Meet Barbara Reamer
Chances are you have already met her because she is ubiquitous in the Highline area. If there is a cause she will appear out of nowhere to help improve something or build something or use her livewire style and impish grin just doing good.
Long may she live because successful, vital communities need lots of her skills and energy.
I met her way back in the fifties when she was a secretary to John Mowbray, owner of Highline's first radio station, KQIN. Al Sneed, then publisher of the Highline Times, and I were his minority partners.
She remembers fending off bill collectors for John but let us in the back door of the office on 153rd.
John is deceased but he sold the station to an evangelical station owner in Spokane.
Now she is helping a Burien arts group put a plan together to build a fancy new arts center in what is now the former Chelsea School to house a Burien Little Theatre, an art school, perhaps a gallery and other amenities.
Hello, city bond issue. I would never underestimate her group of believers.
Meet Jerry Guite ...
(rhymes with jetty, Betty, spaghetti or whatever)
After 37 years he has retired from the surplus business in the Highline area and he and his wife Patty (rhymes with natty) are now retiring but not shy. Neither of them have ever been shy since they met each other at the historic Flame Tavern on Ambaum and Southwest 128th.
Historic tavern to me, I say, because we had a Bassett hound named Charley who used to escape our fence and head there for a beer. The patrons served him on a saucer and several times he got a ride home in the front seat of a sheriff's patrol car.
The couple has one son, who is an attorney in San Francisco.
Now after 40 years of blessed wedlock they have sold their property next to the new Normandy Village now under construction. The AAA surplus goods store will soon become a Burger King hamburger spot.
The Guites will keep busy in community affairs and Jerry will continue to actively serve as a commissioner of Highline Water District,
Jerry, who was reared as a Duluth, Minnesota, farm boy where he learned the value of hard labor, and Patty, who came from Northern Montana, are a light-hearted, down-home breezy pair with strong Republican can-do attitudes, though he is more vocal than she.
They have a dog named Whiskey, though he doesn't drink beer from a saucer.
