The weather was cool, the sky overcast the day the Alki Statue of Liberty was originally dedicated. A crowd of people, a "parade of a thousand" crowded around the statue. Boy Scouts and Sea Scouts stood in packs on the boardwalk with their troop flags waving.

But Cub Scout Troop 282 was late, arriving just as the ceremony began. To see anything, Harald Sund and the rest of his troop stayed on the sidewalk above.

Sund was 9. He remembers the thong of people, looking over their heads, and the troop flags waving.

"At the time we were not aware of the symbolism," he says. "But maybe deep down we knew what the flags and the Statue of Liberty meant."

Sund, now 65, is looking for scouts who were also there at the original dedication in 1952, to invite them back for the rededication of the statue Sept. 6.

"Other kids kept in contact with their best friends," Sund says. "I can't remember one person in my troop, not even my den mother's name."

But he's found John Kelly, who has been involved with Sea Scouts for over 60 years. Kelly still lives in West Seattle with his wife.

Gerald Pipitone travels from Wenatchee to sell his produce at the West Seattle Farmers Market.

George Cameron, who lives in Arizona, will fly up for the rededication.

Sund has traveled the globe as a freelance photographer, visiting seven continents - including Antarctica - but he has never called anywhere home other than West Seattle.

"It may sound provincial but people have an affinity to, or an affection for, a particular place," he says.

His parents were Norwegian emigrants. His mother came through Ellis Island in 1926. Sund has a copy of the ship's passenger manifest, and had her name inscribed for the immigration center during its renovation. His father had come to the States two years earlier, and the two met at a Sons of Norway dance in Ballard, "since at the time it was illegal to do anything else," Sund says.

The only time he has lived outside of West Seattle was "the three days before I came home from the hospital."

Sund grew up in the Morgan Junction, attending Gatewood Elementary and Madison Junior High, graduating from West Seattle High School. His house was on the school boundary.

"If I had lived on the other side of the alley, I would have gone to Sealth," he says.

Sund joined the army in 1961, preferring to enlist for three years rather than risk being drafted for two. He was discharged in Germany in October 1964, just before 50,000 troops were sent to Vietnam. He returned to attend the University of Washington, and then worked as a freelance photographer for 35 years.

"I've been peripatetic most of my life," he says, traveling the world shooting film for corporate annual reports and magazine spreads. On speculation, Sund once rode an icebreaker heading to the Antarctic peninsula to photograph penguins.

On one flight home, Sund sat beside a Danish woman in her 70s who told him: "It's very important to know someone who knew you when you were young."

"It shows a sense of time and place," Sund says. "To have a shared memory of the same time, the same place, the same lives: It's comforting.

"It also has a sense of mortality. If that person is alive and remembering the same things you are, then you must still be okay."

Sund hasn't been able to travel since 1999, first taking care of an ailing aunt, then his mother, and now his brother Ken. The logistics at airports has changed, because of D.B. Cooper and 9/11.

"My travel days are over for the time being," Sund says, "but that's okay."

These days he takes his brother back to the Gatewood playground to shoot baskets.

"There's a comforting factor of returning to a place and remembering about it," Sund says.

"You can see the ghost of yourself there."

Matthew G. Miller is a freelance writer living in the Admiral District and may be contacted via wseditor@robinsonnews.com.