Phillip and Metta Wickstrom, founding members of the Evergreen Playhouse and longtime supporters of theater and the arts in Southwest Washington, both died earlier this month.
“They were devoted to each other. They were partners in almost everything,” Phillip and Metta’s oldest son, Galen Wickstrom, said of his parents. “She was certainly a very capable woman who did all the stuff she did and worked and raised a family and took care of the house, so she was a force of nature herself. Dad was a passionate believer in the arts, and that meant the plays and the students who he was absolutely devoted to. And they returned that in some measure many, many times.”
Metta died Feb. 4 and Phillip died Feb. 13. Both were 92 years old.
“They had a very strong relationship together, so when she passed before him, there was extra sadness,” said former Evergreen Playhouse President Kris Garrett. “To know that they passed away so close to each other makes sense.”
Phillip Wickstrom was born March 20, 1931, just five months before Metta was born on Aug. 7, 1931.
Phillip’s father and grandfather were both bakers, and Phillip’s parents owned Boulder City Bakery in Boulder, Colorado, when he was a child.
High school sweethearts, Phillip and Metta married in 1952 after Phillip finished boot camp for the U.S. Coast Guard.
While he was stationed in Texas, Metta went to school to become a pharmacist.
The couple moved to Baltimore and then back to Boulder after Phillip exited the service in 1955. Phillip began attending the University of Colorado, where his brother, Gordon Wickstrom, acted and directed.
Gordon encouraged Phillip to audition for the first ever Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1958, Phillip wrote in a 2018 article for his alma mater.
“Theatre has always been a part of my life, and I do trace that back largely to the 1958 festival. That’s the first time I took it all seriously. It’s amazing to think that wet stage was a preamble to the way I spent my entire career — acting, directing and teaching college theatre,” Phillip wrote.
Around that same time, Phillip and Metta moved their family to Centralia.
“I was a toddler,” Galen Wickstrom recalled to a Chronicle reporter. “They loaded up all their stuff in a U-Haul and then a car and they took turns driving it. And in those days, that was no mean feat … There was no interstate yet, so it was quite a drive. It was three to four hard days behind the wheel to get from Boulder to Centralia.”
Phillip officially began teaching theater at Centralia High School in 1957, according to Centralia College.
In 1959, Phillip and Metta joined with a group of eight other area residents with a strong commitment to local theater to establish the Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia.
“It has operated continuously since that time, presenting a variety of live theatre experiences to the community and providing many opportunities for people to share their talents on stage and off,” the Evergreen Playhouse states on its website.
While Phillip was most often the one in the spotlight on the Evergreen stage as a director and actor, Metta was a key figure backstage at many Evergreen Playhouse productions as a producer and costumer.
“He could not have done what he did, which was basically out in front of everybody, without her in the background,” said Peter Yates, one of Phillip’s former students and a longtime friend of the couple.
Metta obtained her Washington state pharmacist license in April 1960, working for Caldwell Drug in Centralia and later for Smith’s Pharmacy in Chehalis. She was president of the Providence Centralia Hospital Auxiliary in 2004, according to Chronicle reporting at the time.
“Metta, in her own right, did some amazing things, not just in the theater,” Yates said. “At a time where women were primarily June Cleaver housewives or nurses or teachers, she went to school to become a pharmacist … at a time when women were not expected to do that. So she was very progressive. She had a great sense of humor.”
After teaching theater at the Centralia High School for several years, Phillip took a position as the English and drama instructor at Centralia College in 1962. He stayed in that position up until he retired in 1991, directing and producing a total of 80 shows during his tenure.
Centralia College dedicated the Wickstrom Studio Theatre inside Washington Hall to him in 2006 to honor his contributions to the dramatic arts in Lewis County.
Phillip’s influence as a teacher helped shape the Southwest Washington theater scene as it is today, with many of his students going on to act, direct and produce shows throughout the region.
“Theater was a love of mine and he (Phillip) became my mentor and a friend, and now I am the artistic director and a founding member of a small theater company in Olympia that’s been going for 20 years,” said Pug Bujeaud, who attended Centralia College in the late ‘70s and helped found Theater Artists Olympia in 2003.
“It wouldn’t have happened without Phillip … He taught me a lot about respecting myself and respecting the craft and respecting the people who do what we do,” Bujeaud said.
Two of Phillip’s students from his last years of teaching in the 90s, Rich and Kris Garrett, were heavily involved in the Evergreen Playhouse after they graduated and went on to found the Theater of Arts Discipline (TOAD) in Centralia.
“A lot of what I do now, I do because of him,” Rich Garrett said.
Kris, who stage manages for shows and has helped train others to be stage managers, said Phillip was the reason she got into the craft.
“What I teach is what he taught me … And he truly is why I am and was the stage manager that I was,” Kris said.
Lucy Page, who is performing in an upcoming Evergreen Playhouse production of “Nunsense,” said her sister’s experience working with Phillip as a Centralia College student while Page was in middle school was what got her interested in theater.
“I remember going to see that play and meeting Phillip there and that was probably the first time I got really excited about theater,” Page said.
Phillip retired before Page herself began attending Centralia College, Page said, “but he was around a lot and he was in a lot of the shows. He was kind of like a legend there in the theater department.”
Phillip and Metta were frequent audience members at Centralia College and Evergreen Playhouse shows, Page recalled.
“They were always great supporters of all the theater projects happening in town … It was always really exciting when we knew they were coming, and they were such kind people.”
Phillip and Metta eventually moved up to Bothell to be closer to family, but Phillip continued to support his former students by attending their shows whenever they could.
Yates, who works as a bus driver in Seattle, frequently drove Phillip down to see students’ shows across the region up until COVID hit in 2020.
“Phillip would come see my shows and we would get together, a group of us, for lunch every so often,” Bujeaud recalled. “He became a peer. Always my mentor, but we kind of became equals on some levels, and that was really profound.”
Kris recalled the pleasant surprise she felt at hearing Phillip’s laugh while backstage at an Evergreen Playhouse production in 2014.
“I heard him laugh and I thought, ‘Is he really here? We haven’t seen him in forever,’” Kris said. “Sure enough, we walked out in the lobby, and there he was, and it was delightful.”
Metta often stayed behind to get some time to herself when Phillip and Yates drove south, Yates recalled. But he made sure both Phillip and Metta made it back to Centralia for the Evergreen Playhouse’s 60th anniversary celebration in 2019.
“As founding members, I knew that it was important they get there, and they wanted to go,” Yates said.
Kris, who was president of the Evergreen Playhouse at the time, said she made it a personal goal to honor and celebrate Phillip and Metta during that celebration.
“That was my goal as board president at the time, but also as their friend,” Kris said.
That was the last time Phillip and Metta both made the trip back down to Centralia.
Yates continued to visit the Wickstroms every month or so up until they died. Yates described Metta’s decline as “fairly rapid,” saying she was still up and about when he last saw her two days before her death.
“I went over to talk with her, and she looked at me and she knew. She said ‘I don’t have much time left,’” Yates recalled.
Yates described Phillip’s decline in the week after Metta’s death as “precipitous.”
While Phillip had issues with his memory for a while before he passed, Yates said Phillip was still able to recite Shakespeare when prompted with the opening lines.
During Yates’ last visit with Phillip, coincidently two days before Phillip’s death, Phillip had Yates read to him from his copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
“I chose Puck’s monologue from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’” Yates said. “That was the last Shakespeare he heard.”
Phillip and Metta are survived by three children, five grandchildren, three step-grandchildren, one great-grandchild and two great-step-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be announced at a later date.
