With interests in the old schools around Spokane, I had fun researching and writing an article about the Pohl Spring Works. Several notions provoked my interest and one of them was the uniqueness of an industrial company in close proximity to Jefferson Elementary School; not that this was bad... but it was seemingly different to me, especially by today's standards. Even though the business left its Grand Boulevard address in 1962, I remember filling the tank of my car at the Shell station and reading a sign on an adjacent old building.

This 1923 sign on the right hand side of the building was faded but still visible until the building was torn down in recent years.

In faded letters it read, "Pohl Guaranteed Springs." For years I wondered about the place. Beside this, the area was my old neighborhood.

In the early 1990s, my father and I designed a discharging device for artificial larynx batteries. The device required a specially bent spring which I had Pohl Spring in the Spokane Valley create. It eliminated the charge memory that was a problem with nickel-cadmium batteries. I found the Pohl operation to be efficient, reasonable, and easy to work with.

Following an article on the Franklin School, I began to correspond with Seattle attorney, Ed Huneke who was raised in the Jefferson area. As coincidence would have it, (no such thing as coincidence)Ed's grandfather was the judge in a condemnation matter involving the original Franklin School on Front Street. I asked him if he recalled the old Pohl Spring plant and he indeed did. In fact, he knew Art Pohl Jr. and graciously put me in touch with him. As children, the two had attended Cub Scout meetings or something similar in the Pohl family home. (By complete fluke and in distant cities, they again came across each other as adults) In June, 2009, I had the opportunity to interview Art Pohl, his sister Anita Pohl-Roberts, and Jim Thosath. The interview was delightful and led to the article recently published in Nostalgia Magazine (October 2009).

There seems to be something enchanting or serendipitous about the connections that led up to the article. In more ways than we know, we may hold connections to people and places that we only discover years later. Take me to the article, Memories of Pohl Spring Works.