A team of history mavens, volunteers, and sharp technical minds collaborated to launch a Web site that is something of a virtual "board game."

Clear, historic sepia toned photos of the original Youngstown-Cooper School, Pigeon Point, Riverside, steel factory area, and trolley tracks serve as the "board," sprinkled with small circles to click to hear interviews of 28 longtime and former Delridge residents who reminisce. Most are former students of the school, now the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, on Delridge Way.

The project was funded by the Washington State Library via a national grant written by librarian Randall Nelson at South Seattle Community College. The Southwest Seattle Historical Society/Log House Museum lent their name, and materials. Nelson's colleagues Shireen Deboo and Diane King assisted in the Web site's technical development. Emeritus faculty member and Pacific Northwest historian Judy Bentley who wrote the site's narrative and project manager for Delridge

Neighborhoods Development Association Phillipa Nye conducted the interviews and researched the neighborhoods. Anna Callahan, who resides in the Cooper building, designed the Web site. Nelson's son, Peder, created cartology maps with the help of materials from Seattle's Kroll Map Company.

"Historic maps show a road where the raised train trestles were," said Peder, a musician who recently created a Frances Farmer retrospective at the Admiral Theater.

"I think the Web site is really exciting, very rich with interactive information," said Peder's father. "For the college to find the resources is really good for building bridges in our neighborhood. It is important to preserve the site, and while it looks pretty permanent it takes money and effort to maintain."

"The focus of this Web site was on the people who went to the old Cooper-Youngstown School," said Nye, who was in charge of the building's renovation in 2005. "During renovation we built a list of names of alumni from the school, and worked from that to get our interviews."

Grace Suyematsu speaks of picking hazelnuts by Alki Beach and sliding down coal chutes on cardboard boxes with friends. Her family was forced to leave in 1942 for a Japanese internment camp.

Nick Skalabrin recalls on the site, "Our place was less than a block from the steel mill. They had a rolling ... stamping mill and made (railroad) tie plates... It would run 24 hours a day and there would be a clank and it would roll down a roller coaster and drop into a gondola car. We got used to it."

Lengthier interviews in the archive section of the site augment the two or three minute interviews featured on the main pages.

"West Seattle gets very focused on Founders Day, Nov. 13 when we recognize the Denny landing, but this Web site attempts to broaden the historical narrative of the Delridge neighborhood," said Bentley.

"In the beginning, Cooper School was considered to be diverse," said Bentley. "But it was really European diversity. Scandinavians lived on Pigeon Hill, Italians in the Gulch and Youngstown, and Slavic people lived in Riverside. They had the stigma of being working class steel mill families. But some kids were welcomed by the (higher class) West Seattle High School students because of their athleticism. Some of those racial barriers changed with Cooper's hiring of Thelma Dewitty, the first African-American teacher hired by the Seattle School District, in 1947."

Visit: www.delridgehistory.org

Steve Shay may be reached at steves@robinsonnews.com