President’s Blog: A PIONEERING SPIRIT

  • Steve Schmutz

Twenty years ago, I took a summer course in Pacific Northwest poetry at Whitworth University from professor Laurie Lamon. Featured poets included Richard Hugo, Gary Snyder, Tess Gallagher, Sherman Alexie, Theodore Roethke, and Raymond Carver. As a teacher of history, I loved how their poetry captured the geography of our region not only physically but emotionally. Professor Lamon had a quote on her wall from poet W.D. Snodgrass: “We shout along our bank to hear our voices returning from the hills to meet us. We need the landscape to repeat us.” All of the poets wove their respective regional landscapes throughout their poems as they explored their relationships with nature, themselves, and family. There was a certain spirit in their writings.

I wrote a paper about Tess Gallagher and have held onto this quote: “The Pacific Northwest is a place where you can talk about things that elsewhere might embarrass people. My work is very human-spirit centered, and it’s very helpful to be in this kind of climate. That may stem from the region’s history. It is a pioneer country. I think the people who came here first believed God got them here.”

Noted author Timothy Egan wrote a brilliant book on the Pacific Northwest titled The Good Rain where he touched upon the pioneer theme of our region. Egan followed the journey of Theodore Winthrop, who in 1853 traveled 320 miles from Vancouver Island, through the Puget Sound, across the edges of Mount Rainer, over the Cascades to central Washington, and on to Yakima and the Dalles. Winthrop’s journey was captured in his book The Canoe and the Saddle, which provided Egan a roadmap to follow on his own journey through the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s. Egan marveled at the diverse beauty of this land, carved from the rushing floods of melting glaciers of the last great ice age.

Those of us who are called to this region can certainly relate to our attachment to the beauty of the geography of the Pacific Northwest. I hail from Eastern Washington, and I love the channeled scabland landscape and the four seasons of my youth. I now call Edmonds home and am blessed by the beautiful backdrop of the Olympics and the Puget Sound. What I have enjoyed about my transition to this side of the mountains is encountering the people who have lived for generations in Snohomish County. In cities such as Everett, Snohomish, Marysville, Lynnwood, Stanwood, and Edmonds, I have encountered storytellers who have shared the countless tales of pioneer spirit, courage, and sacrifice that built Snohomish county. It was this spirit that led to the founding of Holy Cross High School by a group of parents in the 1980s who dreamed of establishing a Catholic high school in Snohomish County for the families who wanted their children and grandchildren to experience a community of faith.

As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, I look forward to exploring the history of our school, from the early founders with their pioneer spirit to the early leaders of the school who harnessed this spirit and established what is today the only Catholic high school in Snohomish County. The story of Holy Cross and Archbishop Murphy High School is a story about hope, love, faith, and sacrifice.

The first entry in this series features former board of trustees chair Herb Sprute and former Principal Kris Smith. They joined me in a conversation in the St. Thomas Chapel as we reminisced about their time at Holy Cross and Archbishop Murphy High School. Herb served on the board from 1996 to 2001 and his son Andrew graduated in 1999. Kris served as the Principal of Holy Cross and AMHS from 1993 to 2009. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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