In the first half of the twentieth century, Tacoma was home to two events that made national news. First, during a month-long power outage during the winter of 1929-1930, the USS Lexington provided electricity to the city. Five years later, the young George Weyerhauser was kidnapped. George was the nine-year-old son of J.P. Weyerhauser, a prosperous lumberman with a large public face in the community. When a 200,000 ransom note was received, the FBI was called in. The boy was recovered after the ransom was paid, and the FBI later tracked down and arrested four people.Near the beginning of the 1950s, Tacoma voters voted to dismantle the commission-style government and approved a mayor/city-manager system, which helped combat the corruption that was present earlier in the century. Ten years later, Tacoma was at the forefront of the musical sound of the era, with garage rock acts like The Wailers and The Sonics and surf rock group The Ventures all hailing from the city. The Sonics’ take on the garage rock standard “Have Love, Will Travel” by Richard Berry is still popular today, and the Ventures have been playing and recording continuously since 1958.However, this musical renaissance was set against a backdrop of decline in the city itself. The downtown fell into disrepair, and neither the government nor the citizens had the energy to revive it. This slippery slope continued for several decades. In 1982 and 1987, Tacoma voters were the first population in the country to vote for or against voting with computers. The proposition was rejected by a 3-1 vote on each occasion.During the 1990s, however, the downtown was reinvigorated with new building projects that echoed its former grandeur. These included a federal courthouse housed in the old Union Station in 1991 and the University of Washington Tacoma campus in the Perkins Building in 1990. At the time, the decision to renovate old buildings rather than destroy them was considered revolutionary. Tacoma also installed an early fiber-optic network in 1998, provided by the municipal power company.