Valhalla Silverware

September 20, 1964, the Sunday News Tribune included an article about an 80th anniversary banquet to be held at the Valhalla Hall the following Saturday night, and that although the 80th anniversary of the Swedish Order of Valhalla was in December, the celebration in recent years was held in September to avoid conflict with the holidays.  I include here, fifty years later, Silverware from the old Valhalla Hall.

Scandinavian Dances at the Valhalla Hall During World War Two

This poem refers to the U.S.O. for African-American Servicemen and Women.  (Please click to see a photo of the building in 1945.)  And It refers to the Valhalla Hall, where Scandinavian Americans could attend Scandinavian dances.



Valhalla Hall, 2008 - the brick building
shown.is from about 1926,
it was demolished to build the new health center



Commerce Street, 2012

APRIL 1923 – LINNEA GORD’S RECITAL PROGRAM




She kept a scrapbook.  Pasted in

Is a program from a piano recital

At The American Legion Assembly Room.
 

Not The American Legion Hall,

Built in 1930 across from the park.

Photos at the library show the Assembly Room

Interior, the ceiling and window structure

The same as a 1922 news photograph

Of the American Legion Assembly Room. 
 

Other library photos are of African-American

Service men and women at their own

USO Club at 713-715 Commerce, 

the American Legion Assembly Room. 

On the recital program they have taken

The opportunity to make her seem

More sophisticated and professional

By adding to her last name, an e.

Linnea Gorde performed A La Bien Aimee. 

In the 1930s she performed

As a dance band piano player at

The Valhalla Hall.  Her second accordion player,

Claus Anderson, on May 29, 1942,

Promised a PA demonstration at the next

Meeting night of the Swedish Order of Valhalla.

He was a member of the committee

To replace the PA.  The job went to Bark’s

Electric.  The Scandinavian soldiers

Could go the the Valhalla Hall for dances.

Her first accordion player and her drummer,

Her brothers, were in Alaska and The Pacific. 

At the dining room window was a basket

Of white rocks my grandma found

On the beach on the island.

There was a small wooden Chinese man

Who pulled a rickshaw.  Through

The lace window curtain was the

Steep front yard.  In the living room was

The piano, where she had rehearsed

A La Bien Aimee by Shutt in 1923.

Valhalla Hall And First Lutheran Church

In the Tacoma News Tribune, Sunday September 20^th, 1964, is a short article, “Tacoma Order of Valhalla in 80^th Year”  The Swedish Order of Valhalla, Tacoma’s oldest “home-grown” fraternal body, will celebrate its 80^th anniversary with a banquet and program Saturday night in its headquarters, Valhalla Temple at 1216 1/2 S. K St.

Confirmation Class - Boys
First Lutheran Church

According to the article, the actual founding date of the lodge was in December, the celebration changed to September to not conflict with the holidays.  The holidays of course were Christmas,  and closest to the Valhalla founding date was Saint Lucia Day.  The lodge was Swedish, as was First Swedish Lutheran Church, and in 1924, (ninety years ago), the lodge headquarters became the headquarters for First Lutheran Church.  The congregation moved to the Valhalla Hall following First Lutheran’s loss of their second building in Tacoma in a fire.  (Their first building had been on Tacoma Avenue.) Their services continued at Valhalla Hall until the present First Lutheran Church building was completed a few years later.

Confirmation Class - Girls
First Lutheran Church

My mother’s family was a part of Valhalla, a men’s organization.  I can show a picture of a confirmation class from before this happened.  It includes my mother’s oldest brother.  I believe the photo shows the pastor’s residence, which was across the street from the church building.

Excerpts from the Blog Entries for Open Mike at King’s Books

Yesterday Evening I read at the Open Mike at King's Books - Their reader was Laura LeHew.  It was a nice evening.  It begins to be a little cool.

Excerpts from the Blog Entries for Open Mike at King’s Books -

Blog Entry:   A Ticket from 1964   Starting high school in 1964 was not a clean break from friends in junior high school.  So I thought the ticket I had for the September 1964 Electronovision production of Hamlet, with Richard Burton,  was time spent with friends who always  focused on drama.  I retained a remembrance of seeing Richard Burton perform in a simple dark costume.

A thousand copies of Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud with Richard Burton as Hamlet, were released simultaneously at a thousand leading cities in the United States for four performances only.  It was presented at The Temple Theater, (seen to the left of the door of King’s Books).  The copies were then destroyed.  A copy remained with Richard Burton, which appears on the internet in sequences and is available as a restored movie.

From the door of King's Books,
 the Temple Theater

  
Blog Entry:  Ophelia .  Shocked and unable to communicate, Ophelia struggled, and as time went by, her father's death became an event to discuss with songs.  Hamlet's Ophelia must have been a strong reason John Gielgud, the director, wanted the play performed in rehearsal clothes.  Ophelia was a favorite theme of the wonderful Pre-Raphaelite painters who think her insanity made her radiant.  Gielgud preferred an Ophelia whose liveliness is dull and chill with shock. 

Blog Entry:  From The News Tribune, September 1964, Emily Walker’s Column:  "...three hours of watching Richard Burton's superb performance had left me in pieces...when the curtain fell...tears were rolling down my face, out of my nose, I couldn't see what I was doing, and I couldn't stop...I stumbled out, with the others...You who didn't see Burton's Hamlet at the Temple missed something wonderful...Here is a man who may be long remembered as the greatest Hamlet of them all."  These are quotes from Emily Walker's review in the News Tribune, printed the Sunday after the "Electron-o-vision" show on Wednesday and Thursday, September 23 and 24th 1964.

Landmark Convention Center
Old Mason Temple
Temple Theater

Blog Entry:  A Clue Emerges  A postcard from Elsinore Castle.  A friend sent the card from a summer trip to Scandinavia in 1966.  Part of the message…”The Castle from Hamlet!!  Remember Mrs. Hunt!”  It could be an English teacher had to do with students having tickets to the Electronovision Hamlet.  

Blog Entry:  Remember Ophelia.  Water Adjustment in the 1950s was at the YWCA pool in Tacoma. I did some microfilm research at the U. of Washington in Seattle.  A reference was in the stacks at the Drama Library.  The Drama Library was beyond the quad, at Hutchinson.  Hutchinson, the women's physical education building where I participated in The 1968 Swim Marathon of the dormitories, in a small pool, a pool like the YWCA in Tacoma.  

So at Hutchinson at the Drama Library stacks, I asked if the pool was still there.  Then if they could show me to an exit where the pool used to be.  This was nearby, and as the library worker showed me through the hallways, he explained which part had been the pool, which part had been the locker room.  However, as he explained his voice sounded into the ceiling with resonance, it was as though the pool were still there. 

That sound to me, in those spaces, always had meant there was a pool there.  Can I have to accept that, instead, the sound had something to do with the ceiling?

The fiftieth anniversary of John Gielgud’s direction of Richard Burton in Hamlet, 1964, and the Electronovision distribution of the taped movie, four performances only in two days, at around a thousand movie theaters.

Celebrate 13 Miles of Go Walk Tacoma Bikeways and Pedestrian Improvements

Celebrate 13 Miles of Go Walk Tacoma Bikeways and Pedestrian Improvements - for this purpose bike riders and pedestrians met at Wright Park yesterday afternoon.  Celebration ride groups included a bike ride to 26th and Stevens, a bike ride to South 37th and "G", and Walk With The Mayor, to 15th and Fawcett.  I have a few snapshots of the Walk.

Group returns to "Upper Downtown"

Podium for Speakers

Walk Group near Lighthouse Senior Center

Near the Lighthouse Senior Center

Flier from Poetry Reading, April 29, 1968

"April 26, 1968, it was a fine reading."  A flier from the reading turned up, it featured Denise Levertov and Galway Kinnell.  So many fliers were printed neatly without any special detail work in those years, but this flier was done in very sweet calligraphy.  I link to the essay about my attending this reading, which was published at Salt River Review.