through the 1961 eighth-grade yearbook brought for the memory table. She thought it was the oldest yearbook there.
"It's really a fluke that I'm here," said the Tacoma accountant, whose father, the late Ken Magelssen, was a metal-arts teacher in the group of teachers that opened the school in 1950.
"I was in town for business and drove by the school on Thursday, for the memory, when something made me go in. I was overwhelmed with emotion. Then someone in the office mentioned the 50th-anniversary party. I'm trying to find someone who knew my dad."
She said the school hasn't changed in all those years, and that she'd gone into the music room. She used to play flute in the school orchestra.
Caldwell, in his address yesterday, invited visitors to search out their old rooms and enjoy the art, writing and music being created today.
He said a goal was "to honor those who made Eckstein one of the best schools in Seattle and in the country."
Ensembles entertained guests with miniconcerts, and budding thespians staged a vignette from "Fiddler on the Roof."
David Parkinson, a recent Eckstein alum who is a freshman at Roosevelt High School, said, "I think it's really nice seeing so many people from so many different years, coming together and talking together even if they did not know each other."
People browsed among gift baskets and silent-auction items, whose sale raised money for school activities.
One memorabilia basket held an autographed lab coat from 40-year Eckstein science teacher Paul Stone, who attended the event.
The high-selling item - which drew a $700 bid - was a "Principal for a Day" package, in which a student and friend serve as principal, while the principal attends their classes.
It was won by Karmann Kaplan, mother of two Eckstein students who will share the prize.
Sales and donations yesterday netted $5,500.
Toni Magelssen finally met someone who remembered her father: Marion Parker, who helped Eckstein organize the first teachers library. "He, along with everyone else who was just back from the war, was really excited to be back and eager to learn." It was a good time for schools, she added.
Magelssen beamed and said she was glad she came to the party.