1965: Eastside Community Comes Together to Campaign for Bellevue College
Jan 4, 2025It started with a luncheon between two competing school district leaders. And ended with the entire Eastside rallying behind a campaign to place a Bellevue college on the map.

It started with a luncheon between two competing school district leaders.
And ended with the entire Eastside rallying behind a campaign to place a Bellevue college on the map.
After two failed attempts, the Eastside finally cut through the tape, and Bellevue Community College was opened in January 1966. But it wasn’t without the help from key movers and shakers in the region. Prominent businesspeople, multiple chambers of commerce leaders, school districts from Northshore to Renton, legislators through bipartisan support, and two newspaper editors were all determined to win the fight.
Bellevue’s first community college was a true community effort.
How It Started
Neil McReynolds, former editor of local newspaper The Bellevue American, was one of those editors.
McReynolds had been covering the Bellevue School District’s school board meetings since the late 1950s when he picked up a story that would eventually change his life and those of countless others – Bellevue School District’s desire to bring higher education to Bellevue residents. After the district’s unsuccessful campaigns to the Washington State Legislature to bring a college to the area, one in 1961 and the other in 1963, McReynolds was compelled to understand what the holdup was.
“Other ones were authorized, other school districts, but Bellevue didn’t get one,” McReynolds said, noting school districts had jurisdiction over community colleges in the early years of their formation, but needed to get state approval before proceeding. “I interviewed the legislators when they came back from Olympia and our legislative delegation for the Eastside said, ‘Well, the Eastside needs to get its act together because the Lake Washington School District, which is Kirkland and Redmond, also wants one. The legislators, our own legislators, didn’t want to get in the middle.”
Back then, the city of Bellevue had a population of about 9,000 people and was described as a “sleepy little town” by McReynolds and others alike. Most of Bellevue was rural with blueberry and strawberry farmland, before Bellevue Square Mall was built.
But Kirkland at the time was a bustling city with a ferry shipyard, a much larger population by comparison. Having a community college for its residents was sure to benefit its economy and residents as well.
Over Lunch
“We were told we had to get these big divergent views together into one joint application for the east side of the lake,” McReynolds said.
After learning why Bellevue’s request was denied again in 1963, McReynolds called up Chuck Morgan, editor of The East Side Journal, a Kirkland-based newspaper, and proposed they organize a luncheon between the president of the school board and superintendent from the two opposing school districts.
“I called him up and said, ‘Chuck, we gotta do something about this. We gotta get these two school districts together to agree on one thing’,” McReynolds said. “So, we did.”
At the time, McReynolds knew both Seattle and Spokane school districts, among other competitors, were also planning to submit requests for community colleges, so the likelihood that the Legislature would again entertain two requests for colleges on the Eastside was slim. And, because the Legislature only met every other year back then, there was a short window of opportunity; 1965 had to be their year.
“We expressed our concern and suggested that they agree on a process to select one of the two districts to get the first community college on the Eastside,” McReynolds said of the luncheon between the two school leaders. “If they did, we told them we would support them editorially.”
The two school district leaders were willing to talk, recognizing the politics of the situation, and agreed the Eastside should put forward one request. However, the question remained: Where?
Eventually, the two agreed to let the Washington State Board of Education decide. The board would hear proposals and presentations from each district and make the tough decision on who it should be.
A College for the Eastside
“The process was initiated, lively competition between the two school districts ensued, and Bellevue was selected,” McReynolds said, noting that Lake Washington faced understandable disappointment.
But over the next two years, Eastside business communities would not only end up working together but co-leading the charge. With editors McReynolds as chair and Morgan as vice chair, the two provided considerable news and editorial coverage in addition to organizing and managing the joint Eastside campaign. This collaboration resulted in a successful bid for a community college on the east side of the lake – a community college located in Bellevue.
“We put together a broad-based group that included business and civic leaders from all of the school districts on the east side of the lake (Northshore, Snoqualmie Valley, lower Snoqualmie, Issaquah, and Mercer Island, as well as Bellevue and Lake Washington),” McReynolds stated, noting that the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce made support of a college its No. 1 priority. “We took lots of trips to Olympia. I remember loading up my car and taking people down to testify and show community support.”
Eventually, McReynolds and Morgan added John Lawson of Redmond as second vice chair to help lead the efforts.
The campaign ramped up in the fall of 1964 with endorsements from several prominent Eastside businesspeople, such as Ralph Davis, the CEO of Puget Power (now Puget Sound Energy), and Kemper Freeman Sr., the developer of the Bellevue Shopping Center (now Bellevue Square Mall). Phone calls and letters poured in.
Republican and Democrat legislators even provided bipartisan support.
“Why did the businessmen of the Eastside work so hard in this effort?” McReynolds asked. “The driving force for us was what the college could do for the quality of life for this area. In the early 1960s, we also saw the college as a wonderful training vehicle for the community, not only for the businesses but for its citizenry as well.”
Early Beginnings
In the spring of 1965, the Legislature approved Bellevue Community College with Gov. Dan Evans signing it into law. With much work to do, the college opened its doors to temporary portables at Newport High School in January of 1966. Two years later, construction began on a 100-acre Bellevue School District property and the beginnings of the college’s current campus took form.
Years later, McReynolds left the Eastside to work for the governor’s office only to return to the college in a different capacity as a Board of Trustee member in 1973. He served one term due to a career that required him to travel internationally. Yet, in that short timeframe, he had another large impact. With the help of his fellow trustees, McReynolds put together the original Board of Directors for the Bellevue College Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that raises and disburses funds to students and the college.
“There were a lot of different needs here – helping students, helping build facilities, other kinds of services,” McReynolds said. “They weren’t getting enough money out of the state, so we had to supplement.”
McReynolds helped recruit Kemper Freeman Jr., State Rep. Axel Julin, Bob Ladd, Gloria Hall, and Jack McCarthy in 1978. The Bellevue College Foundation, then called the BCC Foundation, began in 1979.
True Impact
It wasn’t just McReynolds who had a part in Bellevue College’s history. The McReynolds were touched by the institution on a personal level as well.
“My whole family was affected by Bellevue College in those days,” McReynolds said.
His wife Nancy received an associate degree in Early Childhood Education to supplement her accounting degree from the University of Washington, leading the expansion of a school.
“She put the two degrees together and ran a very successful early childhood school called ‘Emmanuel Day School’ on Mercer Island for many years,” he said.
Later, his daughter, Bonnie, took German classes at the college while she was in high school before spending a year as an exchange student in Austria.
“Bellevue College is a valuable resource for our Eastside community,” McReynolds said. “It has much to offer in terms of training opportunities for the businesses in the area, but we can’t minimize the importance of what the college does for the quality of life for those in our community. It is a true college for the Eastside community.”