March 7, 2002
Staffer wrote the book on Kalakala
| Steve Hill |
| University Week |
Steve Russell must have taken the message from his first book project to heart. Being Nice at a Price: Emotional Domination, Depression, and the Search for Autonomy is a self-help book “about freeing one’s self from internalized oppression and external expectations.”
Consider him freed. Russell, a research ergonomist in the Department of Environmental Health’s field group at the UW, will release his latest book next month and it’s not what one might expect from a man whose 9-to-5 professional life is devoted to preventing repetitive stress injuries.
The book is about, of all things, a ferryboat.
Kalakala: Magnificent Vision Recaptured documents the unusual history of what used to be Seattle’s most stunning icon of cutting-edge technology. The boat now floats in a state of disrepair not too far from campus on the north edge of Lake Union. It’s been saved from the scrap heap more than once and if the boat’s many supporters have their way, it will become a permanent display of Seattle’s maritime history.
In the book that will be released sometime next month, Russell traces the Kalakala’s history from the beginning when the boat was unveiled as a symbol of hope during the depression, to her confounding retirement on an industrial beach in Alaska, and, finally, the heroism of one man intent on bringing her home.
While ferryboats have nothing to do with Russell’s day job, the Kalakala in particular has grabbed hold of his psyche. She’s more than an innovative and shapely boat — more than a good story, even. Rather, he writes in the book’s introduction, she “represents our dreams, our imaginations, and unlimited possibilities, but doesn’t let us forget the hard work, risk, and sacrifice necessary to realize them.”
He didn’t always speak of the boat, much less the idea of a book chronicling the Kalakala’s history, with such reverence. He was introduced to the project by his friend and publisher, Lorenzo Leonard, who was planning to write the book and asked Russell to help with the research.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’ve been on ferries. What’s the big deal?'” Russell recalled. “Then we took a tour of the Kalakala and I was just mesmerized by it. It was so different, so unique. And I was really taken with Peter Bevis.”
Bevis is the Seattle artist who became so enchanted with the slowly deteriorating Kalakala during his summer fishing excursions near Kodiak, Alaska, that he somehow managed to beat the odds and float the vessel back to Seattle. After spending two years of his life working on the book, Russell is just beginning to understand Bevis’ emotional connection with the boat that provided elegant ferry service throughout the Puget Sound.
“I don’t know exactly what it is,” Russell said. “But there’s just something about this boat.”
That something led Russell to leave his home in Portland so that he could soak up the local vibes of the Kalakala and have easy access to its most devoted supporters, like Bevis.
“I really needed to immerse myself in the area and the history up here,” he said. “And it proved to be absolutely essential, just to be where the ferries are. I wrote a lot of the book when down at Alki sitting in Starbucks sipping a cup of coffee and watching the ferries go by on the same run that the Kalakala did.”
In those days it was a stunning, magnificent boat. There was nothing like it. Before the Space Needle, the Kalakala was the image people associated with Seattle, according to Russell.
“It was the very first streamlined, art-deco vessel that was ever built,” he said. “It was built in 1935 right in the heart of the Depression. It was Capt. Alexander Peabody’s gift to the common person during that time. It was really close to an ocean liner-like interior. It had a Buck Rogers sort of futuristic feel to it. It really triggered the imagination — so unique, so different, and yet just a common person could ride it relatively inexpensively.”
Reports about the boat made their way throughout the United States and into Europe. The boat had what was at the time the largest engine ever for a ferryboat. It was the first commercial vessel to have radar and the futuristic design was truly awe-inspiring, Russell said.
Almost 50 years after the Kalakala was unveiled, it still managed to stir something in Bevis. After four summers of floating by and staring with wonderment at the beached ferry, Bevis finally took a tour of her. He peered into every nook and cranny of the vessel whose glory days were a distant memory clouded by rust, rot, and the smell of dead fish (it served as a cannery for most of its days in Alaska). Then Bevis made the pronouncement that has led to his almost 20-year odyssey with the boat.
“Peter went and stood on the boat and said, ‘I’m taking you back to Seattle.’ It was an outrageous claim, but he was so taken with this boat that he was determined it was going back home,” Russell said. “The Kalakala was a wreck. But there was something Peter could see that most people could not see. He saw its history and he saw its potential.”
So Bevis committed himself to the risky proposition of unearthing the boat and floating it out of Gibson Cove and back to Seattle. If the Kalakala had sunk it would have been blocking the shipping lanes that were so essential to the city of Kodiak. The task became more risky still when Lloyd’s of London backed out. No one would insure Bevis, so he was literally taking a million-dollar risk.
That Bevis was willing to take such a risk with no guaranteed payoff — the boat’s future remains unclear — moved Russell. But he says he was able to maintain his objectivity during the project. “I’m not the Kalakala guy. I’m not even a member of the Kalakala Foundation.”
In fact, after spending some time promoting the book he plans to move forward. He says his next book may have something to do with different ethnic perspectives on U.S. history.
“I developed a passion for writing long before I developed a passion for the Kalakala.”
