Read Politics Never Broke His Heart - Washington Secretary of State

GROWING UP
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the top jockey at Longacres. John knew a lot about music. He closely followed
politics. We went to hear Thomas Dewey, the young Republican who
was running for president. John became very interested in things. David
wasn’t like that.”
Hunts Point was a wonderful place to be a boy. The 13 members of
Boy Scout Troop 430, including the Spellman brothers, could practice
their crafts and pitch their tents in their own neighborhood. Adventures
abounded. The hunt for a pesky beaver gnawing docks and trees was the
talk of the lake. It was “as big as an Airedale” and had a pair of buck teeth
like hedge shears, locals told a reporter The Seattle Times sent across the lake
to investigate the hubbub. “Mrs. Von Norman couldn’t figure out what was
happening to her weeping willow trees,” young John Spellman explained—
his first recorded quote. “One day they’d be there. The next morning they’d
be gone. When she found out about the beaver she sure was sore. Nobody
ever gets close to him. He doesn’t give a whoop about dogs—there are 87 of
them on the point. … When they swim after him, he dives.” Spellman’s pal,
Ed Parker, 14, “gazed longingly at the stump of an alder and said: ‘If I had
teeth like that, I wouldn’t be going to the dentist this afternoon.’ ” 6
David and John attended the three-room Bay School through sixth
grade. John had a knack for drawing and illustrating. He was a good talker,
too, winning most arguments and arbitrating squabbles. Bart didn’t want
his children spoiled by mowing lawns or running errands for their prosperous
neighbors. The boys picked berries and sorted flower bulbs for pennies
when they weren’t doing chores around the house and property. David
“resented it terribly” when Bart had them doing hard work on weekends,
according to his siblings.
Most of the painstakingly cultivated berry farms and greenhouses on
the East Side were owned by Japanese. The Yabuki family greenhouses
at Hunts Point were among the largest. When the Bay School principal
made disparaging remarks about Asian students, the Spellman kids were
shocked. “We weren’t raised that way,” Mary Spellman says. “John took
everyone under his wing.” They remember the day he arrived home from
school with a Japanese friend in tow. Their mother was having a bridge
party. Some of the ladies put down their tea cups and raised an eyebrow.
Not Lela. When the Japanese were sent to internment camps the Spellmans
were saddened.
One of John’s classmates at the Bay School was Frank Messenger, who
became a naval officer before a career as a telephone company engineer.
“My family were the dirty Democrats in the neighborhood and his were
the Republicans,” Messenger said. He recalled lively political arguments