Heritage Court 2008
Anna Faye O’Donnell
Mary Eskridge retains a vivid picture of her mother hunched over the sewing machine sewing the outline of a Bellevue Bulldog on a skirt for a school cheerleader.
“All of a sudden the needle went right in my mother’s finger. It was in there so good she had to tear it out with a pair of pliers,” Eskridge recalls. “But it wasn’t a problem in her mind. She put another needle in and finished the rest of the skirts.”
Anna Faye O’Donnell took the same hard-nosed tack in whatever she did, whether it was planning banquets for her two sons’ football and basketball teams or staying up all night to type up the minutes from a Bellevue City Council meeting…
Margaret Murdock
Margaret Murdock is a woman of note in Carey.
Not only does she still play organ for her church at the age of 88 but she taught hundreds of Carey youth how to play piano on the Wurlitzer piano she brought from Heber City, Utah, 60 years ago.
“I had 47 students at one time—before school, after school, on Saturdays. And we’d have recitals every year at Christmas and in spring. At one time I had eight students play together at the same time,” she recounts proudly.
Murdock’s attention to the kids is among the things that prompted members of Carey’s…
mary lou mickelson
Mary Lou Mickelson and her former husband Bob loved skiing so much that they built Alpental Ski Resort on Snoqualmie Pass.
The area is considered to have some of the most challenging and beautiful skiing in Washington. But when the two got their chance they split for Sun Valley and Bald Mountain—what they call the best ski turf in the world.
Here they helped build—and sell–Sun Valley. And they enjoyed the company of those who figure prominently in the annals of Sun Valley history.
Now Mary Lou Mickelson is one of four women who have been named to the 2008 Blaine County Heritage Court for her part in the Wood River Valley’s heritage.
Lois Heagle
Lois Heagle can still remember when her school class climbed the stairs of the second floor of the old Hailey Elementary School to watch the first passenger train go past, carrying the rich and famous to the new Sun Valley Ski Resort.
It sparked a sense of adventure in the young impressionable student. But it was an adventure she could never take part in herself.
“I had to give it up because I dislocated my hip when I was born,” recalls Heagle, now 81. “Dislocated hips were a common problem then but they didn’t check for it like they do now. They didn’t discover I had a problem and put it back in place until I was 2.
“My doctor said, ‘I know where you’re from and I know what they do up there, but I think if you go skiing, you’ll break your hip.