https://www.facebook.com/SouthWhidbeyHistory/videos/1022862444534635/
The late Bill Hunziker (1922-2016), son of ferry boat Captain Stanley Hunziker who did the Clinton-Mukilteo run, was given a movie camera by his parents when he was a boy in the 1930s.
He shot many home movies on South Whidbey, and even took the movie camera to his grade school in Mukilteo, where he attended Rosehill School. (Bill’s mother wanted him to attend a larger school than the one in Langley, and it was an easy ferry commute from his nearby home on Columbia Beach.)
These two movies, one black and white one — presumably shot when he was in 7th grade, and a slightly later one shot in Kodacolor in 1937 capture what school was like in the late 1930s.
It was a time when male teachers wore three-piece suits and ties, girl students wore dresses and bobby socks, and there was only one microscope for the whole science class.
When Capt. George Vancouver landed on the shores of Point Elliott in 1792, he noted the expanse of wild roses growing near the shoreline.The name given to the place where Rosehill School was located, Rose Point, was coined by Gen. William Broughton, a member of Vancouver’s expedition.
In the 1890s, when a prominent Everett architect designed a Victorian-style school just up the hill from the beach, it was named Rose Hill School, later shortened to Rosehill School. The first school, a wooden structure with an onion-shaped dome, burned in 1928. A second, larger one was built in 1929.
The stone monument in the video was placed in 1929 by the Marcus Whitman Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the 1855 Point Elliott Treaty made between 82 native American leaders and the U.S. Government.
In the 1970s Rosehill School was converted to Rosehill Community Center and later torn down in 2010 for the current, more modern Rosehill Community Center.
The opening credit of the video was fashioned to reflect Bill Hunziker’s hope of one day emulating the great Hollywood directors.
