Here are two of Mildred and Walt Woodward’s timeless editorials, the first published on Sept. 19, 1962 and the second a week later:
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“To the Nincompoop on The Times’ Copy Desk”
Dear Jerk: That was a lovely photograph of ferries at Colman Dock by Josef Scayles on Page 14 of the Sept. 9 Seattle Times pictorial section. Why did you have to louse it up with your inaccurate and uninformed cutlines?
You wrote: “As vacationers galore ship aboard Puget Sound ferries just for the ride, modern-day voyagers commute between Seattle and cross-water homes twice a day, five days a week, and grumble about the monotony of their salty sojourns.”
What kind of idiotic bilge is that?
Ferry commuters drink coffee, play steamboat bridge, talk, relax or just sit in nice, comfortable seats and watch the view go by.
Some of them even read The Seattle Times. None of these things can be done by the ordinary, land-bound commuters who must fight that bumper-to-bumper rat race every evening.
Incidentally, this isn’t just your opinion against hours. There is still on file in Olympia, the results of an unbiased survey, taken by a University of Washington expert, which says that if we ferryboat commuters had a choice between a bridge and the ferry, with time and cost being the same, we’d elect the ferry… by 80 percent.
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”Bainbridge, Where There Really is One Call for All”
Newcomers to Bainbridge Island – new since last October – will have the privilege next week of joining the rest of us in proving that there is, indeed, one community where ALL the giving is limited to ONE financial drive a year.
For two years, we’ve proved it, Mr. and Mrs. Newcomer, and we have no intention of failing this third time around, particularly with your understanding and help.
It works this way: we have a group of magnificent volunteers called Bainbridge Foundation Inc., with no pay whatsoever, not even expenses, and with a modesty that drives our news editor nuts. They carefully organize this ONE call for all giving for 10 days – 10 days only – from October 1 through 10.
They don’t set any quotas. They don’t demand that any recipient agency submit a budget. They simply provide a community basket into which we toss it all… at one time. In this way, our wonderful women, who will be plodding to your doorstep and to the doors of your neighbors next week, don’t have to get into that routine every few weeks for this drive and that one.
There’s a pledge card (we’ve tried to make an engraving of it on page one so you can see what it looks like). On it are all the local Kitsap County, state and national health and welfare agencies that Bainbridge Foundation can think of. There are some blank lines for you to add only others you wish to donate to. You put down the amount you want to give to each one, or indicate how you’ll pay it on the installment plan.
That’s all. And we mean it. There won’t be another handout drive on Bainbridge Island until next October 1. It really works here. Help us Mr. and Mrs. Newcomer, and we’ll keep it that way.
Yes, it still really works here. It was a great idea and still is.
