More than 60 years ago, a business owner on Whidbey Island took extraordinary steps to save a one-of-a-kind artifact from World War II.
. Schacht lives in Seattle, but she grew up in Oak Harbor, and her roots there run deep.
“There’s a historic World War II mural depicting the U.S. Navy based out of NAS Whidbey downing Nazi planes and Nazi subs [in what] looks like around the Puget Sound,” Schacht told KIRO Newsradio as she stood near the building’s back wall. “There are mountains and water, and smoking and sinking Nazi subs, and it’s a pretty vibrant mural.”the mural, and it’s not clear if anyone still alive has, either. All Schacht has is an old photograph from a nearly 80-year-old newspaper clipping.
“My grandfather, when he was still alive about 10 years ago, made sure that there was a printed copy of the mural taped to the wall,” Schacht said. “And around the printed copy it said, ‘Do not destroy wall, historic mural behind.’ And so there are all these notes that my grandparents left all over the buildings for me and my mom.”
“Probably a better piece of information related to the mural is that at the USO Club on Valentine’s Day in 1943 [my grandfather] met my grandmother at a dance in this building,” Schacht said. “He proposed three months later, … they spent 67 years together, starting their business in this building. So I’m sure he had knowledge and appreciation and a sense of the significance of the mural.”
“I know that I have to remodel this back part of the building to make sure that the heavy rains we get every year aren’t causing a problem,” Schacht said. “I cannot keep mopping up water every winter. So, sometime in the next year, I’ve got to pop the end of this building off and put a fresh one on.”
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