August 28th, 2016

​SUNDAY IN SEATTLE
 
         It’s Sunday, August 28, 2016 and Pat and I are visiting our daughter, Tina, and her family, Ben, Noah, Lisi, and Ninji Summers in nearby Redmond. Ben Summers is a rising executive at Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond.
 
         We just finished eating a huge brunch at Salty’s on Alki with the Summers plus Ben Haskell and Becky Braniff, son and friend of my late brother Peter. Ninji, the Summers dog, stayed home. Ben Haskell was recently promoted to Battalion Chief of the Seattle Fire Department and has been here for about 25 years. Becky works for Amazon.
 
         Our daughter, Tina, arranged our brunch and we celebrated three things: Lisi’s ninth birthday; Noah’s promotion to a brown belt Karate; and Ben Haskell’s promotion.

          Unfortunately, there was some drama in the water just outside the restaurant. We saw fire boats in this area and watched them pull a young woman out of the water, who'd been taking a scuba-diving lesson. Tina's neighbor, Julie, told us Seattle has the highest percentage of water rescues of any city in the USA so, hopefully, this woman will recover.
 
         After brunch, Ben Summers showed us around West and downtown Seattle. Ben Summers knows a lot about this area and pointed out Amazon’s new headquarters buildings and all of the other property this amazing company has erected in the last couple of years. Google also has a major presence here and Starbucks was founded in and still located in Seattle.
 
         This area has grown amazingly since my first trip here in 1954 to a fraternity convention at the University of Washington. A group of five Bowdoin College Alpha Delta Phi fraternity members drove out here, camping on golf courses along the way, to save money. It was the first large state university I’d ever seen and now educates more than 54,000 students annually.
 
         Tina has planned a full week for us and I’ll report more as we experience our visit.