When Kathryn Hess first moved to Silverdale in 1939, it was a town of gravel roads, small shops and family-owned farms.
There were no sidewalks, much less highways, and she churned her own butter and sold her cows’ milk to friends.
Hess recalls it being a close-knit community. When World War II started, everyone pitched in to support their neighbors at home and the troops abroad, and when Silverdale needed a new library, Hess and her husband gathered donations to put one there.
“Our roots were very deep in the community,” she said.
This year, Hess celebrates her 100th birthday. Though her birthday was in August, a community celebration is being held at the Silverdale Boy Scouts Hall from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday to honor her and her contributions to the Central Kitsap area, which include her time as a volunteer librarian in Silverdale’s first library and her involvement as a charter member of the League of Women Voters of Kitsap County. Through her experiences, the blue-eyed, white-haired Bremerton resident who still walks freely without a cane embodies a living history of Central Kitsap’s last 75 years.
ON THE GRAVEL ROAD
Kathryn Hess moved with her husband, Ray Hess, and her young son, David Hess, to Bremerton from Portland in 1937. While Ray Hess worked as an electrical engineer at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the family rented a house in Bremerton for two years before moving to a more rural environment that Kathryn Hess preferred.
The family moved to an unfinished house on Newberry Hill Road, at that time a gravel road “that went up about so far,” Kathryn Hess said, holding her thumb and index finger about an inch apart. Four days after the move, she gave birth to her son, Stanley Hess.
The Hess family lived on nine acres that included a barn, garden, chickens and cows. The boys would grow up to do the morning milking before going to class at Central Kitsap High School.
“Our children would have this farm experience where they learned to do things with their hands and bodies,” Hess said, adding that she used to tease her son Stanley Hess, now a museum curator at the Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum in Bremerton, saying, “Did you ever tell your arty friends that you know how to milk a cow?”
In 1959, Kathryn and Ray Hess learned there was a highway planned to run through Silverdale, with the centerline passing through their living room. To prepare for the coming demolition of their property, they bought 200 feet of waterfront on the Hood Canal and frequently camped there while they spend evenings, weekends and holidays building a new “dream house.”
When they moved to the new house in 1963, the highway hadn’t yet taken over the old house – it wasn’t built until 1969, 10 years after the family made plans to move – but their new home on the water fulfilled a longtime wish for Kathryn Hess. From her living room, she could see several constellations in the night sky, framed by trees.
“I’d really like to spend the rest of my life on the canal looking at the Olympics,” she said of her hopes at the time.
Silverdale resident Elizabeth Bondy was a neighbor of the Hess family and helped Kathryn Hess in the wake of her husband’s death in 1973. Bondy, 93, still lives in the waterfront neighborhood today.
“She was active and cheerful,” Bondy said of Kathryn Hess. “She was a wonderful friend.”
THE WAR EFFORT
When the U.S. joined World War II, Central Kitsap was shaken up, especially given its proximity to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Nonetheless, Silverdale residents rallied to support the war effort and prepared for any danger that might come.
“Silverdale was sort of a microcosm of the whole country,” Kathryn Hess said. “I think World War II was the one war that we felt was justified and involved complete support.”
Kathryn Hess said Silverdale residents used coupons for sugar and butter rations, just like the rest of the country, and nets were installed in the Puget Sound to deter enemy submarines and were lowered for ferry passage.
Her job was to go door to door to record unregistered babies should families become separated in an emergency. She also manned a watch tower at Central Kitsap High School every Tuesday from midnight to 6 a.m. to watch for enemy planes.
“We were so vulnerable, we didn’t know what to expect,” Kathryn Hess said, admitting there ultimately wasn’t much to fear, after all.
LIBRARIES
Kathryn Hess was a charter member of the League of Women Voters in Kitsap County, helped raise money for the Bremerton Community Theater and volunteered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church since “before God,” she said, but she is perhaps best known for her years as a volunteer librarian and one of the main fundraisers to build the Silverdale Library’s current building on Northwest Carlton Street.
Stanley Hess said his parents’ interest in Kitsap County’s growing library system was a natural extension of their passion for education. Kathryn Hess was involved in local PTA groups, while Ray Hess was a two-term Central Kitsap School Board member.
“Education has always been an important aspect of our family life,” Stanley Hess said.
When the Hess family first moved to Kitsap County, the only library was the Bremerton city branch on Fifth Street, next to its current location on the same street. There were a few book collections in churches and there was no countywide library service.
After a few years, the county established a library district, with its headquarters in a Westpark building, Kathryn Hess said. The first Silverdale library was located in the Sunday school room of a Methodist church before it moved in 1948 to a 16-by-16-foot former Army barracks owned by the school district. There, Kathryn Hess acted as a volunteer librarian at the building that served the local schools as well as the public.
Though the building was later expanded to 16 by 35 feet, in 1969 the community started collecting money for a newer and larger branch. Though Kathryn retired from the library in 1968, she and her husband lobbied residents for more donations. Having started with $8,000, library fundraisers collected the $13,000 needed by 1970, when the current library was built.
“It was really Kathryn and Ray that kept things really going,” said Betty Coster, a former Kitsap Regional Library board member. “Kathryn was the one who kept all the interest going.”
Bondy, Kathryn Hess’ Hood Canal neighbor whom she met while working for the county libraries in 1960, said Kathryn Hess was well-loved by library patrons and fellow volunteers and was a leading champion of the Silverdale library.
“She was such an activist,” Bondy said. “They loved her dearly.”
The library was dedicated to Ray Hess in 1975 in honor of his fundraising efforts for the building.
IT WAS ALL THAT MILK
Kathryn Hess has lived at the Canterbury Manor retirement community for the past 14 years, where she now gives tours to potential residents. She is now legally blind and can’t hear as well as she used to, but she is thankful for her mobility – even at 100, she walks around with no assistance.
Her key to longevity?
“All that milk,” said the great-grandmother of four, referring to the wealth of milk her cows produced, adding that she has never broken a bone.
Stanley Hess said his mother is the beneficiary of good genes — her mother lived within a day of her 96th birthday and her father died at 89 – but has also maintained a positive attitude.
“She’s kept busy all her life, active both physically as well as mentally,” Stanley Hess said. “My mother has exemplified that very well.”
Kathryn Hess, who used to read newspapers for audio tapes for the blind, now immerses herself in audio books, the tapes piling up in her apartment.
“I’d go crazy without them,” she said.
She is nostalgic for the small-town days before family-owned farms were replaced with big businesses and back when children helped out more with household chores.
“The whole culture of the country has changed,” she said.
But despite the changes, the children of old friends who run into her at the grocery store still know Kathryn Hess as a community fixture, asking: “Are you still working at the library?”
