'Family' celebrates 11th annual Crescent Bar Fourth gathering
Some of the "family" members who made it to Matt Black's and Kate Berschauer's place in North Park for the annual Fourth of July reunion include (from left, front row) Caitlin Estey, Tieton Estey (on lap), Isabella Estey and Sedona Anderson. Others, from left, back row, were Eric Wickwire, Candy Anderson, Cole Anderson, Fred Anderson, Jason Nihard, Matt Black and Kate Berschauer.
CRESCENT BAR - If he ever has to leave Crescent Bar, North Park lot owner Matt Black will remember it as "a uniting place for friends and family to celebrate the Fourth."
Matt's and his wife Kate Berschauer's "family" reunited for the Fourth of July for the 11th straight year last weekend. It is a blended family of relatives and friends that has drawn as many as 35 to the celebration.
This year, a Saturday dinner of "real" Italian food took about 10 hours to prepare for cooks Berschauer and Jason Nihard. Made from scratch and prepared in authentic ways, it included pizza, mascaponi cheese-filled salami and prosciutto, cantaloupe with lime zest and hot chiles (Sicilian), langostino pasta, sweet wine pears and limoncello.
"We started to eat at 7 p.m. and finished about 11 p.m.," Berschauer said.
According to Black, everyone who attends is passionate about Independence Day even if they have differing views about its meaning. According to Eric Wickwire, the family comes from many different camps.
"There are probably 300 million different meanings (to Fourth of July) because of the level of freedom we enjoy," he said.
The gathering is especially meaningful to Nihard, of Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. It reminds him of the people for whom he and his comrades-in-arms have stood up for in war.
"I have 20-25 friends on a memorial wall," he said.
An ordnance demolition expert, Nihard served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq in 1990-91 under George H.W. Bush. He went back to the Marines and served in Iraq under George W. Bush in 2003-04 and 2005-06.
Nihard served a total of eight years and left the Marines as a Master Sergeant. He works for the government on contract as an unexploded ordnance technician.
According to Nihard, self-survival and survival of the team are the overriding concerns during moments of combat. But during down time, men of war often reflect on the mission.
"Someone said, 'I don't know anything about all of that,'" Nihard said. "I said, 'That's why people like me do it. So people like you don't have to think about it. We volunteer to keep the fight over there so it doesn't come over here.'"
The man gave Nihard another glass of wine.
No one else in the family has served militarily, but Wickwire said that doesn't mean others don't serve. In a country whose foundation is freedom of the individual, everyone serves in his own way.
"I believe I'm serving when I'm teaching," he said.
Wickwire is a social studies teacher at Cle Elum-Roslyn High School. Black is a transport broker in Wenatchee. He arranges loads for truckers.
It is because of Black that the individuals who make up the "family" gather annually at Crescent Bar. They discovered this Columbia River paradise because of his parents, Wendell and Cheryl Black.
"They used to come here and water ski before the dam was built," Black said. "I was born in February and was at Crescent Bar in May. After they dammed it, we camped out at the point."
Black and Nihard have been friends since they were both four years old and were neighbors in western Washington. Nihard came to the island with Black at the age of four.
Black and Wickwire have baseball and Spokane Falls Community College in common. They played in different but succeeding years during an era when SFCC had a crack junior college program. Black was a pitcher. Wickwire was an outfielder.
Adults and children played whiffle ball all weekend. They marked out a diamond near the house and went to pitching, hitting and catching.
Compared to Black and Nihard, Wickwire is a relative newcomer to Crescent Bar, but he has the same appreciation. "People come here to have fun, and they do," he said. "Neighbors talk to each other here. They wave. The things kids learn here are fantastic."
"It's not like the supermarket back home," Nihard added. "You smile at someone in the checkout line, and they look down or look away."
This sense of community is what Berschauer fears will be lost if the island is ultimately shut down as a residential area. She fears it will be difficult to find another place like it that can serve the same purpose. The "family" might fracture, with members scattering.
"It would probably be smaller," she said.
"It wouldn't happen as often," Wickwire said.
Black added: "The thing I don't like is that the next generation wouldn't get to enjoy this. We wouldn't be able to pass it on to the next generation."