I would like to compliment your reporter Tracey Compton on her excellent article about the “Walkers” at Gene Coulon Park (April 25 edition of the Renton Reporter). These dedicated women who walk the paths there also work diligently at every holiday to festively decorate the statues for all the park visitors to enjoy.

I think Tracey really captured the true friendship and enjoyment that these women share with each other, as well as bringing fun and smiles to the entire neighborhood and, of course, the city of Renton.

I would like to add that my mom Gwen Meyers was a walker and now at 89 is still a statue dresser and has participated in this tradition for years.  What I find amazing is that she left her tiny sparse town as a very young 18-year-old (and left all she knew in the middle of Minnesota), and ventured out to work for the Boeing plant in Renton. She and others like her were known as “Rosie the Riveters” (young women who left home to help out during the war in the 1940s).

After all these years, my mom is still contributing to the delight of the all of us. From a devoted Rosie the Riveter at Boeing in the 1940s to an enthusiastic statue dresser at Gene Coulon Park in 2014; and both places are less than one mile away from each other but more than 70 years apart!

I’m so very proud of my mom and what she’s accomplished, and I think all the women who dress the statues are incredible and inspiring!

Maureen (Meyers) VanderPas,
Renton