Two naval officers
vanished decades ago after taking off from Sandpoint.
Now is the mystery solved?
We truly treat each other like family.
Kenmore Air,
the seaplane king marks a major milestone.
What's up? I am Anthony, this is my wife, Marlie.
A Seattle couple uses a racial equity
lens to create videos that rate popular destinations.
These stories and more next on City Stream.
I'm Enrique Cerna welcome
to CityStream from Magnificent Park.
From the 1920s
to the 1970s, this spot that I'm standing on
was once a runway of the old Sandpoint Naval Air Station, and that's
where two young aviators took off more than 70 years ago and never returned.
Their disappearance set off a decades long search,
not just for the men in their plane, but for closure for each family.
Here's Felick Banel.
So, you would have
had to clear the tree, then drop down, and you only have about 1500 feet left.
It's a foggy day in the Cascade foothills.
Sean Murphy and Lee Corbin, two men with a passion for aviation
history, have returned here once again to honor two Navy fliers.
Here is Black Lake.
It's a tiny body of water on private timberland, off limits
to the public, and east of the Snoqualmie Valley town of Carnation.
The story actually begins 20 miles away, as the crow flies,
at the old Sandpoint Naval Air Station on Lake Washington.
It was there at what's now Magnuson Park, where
two young naval aviators 23 year old Ensign Gaston Mays
and 25 year old Lieutenant Junior Grade Benjamin Vreeland took off on March 11th, 1949.
The two were flying a World War II era trainer known as an SNJ-5 Texan.
They departed at 10:05 on that morning just to go out to the east
and do some flying around for maybe hour and a half, 2 hours, something like that.
They made one radio call after they departed, and
that was the last anybody had heard from them after that.
Well, frankly they searched for ten days.
The normal ten day pattern of searching up and down
the western Washington from the water, to the mountains, north-south.
Is it seemed like no one really zeroed in on that area,
even though the loggers had come out and stated what they had seen.
That area was Black Lake.
For years, the mother of Gaston Mays, one of the lost
fliers, traveled from her Tennessee home to the northwest to search for her son.
Then in 1953, she got
a letter from a ranger who had found suspicious debris in Black Lake.
Encouraging news to Nora Mayes. So, each summer, she returned to search for her boy.
A mother's love and devotion kept her coming back for 19 consecutive years.
But the plane and the two men were never found,
Nora Mayes visited for the final time in 1969.
She died in 1983.
It was obviously the ongoing story of Nora
throughout the years where I was looking through the newspaper clippings.
For me, I think it was more of that these two naval aviators
had kind of been forgotten about just because they couldn't be found.
I didn't feel it was right that they should be totally forgotten.
After meeting a few years ago, through their shared interest in the lost plane.
Lee Corbin and Shawn Murphy revived the search effort.
They tracked down
family members of both men and kept them updated on their progress.
Nora Mayes' son even trusted Lee Corbin with all of his mom's research files.
They got help from the Maritime Archeological Society
to search the lake one more time.
We then went out with magnetometer that could read
18 inches under the mud, and we hit on some anomalies.
The divers went down.
They stuck their hands all the way to their neck.
They were not able to find an end to the mud in their probe.
Though they couldn't locate the plane.
Corbin and Murphy contacted the Naval History and Heritage Command.
The part of the Navy that keeps records of lost vessels and planes.
They shared what Nora Mayes had found, and the new analysis from the Maritime
Archeological Society.
Their hard work and determination paid off. In late 2020
more than 70 years after the men disappeared, the Navy officially
recognized Black Lake as their likely final resting place.
All military personnel and servicemen
please face the flags. In May 2021
with help from the American Legion Post in nearby Snoqualmie.
A monument to the two lost fliers was dedicated at Black Lake.
Dan Vreeland, nephew of Lost Flier Benjamin Vreeland,
came all the way from Texas for the ceremony.
I've been trying to do research on this for years,
and the amount of information that I've been given in the past two years
I just my whole family is was blown away,
and I can't say thank you enough.
I'd like to say thanks to each one of you for what you've done for us.
The Mayes family wasn't able to attend the monument dedication,
and neither was Dan's sister Isabel Hoverman, niece of lost flier Benjamin Vreeland.
This gave Shawn Murphy and Lee Corbin and Dan and Isabel
one more reason to return to Black Lake on that foggy day
in November.
Well, if you think about the fact that I'm the only person that actually met Ben.
I was three years old the last time he was with family.
Thanks to a group called Cascade Warbirds, and with help from pilots
John "Smokey" Johnson and Stan Kaspryzyk,
an SNJ-5 Texan, just like the one flown by the missing men,
paid tribute to the families with a series of memorial flyovers.
It's so loud, no wonder people heard.
To me, I mean, I've seen plenty SNJ's at air shows and up close to stuff but to see
one fly over the lake where my uncle's in his SNJ still possibly.
You can't quite explain it.
It's the end of a story.
Yeah.
A story
that we've heard about since we were kids because of all of these amazing people.
Yeah.
Every one of them. You too. We got the answer to the story.
It's great.
Along with the memorial stone
and hard to reach a Black Lake, the Snoqualmie VFW
also dedicated a small monument outside their post in downtown Snoqualmie.
Next on CityStream,
its pilots have long used the water as a runway.
Now Kenmore Air is celebrating a big anniversary.
If you've ever spent time at the north end of Lake Washington
or Lake Union, you've likely watched a seaplane take off.
Those planes belonged to Kenmore Air, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary.
Back in the 1940s, when Bob Monroe first taught GI's how to fly,
he never imagined his small company would someday
become the biggest airline in America.
On water that is, Jenny Cunningham has
the story.
Have you heard
the kids these days are living life buried in screens?
Clearly, Hunter Banks
hasn't gotten the memo.
I mean, this Jobs doesn't feel like a job.
It's more just
what I do day to day,
and I love it.
Hunter does grunt work that keeps the sea planes
flying at Kenmore Air.
You wouldn't guess that he's the son of the boss
unless you knew the Monroe Banks family.
We all started work in the front line.
I started working here when I was probably 13.
That includes cleaning restrooms, and dumping
trash, and washing airplanes.
We fly up, and I'd work on the line, and I do fish boxes,
and work on the office, and take reservations.
The biggest seaplane
company in America is taking a victory lap.
75 years we're here. Yes, we are.
On a blue sky Saturday
folks are celebrating the 75th anniversary of Kenmore Air.
For Kenmore President Todd Banks,
it's a moment to reflect on why his company is one of the few
family owned businesses that survive into a fourth generation.
Our secret sauce is, I think we have a unique
relationship with our
ownership, management, and employees
where we truly treat each other like family.
Here's one example of the devotion Kenmore inspires.
Employee Beth Thompson had a seaplane gown made for the anniversary party.
It's not what she normally wears to work.
Yeah, I don't wear these on the shop floor.
I mean, I never felt like I was odd for being
a girl mechanic here.
I felt like I was treated like a mechanic, which is what I wanted.
This celebration is also a survival story.
In 2020 the pandemic grounded Kenmore.
We went from around 100 employees to 18 employees.
I think in like
two weeks, less than two weeks.
Lay off people that have worked here longer than I've been alive.
Yeah, doing that.
We're coming back.
Bob Monroe and a couple of friends
started Kenmore Air in 1946.
They converted an old shingle mill on Lake Washington into a seaplane airport.
Early on, Monroe found himself in charge of the business.
He would run it for more than 50 years.
It originally started out to just be a flight training operation.
Then people started asking for flights to famous fishing
spots, and the charter business took off.
Bob Monroe's kids, Leslie and Greg,
grew up in a house at the airport, riding trikes under tall planes.
We use them as toys, kind of.
We would build camps underneath the fuselage.
Seaplanes were this family's station wagon.
We fly over there and have a picnic on a remote beach....
and swim...
build a fire,
roast hot dogs, cook oysters, swim, s'mores.
I just like to go on record as saying it was not a glamorous life.
It was really really hard.
And their dad was gone a lot, sometimes doing dangerous work, toting torpedoes
for the Navy or flying supplies to scientists doing research on glaciers.
This was the craziest of those missions.
Snow dome on Mount Olympus wasn't long enough for takeoff.
So Monroe dropped onto a steep slope under the glacier
and into thin air.
Well, most of us think of as Kenmore Air, those yellow
stripe planes purring by the Space Needle that's scheduled service.
It didn't start until the 1980's around
the time Kenmore opened a terminal on Lake Union.
By then, Bob Monroe's son, Greg, was becoming a well-known
pilot himself with more than a few celebrity encounters.
Meg Ryan. Goldie Hawn.
Chuck Yeager.
Jimmy Buffett.
Inside hangars, you'll find the less glamorous side of Kenmore Air.
That diversity has helped the airline survive economic turbulence.
We sell parts all over the world,
and then we
also maintain airplanes for other customers.
Ken Moore's mechanics are known for taking rusting carcasses of vintage seaplanes
and transforming them.
I said, "If you teach me how to how to fly it, I will buy it."
John Nordstrom, yes,
one of those Nordstroms, bought a vintage beaver from Kenmore in 1991.
30 years later, Nordstrom flew his prized possession to the anniversary
party, where he claimed this plane is so easy to fly.
Put your butt on the seat, and you'll be in great shape like I do.
A reporter could do it. Sit there,
put your feet on the pedals.
There's the yoke.
This crazy. Pull it towards you.
That's how you.
That's how you go up. Tip the wings the other way.
Crazy, huh?
I just got a flying lesson from Mr. Nordstrom.
I know. Nordstrom is one of those customers who's become a friend of the Monroes.
We are so lucky to have the family.
I'm from a family business, and it family businesses
can be really good or really not good.
And this is a really good one.
But even good businesses have failed in this pandemic.
Kenmore won't be one of them.
The company launched an anniversary scenic flight for $75,
and the phone started ringing.
Just got so busy.
But we didn't have we have like a third of the staff that we normally have.
So, it was like, especially for a family, we were just putting different
hats on, and doing whatever we could to just kind of get back.
It's exhausting,
but it's worth it.
It's great to see the planes flying, and hear the the noise of
the engines going.
Since 1946, the rumble of float planes
has been part of the soundtrack of Puget Sound.
Will Kenmore Air survive another 75 years?
Will it still be all in the family?
When I'm not working, I'm flying,
and when I'm not flying, I'm working pretty much.
Hunter is training to become a Kenmore pilot.
So at the end of a long day, the boss fills in as line crews.
You be the line crew? Yeah.
With son Hunter at the controls. Keep them straight level.
and Uncle Greg in the passenger seat.
Kenmore Air
taxis into the future.
Hunter isn't
the only fourth generation family member working in the wings at Kenmore Air.
Some of the other kids are still in high school, so it's too early to say for sure,
but hunter siblings
and cousins have all expressed interest in continuing the family business.
Next on CityStream,
this couple's YouTube videos
use a racial equity lens to focus in on popular places.
Their story next.
CityStream returns
from the Fynn Project at the east end of Magnusson Park.
Artist John T. Young created this to simulate the dorsal
fins of an orca pod. But a closer look reveals the sleek
metal slabs are actually decommissioned submarine wings
that each weigh 10 thousand pounds.
Well, it's time to hit a rewind and watch a "Favorite
Find" from our friends at the Seattle Municipal Archives.
This one highlights a series of animated educational films
created entirely by the Seattle Fire Department.
Here's archivist Libby Hopfauf.
Between 1977 and 1988.
The Seattle Fire Department's
Public Education Office produced a series of original animated films
as a component of their School and Fire- Safe Education Program curriculum,
which was presented by the Fire Department in King County Elementary Schools.
One of the main reasons this series is so special and unique is
because the films were actually developed, written, produced, edited
and animated by employees at the Seattle Fire Department.
Several of these cartoons start Big Red, The Talking Fire
Hydrant. I'm Big Red a Talking Fire Hydrant. In 1984
big red made his first appearance in the safe films along with his friend Inspector
Jim. Big red travels to a local residents perform a fire inspection and teach Mrs.
Reeves and her dog spot all about fire safety.
Big Red was based on an actual robot,
which national fire departments purchased to use as a teaching tool.
The Seattle Fire Department felt that having both animated movies
and actual robot in their presentations provided, quote, "a two way interaction
between the children and the fire educator to make teaching fire
safety more interesting and fun for both children
and adults."
Local radio personalities such as Kiro's Jim French
and KJR's Debbie Deutsch volunteered to provide voices for the characters.
The University of Washington's Department of Education Media Services
donated the use of its animation and film equipment for the project.
Film students from UW receive school credit for assisting with animating,
editing and seeking the soundtrack.
Some of the elements addressed, such as smoking, safety or dated.
But the quirky, homemade feel of the film remains endearing and entertaining.
To view this film or if you have any questions, please visit
archives.seattle.gov
The big red film series
connected with kids, and educated them at the same time.
One Seattle couple is doing something similar using video
to educate people of color about popular sites around the Sound.
As we celebrate Black History Month, the work of Marlie
and Anthony Love highlights accessibility and racial equity,
with the YouTube series "Traveling While Black in Seattle."
Brian Callanan has the story.
Alright, you want to go this way? Yep, that's cool.
When Anthony and Marlie Love came to the Pacific Northwest two years ago,
they didn't know their way around Oh, here we go.
Sometimes this is life, so it's
we drive life Washingtonians already.
But dealing with potentially uncomfortable situations on a road trip
comes more naturally to this couple than you might think.
What's up? I'm Anthony. This is my wife Marlie,
and welcome to another episode of Traveling While Black in Seattle.
The Loves, self-proclaimed lifelong black people have created a show
to chronicle their trips across the state of Washington and beyond.
Cheers!
Marlie, a life coach, and Anthony, a supply
chain worker, are transplants from Saint Louis
who started their online program in 2019 simply as a way to get to know Seattle.
So, I said, "how about we start a show where we go out and help black people
and other people that are marginalized let them know where the places are safe,
how much when they are and just like our overall experiences."
Anthony and Marlie give each location a drive grade for accessibility,
a fun level rating, and what the loves call a black person comfort meter.
People might not realize that people that look like us, people
that feel discriminated against have that like little voice
in the back of their head being like, is this going to be safe for me?
Census figures show black people make up only 7.3%
of the Seattle population. 4.4% statewide.
But the Loves are keeping their eyes open.
Oh, we got some black folk.
We have to get that. Their smiling
positive approach
to the challenging topic of race carries a gentle but powerful message.
It's not really about, you know, going out and seeking, like, racism
or any type of hate.
It's about encouraging black people to travel to places where
they may have not even thought they would want to go check out.
With 60 plus episodes and counting.
Traveling While Black has covered a lot of ground,
having some fun and turning some heads.
I think we went a little overboard.
Rebecca Servoss
owns Distant Worlds Coffee Shop in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood.
And they wore cosplay.
And I said, "those are our people right there."
Yeah. Okay, go ahead and write that all down.
Let's get rock and roll in on that.
She invited traveling while black to visit herself described geeky coffee spot.
Hey, y'all. Hey. How are you?
Living the dream all day, every day.
Servoss says her business seeks to elevate the voices of queer women
and people of color.
Serving up a new perspective on what being a geek is all about.
We really want to create a space that is inclusive and welcoming to folks
who may not have felt
included, unwelcomed in geek culture prior to being here in our space.
It's a mission similar to what guides Traveling While Black,
inviting people with a sense of community, not competition.
To examine the prejudices we all carry.
It requires a lot of looking internally
and seeking out those personal biases.
Rooting them out.
Seeing how they're influenced by the culture that we live in.
And that culture is changing.
I think we go that way. Let's go.
Should we go to the bar?
Let's go.
Can we start you out with a beverage today?
The Westy, who's founding chef, Chris Hartfield is black,
has survived a time of protest and pandemic over the past year plus
by adapting its business but staying focused on inclusivity.
There shouldn't be any reason, whether it's black, white, Asian, gay.
I mean, what straight?
I mean, there should be no reason
to be greeted any differently from how you would anywhere else.
One, two, three.
It's an idea worth toasting for traveling while black, for the Westy,
and for all of us
as we recover from a worldwide crisis in the hopes of coming back better.
I think that we've seen a lot of creativity
come out of this past year and a half.
So, it's fun to see that use in a positive light, and to share that message,
and to make other people see it, and be welcome about it.
Not every trip has been fun.
On a visit to the Olympic Peninsula last year.
The Loves felt ignored at a restaurant and very unwelcome.
Well, an unfriendly cold welcome. We know it was cold for us
because the two sets of white customers that came in after us during our visit
were both greeted very differently.
Most of all, I think it was kind of disappointing.
And social media isn't always on their side either.
You know, we get comments on our YouTube and our Facebook page or we were like,
"this is dumb, you shouldn't be doing this."
But those few incidents haven't stopped their willingness
to dove into situations that are not always that comfortable.
Full disclosure, we don't know how to swim.
We're trying to do something about it,
and just show people, hey, listen, I know
you have a voice in the back of your head, but it's okay.
You can get out.
You can do these things and it's fine and it's beautiful.
Anthony and Marlie
say they're open to wherever the Traveling While Black experience takes them,
and they're hoping that everyone, no matter what your racial background is
on board. Yes, they might take some wrong turns.
Is this a one way? No, it's not a one way.
But we all could use some help finding our way
on a long trip to racial equity.
That's kind of like a dream of ours of our show can have an impact.
That journey we are on as a country to rights and wrongs in the past,
and kind of heal some wounds. We want to go north, south.
We want to go all over Washington.
We want to go Oregon, California.
We want to go everywhere.
While the
videos are called "Traveling While Black in Seattle,"
Anthony and Marlie explore much of western Washington,
and with 86 episodes and counting, they provide a lot to see and experience.
We'll be right back.
Well, that wraps up
this episode of CityStream from Magnusson Park.
If you'd like to watch more outstanding Seattle Channel programs, visit
our website, seattlechannel.org and click on feature shows.
I'm Enrique Cerna. Thank you for watching.