Everett High renames library after its biggest fan, Larry O’Donnell

EVERETT — At Everett High School, over 300 friends, former students and colleagues filled the newly renamed Lawrence O’Donnell library with gratitude Wednesday evening.

They sang the school anthem.

“E-V-E-R-E-T-T stands for Everett High

I am an Everett man born,

An Everett man ‘til I die!”

No one bleeds blue and gold, the Everett High colors, as much as Larry.

Now 86, Larry started as a kindergartner at the old Jefferson Elementary School. In his decades in Everett schools, he was a student, teacher, counselor, dean, vice principal, principal, consultant and more. Since his retirement, he has penned six books on local history, fought to preserve Everett’s historical sites and pursued his love of cycling.

Ask him about his own achievements, and soon, he shifts to sharing stories about all of Everett residents’ accomplishments since 1893, the year the city was founded.

Bill Rucker, a longtime youth sports coach, knew of Larry in high school. Larry was two years older than Rucker, but even in a class of about 600 students, Larry stood out as a “neat guy,” Rucker said.

In high school, Larry said he wasn’t a great athlete on the track team. Or an advocate on the debate team, but he “can stand up and yak.” Competition did not draw him in as much as learning and understanding different perspectives.

Ahead of a competition at the College of Puget Sound, teacher Harold McNeil pulled him aside.

“You know, you’re really not very good at debating,” Larry recalled McNeil told him.

“I know,” he replied. “Somebody says something and I think, ‘It makes sense.’”

McNeil redirected Larry to the “after dinner speaking” category.

Using jokes from Boy’s Life Magazine, he made the entire room laugh to tears, earning first place.

To this day, his classmates put his name down to speak at reunion events or funerals.

After attending Everett Community College and Western Washington University, he came back to teach in Snohomish County.

‘Who I want to be’

That’s where Nancy Sunderland, a retired teacher of 30 years, met Larry.

Sunderland was terrified of the task Larry, then principal at Emerson Elementary, hired her to do. She arrived after spring break and was the fourth teacher her students would have that year.

With only one year of experience, she felt miscast.

Larry convinced her otherwise.

“I didn’t know what I was doing. And he felt like he made me feel like he thought I was wonderful,” she said. “He was my first principal and he has been a support all the way through. Just such a staple of who I want to be.”

On Wednesday night, tears ran through her face as she listened to Larry’s speech at the event dedicating the Everett High School library in his name.

“He’s not an author, an administrator and community person for his benefit, he literally does things for the good of the community,” she said. “When he gives a speech, he wants to make the crowd feel good. He doesn’t want to make himself look good.”

Larry came to her retirement party in 2006.

“From beginning to end, he was there,” she said.

Sunderland is one of many with similar stories about Larry.

‘He absolutely lit the fire’

Larry’s impact is felt throughout Everett.

He believes history isn’t just something that happened to us, we can also shape it.

In 1995, he advocated to tear down Everett High School’s annex. He called the 1960s Brutalist building “the most unpopular building in the history of this city.”

To Larry, its worst crime was to obscure “one of the most gorgeous buildings in the state of Washington,” referring to Everett High’s main building, built in Beaux-Arts style. In 1997, the school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Other fights he is proud to have picked include preserving the maple trees in the 3300 block of Grant Avenue and clearing out the Forgotten Creek Trail.

He has also sparked in others the ambition to shape Everett.

Historian and illustrator Deborah Fox credits him for her successful campaign to name Emma Yule Park after Everett’s first teacher.

In the 2010s, as Everett’s 125th anniversary approached, Fox asked Larry for inspiration to create postcards in commemoration. Larry told her about Yule, Everett’s first teacher and principal.

He gave all Fox all his research.

“It helps to have someone like Larry to give a lead. Like, ‘Here’s the name of someone you should look at,’” she said. “Larry absolutely deserves credit for Emma Yule Park. He absolutely lit the fire.”

She started a change.org campaign, went to City Council meetings and lobbied the mayor. In 2020, the city’s newest park was named in Emma Yule’s honor.

Today, she loves bringing her five granddaughters to the playground at 4831 Rucker Ave., next door to the Everett YMCA.

After retiring in 1989, Larry began writing. His first book, “Everett School District, The First 100 Years” came out three years later. He wrote it, financed it, published and marketed it.

“History has been a fun hobby, because it never ends,” he said.

Since then, he has written books about local history, revolving around sports, Everett High and the Rotary Club. He also coauthored books with his younger brother, Jack O’Donnell, another eminent historian of his hometown.

History specialist and Everett librarian Lisa Labovitch moved here from Chicago in 2012. Larry and Jack became some of her best, most welcoming resources. Despite being a “living encyclopedia,” she said, Larry was never condescending when others made a mistake.

“I don’t think I ever heard him shooting me down on anything,” she said.

When people ask what is a “must read” of local history, Labovitch directs them to books by the O’Donnells.

‘Big Shots’

After all this work, Larry has slowed down.

He’s looking forward to a 70th class reunion in June 2025.

To keep healthy, he quit smoking and joined a local bike club ironically called the “Big Shots.”

He doesn’t run marathons or bike the Centennial Trail in a snowstorm anymore.

But he keeps moving forward.

A few years ago, he had a health scare.

Rucker said that Larry got better. The joke is he cheated hospice and got “fired” from it.

He came back to the pedals, this time with an eBike, twice a week.

“It’s kind of inspiring for all his friends that he’s done so well,” Rucker said. “Geez, this guy was supposed to be dead, you know, six months ago and now he’s buying himself a new bicycle.”

He’s the oldest of the Big Shots.

The past is ever-present in his life.

To fall asleep, Larry reads local history until the book falls out of his hands.

“I always discover something I hadn’t realized before,” he said. “As I say, this thing is open-ended.”

Aina de Lapparent Alvarez: 425-339-3449; aina.alvarez@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @Ainadla.