Hotel furnishings donated

Jacqueline Eide has lived in the former Palace Hotel for most of her life. Her parents, Roy and Lucille (Hardung) Haskins, were living there and operating the hotel in the early 1960s when she and her two young daughters returned to Odessa to live. Eide was able to get hired on to the Odessa School District teaching staff and taught many of Odessa’s schoolchildren at P.C. Jantz Elementary School over the years until her retirement.

The Haskins family ran the hotel from 1946 until the death of Mrs. Haskins in 1993, although it was mainly just their residence after about the 1970s. The ground floor of the building is still the residence of Jacque Eide, while the second and third stories consist of several bedrooms and a communal bathroom and shower for each floor. The last time the place was actually used as a hotel was in the late 1960s/early 1970s, when the missile sites near Odessa were under construction, and laborers bunked there in shifts.

Since the top two floors were no longer in use, the decision was made to empty them out. The steel-frame beds, metal springs, wooden desks, chairs and chests of drawers were all donated to Spokane Community Warehouse, an entity under the umbrella of the Catholic Charities organization.

Eide was told that the bed frames would be fitted with box springs and used at a homeless men’s shelter in Spokane. Much of the other furniture would be sold and the money would be used to assist the homeless and others in need.

A crew of three arrived with a rental truck and began bringing the items down from the upper floors. The crew managed to fit all of the furniture from the third floor into the truck, but then it was full. They will return at some future date and get the second-floor furnishings.

As for what will become of the old hotel in the future, no one is saying right now. It is one of Odessa’s unique structures, and it is hoped that it will endure in some or other for many more years.