Cyrus Gilbert Oral History

Excerpt from Robert Gilbert's oral history

Cyrus Gilbert first came to the Sunnydale area in 1904 as a Methodist minister. He served there for three years and was then assigned to Shelton.

So teaching is what brought him back to Sunnydale. He was principal and teacher (principals taught in those days) at Sunnydale. He started there in 1923. So I was in Sunnydale grade school. There was no high school in the area at that time. Some high school kids went to West Seattle, some to Kent, some to Auburn. To travel to West Seattle they took the Toonerville Trolley out of Burien. Of course we had automobiles at that time. But we did a lot of walking too.

Rosalia Brothers had a big flower farm on Des Moines Way. We kids used to get jobs pulling weeds there. We worked ten hours a day and got 15 cents an hour. That was in 1924-25. There were jobs for the kids if they wanted to work.

Most of the area was farms between 12th and 16th South. We kids used to earn some money by picking cucumbers up at Gene Wilcox's. There were houses all over up there, but they moved them all out when they built the airport.