Sisters just 13 months apart, Mary Lou Hogland Holtgeerts and Kay Hogland Scheller are this year’s Pioneers of the Year. Born in Everett, they moved to Mukilteo when their family bought the McNab house in 1942, a large house built in 1906 on Webster Street near Mukilteo’s Pioneer Cemetery.
Both sisters attended Rosehill school and later graduated in 1954 and 1955 from Everett High School. Mary Lou and Kay remember that when their parents bought the big house in Mukilteo, it was being used as a WWII Army hospital run by the Ursuline Sisters. They remember cots all over, pots filled with sand, and surgical instruments. They remember seeing two well-stocked fish ponds on the property, but these were soon filled in: “Mother was afraid that we’d fall in.”
Their parents, Valeria and Everett Hogland, lived in their Mukilteo home until they died, Everett in 1959 and Valeria in 1987. Kay bought the family home and turned it into a bed and breakfast in 1993.
Their mother, Valeria Scott, was born in Minden Mines, Missouri. She came to this area on the train with her mother and siblings, joining her father who had come to Washington to work in the lumber industry.
Mary Lou and Kay’s father, Everett Albert Hogland, was born in Skagway, Alaska in 1900 during the peak of the Yukon Gold Rush. His father was an immigrant from Sweden. Everett lived with his dad in lumber camps and was working on the Seattle docks by sixth grade.
He started the Hogland Transfer Company in 1933, buying his first trucks off poker winnings that he hid behind a loose brick in a building in the Georgetown area of Seattle. He and Valeria married in 1935 and had three children: Mary Lou, Kay, and Al, who is ten years younger.
After high school, Mary Lou attended Everett Junior College, and then married Kenneth Henry Holtgeerts in 1956. They had three children: Steve, Kristi, and Jeff. Ken was born in 1932 in Anacortes; his family moved to Mukilteo when he was ten years old. He attended Rosehill and Everett High, graduating in 1951. Ken was in the army during the Korean War. He worked at various jobs and then at the Hogland Transfer Company, where he retired as president. They lived on 3rd Street in Mukilteo when Steve was born, and later moved to 8th Street. Ken served on the Mukilteo City Council in the 1970s—his father, Luke Ho1tgeerts, had served on the Mukilteo City Councils, 1947-1953. Luke and his partner Russell Edgerton built and ran the bus line from Mukilteo to Everett. They built the bus barn in the 1940s—the building that is now Diamond Knot Brewery.
Mary Lou was a Cub Scout leader, Camp Fire Girls leader, Assistant Treasurer at Mukilteo Presbyterian Church, and worked on fundraising for the Assistance League and Boys and Girls Club. Mary Lou now lives in Anacortes.
Kay married Jack Scheller. They had four children: Nancy, Earl, Greg, and Byron. The family lived on the corner of 3rd and Loveland for many years while bringing up the children. They later divorced.
Kay worked at the City of Mukilteo and the Mukilteo Water Department. She was a Sunday School superintendent and teacher at Glad Tidings Chapel. She helped organize many dance fundraisers and New Year’s dances at Royal Neighbors Hall (now the Boys and Girls Club on 2nd Street). Kay was active with the Seattle Swing Dance Club and on the Board of the U.S. Dance Championships.
Be sure to come to the Mukilteo Historical Society meeting on Thursday, August 11, at 7:15 pm at Rosehill Community Center to hear more of Mary Lou and Kay’s memories of growing up in Mukilteo.
Mary Lou and Kay will be riding in the Lighthouse Festival Parade on Saturday, September 10, at 10:30 am, accompanied by a contingent from the Mukilteo Historical Society. They will be honored at a reception at the lighthouse at 3:00 pm that day along with Mukilteo’s Citizen of the Year, Debra Borden (daughter of Lois and Bruce Brown).