The totem pole that has graced the Sidney Avenue turnaround and the waterfront of downtown Port Orchard since the 1980s is back in its rightful place, freshly restored by the grandson of its original carver.

The pole with its chipped paint and evident spots of rot had been taken down in June after the city announced it was working with the Makah Tribe to restore the worn-down carving.

That same pole, now with its familiar dazzling colors and rot removed, was successfully returned to the waterfront in a short ceremony Aug. 30, attended by Mayor Rob Putaansuu and the city’s elected council members.

“This is an important, fabulous piece of history and artwork on our waterfront,” Putaansuu said in a short statement, “and I’m glad we’re able to keep it in good condition and honor it the way it needs to be honored.”

The totem pole originated as the work of the late Frank Smith, who erected the structure as one of his many artifact carvings. This piece in particular was made not only as a representation of the Makah culture but as a dedication to the late Gerald H. Grosso, a former councilman and journalist whose archaeological work preserving the Ozette artifacts of the Makah civilization earned him a close relationship with the tribe.

“He was a very interested man and very involved with the community,” said Councilman John Clauson about Grosso, a man he spent time working with. “He was very, very intelligent, very interested in the archeological aspects of this group of people especially.”

Smith’s son, Frank Smith Jr., revamped the pole in 2006 with the assistance of a longtime companion.

Only now, in this latest renovation, did the third generation in this family of woodworkers be called upon to restore the pole to its original looks.

“One of the things that I’ve always believed about artwork is as long as you maintain it, it will last as long as it possibly can,” said Bill Martin Jr., standing next to his completed work months in the making. “It was nice to have a hand in being able to clean it up, give it some extra life.”

Martin is the grandson of the senior Smith and, like those who came before him, is fascinated with woodwork. Learning how to revive and work on totem poles in his younger years, the craft had been more than familiar to him when he was asked to take the lead on this latest project.

It was an easy answer for Martin to accept the job, even as he knew the work to restore the old pole would be lengthy at best. “If they didn’t get to it soon, it would have turned a corner,” he said.

For weeks, Martin worked to sand off the old paint, smoothing the wood down, cleaning off the cuts and searching for the different sections of rot. “I used a plunge cutter, a little vibrating plunge cutter, and I’d square out the area of rot and put in a fresh block of wood,” he said.

Martin’s work slowly but surely revived not just the pole, but the story it represents. Martin recalled the ancient vision in which a man saw a thunderbird delivering a whale to the tribe. The vision is depicted in the totem poles’ three layers: a man wrapped in a bear-skin robe at ground level, above him a whale and above that, the body and spread-out wings of the thunderbird.

Martin couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of the three layers of the totem pole now being matched by the number of generations that have come to work on it. It’s part of the joy he now feels seeing his work on display. “I just wanted it to keep lasting. I want it to have an extra life,” he said.

“It breathes life back into it,” said Clauson about the work done by Martin. “It’s been a fixture on our waterfront for three decades now or longer. I find myself fortunate to have been there when we first dedicated it, and it’s great to see it go up again.”

A city employee works to secure the restored totem pole.