It is intriguing to have such friends as Smitty, Yary. Rorry and Gracy.

Smitty just completed a distinguished career as a metropolitan daily newspaper sportswriter, Yary has completed an internship as a sous chef in a small hotel in Spain, Rorry is on his way to Peru on a medical mission and Gracy continues her efforts to keep the wellness program on track at the Northshore Senior Center.

I have known Smitty since he was a junior at Bothell High School, Yary since she arrived from Cuba a short few years ago, Rorry the past 15 years as a fellow member of Woodinville Rotary Club, and Gracy as a longtime volunteer at a Bothell thrift store that raised money for those needing help paying monthly utility bills and rent.

Smitty

When I became editor of the Bothell-Northshore Citizen in the early 1960s, the editor took classified ads, sold greeting cards in the front office, tried to sell ads to doubting local merchants and even cover the local sporting scene.

I have vivid memories of this gangly teenager showing up at our tiny Main Street office one afternoon after school wanting to know if he could write sports for the Citizen. I could spot a prospective journalist in this kid. In the course of our “interview” I learned that Smitty was a junior at Bothell high and rode the bench on the Cougar football team. On the field were such storied local names as Strand, Ericksen, Haynes, Ferrante, Selg, Culpepper etc.

As I was not long out of journalism school, it was apparent that we may have an issue of “objectivity” if Smitty were to cover a team on which he was one of about 27 members (a far cry from today’s nearly 100 riding the Blue Train of Cougar football nation). It was clear that Smitty and his teammates didn’t think much of my coverage of their woeful season.

Signing him on, we gave Smitty a pad, sent him out with limited credentials, implored him to be impartial, and let him use one of our office Underwood manual typewriters on which to create his prose.

The rest is history. Following a stint as editor of the University of Washington Daily, Smitty spent time in the Vista Corps, found his life’s mate back East and returned to Seattle to begin a career with the Seattle Times. His “Sideline Smitty” column targeted high-school sports in the region and became the best read and even-handed sports columns for at least a quarter century.

It was a real treat sitting with Smitty at Pop Keeney Stadium earlier this fall to kibitz and watch Bothell defeat top-ranked Skyline in one of the best high school games one could imagine. He couldn’t refrain from keeping notes. What Smitty liked best about “covering” this game was “I could care who won and show it.”

Yary

The ambitious, young Yary fled Cuba not long ago and made her way to the U.S. with the assistance of retired travel executive Hi Fairbanks of Lake Forest Park. Trained in accounting, Yary took whatever jobs she could to support herself until she could bring her elementary-school-age son to be with her.

She landed a scholarship to attend the Kitchen Academy in south Seattle, graduated with honors and was selected for an intense internship program working in one of Spain’s family-sized hotel-restaurants. In Seattle she studied under, among others, Emily Moore, whose credits include the Cordon Bleu chef training school in France where she specialized in pastries.

Yary and Emily have agreed to prepare an Earth Day dinner in April as a fund-raiser for local scholarships.

Rorry

The last time I saw Rorry, he was surrounded by stacks of carefully zippered canvas bags filled with pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. He would be among a dozen volunteers, physicians and nurses headed for Cusco, Peru, to set up portable clinics on the city’s outskirts and later in a predetermined rural area. Over the next two weeks, Rorry and crew would see as many as 1,200 Peruvians who otherwise could not afford or would not seek medical attention of routine or acute conditions.

Rorry’s goal on this, his sixth such trip to Peru, is to make contact with a Rotary club in Cusco to partner up for future missions. The team selects locations where it is possible that permanent health clinics will grow from their visits. The toughest part of the trip, Rorry acknowledges, is getting the supplies through government red tape and past low-paid parochial customs officials.

Gracy

When the thrift store closed in Bothell recently, Gracy wanted to continue helping others. She secured a job as a bus driver with Hopelink, transporting and caring for severely disabled seniors living in group-home situations who benefited immensely from services and personal contacts provided at the adult wellness program at the senior center in Bothell.

Known to her friends as a rather aggressive driver, Gracy nonetheless passed the qualifying tests with flying colors. She quickly became one of the most popular “drivers” and developed many lasting friendships with her clients.

The threat of curtailment or loss of the program through severe budgetary cuts has hit Gracy hard, not for her job, but for her client-friends who have thrived on their visits to the wellness program. She is doing what she can to find funding, even taking the issue to her church in hopes of finding outreach dollars that could help stave off the day the program could end.

Name yours!

We’d like to hear about your intriguing friends. Cyber me here and we’ll follow up.