Sherry Grindeland / Times staff columnist
To help wipe out polio, kids raise pretty penny — 180,000 of them

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Author and former Redmond resident Peg Kehret will have a host of fans when she speaks at the Mercer Island Rotary Club today. Twenty-one students from Lakeridge Elementary School will be joining the Rotarians and Kehret for lunch at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.

Kehret has written more than 30 juvenile books, including "Small Steps," the story of her battle with polio when she was 12.

So after fourth-grade students in Carrie Webster's class at Lakeridge read "Small Steps," they decided to run a schoolwide fund-raiser, collecting money to help fight polio. The students will be donating the money to Rotary International's Polio Project, which hopes to eradicate polio worldwide by 2005.

Mercer Island Rotarians invited the class to lunch to hear Kehret.

Webster prepared her class well — from etiquette lessons about what manners to use at a buffet lunch to making centerpieces for the tables.

Only one potential problem: The Rotarians suggested the students bring their donation to the polio project in the form of pennies.

They underestimated the dedication of these kids. As of last week they had raised more than $1,800. Imagine lifting 180,000 pennies — a feat the students will perform.

Congratulations: Longtime Issaquah resident and environmental activist Ruth Kees was honored by the Metropolitan King County Council yesterday. Council members David Irons Jr. and Larry Phillips made the award.

Kees was profiled in a Seattle Times story two weeks ago just before receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Issaquah Environmental Council. She has been a tireless advocate for protecting Issaquah streams and the water system.

Busy feet: First it was the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and now people at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which also raises money for breast-cancer research, education and detection, have donned walking shoes.

The Komen Foundation national offices today announced the launch of the Breast Cancer 3-Day series of walks.

Although hundreds of Eastside women, including community activists Wendy Dore and Beverly Jacobson of Bellevue, participated in the Seattle 2001 and 2002 Avon three-day walks, this year participants who want to do the endurance walks will have to go south.

Seattle isn't included on either the Avon or Komen tour.

The Komen walks will be held in California in November. The closest Avon walk, only two days long this year, will be in Portland on July 12-13.

(The local Susan G. Komen office will again be organizing the Race for the Cure on June 1.)

Collectibles: Folks at the Kirkland Heritage Society are trying to locate a Seattle man who collects railroad track for possible future display.

The man posted a long note on a Web site in England, saying he had found rail tracks made by the Moss Bay Steel Works, dated 1886 and 1888, and used originally in the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway. (Much of that railroad is now the Burke-Gilman Trail.) The rails were pulled up and reused in the Snoqualmie Valley on the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railroad.

The Kirkland connection?

Peter Kirk.

He owned the Moss Bay Steel Works in Workington, England, and supplied rail track to many railroad companies, including the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern. Kirk wanted to build a mill in the United States. While on a business trip to New York in 1886, he met Daniel Gilman, who was raising money for the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway.

Gilman suggested Kirk come to the Puget Sound area because the Eastside was a coal-mining center.

Kirk founded Kirkland and built a mill near today's Forbes Lake. Alas, it never produced steel, due partially to a recession and lack of good-quality iron ore.

So even though the collector's tracks are marked Moss Bay, they weren't made anywhere near Kirkland's Moss Bay. But heritage society members like to track everything associated with town founder Kirk.

Oh, say! Talk about getting into your stage role. David Wilson, star of "Damn Yankees" at Issaquah's Village Theatre, will be at Safeco Field for the Mariner-Yankee game tonight. Wilson will sing the national anthem.

The musical opens Thursday.

Sherry Grindeland: 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com