Seattle Seahawks merchandise branded with their Super Bowl championship has already started trickling into Oak Harbor
The last time the Pacific Northwest felt a rumble of this magnitude on the sports landscape, Lance Gibbon nearly lost his bearings.
It’s a rare day when a customer walks into Pat Beach’s dive shop in Oak Harbor and recognizes his name or his face.
And that’s the way Beach prefers it.
“Being recognized is not my thing,” Beach said.
After retiring from football in 1993 after a 12-year NFL career, Beach decided three years later to open Whidbey Island Dive Center and retreat about as far away from the game as he could.
Connie Arroyos couldn’t fill the balloons fast enough.
Just moments after she completed her balloon bouquet, it was snatched up.
But it wasn’t just any bouquet.
Most anything blue and green has disappeared fast at the Whidbey Party Store in Oak Harbor this week in preparations for Super Bowl XLVIII.
Any Super Bowl matchup is traditionally a popular occasion for a party. But with the Seattle Seahawks involved Sunday, the impact has been felt at the cash registers of retail outlets on Whidbey Island.
Inside Che Edoga’s classroom, all eyes are locked to a crude-looking device navigating through a tabletop maze.
Students surround the table, watching as the unit rolls slowly and turns, collecting cardboard tubes along the way with two prongs that catch them.
The route is all pre-programmed by Edoga’s students at Oak Harbor Middle School. No remote controls are allowed.
The teasing never ceased.
Before Joe Higgins could finish a sentence, Bob Bower would toss a zinger at him.
Chip Batcheller and Dick James listened and smiled, very much aware they could be next, and checked their own mental inventory for a witty line of their own.
The four friends are making the most of retired life, preferring not to sit still too long.
They take a special joy in rocks, and have a passion to share what they know.
It’s on.
Oak Harbor now has a couple of friendly wagers going with a suburb of Denver, Colo., on the Super Bowl.
The first bet started between the chambers of commerce for Oak Harbor and Parker, a town about 20 miles from Denver.
As a well-traveled, veteran community theater actor and director, Kevin Wm. Meyer has seen lots of different stages and places to perform.
He was once part of a traveling theater company in Miami, Fla., and later San Francisco that would break out its act in some of the tightest quarters imaginable.
It’s going to be a while before Joanne Hartley can stop smiling.
The grin was still wide Monday. She was still even wearing her blue hat.
“It might take a year to quit smiling,” she said. “After we win the Super Bowl, maybe.”
Hartley, an ardent Seattle Seahawks fan from Oak Harbor, was still abuzz Monday, a day after the Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers to clinch the franchise’s second berth into the Super Bowl.
The hat wasn’t one Mary Brock would ordinarily choose for a public speaking engagement.
Not only did it make her head feel too hot, she admitted that it looked kind of silly.
But that was the idea.
As one of the chief organizers of the Relay for Life of Whidbey Island, Brock understands that most people involved in the fight against cancer can use a little humor in their lives.
She dressed the part with a clown cap as she spoke before more than 100 people who gathered at the Oak Harbor Elks Lodge Wednesday night for the kickoff rally for the 2014 Relay for Life of Whidbey Island.
To rise from darkness, Mike O’Connell got a lift from his paintbrush.
There was a time in his life when he was so gripped by depression that he couldn’t leave his home in Auburn.
For two-and-a-half years, this went on, until treatment and therapy let light back into his life and eventually gave him back his passion for painting.
When Tiffany Andrukat was 10 or 11, she remembers watching her older sister perform in a choir concert at Oak Harbor High School at a time before the school’s major remodel.
She remembers sitting at a table in the old Parker Hall and the sweet feeling she got when Jessica Andrukat, her sister, approached.
“My sister got to serve me cheesecake,” Tiffany said. “It was real hands-on. It was very personal. It had an impression on me joining choir.”
If he were a traditional actor, Gavin Keohane might be able to say he’s becoming more seasoned in front of a television camera.
But Keohane is no actor, he’s a fishing boat captain.
Still, in the world of reality TV, what’s important is that he has a strong camera presence, is articulate and can weave together a good tale for viewers.
