By STAN STAPP

JANET EAGLES, Lincoln High (of Seattle) class of '40, recently placed an item in the Lincoln Alumni News publication asking whether anyone knew the whereabouts of Bob Tharp, class of '39. I did, and e-mailed her the information. I knew him as a kid going by the name Bobbie Val Tharp.

When he graduated from Lincoln, the Totem Annual noted Tharp's idea of an Ideal Life: "Plenty of pretty girls and a lot of cents."

Since then I'd talked with Tharp at a Lincoln reunion and written several items about him in my column, including the occasion when he ran for governor, and earlier when I ran into him on N 45th, after he'd retired as a Flying Tiger and airline pilot.

The Eagles, Stapps, and Tharps all lived within a block of each other. I was able to recall most of the neighbors on our Woodlawn block: 4203 Stapps; 4207 Bowens; 4211 Mrs. Norvell (the lady who told fortunes for a living, and cut my hair sitting on a stool in her backyard for 15 cents); 4215 Eagles; 4219 Callenders; 4225 Bob Rowse; 4229 Kauffmans; and one or two more.

I remembered Janet, her brother Bill Eagles, and her older brother Erle Landers - even though that was some 70 years ago. That night I got a phone call from Bill, who lives north of Seattle. Janet, who now lives in Sebastopol, Calif., had apprised him of my response.

A few days later I received an e-mail from Janet, who now goes by the name Jan (Eagles) Gilkinson. She recalled several childhood antics: such as the "Big Top Circus" at which Catherine Thompson, who sold lemonade and then got so tired she began crying and mascara flowed down her cheeks; while Bob Tharp and Bill Eagles made an elephant out of gunny sacks and hid inside and lumbered around the Eagles front lawn.

"I forgot how much we made. It was a small amount but to us it was a fortune," Gilkinson wrote, "You wrote an article about it in the Outlook and we were further delighted."

The other day, while my wife Dorothy and I were lunching at the Olympic Pizza & Pasta, NE 64th and Roosevelt Way NE (where we usually enjoy a bowl of tasty soup and split a big green salad), I happened to mention the foregoing incident to the owners, Andreas and Irene Michelakis. Were we surprised!

They currently live at 4225 Woodlawn Ave. N, which was the Rowse family home years ago. Bob Rowse was a good friend of mine, and an Outlook employee for awhile. He died of polio at an early age. His mother, a Realtor, sold me my first home at 2122 N 117th St.

Also readers might recall that my last column contained a few paragraphs about the people who used to live at 4202 Woodlawn Ave. N, right across the street from the Stapp family home, the Outlook newspaper, and the Stapp School of Music.

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MARGE LUEDERS writes from Colorado, sparked by running across a copy of the Jet City Maven on a recent visit to Seattle. Marge was active for years in the University Unitarian Church and as a news person, editor of a Unitarian monthly, Changes. She will be up here again to mark her 85th birthday July 4 (probably holding a party on the 7th) to be held at the family home near Silverdale. Her three daughters and spouses will be coming from Eugene, Denver, and Tullahoma, Tenn.

Marge is busy in Colorado, involved with the Colorado Senior Lobby, Gray Panthers, Universal Health Care, the Older Women's League of Denver, and the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. "It looks like old newshounds never say quit," she admitted.

"The plan here is that in about two years, my family in Denver will return to the Pacific Northwest and live out on Hood Canal (between Poulsbo and Seabeck) in a home they bought recently. I most likely will seek a place I can rent and stay when I want to be in Seattle."

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ALEX EDELSTEIN died recently after a long bout with pancreatic cancer. His career as a communications professor at the University of Washington was for 33 years, of which eight were directing the School of Communication. I first became acquainted with Alex in attending Washington Newspaper Publishers Association conventions at the university.

In the 1950s, the Outlook was selected for a comprehensive study of a community newspaper. Alex saw that it was done right and we conferred a number of times on its operation. The survey was financed by the Graduate School of Communications, the Department of Sociology (Otto N. Larsen), WNPA, and the Outlook.

The result was a compilation of two reports: the first dealing with a survey of 284 Wallingford families in 1952-53 (resulting in a 23-page report); the second dealing with the functions of an urban weekly newspaper, involving 735 interviews in 1958-59 (resulting in a 32-page report).

Journalism Graduate students did the interviewing. Residents were queried about reading habits, age, home ownership, education, income level, community feeling, etc.

One category, crime news, drew an interesting result. The Outlook being the first community paper in Seattle to regularly cover crime (for eight years I called on the local police station daily) some people thought we overdid it.

However, the survey showed that we devoted only 6.6 percent of our news space to crime, but that 95.1 percent of our readers were reading it - our most highly read category.

I last saw Alex Edelstein a few years ago at a Roosevelt District restaurant when Dorothy and I were going to lunch. He and his companion, Jean Godden, Seattle Times columnist, invited us to join them and we shared recent events. I'd known Jean earlier when she was editor of the University Herald. Alex shared an office in the Pike Place Market with Emmett Watson, Times/P-I columnist, who also died recently, public relations professional Alex Hubbard and Clayton Park, who, at the time, worked for Hubbard and was also editor of the Pike Place Market News. As readers of this paper know, Park and his wife Susan now publish the Jet City Maven.

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THE BIG ARSON FIRE that destroyed much of the Center for Urban Horticulture, located on the UW campus, caused several millions of dollars damage to the building and ongoing projects. Eco-terrorists claimed credit for setting it, the target being biogenetic tree research.

Many friends of CUH showed up at the center the next morning after the fire to help with the cleanup, including Dorothy, and three of her Master Gardener friends, Marty Wingate, Jane Tobin, and Jutta Rhinehart.

(They all got acquainted at the the Master Gardener course at CUH several years ago, and have ever since gotten together monthly to visit a garden, eat lunch, and maybe have a glass of wine.)

My wife, Dorothy, at times has weeded the CUH garden, served on various clinics, and attended other events there.

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ANOTHER FIRE that interested us was the burning of "The Rock," Morris Graves' retreat on a rocky promontory above Campbell Lake, north of Deception Pass. Terry Smith, caretaker of the property, died in the blaze. The home had no electricity or water. Graves, the famous artist, developed his painting style there in the 1930s and 1940s. He died at the age of 90 not long before the fire.

When Dorothy and I lived in Anacortes for five years (1978-81) we ran onto Graves home, just by accident. We were trying to find a rock quarry owned by Dave Taggart, a landscape constructor and designer. (He had a steam shovel as big as a two-story house.) We never found the quarry, but did get a chance to look over Graves' home, which by then was open and in pretty bad shape.

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ELLEN BRANDT, Lincoln High grad, Class of '42, died recently. For years her parents, Knute and Anna Brandt operated Brandt's Bakery at N 40th and Wallingford, right next to Quality Meat Market and Thaden's Grocery. Ellen aspired to become a social worker, or Spanish interpreter. She ended up working for a fisheries supply, steel company, food broker, Swedish Hospital, and United Way.

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I RAN INTO Peter Raible, the former minister of University Unitarian Church, shopping at the Roosevelt QFC. He looked in very good shape, and is currently living near Northgate. After a year in Seattle he will be leaving in August for Kirkwood, Mo., where he will serve as an interim minister.

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I RECENTLY had a nice phone visit with Bert Balch, son of Albert Balch, the developer of Wedgwood. We discussed the old Coon Chicken Inn and the Jolly Roger the two places said to have been connected together by a tunnel under Lake City Way. Bert was interested in securing a photo of the Coon Chicken front door, which was quite spectacular, he said. I have a colorful Coon Chicken menu, but not the front door. Does anybody? Let me know.

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IN MY LAST COLUMN I printed a photo of 64 airplanes in formation, half of them being giant letters, JPJ. I'd taken the picture years ago, but don't recall the meaning of JPJ. I had one theory from Clark Green who asked via e-mail, "Could those be navy planes pictured in formation marking some anniversary of John Paul Jones?

John Paul Jones, in case you've forgotten, was an American naval commander in the Revolutionary War, involved with warships all his life and in on a lot of killing and bloodshed. He was: chief mate of a slaver brigantine; arrested on a charge of murdering a carpenter; killed the ringleader of a mutinous crew; court-marshaled for cowardice; had numerous bouts with British ships, and many more such adventures.

Despite this, Jones received the grateful thanks of Congress, which awarded him a gold medal, and was buried at Annapolis, where his grave is a national shrine.

Any other suggestions? (