>>RIVERFRONT PARK IS A RETREAT OF GREEN SPACE AND WATER RIVALED BY FEW COMMUNITIES IN THE COUNTRY.

WHEN YOU STROLL THROUGH IT, DO YOU EVER PAUSE TO THINK ABOUT HOW IT CAME TO BE?

WHEN YOU ATTEND A FUNCTION AT THE CONVENTION CENTER OR A PERFORMANCE AT THE OPERA HOUSE, DO YOU REFLECT ABOUT WHAT IT TOOK TO ACQUIRE FACILITIES SUCH AS THESE?

PROBABLY NOT.

YOU MAY NOT EVEN KNOW THE STORY.

THE STORY OF HOW THIS PARK AND THESE BUILDINGS WERE CARVED OUT OF URBAN DECAY.

30 YEARS AGO THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE IN DOWNTOWN SPOKANE.

TO REVITALIZE THE HEART OF THIS CITY WAS A MONUMENTAL UNDERTAKING AND THE VEHICLE FOR CHANGE WAS A WORLD'S FAIR.

YOU MAY NOT KNOW THE STORY OF EXPO '74 BUT THESE PEOPLE DO.

THEY ARE AMONG THOSE WHO MADE IT HAPPEN.

AND THEY WANT TO SEE THEIR LEGACY PASSED ON TO THE NEXT GENERATION.

JOIN THEM AS THEY REMINISCE ABOUT THE STRUGGLES AND JOYS OF EXPO '74, SO YOU TOO CAN KNOW WHAT A LITTLE CITY CAN ACCOMPLISH WHEN A FEW WITH FOCUS AND VISION ARE WILLING TO LIGHT THE WAY.

(Jack Geraghty) Probably the most disappointing thing is that now after what 30 years or whatever, there are a lot of people that have absolutely no concept of how it all came together.

You know, in the community, the EXPO really was the culmination of about fifteen years of uh revitalization efforts, during the fifties in Spokane, the community was just getting over the shock of WWII and uh a lot of things started happening.

The freeway, which we, consider as having always been there just was being completed and the flight to the suburbs was really beginning Spokane as the city hadn't grown much since the 1920's really in terms of population growth.

They put a massive package of bond issues on the ballet in 1962.

Well, the voters were very interesting, they picked and chose their way through that election and turned down the airport issue, turned down the civic center, but they did say yes to libraries, streets, and fire stations which is kind of a normal thing that happens anyway but out of that kind of came the reputation for Spokane that everybody gets together once a year and votes no on things.

(laughter) But out of all of that then came the movement for the downtown revitalization.

King Cole came, in '63 came up as a hotshot young planner from San Leandro, California, and turned out he was.

(Laughter) And he started things like the Parkade, the project and some other things as kind of a walk before you run thing, but done out of his fertile mind and some others came and this concept for the World's Fair.

(King Cole) I was brought to Spokane because of the state of the downtown because of the meager outlook that we had for the future of the downtown and therefore the community but there was a small group, a little larger than this, but not much larger, of people who, who had never done anything like this before in their lives and I was one of them and we came together in a town that never could possibly could have thought of doing something like this in its life, and with a dream that was just bigger than any one of us and certainly bigger than all of us put together, and being part of the group that made it happen.

>>KING COLE HAD BEEN DIRECTED TO PLAN A CELEBRATION FOR 1973 THAT COULD HELP REVITALIZE THE CITY.

AFTER SPEAKING TO CONSULTANTS WHO HELPED WITH THE SEATTLE WORLD'S FAIR SIX YEARS EARLIER IT WAS DECIDED TO TRY FOR SOMETHING THAT MIGHT HAVE A MORE LASTING IMPACT.

(Cole) People we were talking with ERA a consulting firm, said uh, You'll have a big party, it'll cost you a million dollars and you'll just have a hangover (laughter).

Why don't you have a world's fair and spend about three times or four times that much and getting started and uh see what you've got.

So, I went to the board and they uh went back to the Consultants and the consultants came back and said it's feasible, uh, go for it.

>>COLE TOOK A TRIP TO PARIS, AND TO JUST ABOUT EVERYONE'S SURPRISE, STAFF AT THE BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL EXPEDITIONS OR B-I-E OFFERED EARLY SUPPORT TO THE IDEA.

THIS SUPPORT WAS VITAL BECAUSE ANY GROUPS WANTING TO HAVE AN EXPOSITION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD MUST FIRST APPLY TO AND HAVE THEIR IDEA ACCEPTED BY THE B-I-E.

SO IT WAS WITH THE B-I-E'S ENCOURAGEMENT THAT COLE AND COMPANY BUSILY SET ABOUT PLANNING HOW SPOKANE COULD QUALIFY FOR A SPECIALIZED CATEGORY WORLD'S FAIR.

IN THIS SPECIAL CATEGORY NONE OF THE STRUCTURES COULD BE PERMANENT THEY WOULD HAVE TO COME DOWN AFTER THE FAIR CLOSED.

THAT WOULD LEAVE ROOM FOR THE ULTIMATE RESIDUAL OF DEVELOPING A PARK ON THE SITE WHEN THE FAIR WAS OVER.

THE FIRST CHALLENGE WAS AQUIRING THE SITE.

(Mike Kobluck) There were two levels of railroad that completely blocked the downtown area from the river.

There are a lot of visitors to our community who didn't understand that there was a river that ran right through downtown Spokane, and (Jane Johnson) from an attitude point to, it separated the north and south part of our city.

(Geraghty) Tracks were just like those elevated tracks in New York City.

King use to call it the Great Wall of China, (Johnson) The fact that you had to get the railroads to agree, I mean that in itself was an absolute miracle.

(Cole) The secret was getting a leadership group together to go over to Portland to visit the regional heads of all of the railroads.

There were four railroads.

People use to say, if you want to do business with anything in this country that resembles the slowness, the intricacy, the bureaucracy of the Federal government, go to, try a railroad, and we had four of them.

(David Rodgers) The Union Pacific and the Milwaukee were on the trestles and Great Northern was on the level and up a few blocks was the Northern Pacific, which is where the tracks are today.

None of them were using those tracks to any great degree they were just running trains to keep their rights on them.

(Cole) Our first meeting we said that's the first question, if this whole thing were to work out, could you be out of there by '73?

And the second question we said as long as you're asking that question, find out how much it's going to cost to do this, so they came back and they said well, we can do it in '73 but it's going to cost you, about 16 million dollars and I remember the Union Pacific fellas looking at us and I said well, I said that's what we wanted to know because we're going to go to your superiors and ask them to donate the property.

(Laughter) I remember the president with the railroad was a great big guy and he laughed, he thought that was the funniest thing he ever heard.

(Geraghty) At the beginning of that process if you had said uh well, we need this property, we need four major intercontinental railroads to get together.

We need them to leave by 1973.

We need them also, of course, to donate the property there, we're not going to buy it, they donate it to the city, If somebody had said that would all happen back in 1968 or whenever the process started, you would have said, well you're crazy!

(Cole) We had an appointment the chairmen of the board of the Union Pacific, very hard now to get to see because they didn't just have railroads, but they had oil wells all over the world and they were big, big holding company for a lot of things.

But we got the appointment We went in and the door opened and the chairman came out and he looked around and he said, uh where's Rod Lindsey?

And Rod was our chairman and says, here I am, and he says, Oh, he says is your name Rod Lindsey?

He says, I thought it was Rod Lindsey coming to see me, the mayor of New York's brother, and he says oh, well, he was out of the room, and he says oh well let's talk anyhow, what is it you want?

(Laughter) and so that's, we got, that was a completely miraculous, serendipitous shot in the dark.

We had nothing to say about making it happen.

It was one of the miracles of the many miracles that got us there, and Rod Lindsey was the right Rod Lindsey in the wrong room.

(Rodgers) You know, I think there's one thing that we've got to keep in mind when it comes to dealing with the railroads.

Warren Magnuson was a senior senator and he was, I don't think we could have done it without him.

He was on the appropriations committee of the United States Senate.

Warren Magnuson was god to the interstate commerce commission and the interstate commerce commission was god to the railroads.

When Warren Magnuson called John Kenefick or Bill Quinn from Milwaukee come down and have lunch with him, and he wanted to talk something over, they were there.

>>AS ON LOOKERS WATCHED WITH AMAZEMENT THE RAILROADS RELOCATED AND DONATED THEIR PORTIONS OF THE PROPOSED EXPO SITE TO THE CITY.

(Paul Creighton) It took up ten miles of railroad tracks, tore down trestles, removed laundries, got rid of Travel Lodges, motels, warehouses we didn't have a site we had a demolition job that would later become a site, on a river that when water was in it could be fairly dangerous in terms of putting about 4.8 million people on it over a six month period.

>>YET EVEN WITH THE LOCATION SECURED THERE WERE STILL OTHER INCIDENTS THAT COULD DERAIL THE FAIR.

ONE CENTERED ON A BOND ISSUE NEEDED TO PAY FOR THE CITY'S PORTION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND NECESSARY SITE IMPROVEMENTS.

THE BOND NEEDED SIXTY PERCENT APPROVAL TO PASS; IT RECEIVED 58 PERCENT.

(Rodgers) The timing was interesting.

We had to have the support of the Federal Government, Magnuson, Jackson, and Foley had taken care of that.

We had to have state government support.

Dan Evans had taken care of that.

But you had to have the local support also and that bond issue that failed to validate was to be our portion, and that was about the 30th of August that we had that.

I remember (Cole: Terrible, terrible day).

(Rodgers) it looked like EXPO was going down the tube and we had, we were at Rod Lindsey's house that night of that election.

I remember sitting in the library.

It was King and Jim McGoldrick, who was president of the chamber, and George Ritemyer and myself, I was kind of over here and the rest of them were over here.

And they were all looking at me and they kind of shuffle their feet and wiggle their heads and I knew what they were thinking cause the only thing left was a B and O tax.

King had to be in Paris like about three weeks hence.

And he had to have that support.

Well, we uh, the B and O tax was all that was left.

George Ritemyer and Jim McGoldrick went to work through the chamber and they got, they built up some support.

It was not unanimous by any means, but the tough thing was there was about uh - let's say on a Tuesday about three weeks later, before the Thursday that you were in Paris five of the council members were up for re-election.

And the first day we could vote was the Monday before that Tuesday (laughter between Dave and King)...these people were faced with putting in a B and O tax uh on that day.

I was not up for election myself so, but those four or five that were, this was a pretty tough vote, but enough people came down and supported it from the business community.

We had some opposition that was pretty severe too, but they voted and the council did go through unanimously and King was in Paris and he got the phone call said it's there so he could uh speak for those people and uh - to those people and it was one of the moments in the city government that was tough.

(Johnson) Well, when you think of the series of miracles that we went through, and they really were, we probably couldn't reproduce that today.

You talk about political clout you talk about the B&O tax, which of course came about as a result of the bond issue going down and yet you have 56% plus that supported it.

You look at the fact that we were going through all of the bureaucracy of the Bureau of International Expositions as the first U-S small category World's Fair.

All of those things just absolutely had to fall into place to make the thing happen.

Unbelievable!

>> CHALLENGES CONTINUED TO ARISE BUT SOME HOW THOSE INVOLVED PRESERVERED.

THE DAYS COUNTED DOWN ON THE CLOCK TOWER IN THE MIDST OF SEEMINGLY ENDLESS CONSTRUCTION.

MANY THOUGHT IT WOULD NEVER BE COMPLETED IN TIME.

TRUTH BE KNOWN CREWS DID WORK RIGHT DOWN TO THE DEADLINE AND BEYOND.

(Creighton) If you recall we had light ballers that were going up the middle of the walkways particularly from like the YMCA up to the top of the hill over the tunnel and these were about three, four feet high with lights in them, and those, the city was gonna do this but they hadn't all arrived.

And so what am I going to do?

The wires were sticking up out of the asphalt, so we had to do something.

So uh I came up with an idea that we could cover those with concrete pipe, 12 inches in diameter and paint them white and we could put a wash basins inside each one and put sand in there and it was a cigarette urn.

Well, on opening day, along about 8:00 in the morning why I'm doing kind of a walk before the gates open, and here's three sets of wires stubbed up in the asphalt.

What had happened is they ran out of stuff so they just quit.

We got some tiles we painted them real quick I think they were wet when the gates opened.

>>YET EVEN THOUGH FINISHING TOUCHES WERE STILL BEING APPLIED OPENING DAY WAS A STAR STUDDED SPETICAL THE LIKES OF WHICH SPOKANE HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE.

♪ Music ♪ ♪ Music ♪ (Geraghty) The sun came out, it was this beautiful crisp day, a lot of things that were going to happen that day.

They were going to have the President of the United States there, all kinds of dignitaries.

Of course Tom Foley, our congressman and the governor and we had Danny Kaye as the celebrity part of the ceremonies.

(Danny Kaye) We believe that the universe is a grand design in which man and nature are one.

(Geraghty) Just seeing all of those people, after all of the work and everything and nights when you said, went home at night and said well, it's over.

We won't ever have one of these things.

(Johnson) We had 85,000 people go through the turnstiles that day.

That was more than double what the Seattle fair had on their opening day.

So when you think about that, in terms of a population draw that we had, that was fantastic.

(Geraghty) One of the most poignant moments that I recall of that day was by more or less accident being caught alone in the art gallery, in a fantastic art gallery that we had and the only other two people in there were Richard and Pat Nixon.

They were trying to give them a moment of relaxation.

And you could tell that there were lots of stresses and strains but they just kind of lost themselves for a little while in the art and it was, it was, given the nature of the times.

(Cole) This was President Nixon's last public appearance of his presidency, the last one.

Event Announcer: Mr.

President will you say the magic words... (R.M.

Nixon) At 12 noon on this day, acting in my capacity as President of the United States.

It is my high honor and privilege to declare EXPO '74 officially open to all the citizens of the world.

♪ Music ♪ ♪ Music ♪ (Kobluck) So while all of these exciting things were happening on the floating stage, uh some of us were back in the office (laughter) ...planting flowers or whatever (laughter) (Cole) Weren't you still planting flowers in the gateways when people were... (Creighton) Yeah, we were still playing around with getting some of the uh petunias in.

And then the dog gone uh marmots would come up and eat the eat the petunias and we'd have to keep replanting all the time and then Monty Ensler, the guy in charge of landscaping how you do this, He didn't know, he had a few advisors from Washington State but he was in charge of logistics on it.

He planted 20,000 petunias in one night, and nobody could figure out how could he do this.

Well, he had gotten the garden clubs organized and he got them to come down at midnight.

By 8:00 the next morning, he had 20,000 petunias replanted.

And he thought it was something that you were just supposed to do, you know.

(Johnson) That was so typical though Paul of the story of the fair the volunteers.

(Creighton) They would do these things and if you needed something, somebody got it for you.

I'll tell you, it was such a joy to do this.

(Reporter Ron Bair) This is the headquarters building at the EXPO '74 and today is what's known in the trade as press preview day, and that's who all these people are, part of the 5 to 600 visiting newsmen who are in the city at the moment to take a preview look at the worlds fair.

>>LABOR OF LOVE THAT IT WAS FOR THOSE INVOLVED, MANY OUTSIDE THE AREA DOUBTED SPOKANE COULD PULL OFF A WORLDFS FAIR.

WHEN OPENING DAY CAME AND WENT, FROM AFAR CRITICS STILL ASSUMED EXPO 74 WOULD BE LESS WORTHY THAN THOSE FAIRS SPONSORED BY BIGGER CITIES, THEY EVEN DOUBTED ITS THEME.

(Worlds Fair Theme Music) "Spokane Washington, site of the world environmental fair...celebrating the birth of tomorrows fresh new environment... >>EXPO 74'S THEME CELEBRATED MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

FOR THE FIRST TIME A WORLD'S FAIR WAS TRYING TO EDUCATE PEOPLE ABOUT THE IMPACT INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION, LITTERING AND WASTE HAVE ON THE NATURAL WORLD.

EXPO IMAX Film: "What ever happens to the earth happens to the sons of the earth.

>>THIS WAS DIFFICULT BECAUSE THE NATIONFS FOCUS WAS ELSEWHERE.

THIS WAS A TIME WHEN AMERICANS WERE BURNING BUILDINGS AND RIOTING IN THE STREETS.

YET WHILE OTHERS CLASHED A HARMONIC CHORD WAS STRUCK IN SPOKANE.

VIRTUALLY EVERYONE WHO CAME TO THE FAIR WAS ENCHANTED BUT MANY DIDN'T FEEL THE MAGIC UNTIL THEY WERE ACTUALY ON THE SITE.

THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS WAS THE LITTLE CITY THAT COULD IS A WELLSPRING FOR MANY MORE BEHIND THE SCENE STORIES.

(Cole) The first hurdle was to get the media in this country to think about this as a feasible thing and not to laugh at the idea of a rural Spokane having a World's Fair.

Excerpt: This is Spokane Washington, home of EXPO '74 Worlds Fair.

A whole world of adventure on the islands and shores of the Spokane River, a world of enchantment, of international excitement and dazzling entertainment, come to the World's Fair to Washington State, see your travel agent now.

(Johnson) They were such cynics in terms of even the fact that we had this beautiful site; they just didn't feel like an upstart like Spokane, small city, could really do it.

I mean, you know, for a while, we got an awful lot of negative press.

I can remember one national commentator, in '73 said you know, if you've never seen a cow, or if the highest building is the Union 76 station, then you all come to Spokane.

And you know, I can remember the lines, the telephone lines at the EXPO headquarters just absolutely coming off the wall because people were so really upset here in Spokane over such a put down as we got, actually, that worked in our favor because it turned Spokane's negatives into a positive.

Even those people that were really basically concerned about the attracting of the rift-raft and the mafia and you know, we couldn't pull it off in terms of dollars basically said, we're not going to put up with that.

You know, they turned around and basically started, a lot of them, to support the fair so.

(Bob Glatzer) I have a story along that line too, when the Smithsonian was approached by the EXPO Corporation to produce a Folk Life Festival they sent this expert couple out to do 30 days of research on whether or not there would be Folk Life in the Northwest.

And they came back to Washington and said no, there is no Folk Life in the northwest.

That was the atmosphere at the Smithsonian about this.

(Geraghty) Then you discovered the Basques, discovered the Indians.

(Glatzer) I have told stories about the Folk Life Festival for years, I was always delighted in the years since then so many of the participants would come up to me and say this is the first time that we ever had a sense of being ethnic recognizable cultural group or heritage group.

I think we provided a good deal of not only entertainment but also an understanding among cultures that hadn't really existed here in such a homogeneous area of the country.

Ron Bair Report: "one of the more popular attractions here at EXPO '74 is the old steam locomotive 8444, you remember the day it came all the way back east through Cheney, and it ended up on these tracks.

It really doesn't have a great deal to do with the environment but it has a whole lot to do with nostalgia.

(Old Engineer) American Locomotive works guaranteed em 130 Miles an hour on a light train.

(Glatzer) We were, of course, one of the few places that generated fresh media news everyday (King: every hour) And so I could arrange things, for example uh at the gold panning, if it was a slow day, someone would be shocked to discover a gold nugget as they were panning for gold.

Of course, there are not gold nuggets in northwest gold deposits, it's all flakes in rivers, but we imported gold nuggets (laughter) and so by coincidence there'd always be a newspaper photographer or a television station on hand to record it.

And we had these guys who were wonderful, they were old prospectors who would palm the nugget, you know, and say Oh, let me help you with the panning, you know, and then Oh!

Look at that!

It was that kind of thing that was very nice, What about the gypsies (Glatzer) That's the thing, and Jimmy Marx was very very clear about this, he said do you want us to be authentic or do you want us not to be authentic?

If want authentic, then you have to deal with us on that level and so during the week that they were there, I kept getting these phone calls from Peter Spurning, Say someone just came into our office saying, asking if they're suppose to pay fifty dollars to have their fortune told.

And then three hours later there'd be another call from Peter, Uh gee Bob, I got a whole stack of twenty dollar bills and I would just say Send them into my office, send them into my office and I'd pay out twenty bucks or whatever it was that these people had been charged by the gypsies for telling the fortunes.

Then of course, the cops raided the folk life festival (laughter).

That was the end of that week.

(Glatzer in 1974) You really have to put this into perspective, we have a festival for the first time in the United States perhaps other countries too, Gypsies have come out of their own closed world and participated in a multi-cultural presentation and they are sharing their music and their food and dance with visitors for the first time.

And talk is free and we would love people to come and talk and meet the Gypsies in the open and chat with them and learn about their traditions and their culture.

(Creighton) Mike, I can't forget the story that you tell about when you got going on entertainment, because I'll tell you, - I don't think a fair, at least a fair that I know about, had anywhere near and any category of the World's Fair, anywhere near the entertainment line-up.

(Mike Kobluk) When I first came to the World's Fair in 1972 One of my first responsibilities was to contact all of the small and big communities in the country, literally, and ask them to send representatives to come to the World's Fair and to perform at the World's Fair basically free of charge.

And so, Joe Rosenfield who was my mentor and my board member representative would have to go and report to the board of directors on a regular basis as to what was happening in the entertainment field.

And so, Joe would have to go and say well, uh during the week of July 1st, we're going to have this marching band from Othello and they're a prize winning band and the board members would nod (laughter)...and then the following week the Angus Scotts pipe band will be here from Nelson and Oh, gosh (laughter) that sounds pretty good.

It wasn't until we got a letter from Los Angeles, from the city of Los Angeles, that said that they were very interested in coming to the World's Fair as and they would send their representatives, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Zubin Mehta to conduct and perhaps on a different occasion the Roger Wagner Corral.

And so I'm looking at this letter and I talk to Joe (laughter).

Now Joe had something to really discuss with the board of directors and that was the door that opened and the floodgates started to happen.

♪ ♪ The Spokane Symphony opened the Opera House on May the first and the World's Fair opened on May the fourth with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and that was the first of major orchestras because later we had the Cleveland Orchestra with Lorin Maazel, we had the Philadelphia Orchestra, we had the Salt Lake City Orchestra, and we had our own Spokane Symphony, plus all these other major artists, but also one of the other things King I don't know who it was, contacted Bob Hope and got Bob Hope to do some commercials for the World's Fair and Bob Hope's visage on the commercials also gave credence to the fair.

(Bob Hope Pitch) Hi this is Bob environmentally invigorated Hope; I'm on the road again this time to EXPO '74 in Spokane Washington.

It's so lush you wouldn't believe it's Crosby's hometown.

Eleven nations are here to celebrate the birth of tomorrow's fresh new environment along with great entertainers and sports figures from around the world... (Kobluk) And now the doors opened and pretty soon, Liberace said yes, he'll come and Bellefonte and.... (Johnson) The media sometimes still didn't believe, I remember them looking at our calendar of events, the Othello band along with all these big names.

(Creighton) Mike did such a fantastic job that he'd get me in trouble all of the time over in operations because he'd call over there and he says uh Liberace would like to go out on the site and buy a few souvenirs.

Well, I sent Bill Burke, kind of my number one guy in the warehouse and everything, and I got old Bill and I said Bill get a golf cart.

Go over the green room, Mike wants, pick up Liberace.

Mike says he wants to go out and buy some trinkets and stuff.

Well, the minute Liberace steps on the site, the whole thing was gone.

You know, the site changes and you've got 38 thousand people trying to see Liberace.

And Liberace buys this stuff and uh puts it in the golf cart and about twenty minutes I get a call and Burke says, well get another golf cart.

So we send another one out.

Pretty quick we got four golf carts behind this guy going around this site, here's Liberace getting out of the golf cart, buying a bunch of stuff, here's the whole crowd at EXPO trying to see what he's doing the whole place just turns into a turmoil and so I, security starts calling, I said well, I called Burke and I says figure out something but we've gotta get Liberace off the site.

He says okay, he's says uh I'll do that, I'll just tell him haven't got anymore golf carts, says go ahead, tell him something but get him off of that place-because he'd been out there about an hour and a half and he's having a show because the guy was a showman 24 hours a day so he's you know he's just having more fun than anybody.

THERE WERE NUMEROUS DOMESTIC EXHIBITS, OFTEN SPONSORED BY CORPORATIONS.

THERE WERE ALSO NINE FOREIGN EXHIBITORS AT EXPO '74.

GIVEN THAT THIS WAS STILL THE COLD WAR ERA MOST WERE MORE THAN A BIT SURPRISED THAT THE COUNTRY TO MAKE THE FIRST AND LARGEST COMMITMENT TO THE FAIR WAS THE SOVIET UNION.

(READS TEXT ON WALL) "That is the credo on the USSR Pavilion.

One of the largest and expected to be one of the most popular here at EXPO.

USSR Docent: "welcome to our pavilion" (Rodgers) They took fifty-five thousand square feet if my memory is correct and the biggest exhibit at the Century 21 in Seattle had been fifteen thousand square feet, I think that was the French.

So when the Soviets came in with fifty-five thousand feet, the rest of the world knew we were for real, and we started getting other exhibitors.

And it was a uh, I think probably the moment it really took off.

Film announcer: "The '72 Olympics America fell in love with a bright pixie from the Soviet Union.

(Olga Korbut) Hello, I'm Olga Korbut.

Film announcer: "Olga Korbut from the Soviet Union other great nations in a star stream world of entertainment are coming to Worlds Fair '74 (Korbut) All my best to you.

(Johnson) I'll never forget one day, again we used a lot of volunteers in the whole public relation publicity area because we just didn't have the dollars.

And I remember using a number of students from the area colleges and one day I was in my office and I just happened to glance over and here was the, a very key figure with the Soviet exhibit and he was off in the corner talking with this young woman and uh I just glanced over there and glanced over there a second time and he looked up at me and his eyes were just sparkling and he said I'm brainwashing her (laughter) I'll never forget that.

Again in that time in the history of the Soviet Union there was still a lot of skepticism (Rodgers) They did not travel along I think a number of times they came to my office and there was always, we called them the gum shoes, they didn't say anything they just sat down in the corner while you were talking to Victor Boriskokerov or somebody like that and they were never alone.

(Johnson) But the council general he travelled alone, I remember we came close to having some real fiascos I remember one time we wanted to do a barbecue on a ranch outside of Spokane so they would have a sampling of what it was like on a farm and I think we just about created an international incident.

It was past the number of miles we could take from that so those were some of the fun things to work your way through.

(Kobluk) We had the Soviet Basketball team, the champion skaters of the Soviet Union and once a nation like that committed to bringing those kinds of artists pretty soon all kinds of other commercial artists would also come.

When the Moiseyev dancers did appear on stage, a hundred and twenty dancers, Russia was responsible for bringing them to our doors then it was up to the worlds fair to house them and to find a place for 120 dancers in Spokane it was a problem until somebody come up with a wonderful idea of putting them into trailers Winnebago's, there's a Winnebago camp just outside of town, here these Russian dancers, none of which could speak English who were housed in Winnebago's outside of the community.

They loved it, this was the best thing in the whole world to have these homes on wheels.

(Cole) Mr.

Philipov was the commissioner general when they came to me and said, we would like to go visit some Indians.

They were crazy about Indians.

They'd seen all of the cowboy and Indian movies and they had an idea.

I knew that it would be difficult but I said okay, I'll take you so, we got them in the car, if I weren't driving, I would have shut my eyes, but I almost shut my eyes in fear of what they were going to say when they saw the reservation because at that time the Indian people here were very poor and they didn't have much in the way of material goods.

Some of them were living in rather modest homes and uh big yards and the yards were full of children playing, but they were also full of cars that had been abandoned and uh not taken to the junk yard, they were just sitting there.

And Mr.

Philipov turned to me and he whispered, he says these Indians are very wealthy aren't they?

And I says, No.

And he says, well he says, they looked wealthy to me; he says how come they have so many automobiles?

(Laughter).

In the Soviet Union, any used car was a valuable thing.

You fixed it because it was going to you'd find a part and make it work, and these people had six, seven, eight cars in their yard, front yard.

And they thought they were all workable models.

That was their visit to the Indian reservation, and I never took them back because I just felt like they came through it and their mental state was relatively healthy when they're finished.

(Laughter) >>THE SOVIETS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO GO ANYWHERE ALONE AND WERE OFTEN FOLLOWED BY KGB OFFICERS POSSIBLY TO MAKE SURE THEY DIDN'T TRY TO DEFECT.

PEOPLE FROM THE PHILIPPINES WORKING AT ITS PAVILION TRAVELLED TOGETHER AS WELL, BUT IT SEEMS THAT THEY JUST ENJOYED EACH OTHER'S COMPANY.

(Rodgers) Mrs.

Kaugamon, if my memory is correct-she had the Philippine exhibit.

She was in She had about 30 they were dancers, they were good and they were fun.

And my wife Naomi said, well why don't we have Mrs.

Kaugamon and a couple of her people out for a Sunday dinner, which we did and uh Naomi had in mind, I think, three or four people.

And Mrs.

Kaugamon called about two days before and she says I'm closing down our exhibit and we're bringing all the troop out.

She had 35 people in the house Sunday afternoon.

It was quite a scramble, but we got along all right.

>>THE AUSTRALIANS DELEGATES WERE VERY OUTGOING AND POPULAR.

PARTLY BECAUSE OF THE PARTIES THEY LIKED TO THROW.

THEY WERE ALSO WELL LIKED BECAUSE OF THE ACTIONS OF THEIR HIGHEST RANKING OFFICIAL WHO HAPPENED TO BE THE ACTING COMMISSIONER GENERAL FOR THE FAIR.

Noel Flanagan: and here's a gift for mommy in memory of being the 100 thousandth visitor to our pavilion.

And there's a little bit of "warm you up" for dad.

(Cole) Noel Flanagan could have been elected mayor of Spokane.

His emphasis was on the people of Spokane and he would go and bring his troops after they performed for the public, he took them to orphanages and took them to old folks' homes and made sure that everybody who was destitute or needed something like this, and the Australians put this on as a major emphasis of their program.

It was just wonderful.

(Dave Rodgers presenting) What we have is a silver bowl inscribed Nishinomiya festival day, EXPO '74... (Johnson) Being able to be involved with cultural diversity, having a chance to learn from people from other countries, to be a part of making something happen, those were all forces that made a real difference for me.

Out of the fair, I think for me when I took a leave of absence from the community colleges was the opportunity to get the "I can do" spirit back into Spokane, the optimism, the really building on the economic development initiatives which meant jobs for people and meant uh a prosperous community.

So those were really I think underlying components for me (Kobluk) To me somewhat similar, I think, it was the extreme positive attitude of the board of directors of the individuals who worked for the fair.

You couldn't find anyone in a room working on the World's Fair who would put up barriers that would stop things from happening.

It was the kind of thing where, no matter what the objective, no matter what the problems were to get to it, we were going to find a way to get it done.

And as Jack had indicated, by opening day and then throughout the next six months.

So, to me it was that positive attitude that frankly I don't think exists quite the same way as it did then.

What we have now are people, I think, who are more inclined to put up a barrier and say no, it's extremely easy to say no.

You can stop all kinds of projects by saying no.

But it's very very difficult to make them work, and that's what I have taken from the fair.

(Glatzer) Organizing and directing a folk life festival was the best piece of work I ever did in my life, before or since.

The way in which the cultural and heritage and ethnic groups of the northwest were able to come to the folk life festival and express themselves, certainly, for the first time in this area in public where they had, hardly any of them had ever done anything like that before, was a great thrill and I take a lot of pride in that.

>>FRIENDSHIPS AND EXPERIENCES TO LAST A LIFE TIME ARE WHAT THESE PEOPLE BROUGHT AWAY FROM EXPO '74.

HOWEVER THEY HELPED LEAVE SOMETHING EVEN GREATER BEHIND.

(Rodgers) The city's job was the residuals, that's what we were interested in, the park and another bonus that came along with the work of Luke Williams and Vicky McNeil in the Opera House that's a wonderful legacy.

We really didn't expect that in the beginning.

Along with it came the remainder of the state exhibit was attached to it.

That's the beginning of our Convention Center.

That one, the others were wonderful additions and very important, we don't think of that Convention Center, but the millions and millions of dollars that that's been worth to us for, over the years and it's been expanded a couple of times and we've just voted to expand it again.

(Cole) Well, there were two big residuals.

One of them was a classic residual of the park which the city had to then stop everything and turn this efforts into making that happen but the other was an activity residual which was the entertainment aspect of the facility (Rodgers) I wonder how many entertainment activities have come through that Opera House that we couldn't have had here in Spokane if it had not been for the Opera... (Kobluk) Our symphony would not be as good of a symphony as it is today if it didn't have, not only those six months of extra performances, but having the Opera House in which to perform.

We would not have had the Broadway shows that we have because there would be no place for them to play.

I really believe that most of the major concerts that we have would not have played Spokane, without those kinds of facilities.

(Rodgers) All this entertainment, all these conventions and uh people visiting here, those are very significant, economic residuals.

(Creighton) I had the opportunity to go up from there and do five more World's Fairs and so I had the opportunity to compare the Spokane fair as opposed to the other fairs.

The smallest city that ever held a World's Fair out of a 127 since 1851.

By far the best example of residual value and residual use comparatively speaking to other fairs.

And, at least in my feeling is that no fair had the dedication that the Spokane group had.

They never lost focus as to what they were doing which was to create a better Spokane, that was a philosophy and all of the pieces that go into that.

And they held true on that course (Geraghty) An event like that meant uh was probably the high point of my life really.

Uh given the fact of all of the different things that came together in that fair, what it left in the community, the uh the park, incredible lasting legacy and there aren't very many fairs quite frankly that had that kind of a legacy.

And the other thing that it left with me is the really the understanding that a community can get together and make good things happen and that it takes leadership, it takes vision, and we've had an incredible vision with EXPO '74 that a lot of people thought that the vision was so outrageous that it could never happen but it took that vision in order to make it all happen and it also took the practicality of knowing that you had to open on a date certain and if stuff wasn't going to be done by that date then you forgot about it and you made it all happen, so, we've had some other things in the community that have happened since that really modeled on the fair.

(Rodgers) That's the lesson, I think, when we all pull together, we can get things done.

(Kobluk) It's finding people who will solve problems rather than create them.

(Johnson) It's a positive kind of Yes, I can.

You know it's yes I can in Spokane.

(Cole) You all are right.

Here we are right today on the threshold of another era if we want, because we've got the ingredients of the stepping stones into that era and the passage of the bond issue that we just saw pass for fixing our entertainment facilities.

What else are you doing?

(Kobluk) Mirabeau Point uh certainly.

The fairgrounds as well.

These are well needed in the community and I think are major stepping stones of positive value.

(Johnson) I guess the challenge for us is to say to people coming up in leadership positions is to be willing to take risk and to have that kind of Can Do spirit that is important to be able to make good things happen.

(Creighton) People say that uh power is a bad thing, in many cases.

The use of power, it's the abuse of power; it's not the power.

It's important that young people coming up into leadership roles in a community be totally non-selfish and understand how power works.

These things work because of power.

Individuals together, individuals have power, together they're powerful.

And I think this is what is lacking in terms of initiating projects that are really good projects for everyone is that they don't understand, first of all what power is - it's a bad thing now, it didn't use to be.

Secondly, what to do with it.

And thirdly, how through collective use of individual power, you can move mountains.

(Rodgers) I think the long and the short of it is it's a classic case of real triumph of public and private coordination.

Everybody pulled together.

(Cole) It was just a breathtaking thing for me to be a part of and I'll never forget that and be eternally grateful to all of you who made it happen.

King Cole in 1974: Ladies and Gentlemen look at the clock, nothing but zeros.

I remember when there were 1000 days to go and I am here to very briefly to pay tribute to the people of this community of this state of this region of this planet, to have overcome super obstacles during that thousand days to make this exposition the success that it is now today, proven to be.

R.M.

Nixon: Another aspect of environment that occurs to each of us of course is what this magnificent expo is going to leave as a legacy.

It will leave I trust some of these beautiful buildings, it will leave a hundred acre park in the heart of the city of Spokane, that was once a blighted area, but beyond those material things it will leave something else and that is a new spirit and what impressed me as I read about how this expo came about, was that the idea did not come from Washington D.C.

It came from Washington State.

Those who worked on it, those that conceived it and most of the money that went into it came from the people, and to the people of this state we give you the congratulations for a magnificent achievement.