Rene Herman Deull by Amy Boswell
Rene Herman (Duell)
Class of 1978
Family life (before and during): We had a nice family life. I have my mom, my dad and my brother, Rick. My dad was a fireman and my mom drove school bus. We had very structured schedules. We also had a little dog that needed to be taken out so the first person who was able to be home had to go in and let the dog out. Our dog was a little poodle named Snoopy. We had a very pleasant house, very structured. With my mom being a school bus driver, every day that we were off school she was also off and so we had a lot of family time together, even though my both parents worked. My favorite grandma, my mom’s mom, grandma Zwicker, passed away in that time frame. That was pretty traumatic because I really liked her and enjoyed spending time with her. As I got a little bit older, my mom got breast cancer and that was a pivotal change in my life, to help her go through that process. It made me realize that everybody gets sick and they might not be around forever like you thought. I had lots of happy events, I had very happy Christmases, I loved Christmas, Christmas was always very fun. I guess when I got my first job that was a very exciting event for me. We got along, my mom’s side of the family, we did a lot of stuff with my mom’s sister and brother who live in the Bellingham/ Ferndale area. We did some stuff with my dad’s side of the family who lived here in Lake Stevens. We would spend Christmas eves there but we mostly did things with my mom’s sister and her family and our cousins up there. They came over here from Germany. My dad’s family also has some German in them but I think they were pretty much all from here. My grandma used to always be in the kitchen cooking German food. She made something that we called Strudel, and another dough and potato kind of soup that we called buttons. That was a big thing to go to Grandma’s, have buttons, and strudel. She was just my grandma Zwicker. I had never seen her in any other part of the house. She always hung laundry out on the clothes line and never put it in the dryer. We went camping a lot. We were camping people and enjoyed shell fish and stuff. Crab is really big in our family so we went clam digging, crabbing and camping a lot. I remember taking a trip down the Oregon coast all the way to California and we stopped in Reno. We were gone for about two and a half weeks on that trip. We went to the Grand Canyon and up and around and that was a very memorable trip.
Before high school: We lived in Everett. I started off in grade school at View Ridge, then I went to Evergreen Middle school, and then on to Cascade.
What’s changed at cascade? Since I went, they’ve built a whole new school. We had lockers of course. You still had to go outside a little bit, but the school wasn’t as laid out as it is now.
During high school: During my High school years, I enjoyed going to high school; it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t a real great student but I wasn’t real bad either. I was a “C” and “B” average student. I can’t remember any of the teachers I went to. I was in choir and I enjoyed that very much. I also did the DECA program. The choir teacher, I think was Snavely. I think there was only one choir because it wasn’t all separated like it is now, there was just one and I liked that. I think we started around 8 and had 7 classes in a day. We went later; I think we went till 3:30. I was quite shy and quiet in high school so I didn’t become a more open person until after high school. I had a very small core of friends in high school and we pretty much stayed together. We got involved in the pep assembly stuff and the football stuff and really enjoyed that. During the football season, we went to the football rallies and that type of thing. But other than that I had about 5 or 6 friends and we pretty much did our own thing. I didn’t date in high school. I didn’t date until after high school. We had a large circle of friends, some people that were friends and stuff, that’s why I didn’t get to go to the homecoming and the prom. We had fire drills and earthquake drills, where you have to get under your desk or in a walk way or whatever. I don’t recall us having to talk about lock down stuff. I don’t think that back when I was in school there was as many gang situations and stuff as there are now. I know we had a student pass away unexpectedly that was in our class. He had something wrong with his heart that he was born with and one day, unexpectedly, he died. I think we only had one class mate that died.
How did you get to school? Until I got my driver’s license I took a school bus to school. After I got a driver’s license, a job, and a car, which was my senior year, I got to drive to school.
Lunch: We got to go off campus for lunch. After I turned 16 and had a car, we most of the time got to go off campus for lunch and then lots of times we didn’t always make it back to the next class after lunch, because we liked to stay at lunch too long. They didn’t do anything unless you were failing the class or if you had too many absences. Then they reported that to your parents that you missed class 4 on this particular day, but if you didn’t miss or go over, nothing really happened. If your grade was not an “F” and in the “C”, “B” average then they didn’t do anything. There were 2 lunches. We didn’t have the variety of food like you have now; there wasn’t pizza and all that. You would either have the regular hot lunch they had or you would bring your own lunch. You didn’t get a choice of having pizza or pop because there wasn’t any of that.
Extracurricular: I enjoyed football very much. I didn’t follow very much of the other sports but I did follow the football and we did pretty well, all 4 years that I was in school. I went to all the home games and I liked the pep assemblies on Fridays; we looked forward to that. We had a rivalry with Everett High, but I wasn’t involved in any of that. I enjoyed DECA and worked in the student store for a time. I remember going on a sales event, a sales competition, and I remember we had to pick something to sell and sell it to a customer. I remember that I picked a set of sheets, bed sheets, and I learned all about them. I bought a brand new pair of bed sheets and learned the thread count in them, they were 100% cotton and they were this and that. I didn’t place in the competition but I remember being involved in that. Our school store, back then, sold a few school supplies such as pencils, pens, some paper, a few candy bars, few logo wear stuff, and stuff; no soda. I don’t think that we could have any soda at school. It was only open during lunch time.
Outside of school: At that time you were able to cruise Colby. So my girlfriends and I, that was a lot of our past time on Friday nights before and after a football game. Cruising Colby: basically you went from 41st street, all the way down to, not quite where the hospital is now, a little past Everett High, go back to Everett high and then you would turn around and go back the other way. It was lined with cars, you went real slowly, and people would holler out of their car windows and play their music real loud. My first job! I got hired at Taco Bell. Right after I got hired at Taco Bell, K-mart called me and I left. I didn’t work at Taco Bell very long, and then I changed and worked at K-mart for quite a while.
Dances and assemblies: No class colors. I mean you basically wore the crimson and gray and that was the class color. You didn’t deviate; you didn’t separate freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In my senior year we had the senior party, before that all the seniors had a party on their own. Then when we graduated, they did an all night party, like you do now. They had the same type of dances that they still have today; Homecoming and Prom and stuff. I didn’t go to any of them so I’m not really familiar with them. Homecoming was a big thing and they announced the Homecoming queen and king at the pep assembly the day before or earlier that day. There was a full Homecoming court, I don’t remember how many, but there was like 3 princesses and then the king and queen.
Graduation: We had our graduation; we had something the day before graduation that was called back-a-lariat. It was a little bit more religious, but was still formal, we still wore our gown. We did that and then we had a regular graduation, and then an all night party. We just sat and we would listen to speakers and it was just a little bit calmer and a little bit more religious then regular graduation. It was probably about only an hour long ceremony and that was all, and then it was just done. We did have, what it was called, I.T. There was one type of testing we had to do but it didn’t matter if you really passed it or not, it didn’t mean you couldn’t graduate if you didn’t pass it. They just wanted to see where the whole standing of education was. There was a certain amount of credits you had to get, like you do now. You have to have 2 credits of P.E., 4 credits of math and, and there was criteria like that, then you had to get a couple electives and you had to pass those classes in order to graduate. We didn’t have to do a senior presentation or anything. I do remember the one thing that we had to do, was we had to map out a 2 thousand mile trip from start to finish, on a budget of a certain amount of dollars that went toward things like putting gas in your car, and then how many miles did your car go on a tank of gas, and where you were going to stop and get gas. It was a 2 thousand mile trip from start to finish, where ever you wanted to start you had to go 2 thousand miles in a circle and end up back where you started. You had to document where you would stop, and where you would get gas and when you stayed overnight and how much you drove in a day. That was probably the one big assignment and you had to pass that.
Why Everett? I don’t have a desire to live anywhere else. I’m glad to be a person who was born and raised in Everett, Washington and I don’t have a desire to move anywhere else. I enjoy being part of a community and watching it grow and change over the years. Everett was much smaller, with the Everett Mall not being there. If you had to go shopping you went shopping in downtown Everett and there was the Bon and a Penny’s and there was another major store, a store called Shafies and then of course Woolworth’s dime store. I remember going Christmas shopping and you would get all bundled up, because it wasn’t in the mall all covered up and warm like it is now. Downtown Everett was way different than it is now.
After High School: After graduating in 1978, I went on to Everett Community College and entered the Beauty Cosmetology program. I graduated from that in 1980, and went on to become a cosmetologist and a salon owner. I purchased my first salon in 1985 and I am still a salon owner today. I enjoyed beauty school very much and I was a very driven person, at that time, to succeed. Once I got into the beauty industry I decided early on that I wanted to become a salon owner. I was very dedicated to getting high grades during my college years. I went to work for another salon, and worked under them for about 5 years and really took in everything, and went to lots of seminars and different things, to learn how to be a salon owner. So from graduation till the age of 28, I was very driven and bought my salon when I was only 25 years old. I worked a lot. When I was in high school I worked at K-mart on the weekends and at night times till 10 O’clock and I did that through college too. I started working when I was a senior in high school. I didn’t get married until I was 30 years old. Then I had a daughter when I was 32; and she has now graduated from Cascade in 2011. I married a man named Todd Herman, who went to Lynwood High School. The day I signed papers for my very first salon and of course getting married and having my daughter Callie, were the best days I had.
Now: I’m still the owner of Robert Scott Salon; I have owned it now for 26 years. I got married and I have a daughter, Callie, who is 18. She just graduated from Cascade last year. We have our house and I got cancer about 4 years ago, which immensely changed my life. I really worked a lot prior to getting cancer, and now I try not to work so much and spend time with family.
Reunions and old friends: I’ve been to all the class reunions. We have had a 10 year, and a 20 year and then the last one we just had was at the Tulalip casino. I enjoyed my 10 year one very much. My 20 year one I wasn’t feeling all that good so I had a hard time connecting to that one. But the 10 year one I really enjoyed. I got to see what everybody had done and the changes in some people from the time they got out of high school to that 10 year reunion. Everybody had kind of gone in the directions and most people had decided on their career path so it seemed like there was a lot to talk about, asking them what they were doing at that time. From being a salon owner, I have several people that are salon customers. I have my friends Dana Wall, Teresa, and Judy. I was swimming at Forest Park for a while and met one of my class mates there and she has now become a friend. She comes to my salon and has her hair done. When I have gone to the reunions I have handed out cards, so there’s probably about 5 or 6 additional members that I graduated with that now I keep in contact with.
From then to now: You could fill your whole car up for 5 bucks. I don’t know what the price was per dollar but I know that if you had 5 dollars you could put gas in your car and that was a lot of gas. Things were a lot less expensive. For instance, I moved out of my parent’s house right before I turned 21, and a girlfriend and I rented a town house in Silver lake area, and the rent was 350 dollars. My first apartment! So we divide that in half, and that was 175 dollars each for rent. In comparison to today, you can’t even do anything with that. So I then lived with her for several years, then she got married and I moved on. I had to find an apartment on my own, and live by myself. I found a one bedroom apartment and the rent for it was 195 dollars a month, and that was in the Forest Park area.
Regrets: I wasn’t real popular in high school. I wanted to be a cheerleader really bad, but I didn’t have the body type; I was a little chubby. But I enjoyed watching them very much and I wished that I could have been that. That was probably the one thing, that if I could do over again, I would. Because I think now it seems like some of the cheerleaders aren’t as perfect. It doesn’t matter anymore, it’s more accepted to be a little on the chubby side to get to be a cheerleader.
History: The Nixon controversy probably was a little bit before I entered high school. I guess at that age I didn’t really pay attention to too much on the world news and different things. I didn’t really follow politics very much. I still don’t follow politics very much today, I more or less get more upset about the medical situation that we’re in more so then the political stuff. I’d have to say that my interests lie more on the medical reform stuff than on the political stuff.
Class of 1978
Family life (before and during): We had a nice family life. I have my mom, my dad and my brother, Rick. My dad was a fireman and my mom drove school bus. We had very structured schedules. We also had a little dog that needed to be taken out so the first person who was able to be home had to go in and let the dog out. Our dog was a little poodle named Snoopy. We had a very pleasant house, very structured. With my mom being a school bus driver, every day that we were off school she was also off and so we had a lot of family time together, even though my both parents worked. My favorite grandma, my mom’s mom, grandma Zwicker, passed away in that time frame. That was pretty traumatic because I really liked her and enjoyed spending time with her. As I got a little bit older, my mom got breast cancer and that was a pivotal change in my life, to help her go through that process. It made me realize that everybody gets sick and they might not be around forever like you thought. I had lots of happy events, I had very happy Christmases, I loved Christmas, Christmas was always very fun. I guess when I got my first job that was a very exciting event for me. We got along, my mom’s side of the family, we did a lot of stuff with my mom’s sister and brother who live in the Bellingham/ Ferndale area. We did some stuff with my dad’s side of the family who lived here in Lake Stevens. We would spend Christmas eves there but we mostly did things with my mom’s sister and her family and our cousins up there. They came over here from Germany. My dad’s family also has some German in them but I think they were pretty much all from here. My grandma used to always be in the kitchen cooking German food. She made something that we called Strudel, and another dough and potato kind of soup that we called buttons. That was a big thing to go to Grandma’s, have buttons, and strudel. She was just my grandma Zwicker. I had never seen her in any other part of the house. She always hung laundry out on the clothes line and never put it in the dryer. We went camping a lot. We were camping people and enjoyed shell fish and stuff. Crab is really big in our family so we went clam digging, crabbing and camping a lot. I remember taking a trip down the Oregon coast all the way to California and we stopped in Reno. We were gone for about two and a half weeks on that trip. We went to the Grand Canyon and up and around and that was a very memorable trip.
Before high school: We lived in Everett. I started off in grade school at View Ridge, then I went to Evergreen Middle school, and then on to Cascade.
What’s changed at cascade? Since I went, they’ve built a whole new school. We had lockers of course. You still had to go outside a little bit, but the school wasn’t as laid out as it is now.
During high school: During my High school years, I enjoyed going to high school; it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t a real great student but I wasn’t real bad either. I was a “C” and “B” average student. I can’t remember any of the teachers I went to. I was in choir and I enjoyed that very much. I also did the DECA program. The choir teacher, I think was Snavely. I think there was only one choir because it wasn’t all separated like it is now, there was just one and I liked that. I think we started around 8 and had 7 classes in a day. We went later; I think we went till 3:30. I was quite shy and quiet in high school so I didn’t become a more open person until after high school. I had a very small core of friends in high school and we pretty much stayed together. We got involved in the pep assembly stuff and the football stuff and really enjoyed that. During the football season, we went to the football rallies and that type of thing. But other than that I had about 5 or 6 friends and we pretty much did our own thing. I didn’t date in high school. I didn’t date until after high school. We had a large circle of friends, some people that were friends and stuff, that’s why I didn’t get to go to the homecoming and the prom. We had fire drills and earthquake drills, where you have to get under your desk or in a walk way or whatever. I don’t recall us having to talk about lock down stuff. I don’t think that back when I was in school there was as many gang situations and stuff as there are now. I know we had a student pass away unexpectedly that was in our class. He had something wrong with his heart that he was born with and one day, unexpectedly, he died. I think we only had one class mate that died.
How did you get to school? Until I got my driver’s license I took a school bus to school. After I got a driver’s license, a job, and a car, which was my senior year, I got to drive to school.
Lunch: We got to go off campus for lunch. After I turned 16 and had a car, we most of the time got to go off campus for lunch and then lots of times we didn’t always make it back to the next class after lunch, because we liked to stay at lunch too long. They didn’t do anything unless you were failing the class or if you had too many absences. Then they reported that to your parents that you missed class 4 on this particular day, but if you didn’t miss or go over, nothing really happened. If your grade was not an “F” and in the “C”, “B” average then they didn’t do anything. There were 2 lunches. We didn’t have the variety of food like you have now; there wasn’t pizza and all that. You would either have the regular hot lunch they had or you would bring your own lunch. You didn’t get a choice of having pizza or pop because there wasn’t any of that.
Extracurricular: I enjoyed football very much. I didn’t follow very much of the other sports but I did follow the football and we did pretty well, all 4 years that I was in school. I went to all the home games and I liked the pep assemblies on Fridays; we looked forward to that. We had a rivalry with Everett High, but I wasn’t involved in any of that. I enjoyed DECA and worked in the student store for a time. I remember going on a sales event, a sales competition, and I remember we had to pick something to sell and sell it to a customer. I remember that I picked a set of sheets, bed sheets, and I learned all about them. I bought a brand new pair of bed sheets and learned the thread count in them, they were 100% cotton and they were this and that. I didn’t place in the competition but I remember being involved in that. Our school store, back then, sold a few school supplies such as pencils, pens, some paper, a few candy bars, few logo wear stuff, and stuff; no soda. I don’t think that we could have any soda at school. It was only open during lunch time.
Outside of school: At that time you were able to cruise Colby. So my girlfriends and I, that was a lot of our past time on Friday nights before and after a football game. Cruising Colby: basically you went from 41st street, all the way down to, not quite where the hospital is now, a little past Everett High, go back to Everett high and then you would turn around and go back the other way. It was lined with cars, you went real slowly, and people would holler out of their car windows and play their music real loud. My first job! I got hired at Taco Bell. Right after I got hired at Taco Bell, K-mart called me and I left. I didn’t work at Taco Bell very long, and then I changed and worked at K-mart for quite a while.
Dances and assemblies: No class colors. I mean you basically wore the crimson and gray and that was the class color. You didn’t deviate; you didn’t separate freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In my senior year we had the senior party, before that all the seniors had a party on their own. Then when we graduated, they did an all night party, like you do now. They had the same type of dances that they still have today; Homecoming and Prom and stuff. I didn’t go to any of them so I’m not really familiar with them. Homecoming was a big thing and they announced the Homecoming queen and king at the pep assembly the day before or earlier that day. There was a full Homecoming court, I don’t remember how many, but there was like 3 princesses and then the king and queen.
Graduation: We had our graduation; we had something the day before graduation that was called back-a-lariat. It was a little bit more religious, but was still formal, we still wore our gown. We did that and then we had a regular graduation, and then an all night party. We just sat and we would listen to speakers and it was just a little bit calmer and a little bit more religious then regular graduation. It was probably about only an hour long ceremony and that was all, and then it was just done. We did have, what it was called, I.T. There was one type of testing we had to do but it didn’t matter if you really passed it or not, it didn’t mean you couldn’t graduate if you didn’t pass it. They just wanted to see where the whole standing of education was. There was a certain amount of credits you had to get, like you do now. You have to have 2 credits of P.E., 4 credits of math and, and there was criteria like that, then you had to get a couple electives and you had to pass those classes in order to graduate. We didn’t have to do a senior presentation or anything. I do remember the one thing that we had to do, was we had to map out a 2 thousand mile trip from start to finish, on a budget of a certain amount of dollars that went toward things like putting gas in your car, and then how many miles did your car go on a tank of gas, and where you were going to stop and get gas. It was a 2 thousand mile trip from start to finish, where ever you wanted to start you had to go 2 thousand miles in a circle and end up back where you started. You had to document where you would stop, and where you would get gas and when you stayed overnight and how much you drove in a day. That was probably the one big assignment and you had to pass that.
Why Everett? I don’t have a desire to live anywhere else. I’m glad to be a person who was born and raised in Everett, Washington and I don’t have a desire to move anywhere else. I enjoy being part of a community and watching it grow and change over the years. Everett was much smaller, with the Everett Mall not being there. If you had to go shopping you went shopping in downtown Everett and there was the Bon and a Penny’s and there was another major store, a store called Shafies and then of course Woolworth’s dime store. I remember going Christmas shopping and you would get all bundled up, because it wasn’t in the mall all covered up and warm like it is now. Downtown Everett was way different than it is now.
After High School: After graduating in 1978, I went on to Everett Community College and entered the Beauty Cosmetology program. I graduated from that in 1980, and went on to become a cosmetologist and a salon owner. I purchased my first salon in 1985 and I am still a salon owner today. I enjoyed beauty school very much and I was a very driven person, at that time, to succeed. Once I got into the beauty industry I decided early on that I wanted to become a salon owner. I was very dedicated to getting high grades during my college years. I went to work for another salon, and worked under them for about 5 years and really took in everything, and went to lots of seminars and different things, to learn how to be a salon owner. So from graduation till the age of 28, I was very driven and bought my salon when I was only 25 years old. I worked a lot. When I was in high school I worked at K-mart on the weekends and at night times till 10 O’clock and I did that through college too. I started working when I was a senior in high school. I didn’t get married until I was 30 years old. Then I had a daughter when I was 32; and she has now graduated from Cascade in 2011. I married a man named Todd Herman, who went to Lynwood High School. The day I signed papers for my very first salon and of course getting married and having my daughter Callie, were the best days I had.
Now: I’m still the owner of Robert Scott Salon; I have owned it now for 26 years. I got married and I have a daughter, Callie, who is 18. She just graduated from Cascade last year. We have our house and I got cancer about 4 years ago, which immensely changed my life. I really worked a lot prior to getting cancer, and now I try not to work so much and spend time with family.
Reunions and old friends: I’ve been to all the class reunions. We have had a 10 year, and a 20 year and then the last one we just had was at the Tulalip casino. I enjoyed my 10 year one very much. My 20 year one I wasn’t feeling all that good so I had a hard time connecting to that one. But the 10 year one I really enjoyed. I got to see what everybody had done and the changes in some people from the time they got out of high school to that 10 year reunion. Everybody had kind of gone in the directions and most people had decided on their career path so it seemed like there was a lot to talk about, asking them what they were doing at that time. From being a salon owner, I have several people that are salon customers. I have my friends Dana Wall, Teresa, and Judy. I was swimming at Forest Park for a while and met one of my class mates there and she has now become a friend. She comes to my salon and has her hair done. When I have gone to the reunions I have handed out cards, so there’s probably about 5 or 6 additional members that I graduated with that now I keep in contact with.
From then to now: You could fill your whole car up for 5 bucks. I don’t know what the price was per dollar but I know that if you had 5 dollars you could put gas in your car and that was a lot of gas. Things were a lot less expensive. For instance, I moved out of my parent’s house right before I turned 21, and a girlfriend and I rented a town house in Silver lake area, and the rent was 350 dollars. My first apartment! So we divide that in half, and that was 175 dollars each for rent. In comparison to today, you can’t even do anything with that. So I then lived with her for several years, then she got married and I moved on. I had to find an apartment on my own, and live by myself. I found a one bedroom apartment and the rent for it was 195 dollars a month, and that was in the Forest Park area.
Regrets: I wasn’t real popular in high school. I wanted to be a cheerleader really bad, but I didn’t have the body type; I was a little chubby. But I enjoyed watching them very much and I wished that I could have been that. That was probably the one thing, that if I could do over again, I would. Because I think now it seems like some of the cheerleaders aren’t as perfect. It doesn’t matter anymore, it’s more accepted to be a little on the chubby side to get to be a cheerleader.
History: The Nixon controversy probably was a little bit before I entered high school. I guess at that age I didn’t really pay attention to too much on the world news and different things. I didn’t really follow politics very much. I still don’t follow politics very much today, I more or less get more upset about the medical situation that we’re in more so then the political stuff. I’d have to say that my interests lie more on the medical reform stuff than on the political stuff.