This year’s Pioneer of the Year, Dan Hammer, has family roots in Mukilteo that go back 113 years! Dan will be honored at the MHS meeting on Thursday, August 8, at 7:00 pm at the Rosehill Community Center. Plan now to join Dan as he brings to life stories about growing up in Mukilteo, serving in the Coast Guard, and then serving Mukilteo at the Water Board for 43 years. As you continue reading this article, think of questions you might have for Dan.
Dan’s great grandparents, Floyd and Minnie Haynes, moved from Michigan to Whatcom County in 1904, and then in 1906 they settled in Mukilteo, as the new lighthouse was being completed. Their first home in Mukilteo was on Park Avenue close to Front Street and the old Dutcher Apartments. Later they lived near Pioneer Cemetery, in a home with a spacious garden and family orchard. They had five children, and one wonders if the kids found it scary to live so close to a graveyard.
Dan’s grandmother, Hazel Haynes, was actually born back in Michigan in 1901, but then at the age of five she came with her family to Mukilteo. She attended Rosehill School (the original building with the onion dome on top) and then went on to Everett High School.
In 1920, Hazel married Frank Saponaro, who had been born in Italy in 1894 and immigrated to New York in 1913. Along with many other immigrants, Frank served in the armed forces in WWI. Eventually he made his way to Mukilteo where he met Hazel while he worked for the Crown Lumber Company.
Frank and Hazel lived with their three children in a house on the Speedway. They are no longer with us, but the house still is! It was moved on wheels by the Saponaro family up to 7th and Washington, where it now serves (much-remodeled) as the home of Fred and Jennifer Baxter.
The youngest of the three Saponaro children was Jane, who was born in 1925. Jane attended Rosehill (the second Rosehill school building) and then Everett High. Jane married Ray Hammer, whose family had originally migrated from Norway to America.
Ray was raised in the Woodinville/Bothell area, served in the Merchant Marine in WWII, and then worked at the Tank Farm in Mukilteo. Jane and Ray and their two children, Dan and Janice, lived with Hazel Saponaro in the house at 7th and Washington. Then in the late 1950s, Ray built a house for his family at Tenth and Loveland. Dan has many memories of that home and his walks from it down the trail to Fifth Street.
Dan Hammer was born in 1947, an early addition to the postwar baby boom. He went to Fairmount Elementary for kindergarten, then Rosehill Elementary, Olympic View Junior High, and Cascade High School, graduating in 1966. Dan served in the Coast Guard, 1966–1970, much of the time on the Staten Island, a Seattle-based ice-breaker that operated in Antarctica and twice in the Arctic. He also served on lifeboat stations at Charleston, OR (Coos Bay) and Winchester Bay, OR (near Reedsport).
Following his Coast Guard service, Dan married his high school classmate, Mary Ann Kingsolver, in October, 1970. But they had not been high school sweethearts, because they only really met when sitting together at their graduation ceremony! Both were grateful that Dan’s Coast Guard service was based in Seattle, near enough for their romance to grow and blossom over the next four years.
Dan worked for the Mukilteo Water and Wastewater District for 43 years, retiring in 2013 as Water District Manager. When they were first married, Dan and Mary Ann lived in a townhouse off 80th Street. In 1974 they moved to their home on Goat Trail Road, where they still live. They have two sons, Morgan, born in 1976 and now living in Lynnwood, and Corbin, born in 1978 and now living in Everett. Dan and Mary Ann have four grandchildren.
These days Dan enjoys time with family, camping, fishing, gardening—and not having to explain why water bills have gone up! The Mukilteo Historical Society is pleased to celebrate Dan and his 113 years of family history in Mukilteo. It is especially fitting to note that one of the founding members of the Mukilteo Historical Society was Dan’s grand-mother, Hazel Haynes Saponaro.
Read the full the Summer 2019 MHS Newsletter here.