Vern and Jeannie Lindquist, who live out on East Lake Sammamish Parkway, are proud to be lifelong residents of the Issaquah area.
They were born within three months of each other in the same hospital in Renton in 1942. When Vern was three, his family moved from Seattle to their East Lake Sammamish home. His father had been born in Sweden and his mother’s parents came from the Swedish-speaking part of Finland.
John Bialek, Jeannie’s father, had immigrated with his family from Czechoslovakia in 1903. Around 1940 the Bialeks bought property where the off-ramp from State Highway 18 to the Issaquah-Hobart Road is now, and farmed there for over 50 years.
Jeannie and Vern attended first grade together in Issaquah. Vern rode the school bus from the northern end of the route and Jeannie from the southern end. They were together all through school, graduating in 1960 from Issaquah High School, and from the University of Washington in 1964.
After his father died, Vern and Jeannie bought the house on Lake Sammamish from his mother, raised two daughters there, and still live there today. “There was never a desire or need” to move away, says Vern.
In summers as a child, Vern walked the railroad track to stay at relatives’ cabins for two or three days. His parents never worried about him in their close-knit community. He remembers shedding his shoes for the summer and how his feet hurt when he put them back on for school in September.
Growing up, Jeannie and her three sisters helped their parents with farm chores. Jeannie was bored driving the tractor round and round the fields raking hay into rows , so she taught herself to whistle. “There was a lady at church who whistled the hymns and it was so lovely, I wanted to do it, too.”
Both remember that in the 1950s in Issaquah, there was only a stop sign at Front St. and Sunset Way. Drylies’ “Honeysuckle” soda fountain was a few doors north on Front Street and the “Ford store” was on the southeast corner of the intersection. “Moms were home in those days,” says Vern, “and the teacher’s word was law. You didn’t dare skip school because someone would see you and tell your mother.”
Jeannie says the biggest change since then is in “people’s mobility…kids used to know everyone in the neighborhood.”
Vern taught business subjects, graphic arts, printing – “everything you need to know to get something into print” – at Issaquah High School from 1968 to 1991. Jeannie established a business at home making miniatures and dollhouses when she found those she made for her daughters were better than those on the market.
Nowadays, they create scientifically correct “botanical kits” for making miniature flowers, using modern research tools and laser cutting. They market these kits through dollhouse shops and miniature shows.
Joan Newman is a volunteer with the Issaquah History Museums.
