Lundgren Parratt bleeds blue, too

Thank you to Scott Gaiser the very, very fine principal at Columbia Falls High School. Scott wrote an fantastic letter to the editor of our Hungry Horse News. Recently the high school had the highest graduation rate/completion rate ever. Hurray and hearty congratulations!!

I loved School District 6 as a first grader at the three-room West Glacier School. Those were the years when there was no kindergarten ... and that was fine. My dear daddy, Everett M. Lundgren, served tirelessly on the school board and he even handed me my diploma in 1963.

What a treat that was, even for my classmates. Daddy drove the 40-mile round trip on many, many icy winter roads and he never ever complained. He loved to serve and loved the district just as much as I did ... thank you Daddy. Mel Ruder, Dr. W.F. Bennett, and Superintendent Dulane Fulton were some of the many awesome men on the caring school board. In West Glacier as a young elementary student, Superintendent Fulton visited often and his huge smile radiated. Oh, how I miss my Daddy and all of those great fine men.

Columbia Falls prepared me to be accepted at Whitworth University in Spokane in the fall of 1963. JFK was shot that November. All of us on that pretty campus remember that day very well. We had just left chapel and heard the very sad event on the radio in the lunchroom. The lunchroom was totally silent.

Monty (my husband) and I signed teaching contracts after four great years at Whitworth. I hadn’t even gone through the student teaching program but Marysville loved my husband’s fine credentials. We came to Marysville, Washington sight unseen. Someone was sure looking out for us. Monty and I taught here which is 30 short miles north of Seattle for 30 rewarding years.

So thanks to the past administrations and staff and to the present one at Columbia Falls where they do and we do bleed blue ... and white!!

Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle has a motto: Hope, Care, Cure, and that’s what Columbia Falls did and still does for every single student ... I know that to be a fact.

How can I begin to thank all of you enough ... but I sure do.

Laurel Lundgren Parratt

Marysville, Washington