On March 4, the Tualatin Historical Society will host its “Show and Tell Event” from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., featuring five residents with important historical ties to Tualatin who will share their families’ stories and show family artifacts the society has preserved over the years.
“There were six people who I had the contact information for, whose family had donated something in the past,” Sandra Lafky Carlson from the Tualatin Historical Society said. “So I called each one of them to see if they’d be willing to come and tell a story.”
The historical artifacts will be out on display for the event, and according to Carlson, the array of items ranges from cobbling tools to wedding gowns.
One of the presenters, Kathy Dalton-Walsh, has prominent ties to Tualatin’s early Crawfish Festival, which was a Tualatin town staple throughout the 1950s and 60s, and will be presenting souvenir items from the festival, like program books, ribbons, necklaces and other vintage memorabilia.
“The Tualatin VFW did a crawfish festival from 1950 to 1955,” Walsh said. “Then they quit doing it because they didn’t have enough money.”
Walsh, whose mother, Louis Dalton, was one of the organizers of the revised Tualatin Crawfish Festival in 1959, will walk people through the festival’s history, sharing her experiences attending and helping to organize the event as a young girl.
“1959 was Oregon’s 100th birthday,” Walsh said. “So they thought it’d be a good time to put on a festival. So they named it the Tualatin Crawfish Festival.”
Walsh briefed Tualatin Life on her memories of the early festivals, recalling characteristics like the street dance and parade and the town’s community effort to clean up and prepare Tualatin City Park for the occasion.
“Everybody in the community helped clean up that park, preparing it for the festival,” Walsh said. “It was phenomenal, what can I tell you.”
Walsh said that reexamining her parents’ contributions to Tualatin’s history later in her life illuminated her familial connection to the town.
“It was wonderful for a young kid,” Walsh said. “Growing up in Tualatin and watching this (the festival), I never realized until much later in life how much my mother and father were involved with the community of Tualatin.”
“It’s one thing to see objects like artifacts in a museum, but if you get a story connected to it, especially a story told by a family member, it really brings it to life,” Carlson said.
Other presenters who will speak on March 4 include Diane Sylvie-Swientek, Jo Judy, Cheryl Brink Brown, Chris Nyberg-Tunstall and Gay Pennington Paschoal. More information on the event is available on the Tualatin Historical Society’s website.
