Old clock gets back in good hands
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Standing forlorn on North 85th Street in Greenwood, with its weathered face and dented, peeling helmet, it looks lonely and neglected — a landmark out of step and time.
Before his death in 1999, Davidsen wound the landmark timepiece religiously every Thursday, friends say. A jeweler and man-about-Greenwood, he hauled the stately clock to the sidewalk in front of his Greenwood Jewelers shop from another jeweler's store in the 1940s.
There it sat, cheerfully keeping time, until he moved it to his new store location on North 85th Street just west of Greenwood Avenue North, where it continued its mission. It even had a neon face, until the city deemed it competitive with nearby traffic lights.
As Davidsen aged, friends teased him about making plans for the clock.
"If you wait too long, it's going to be a memorial," Candace Barroga, Davidsen's friend and banker at Washington Mutual, warned him. "And that's what happened."
Barroga, a Greenwood Phinney Chamber of Commerce board member, is overseeing the clock's next journey. Its new home — if the city landmarks board approves its move — would be the Masonic Lodge entrance at 7910 Greenwood Ave. N.
The clock almost ended up in Libby, Mont., with Davidsen's nephew, Richard Davidsen, a jeweler who helped in his uncle's shop and even joined the Greenwood Masons.
Barroga discouraged the move.
"Rich came to visit his uncle Roy and sat at my bank desk," she remembered, "and we had a friendly debate about whether the clock should stay in Greenwood or whether it should go to Montana."
When Davidsen died at age 88, both sides won. The jeweler left the timepiece to his nephew but asked that it remain in the community.
Still the clock sat, frozen, with no one caring for it.
Somehow, Barroga — perhaps because she talked it up so when Davidsen was alive — got a reputation as the clock keeper. She got calls from those curious about it. Finally, a call came from Davidsen's sister in Burien. What to do with the clock? Plans to move it to a new library fell through after plans for the library itself went awry.
Then the Greenwood Masons called the chamber, asking for a community project. Davidsen was a Mason with the University lodge. The Greenwood lodge initiated his nephew, Richard Davidsen.
The clock needed to be wound every week and the Masons are a responsible lot, so Richard granted them custody.
Jim Lumsden, lodge custodian and chaplain, said the Masons are honored to care for the clock. "I guess it's something we all became attached to," he said. "It's hard to describe. It's an item that's become part of our lives."
The clock needs some work — and money, Lumsden said. There are dents to knock out, surfaces to sandblast and repaint, neon to replace, guts to tinker with, a granite base to order and a plaque honoring Davidsen to engrave. And because it's a designated landmark, the city must approve the move.
The Masons hope local business owners will donate time, materials and money for the clock's restoration. They, too, might kick in some cash, and matching funds may be wrangled from the city.
Barroga said the clock's restoration is an homage to Davidsen, an incorrigible storyteller, community activist and "a Greenwood character in every sense of the word."
Now, the clock he treasured and tended will tick again.
"I've had calls from people so sad to see it sitting there, wearing out at 20 minutes to 7, or whatever it is," she says. "We will pull this off."
Paysha Stockton can be reached at 206-464-2752 or pstockton@seattletimes.com.