George, Washington was supposed to honor the first president

GEORGE - Imagine the thoughts this nation's travelers must have when they see the first destination signs for the town of George as they move along Interstate 90.

Got to be something special, right?

Well, not exactly.

So far, according to George No. 1 promoter Debby Kooy, George has fallen way short of the mark dreamed by its founder in the 1950's.

Like the founder, Kooy can be classified an outsider. She is a city girl from Denver brought here by marriage to Elliot Kooy, now the mayor.

The founder was a man named Charles E. Brown. He bought 339 acres of sagebrush and weeds upon which to launch his dream. He worked with a city planning instructor from the University of Washington to design George. They planned for each street to be named after a variety of cherry tree, and current maps still include those names.

But the George that Brown dreamed of never came off. A lawsuit derailed Brown's plans, and then he died at about the age of 70.

"The heart of George remains a bald field of tumbleweed and cheatgrass," Kooy wrote in a lengthy essay about George's history.

George residents struggle with a 94 percent low-to-moderate income level, Kooy wrote. A full 74 percent of George residents are low income, making George one of the most poverty-stricken cities in the state.

Kooy's essay, which was widely circulated, ruffled feathers. It was mildly critical of current property owners' reluctance to develop their George holdings.

But Kooy says she never intended for it to be hurtful. She wanted it to be helpful and hopeful, which she continues to be.

"City leaders work toward keeping the town's infrastructure ready for development in hopes that, someday soon, the property owners will become alert to the opportunities that are passing them by."

If George would accomplish Brown's dream and become the early-American/Colonial theme town the founders envisioned, those aforementioned poverty numbers would be wiped out.

Kooy's essay made it sound as if major property owners were holding things up because they didn't care. She didn't believe that. She was only stating the fact there was no movement.

Truth be told, Kooy might have done similarly if she had been a big property owner when she arrived. She thought her husband had brought her to the end of the world.

The streets were gravel. There was no municipal water system. And the nearest K-Mart was in Tri-Cities, 90 miles away. Debby would have gone back to Denver in a heartbeat if Elliot had offered.

Kooy decided to make the best of things. She investigated why George even existed. That's when she came upon the story of Charlie Brown.

Brown really wanted to honor the first president. He even placed the town right smack in the center of the state, as if to say, "Here's the heartbeat of Washington, true small town Americana."

It was Brown's idea to make George an early-American/colonial-theme town that would attract tourists. He instituted the annual July 4 celebration in 1957, with the first giant cherry pie. It was met with world-wide notice.

Brown served as the town's first mayor, and his wife, Edith, was a charter member of the Georgettes, a woman's service group responsible for making and baking the giant cherry pie. After Charlie died in 1975, Edith served as the second mayor.

During their lifetimes, Charlie and Edith owned several businesses, including gift shops, shoe stores and a fireworks importing and packaging business.

According to Kooy, one particular gift store sold grass skirts, and one such skirt was purchased by a woman tourist, who loaned the skirt to her niece, who wore it to a costume party in Canada. The skirt caught fire at the party, and the girl was badly burned.

The purchaser sued the owner of the store that had sold her the skirt. One of her attorneys was John Erlichman of Watergate fame.

The lawsuit was successful, and the Browns were ruined financially. Charlie and Edith were forced to sell their businesses and real estate holdings, including the still-undeveloped properties of George.

A group of investors known as Colonial Farms entered the picture, Kooy wrote. It was a collection of several professional men, mostly doctors and lawyers from Wenatchee and the west side of the state.

Colonial Farms purchased all of the vacant property in George, along with the Martha Inn Cafe and George Shopping Mall, which the Browns had built in 1957.

In the course of time, the early enthusiasm for developing George as a colonial theme town waned, and the George properties simply became a tax write-off for Colonial Farms, Kooy wrote.

By the late 1990s, Kooy wrote, restless community leaders convinced Colonial Farms that they should either find a way to develop the town or sell their holdings.

Seemingly, the ideal solution materialized. Two developers from western Washington came onto the scene with fresh ideas and great enthusiasm for developing the town.

Unfortunately, they did not have sufficient working capital to fund their development ideas.

So they went looking for local investors and found a family that owned successful farming and produce operations.

All was well - for a time, Kooy wrote. Both developers were often found attending city council meetings and Growth Management Comprehensive Planning meetings.

"Excitement began to build, and there was much interest and hopefulness within the community once more," Kooy wrote.

The city council responded by stepping up municipal infrastructure improvements, Kooy said. By 1997, the city had a brand new municipal sewer system, an updated water system and streets that were in reasonably good condition.

Development did indeed begin to happen, Kooy wrote. The old Chevron station on the corner of Frontage Road and Washington Way was torn down and replaced by "George's Country Place", a gas station/mini-mart/restaurant with handsome colonial-style architecture.

Added to the property was a large bronze bust of George Washington himself, right there on the corner, welcoming everyone to town.

The Martha Inn underwent some remodeling and redecorating, and with an updated menu, the restaurant was once again pulling in traffic off of the highway.

"It seemed like a great foretaste of things to come," Kooy wrote.

Then a series of factors that combined to wreck hopes for the town arose, Kooy said.

Meanwhile, the Martha Inn restaurant deteriorated, and equipment failure forced its closure in 2006. It is now just a billboard. If motorists take the exit looking for the first president's wife's eatery, they find nothing.

A recent exception to this tale is the recent sale of property to Catholic Charities for the new 51-unit migrant housing complex, opened for occupation in October of 2010. It has been of great help to the poorest residents.

That gave Kooy hope that something could happen. As far as she's concerned, Charlie Brown's dream is still attainable. You'll continue to find her at the heart of every event that promotes George, Washington.