Northwest Now Steve On The Street
Makers On The Tide
(upbeat music) - KBTC, a viewer supported community service of Bates Technical College. (upbeat music) From KBTC, public television studios into Como, Washington. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the Steve on the Street podcast, a closer look behind the headlines. As public policy and current affairs impact the real lives of real people. (upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to the Steve on the Street podcast, produced by KBTC Public Television's public affairs program, Northwest Now. I'm your host, reporter and photojournalist, Steve Kigens. On today's podcast, we're talking about world-renowned craftsmanship and where it comes from, right here in Tacoma. Specifically, we're talking about the Willett's Brothers canoe company. The factory located on Day Island was owned and operated by two brothers, Earl and Floyd Willett's. The two started crafting a double-plinked cedar canoes while they were both still in high school. The brothers survived two world wars and a depression and would eventually produce a little more than 917-foot-long wooden canoes. They even invented machinery to help in their factory but refused to hire more staff or expand production insisting their handicraft could not be reproduced by machines or other people. That meant new customers were placed on waiting lists. Clearly, the craftsmanship was worth the wait. The Willett's Brothers canoe company is the focus of a recently released documentary film titled "Makers on the Tide", produced by Mariposa Productions, the film, and several Willett's Brothers canoes are now on exhibition at the Washington State History Museum in downtown Tacoma. Take a listen to Northwest Now's coverage talking about the company's brothers and their history. Life on the Water has been one of the cornerstones for generations on and around commencement bed. Part of that history includes a canoe made along the shores of Puget Sound for half a century. It's a canoe many believe is the finest ever made. A set of skills, of hand skills, of hand making skills that you sense are not really being preserved. I think Tacoma should take a great deal of pride in having health birth, the business and the brothers. That business, the Willett's Brothers canoe company. Between the early 1900s until the mid 1960s, brothers Earl and Floyd Willett's handcrafted, double-planked cedar canoes, mostly inside a factory built on daylight. Despite two world wars disrupting production, the brothers managed to hand craft a short of 1,000 nearly identical canoes, several on display inside the Foss Water Racie Port. If you came across somebody else in that lake and you saw that you had a boat, it would be like, "Oh, you got a Willett's, wow." Some of the canoes ended up in fleets available for rent. Some sailed their way into Red Cross safety classes, others were loaded under customer's cars, destined for adventure. In a way, they record, they're like a diary of a moment in time in American history that just kind of gets that moment. That moment continued until 1962, when 70-year-old Floyd suffered a fatal stroke. Brother Earl hoped to continue filling orders, but couldn't meet the exacting standards without his brother. Earl died nearly five years later from prostate cancer. You just don't make stuff like this anymore. The Willett's archives helped produce makers on the tide, a documentary celebrating the family and their creation. The film and several canoes are on display at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. People will want to see it because it's Tacoma, because these are beautiful pieces of art, because they can touch it. The exhibits are a chance to see up close how the brothers built a business, how their canoes brought people closer to nature, and why so many believe the finest canoes in the world were made in Pierce County, Washington. When you're paddling, you know, there's a drum beat that kind of connects with your heart, almost. In Tacoma, Steve Kiggins, Northwest Now. (upbeat music) Nobody really knows how many of the 900+ canoes still exist today, but since so many were put into fleets, it's even harder to know how many more people actually got to ride or paddle in one. That documentary was produced, in part, by a local historian who knows his way around a Willett's. Next on the podcast, take a listen to this extended interview with historian Michael Sullivan. (upbeat music) - From a cultural standpoint, to be able to appreciate something from another time, from a period in history, I mean, you know, the boys start making canoes right at the point where the railroads and immigration, all that stuff is waning, and we're starting to have tourism and people recreating. It's the era when our national parks are all created, and we're going out. And this becomes an implement of adventure for normal folks, and that's the beginning, and they stop making them right as aluminum and all the other materials, cheaper materials, come along. So they really hit right in a window. In a way, they record, they're like a diary of a moment in time in American history that just kind of hits that moment where, you know, culturally, we're starting to appreciate national parks. We're starting to get outside. We're beginning to appreciate the environment more. We want to involve and be part of the environment. And probably we also start to develop an ethic about protecting the environment. Because we're out in it and we're, we just have a more, a more intimate relationship with the natural world around us, and that's what the Wheelitz Knus did. They really gave people a chance to not just look out a train window going through the parks, but to actually get out and get your feet wet, you know. - Literally. - Literally be out there in it. - Yeah, what fun. - You probably heard the story, but you know, the world, the older brother, the last brothers to be alive died in 1967, and the family just closed the factory up, sealed it the way it, like they walked out in 1967. And so I got Kendall Wheelitz, who's the grand nephew, called me because he had checked with the, I'm not sure who he was checking with, but he wanted some advice on what to do with the, what's there, 'cause they were gonna sell it. So I, he called me, and I started talking to him, and I told him that I had, I knew of kind of a little bit of the story. And so I got invited there in the very beginning when we opened it, and then I helped him make the decision, he and his sister, to make the decision to leave all the thousands of photographs that Earl took, and then all the paper records, which they kept meticulously, all that went to the Tommal Public Library. And then the library built a website, so you can now go to the Wheelitz website, look at their pictures, that kind of stuff. And then the three-dimensional objects, I was part of helping make the decision to get them over to the waterfront museum here. And that was when we bought, when we brought Brent and the other people out. So, so I think the family was happy with the soft landing and the kind of legacy being protected when they sold the property off. And then out of that, Nick Flain, my partner, we were out there the first day they opened it. We brought a camera and filmed it and did some interviews. And then I met Pat Chapman, who wrote a book about the Wheelitz. And the first canoe I found was the one, the first one I bought, was in kind of rough shape. And Pat restored that canoe. - So-- - Where'd you find it? - I found it down trying to think of the community, but inland from Everett. And it was a guy whose father had bought it from the University of Washington when they sold off the wooden canoes and it had been sitting in a garage. It was up in the, up in the garage. - You remember walking up and seeing it for the first time? - Oh yeah, yeah. And it turned out Pat, when I met Pat, he had said, "Well, I know a guy who's got one "who had contacted me, and so I got in touch with the guy." - When you're on the water, do people automatically know what it is? - Not always, but when I've got one on top of my car or when I'm out in the water, yeah, you always get kind of a, that's why when I pulled up this guy down here, just got this beautiful VW, restored VW bus. It's kind of like that, you've got a classic, you know instantly, it's a handmade, older boat. And then when you tell people, it's over 100 years old, then people whoa. - So it's a matter of craftsmanship, it's a matter of longevity. - Yeah, it's a matter of, yeah, a set of skills of hand skills, of hand-making skills that you sense are not really being preserved. They are not, I mean, there are makers out there, people making canoes, even cedar canoes, Western red cedar canoes. But not in the, not for 50 years out of their lives every day, you know. And the unique story, think about that, two brothers, right out of high school who spent their entire adult lives making just one boat, you know, and really just the two of them. - Did their story and the products they build for today, did it kind of grow larger than the two of them and the boat manufacturing process itself? - Yeah, they got to a point fairly early on, they really start making them in, you know, in the teens, you know, after the first world war. And by the early 1920s, they were already being recognized and they had to charge a little bit more, you could go buy a rowboat or something for 10 bucks. You know, you had to, in the early days, well, it's kind of their standard catalog price was $85. So that, and that was quite a bit of money for a, you know, for a watercraft that was mostly recreational. It wasn't a working boat. So that was, you know, their, but they were making so few of them that they're quickly developed a waiting list. And then they probably took some comfort in knowing that they were gonna be able to make a go of it because of the waiting list. And then they started making paddles and various accessories and slightly modifying the design to improve on it. But, you know, they never really developed a whole second product line or anything. They basically made the same 17 foot long western red cedar boat. And the trim would be, you know, oak or teak or whatever, you know, but the basic instrument, the basic boat didn't really change over the 50 odd years they made them. So, and when you look at, go back to the earliest ones and I've never, I think the oldest one I've seen is in the light 30s. Like eight seat, the first 30 boats they made. Compare that to, I've seen boats that are in the high eights and 900s. So those are right at the end of their working lives. And, you know, you can still tell, you know, they still, they're not just, they don't just resemble one another. You can see the hand of the maker, the same maker in both boats. Could this have ever, could their enterprise have operated or rather succeeded anywhere else than where it did? Or is this kind of a, the products they were using, materials they were using, their kinship? - Yeah. - Did it all kind of coalesce that they could only happen here? It's a comb. - Well, there were small canoe makers across Canada and the United States that were using roughly a North American design of a canoe that varied, you know, from 12 or 13 feet up to maybe 20 feet long. There were small artisan canoe makers, but what the Willets did is they, they really recognized the utility of Western Red Cedar. And because of that unique material that's kind of indigenous to our part of the world, you really couldn't know, they couldn't have been made somewhere else. Later on, because of the peacock racing shells and the fame of that material being used in the fastest rolling shells in the world, you know, the boys in the boat, 1936, Olympic, saw that, Willets were working at the same time as peacock. They were working on the same, with the same material and the same basic utility, the same behavior of that material, the adaptability of that material to a boat and the way it behaves in the water. And really, they were far superior to any of the other wooden boats that were out there. So they, and Western Red Cedar, it's buoyancy, it's lightweight quality, it's ability to be super thin and still not leak. Basically, it meant they could build very, very light, very flexible, very fast boats for their day. And eventually, you know, aluminum and fiberglass come along and they become, it's easier just to mass produce that. I'm not sure that the aluminum or the fiberglass boats are any superior in terms of, you know, watercraft, but they're just so much cheaper that, you know, well, they don't come with the meticulous effort in handcraft, nor do they come with the story of how they was made by those who made it. That seems to be the key issues that, why they're customers and, you know, adoptees of their products, treasure them, so highly. - Yeah, yeah, the fact that they were made by the willots, it's like a painting or a stratovariest while in, you know, the maker's name and just that proven quality and that unique hand that creates the object, you know, is where the value is. And as time passes, I mean, they'll never be more. We don't know how many there are in the world right now, but certainly the ones that are still around are getting much more appreciated, people recognize them. (upbeat music) - That's not all to the story of the Willots Brothers. The Foswateri Seaport Museum has several canoes on display where you can see up close and personal, the amazing craftsmanship that went into each canoe. Patrick Chapman not only restores Willots' canoes, he also published a book titled The Willots Brothers and Their Canoes in 2006. Chapman is also part of the documentary makers on the tide. The film, along with several more canoes, are currently on exhibition at the Washington State History Museum in downtown Tacoma. I'm certainly not some mariner or boat expert of any kind, but when I first encountered a Willots canoe, a short time ago, it was sitting among several other handcrafted wooden boats. All of them were awesome examples of meticulous design and construction and preservation, but the Willots, even just from across the room, it stood out and stood out loudly, almost gleaming like a gem. One cannot mistake perfection once you see a Willots canoe for yourself. So, thanks again to Brent Mason from the Foss Waterway Seaport. Thanks also to Michael Sullivan. Thanks both of you for taking time to share the Willots Brothers story on Northwest Now. And finally, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to spend it here with me. Thanks for sharing your continued support just by listening to the Stephen The Street podcast. Once again, I'm reporter and photojournalist Steve Kigens from KBTC Public Television's Northwest Now. Until next time, cheers. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]