When I read the recently released book, “Parknapping Doesn’t Pay,” by Darlene Schanfald, Ph.D., I didn’t expect to be as surprised as I was about what the book’s subtitle calls “The History of Rescuing a Pacific Northwest Crown Jewel.”
I lived here when Schanfald and others began working to save the state park the state Legislature had approved on the Miller Peninsula in 1988.
My husband, Jim Mantooth, and I try to stay well informed about the area we’ve chosen to live, but we were busy with young children; jobs; building our home, garden and orchards with our own hands; and even some volunteer work.
So we’re especially grateful to learn more now through her book.
As a retired journalist and college journalism instructor, I especially liked reading about media’s role getting the word out.
George Erb, then a Peninsula Daily News reporter, and Brier Dudley, then with the Sequim Gazette, were among those defying efforts to keep information from the public.
Persistence Schanfald and others displayed inspires us to keep working to save what we call “our last best chance of a salmon stream in Port Angeles” and get information out through www.facebook.com/EnnisCreek.
Parknapping doesn’t pay, and it shouldn’t be possible for the state Department of Ecology to allow mill owners to leave contaminants in a watershed instead of paying for their removal.
Robbie Mantooth
Port Angeles