Serving Whitman County since 1877
I want to express condolences to all of us for recent losses in our local and regional community:
1. The retirement of Gazette Editor Jerry Jones, whose name became synonymous with the Colfax Gazette (Whitman County Gazette) and who was the trusted and unfailing reporter and photographer who chronicled our county sports, the county fair and decades of events that defined our community;
2. Fonk’s, a centerpiece building in our Main Street historic district that fell victim to a fire last week. In the earlier years, Fonk’s was the five and dime store where many of us found “anything we needed” and our children routinely spent their weekly allowances.
3. Fonk’s Coffee Shop, one of the best loved businesses on Main Street, that also succumbed to the fire. Fonk’s had again, in recent years, become a key gathering place. The coffee shop was like a renaissance for the Fonk’s building. It wasn’t just the great coffee, lunch and baked goods available in this lovely venue that drew so many. It was Amy Warwick herself, who ran this delightful shop and who really made our day.
4. The passing of the torch from Gazette Publisher Gordon Forgey, who spent his years at the paper supporting our community events and making sure the paper maintained its rural character. And, of course, adding his good humor and quick wit to the Main Street business scene.
In spite of the loss for us personally, we all wish our retirees well and hope to see and visit with them in the future. And we will form relationships with the new folks at the paper and thank our stars we still have the Gazette to cover our news.
The shock of the Fonk’s fire is entirely different. The building, with its long and colorful history in Colfax, has been a nostalgic downtown feature. This is also a great loss to one of the longest rural Main Street historic districts in the state. Only a structural engineer will know if its facade or any landmark piece of the building could be saved or used again. Or if the mural painted on the south wall last summer by professional artist Henry Stinson can be preserved in some way.
The lovely coffee shop, however, is a loss that can actually be restored with community support and enthusiasm. The sincere desire to return Amy to the downtown coffee drinkers, lunch goers, through-drivers and visitors who considered Fonk’s their resting stop, is rampant out there. Amy, know your community is behind you. The community will happily engage in a search for vintage linens, lovely tables and chairs and, most important, a venue.
Emily Adams,
Colfax
Reader Comments(0)