Our Place in Walla Walla #12: Getting Noticed

Our place attracts attention.

To borrow a phrase that Whitman Board of Trustee member Jonathan Sposato ’89 recently used to describe our lovely small college, our lovely small city punches above its weight. Walla Walla, here in the remote corner of Washington, has much to offer our region and our country.

Historically, Walla Walla has been known for its fields of sweet onions, its ominous maximum security penitentiary—“home” for many decades of the execution chamber for inmates sentenced to death—and perhaps as being the complex (and to some, controversial) site of the Whitman Mission.

More recently, we’re becoming known far and wide for other aspects of life. (I’m not even going to mention our wine industry, which I’ll discuss later this semester.) Whether you’re in town for a few days, four years, or many decades, it’s helpful to know how and why the world is watching Walla Walla.

Our inclusive, transparent, deliberate approach to solving complex problems:

Our place has developed an effective method of addressing quality of life issues that has come to be known as “the Walla Walla Way.” Originally identified with organizing access to and respect of our complex watershed, the phrase has expanded to other topics that utilize the same methodical step-by-step broad community involved. (Harmony Paulsen Burright ’06 described this in a 2007 article, “The Walla Walla Way: Reevaluating the Role of State and Local Stakeholders in an Integrated Water Resource Management Approach.”)

Community leaders approvingly use this phrase for other issues, too. Kathryn Witherington, Executive Director of the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation, raised this in an Association of Washington Cities feature and Superintendent of Walla Walla Public Schools Wade Smith used this in his remarks during last spring’s installation ceremony for President Bolton. Then-Port of Walla Walla Commissioner Mike Fredrickson described the process of expanding U.S. Highway 12 with this term. Even a recent book authored by Daniel Clark ’65 about how our community has rallied to reduce homelessness draws on this concept (homeless service providers themselves also use this term to explain the success of local work). State and federal elected leaders use it as well: then-state senator Maureen Walsh used this term in a speech to the legislature and U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash called a successful local project “another example of the ‘Walla Walla way.’ You imagine what is possible and work hard to make it happen.”

Perhaps because of the Walla Walla Way we do make things happen.

Our Governor comes here when he wants to imagine the future of clean energy:

Last week, Governor Jay Inslee spent a day in Walla Walla discussing key issues for his final year in office—the spreading fentanyl crisis, electric vehicles and clean energy initiatives. After learning what the Port of Walla Walla is developing on the west side of our county, Inslee said, “There is a cluster of innovation happening here that’s extremely exciting and bears well for the whole state of Washington … ”

The New York Times comes here when it wants to see what it looks like when a school system embraces the possibilities of what AI can offer its students and teachers:

Last summer, the New York Times embedded one of their technology reporters in a Walla Walla Public Schools professional development retreat on how to ethically and effectively incorporate these new technologies into teaching and learning. The result was a significant feature story that drew national attention to our community. One of the teachers featured was an alum who was described as “Once leery of the AI chatbots, Beth Clearman (’90), an honors English teacher at a middle school, is now using them to create writing exercises.”

The New York Times has also recently noticed our hot restaurants (featuring Bar Bacetto in Waitsburg, also a 2024 James Beard award nominee) and our hot real estate options (“$950,000 Homes in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Washington” highlighting an updated Craftsman bungalow about a mile from campus).

Speaking of housing …

NPR looks to us when it wants to see creative forward-thinking approaches to dealing with America’s housing crisis:

For the past several years, Walla Walla municipal leadership, including Whitman alums Preston Fredrickson ’02, Director of Development Services, and Tim Donaldson ’84, City Attorney, have been thoughtfully and creatively changing the city’s land use policies in ways that allow the development of housing that is smaller and more affordable. Earlier this month, the City Council reviewed some of the successes that have resulted from these policy changes. Then, the following week, an NPR feature story on national housing challenges noted, “Smaller cities are winning accolades for their zoning changes too, including Walla Walla, Wash., and South Bend, Indiana … ”

Some of the ground-breaking work on trauma-informed care emerged from Walla Walla:

Thanks to the work of what was originally named the Children’s Resilience Initiative (CRI), educators and social workers around the country have learned to incorporate recent breakthroughs in neuroscience into educational models. In particular, CRI learned to understand how trauma and adverse childhood experiences prevent effective learning in some settings. Whitman students, faculty, staff and alumni have contributed to this work in myriad ways. Walla Walla was in the national spotlight with the release of the 2015 Jamie Redford-directed film “Paper Tigers,” which “follows a year in the life of a high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affects families.” Because of the extraordinary influence of their work, the initiative evolved to become a more nation-wide learning and training network, now called the Community Resilience Initiative (many Whitman staff and faculty were able to learn from CRI before the start of this semester).

Our legislature looks to us to innovate new ways of addressing significant public health concerns:

Last week, it was announced that Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, a local organization that offers substance abuse treatment, was selected as the inaugural Health Engagement Hub rural pilot site. Heart to Heart, in partnership with the Washington State Health Care Authority, was awarded $1.66 million to establish the Walla Walla clinic to “help respond to the opioid crisis in an effective and compassionate way.”

One of America’s most popular children’s book authors lives here (and kicks off his new national tour in one of our elementary schools):

Patrick Carman is a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books with nearly five million copies in print. Starting Tuesday, March 5 in Walla Walla, he will cross the country speaking to tens of thousands of students to ignite their love of reading.

Finally, last Friday I asked Bing to tell me how Walla Walla has influenced the state of Washington and it told me, “Whitman College, founded in Walla Walla in 1859, has played a pivotal role in education. The college’s influence extends beyond the town, shaping the minds of students who go on to contribute to various fields … ”

I hope you have an expanded appreciation for how we’re viewed by people outside our community. We are fortunate to live in such a special place. If there are aspects of the Walla Walla Valley that you think deserve attention, please let me know, and I’ll try to work them into an upcoming column.