

First Edition

Copyright (C) 2018

Legacy Washington

Office of the Secretary of State

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-889320-40-3

eBook ISBN 978-1-889320-41-0

Back cover photo credits, clockwise:

_Seattle Magazine_

_Led Zeppelin archives_

_Boeing Company_

_Bruce McKim / The Seattle Times_

_Whitman County LIbrary, Washington Rural Heritage_

_Seattle Municipal Archives_

_Museum of Pop Culture_

Book Design by Lori Larson

Cover Design by Laura Mott

Printed in the United States of America

by Gorham Printing, Centralia, Washington

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope ...that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." -Robert F. Kennedy

Legacy Washington is dedicated to preserving the history of Washington and its continuing story.

**www.sos.wa.gov/legacy**

_Where the Salmon Run: The Life and Legacy of Billy Frank Jr._

_Nancy Evans, First-Rate First Lady_

_The Inimitable Adele Ferguson_

_Lillian Walker, Washington State Civil Rights Pioneer_

_Booth Who? A Biography of Booth Gardner_

_Slade Gorton, a Half Century in Politics_

_John Spellman: Politics Never Broke His Heart_

_A Woman First: The Impact of Jennifer Dunn_

_Across the Aisles: Sid Snyder 's Remarkable Life in Groceries & Government_

_Pressing On: Two Family-Owned Newspapers in the 21st Century_

_An Election for the Ages: Rossi vs. Gregoire, 2004_

_Krist Novoselic: Of Grunge and Government_

_Bonnie J. Dunbar, PhD: An Adventurous Mind_

_Charles Z. Smith: Trailblazer_

_Robert F. Utter: Justice 's Sailor_

_Carolyn Dimmick: A Judge for all Seasons_

_The Rev. Dr. Samuel B. McKinney, "We're not in Heaven yet"_

_Duane French, "Pity is just another form of abuse"_

_Amy Alvarez-Wampfler and Victor Palencia, new-generation winemakers_

_JoAnn Kauffman, Roots & Resilience_

_Jolene Unsoeld, "Un-sold"_

_Rudy Lopez, The Honor of a Lifetime_

_Erik Larson, our youngest-ever mayor_

_Bill Ruckelshaus, The Conscience of "Mr. Clean"_

_Hank Adams, An Uncommon Life_

_Washington Remembers World War II_

_Korea 65: The Forgotten War Remembered_

**I NTRODUCTION**

* * *

Nineteen Sixty-Eight was a year filled with "dark surprises" that changed us in ways still rippling through our society a half-century later.

The year began with North Vietnam's massive Tet Offensive and ended with the Apollo 8 astronauts orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve. What happened in between is still hard to fathom:

The draft call for 1968 was 302,000, up 72,000 from the prior year. College campuses were roiling with dissent over the war, civil rights and women's rights.

On April 4, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Only two months later, after winning the California presidential primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. The Democratic National Convention in August descended into chaos when Chicago Police clubbed protesters, news reporters and some delegates.

If one story emerges from all this upheaval it's this: The power of a committed individual to make a difference-in the environment, education, arts, civil rights, politics and military service.

_" 1968: The Year That Rocked Washington"_ spotlights 19 Washingtonians whose lives reflected the unsettling problems and soaring ideals of the Sixties. Whether it was Ralph Munro fighting for the rights of people with disabilities; Polly Dyer protecting natural treasures with cheerful tenacity; Arthur Fletcher and Maxine Mimms striving to improve educational and job opportunities for African-Americans, or the valor of Green Beret Sgt. Bryon Loucks deep in the jungles of Vietnam, these Washingtonians came from very different backgrounds. They may have had differing politics and goals. But they had one thing in common: The courage of their convictions.

As Governor Dan Evans said of the half-dozen volunteers who crafted and lobbied for Washington's revolutionary Education for All law, "It didn't take huge amounts of money. It didn't take paid lobbyists. It took citizens who cared."

The exhibit spotlighting the remarkable Washingtonians profiled in this book will tour the state following a year-long run at the state Capitol. Our project also includes school curriculum to explore the society-changing challenges of the 1960s. Additionally, the chapters in this book are available free of charge at: www.sos.wa.gov/legacy/

All Legacy Washington books and exhibits are made possible with private funds raised by the Washington State Heritage Center Trust, a 501(c)3 non-profit. Thank you for supporting our goal of making Washington State history compellingly relevant, especially for students.

**Washington Secretary of State**

**C ONTENTS**

* * *

**Bryon Loucks:** Brothers in Arms

**Larry Gossett & Lem Howell:** Tired of Waiting

**Arthur Fletcher:** Crossing the Color-Line

**Dan Evans:** The Keynoter

**Stuart Elway:** Taking the Pulse

**Nat & Thelma Jackson:** You Run to Win

**Pat O 'Day:** Ring, Ring Goes the Bell!

**Tom Robbins:** Mark Twain with an Illegal Smile

**Maxine Mimms:** "My Life is Education"

**Ralph Munro:** Disability Rights Pioneer

**Polly Dyer:** A Sweeping Legacy

**Norm Dicks:** Alma Mater Comes of Age

**Karen Fraser:** Winning Them Over

**Wes Uhlman:** A Politician of His Times

**Phyllis Lamphere:** City Girl Leaves Big Mark

**Jim Ellis:** "Doing something extra"

**Bibliography**

**Source Notes**

**B ROTHERS IN ARMS**

* * *

Army 1st Lt. Timothy Michael Lang of Spokane, a Washington State University graduate with a boyish smile, was the first of 1,124 Washingtonians killed in combat or missing in action in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. Lang was a helicopter pilot. Risky business. You never knew what was lurking in the jungle canopy. Officially classified as a military "adviser," Lang died at the age of 26 on August 30, 1963, when his chopper was hit by small arms fire in the Iron Triangle northwest of Saigon. His name is Line 3 on the right side of Panel 1 on the Washington State Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the manicured lawn of the state Capitol. If you visit, you could say, "Hello, Tim. Thank you for your service."

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Capitol campus at Olympia.

Five more Washingtonians died in 1964. Twenty-six in 1965. Then hundreds more with each new grind-it-out year as the war escalated. The toll was 188 in 1968, the year the fabled light at the end of the tunnel was revealed to be a highballing train--the Tet Offensive. The U.S. and its allies regrouped to win that battle, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy, but it lost the home front public relations war. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara warned Lyndon Johnson a few months earlier, "There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower ... trying to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed is not a pretty one." The draft call for 1968 was 302,000, up 72,000 from the prior year.

Here's an important thing you'll learn if you interview a lot of Vietnam veterans, especially those who saw heavy combat: They're proud of their soldiering. They talk about the unbreakable bonds formed by men at war. And most believe they could have won this one if the press, pundits, politicians and "radicals" hadn't convinced the American public it was a rotten lost cause. If you beg to differ, well, you weren't doing the fighting and dying.

North Vietnam's Tet Offensive is highlighted, together with the Ho Chi Minh Trail. _National Archives_

African Americans, fully integrated into the services for the first time, were disproportionately drafted and under-represented in the officer corps and Special Forces. Yet as racial strife erupted back home, war correspondents noted that even some Deep-South white soldiers discovered the idiocy of racism while fighting side by side with blacks. It was, after all, the "same mud, same blood."

Some troops anesthetized their fear and cynicism with readily available drugs, especially during the dispiriting final years of the war. A few went totally off the rails and "fragged" incompetent or vainglorious officers. The My Lai ****massacre tarred Americans with a broad brush. Photos of American medics tending to Vietnamese civilians caught in the crossfire seldom made the front pages.

Bryon Loucks, a Special Forces soldier from Port Angeles, remembers coming home on a burial detail for a friend. He was walking through Los Angeles International Airport in his Green Beret and Class A greens when a young woman and several friends spat on him and called him a baby killer. "I was totally embarrassed. I just turned and walked away--went into the bathroom and hid out for a while. Afterward, I was walking along the mezzanine when a worker a level below me started up a jackhammer. Instinctively, I hit the floor. So I went back in the bathroom and waited in there for about three hours before I caught my flight."

_John Hughes Collection_

Coming home could be more confusing than Vietnam. Three million American soldiers served in Vietnam. There were no ticker-tape parades, just a few thousand "Support Our Boys In Vietnam" buttons. The Associated Press reported on February 13, 1968, that grieving mothers and widows of soldiers killed in Vietnam were being subjected to a barrage of "detestable" anti-war mail.

American soldiers scramble out of a chopper. _Pat Swanson collection_

THE LAST Washingtonian to die in Vietnam was Marine Corps Pfc. Daniel Andrew Benedett, a member of the Class of 1964 at Auburn High School. Benedett's fate is historically significant, for he was killed in the last official battle of the Vietnam War. It occurred on May 15, 1975, after an American container ship, the _SS Mayaguez,_ was seized by Khmer Rouge gunboats off the coast of Cambodia. With the fall of Saigon imminent, the ship was carrying containers from the U.S. Embassy. Benedett was part of an assault force organized to retake the vessel and rescue its crew. Hailed as a success by President Ford and the Pentagon, the costly mission also serves as a metaphor for a protracted, divisive war. An intelligence report on the true strength of the enemy wasn't relayed to the attack force--"bad intel" in the parlance of the military. Pfc. Benedett and 12 other rescuers died when their helicopter was shot down en route. Closure, of sorts, came 38 years later when the remains of Benedett and his comrades were identified. They were buried together, in one casket, at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60, Site 10360. Benedett is also memorialized close to home. On Line 28 on the left side of Panel 16 of the Washington State Vietnam Veterans Memorial you'll meet a brave Marine who died at 19. _Semper Fi._

The other names on the wall are an American tapestry: Alakulppi, Dalrymple, Duffy, Enrico, Kessinger, McQuade, Moriwaki, O'Leary, Ozuna and Spinelli. There's a Nixon and, of course, a John Smith.

Army Pfc. Lewis Albanese, born in Italy but raised in Seattle, was among eight Washingtonians awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity beyond the call of duty." On December 1, 1966, as his platoon came under intense close-range fire, the 20-year-old former Boeing worker crept along a ditch to pick off six enemy snipers, according to the citation for the medal. Out of ammo, he killed two more in hand-to-hand combat before being mortally wounded. Fondly remembered by classmates and friends, "Louie" was a handsome kid, his dark hair swept back Frankie Avalon-style during his days at Franklin High School. Google him and you'll find a classic 1960s snapshot. There's Louie posing alongside a cool '57 Pontiac hardtop. Albanese is the only Italian-born American to receive the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. A street in his ancestral home in Italy is named in his honor. In Olympia, you'll find his name on Line 21 on the right side of Panel 3. His cousin, Army Sergeant Luigi Albanese, was killed in action two years later at 19. He's Line 17 on the right side of Panel 7.

Tim, Andrew, Louie and Luigi are forever young. Bob Dylan, whose songs are so essential to the soundtrack of the '60s, brought it all back home:

_May you build a ladder to the stars_

_And climb on every rung;_

_May you stay forever young ..._

In all, 58,193 Americans died in Vietnam, of which 25,493 were under 21 and 46,141 under 25. At last count, 1,600 are still missing in action. The search for remains is ongoing--a dog tag, a fragment of DNA.

Another 150,000 American soldiers were wounded, many with invisible scars. Half a million suffer from PTSD. Agent Orange is also taking its toll. In all, the U.S. sprayed more than 20 million gallons of herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to destroy the jungle cover and the crops feeding the enemy.

Bryon Loucks, now a 72-year-old tree farmer in bucolic Lewis County, saw it all. He lost a friend and mentor--one of the bravest of the brave--and part of his youth in Vietnam. Loucks couldn't talk about it for decades. Their shared story is one you need to hear.

FOR STARTERS, you pronounce Bryon like "Brian" and Loucks like "Lowks." Otherwise, he's uncomplicated--on the surface at least. He and his wife Donna, both Weyerhaeuser Company retirees, own and operate an award-winning tree farm.

Loucks grew up in Port Angeles, the son of a police officer and a nurse. Born in 1945, Bryon is the oldest of six. His mom quit work when the kids started arriving. He remembers "an ideal childhood," with the Olympic National Park as a backdrop and the Strait of Juan de Fuca on their doorstep. He was an outdoorsman from an early age, fishing, hunting, hiking, skin-diving. With a cop for a dad, messing up wasn't an option in a small town. "Jasper Loucks was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy--a straight arrow. If he had caught the chief of police speeding, he would have given him a ticket. And if his kids did anything wrong, there was trouble."

Loucks, like so many Vietnam vets, graduated from high school in 1964. Living at home, he spent two years at the local junior college. "I was mostly fumbling because, like a lot of young kids, I was immature. I didn't know how to study. I didn't know what I could do or what I really wanted to do. That was a time when the military said, 'If you change your major you're eligible for the draft. And if you fall below a 2.5 grade-point average you're eligible for the draft. And if you don't carry 15 hours of credits you're eligible for the draft.' _I hit all three_."

Loucks resolved to enlist in the Air Force, imagining himself as a jet pilot. "Sorry son," the recruiter said. "You're wearing glasses." He told the Navy recruiter he wanted to be in underwater demolition. A sinus issue squelched that. The Army needed helicopter pilots, but 20-20 vision was its prerequisite, too. "That's when I started to get really discouraged. Then I heard the song about the Green Berets." It was a No. 1 hit in 1966 for Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, a Special Forces medic who appeared on _The Ed Sullivan Show._ Sadler deserved a medal--or at least a promotion--for writing a hit song about the Vietnam War:

_Fighting soldiers from the sky_

_Fearless men who jump and die_

_Silver wings upon their chest_

_These are men, America 's best_

_One hundred men will test today_

_But only three win the Green Beret_

"It was an instantaneous decision," Loucks remembers. "I wanted to be in an elite group like that." The Green Berets also reminded him of "Sgt. Rock," his favorite DC comic-book hero when he was a kid. Sarge was a rough, tough old World II veteran "who always was there for his men."

Three-thousand miles away on Long Island, New York, another police officer's son, John J. Kedenburg, was also intent on joining the Special Forces. "Disgustingly handsome," as one high school classmate puts it, Kedenburg was tall and sturdy, a standout athlete and "natural-born leader" who exuded quiet charisma. Enlisting in Brooklyn in 1965, he left behind a wire-wheeled Austin-Healey sports car and his close-knit Roman Catholic family. His high school friends called him "Jack." In Vietnam he was John. It was as if he had left his youth behind at 19. No one back home was surprised in 1969 when they learned why he received the Medal of Honor.

John J. Kedenburg on a visit home to New York. _Kedenburg Family Collection_

BRYON LOUCKS entered the Army in June of 1966. At Fort Ord, they prodded him to apply for officer candidate school because he had two years of college. He was also informed that otherwise qualified applicants with corrected vision were now eligible for helicopter flight school, evidence that demand was outpacing supply. Still coveting a Green Beret, he passed the Special Forces exam. "The big emphasis was on being a team player. It was going to be like the Peace Corps with rifles because you were trained to teach indigenous people how to assist our forces." Loucks has a knack for wry understatement. He describes what he did in Vietnam as being "like James Bond without women."

"I still really wanted to be in demolitions--to blow things up. But everyone wanted to do that. Demolitions was a six-month course, and it took eight months to get in, which meant I'd have eight months of KP." He decided to become a medic, mostly because it was the hardest school--not fully realizing _how_ hard. What he learned in the next intense year changed the course of his life. Mastering the daunting course work at Special Forces "91-B" medic training school, with cross-training in the 7th Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was a huge confidence builder. Combat medics are the original first responders.

"It was amazing what they taught us in the space of a year. First phase was basic first-aid. Then we moved on to prescriptions and diagnostic skills. The third phase was on-the-job-training, working in emergency rooms in military hospitals, sewing up a gunshot wound or a stabbing injury. The fourth phrase was a combination of gunshot wounds and amputations. Throughout, it was a crash course in super-super memorization. A doctor might spend a week learning about jaundice. We would spend two hours memorizing everything there was about jaundice. Malaria meant you learned the signs and symptoms, the prognosis, the drugs of choice and the potential complications. Then you moved on to the next disease.

"That rigorous, year-long course truly gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. The diseases portion was centered on the Vietnam area, because that's where we were all going.

"For a year I didn't do anything but study. Once a month it was a movie and a nice meal. Then back to the books. Some of the physicians had never been in a combat theater, so the medics were teaching us all important lessons. Several medical students from Duke University came down to Fort Bragg to take that course, and many flunked out in the third week--not because they were dumb; they just weren't geared to that level of memorization. Duke made a standing offer that if we passed their entrance exams we would be admitted to medical school.

"Today, when I review some of my notebooks it amazes me how much information we were processing. We jokingly used to say we were qualified to do anything except brain surgery or open heart surgery. And that's not far off the mark. We were trained to take the place of a physician in a remote situation with large groups of indigenous personnel for extended periods of time. That might even mean amputations or diagnosing diseases and taking action."

"Doc" Loucks graduated, won his sergeant's stripes and received orders for Germany. Not what he had in mind. It was now April 1968. Between Basic Training, Advanced Infantry School, Jump School and his Special Forces medical training he had been in Army schools for two years. During his months at Fort Bragg, one group spoken of in tones of near reverence was "C&C," Command & Control, also known as MACV SOG--short for Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies & Observations Group. Loucks had no idea it was a top-secret reconnaissance outfit. In the early years of the war, when the Americans were supposed to be "advisers," it was a CIA operation. By 1968, it was "the largest clandestine military unit since World War II's OSS," answering directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, "often with White House-level input," wrote former SOG officer John L. Plaster. ****Of the estimated 3 million Americans who served in Vietnam, only about 1,200 were chosen for SOG 's cross-border reconnaissance teams.

Loucks phoned the Special Forces go-between at the Pentagon--"Mrs. A"-- to see about getting his orders changed to Vietnam. "Mrs. A" felt his wish would be granted. Special Forces medics were in short supply. He told her he wanted to be assigned to C&C or SOG.

"Don't say those words over the phone!" she ordered.

"OK," Loucks gulped, chastised and a bit confused. "But get me in if you can."

A week later, new orders arrived. They were written in typically cryptic military language. Loucks took them to a sergeant major and asked for a translation. Had he been assigned to SOG? "He scanned the orders, looked me in the eye and said, 'Well, sergeant, I hope you know what you've asked for, because that's where you're going.' " Loucks would soon learn the unofficial motto of the Special Forces in Vietnam was "You Haven't Lived Until You've Almost Died."

Bryon is going to tell you the rest of the story--one of the most remarkable of the Vietnam War:

Sgt. Loucks, a combat-ready medic. _Loucks Collection_

I REMEMBER very little of my first week "in country" other than the fact that most Special Forces soldiers either felt sorry for me because I was headed for SOG or treated me with more respect. Outhouse walls featured the slogan "Caution: C&C May Be Hazardous To Your Health." Soon I was on my way to Forward Operating Base 2, which later that year was renamed CCC or Command & Control Central. It was just outside Kontum in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

SOG's reconnaissance teams, also known as "Recon" or "Spike" teams, were named for states, carpenter's tools and snakes, depending on the camp. I formed Spike Team Washington when I became a "One-Zero," our code for team leader. A team generally consisted of two Americans and four to six Vietnamese or Montagnard troops. (Montagnard is a French word for "mountain people." It's pronounced "mountain yards.") The camaraderie was intense. You've never heard a story about a Special Forces team "fragging" an officer. For one thing, there weren't many officers. Non-coms invariably were in charge. And if an officer joined a team as a junior member he answered to an enlisted man until he was ready to lead. These were tight-knit teams of extraordinary soldiers.

Our operating areas were well behind the lines, usually along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Our radios had a relative short range of five to 15 miles, and we were well outside that distance during our missions. That meant we would have had no communication with our base in South Vietnam if not for C-130 Command & Control aircraft that could pick up our radio signal at night, or a radio relay site in Laos called "Leghorn" that we could sometimes reach. The small forward-air-controller planes that periodically flew over were another possible link to home base.

Because of the covert nature of our work, we went on each mission in a "sterile" format. Our clothing and weapons were nondescript, easily attainable from other countries and likely also to be worn or used by the enemy. We wore no dog tags or memorabilia that could identify us as Americans. We ate what the natives or enemy ate, mostly rice. To this day I don't like plain rice.

Our rifles were predominantly the CAR-15, a shortened, lighter version of the M-16, or the Swedish-K Submachine Gun, a relatively lightweight 9mm semi-or fully-automatic rifle firing a 36-round clip. These weapons were readily available on the international market. For the most part our clothing and gear were not chosen to allow us to infiltrate enemy camps, but rather to give us a few seconds' advantage if we came in contact with the enemy. "White Russians"--most often Russian advisers--were working with the enemy in areas where we operated, so it was within reason that if we had the appearance of the enemy we might either get away without a firefight or have a chance to open fire first. If we had worn American uniforms it would have been a dead giveaway, so to speak.

It was fairly rare to have a medic on a SOG team. The cost and difficulty of training a medic for such small teams made it not very practical. However, Special Forces operated on the principle of cross training, so individual American team members did have a lot of general medical training. Most of our teammates and all of the indigenous troops called us "Bac Si," which is Vietnamese for doctor.

While Special Forces medics were trained to save lives, primarily we were a fighting team member just like everyone else. Our basic pack weighed 75 to 80 pounds. Sounds like a lot today, but you must remember we were so far from friendly lines that we had to be equipped to get out of sticky situations. A soldier involved in a firefight will go through a lot of grenades and ammo in a very short time period. Each team member took up to 20 clips, each one holding 20 rounds. We had additional ammo in our packs. We also carried as many as 10 grenades apiece, plus a couple pounds of a plastic explosive called C-4; 10 "toe-poppers," small mines to plant along the trail if we were being followed; a claymore mine and variety of smoke grenades and signal flares.

Kedenburg, right, with a Special Forces comrade and indigenous troops. _Loucks Collection_

IN THE beginning, I was assigned to room with John Barnatowicz, a member of Spike Team Ohio. He would become one of my closest friends. Unfortunately, Barnatowicz was often gone on missions while I was in camp undergoing training before joining a team. Teams were being inserted and extracted on a near daily basis. Some were gone for one to four days; others went behind enemy lines for five or more days. There was never any real rhyme or reason for who was in the field, on leave or training for the next mission.

Specialist 5 John J. Kedenburg, one door down from us, became my mentor. Though still a few weeks shy of turning 22, Kedenburg was the revered leader of Spike Team Nevada. John was the kind of leader you never forget.

One of the things that made John unique was his genuine concern for others. When you enter combat as a green person you're making mistakes and you're more likely to die. When you've been losing friends in combat, the last thing you want to do is make a new friend. So when the new guys come in, the senior enlisted people want nothing to do with you--until you've proven yourself. John was different. He recognized that we were new and somebody had to help us. A stickler for detail, John spent many hours with me, patiently explaining how to sound-proof equipment with tape; how to pack the array of armament we carried; what rifle to use and its special quirks. In other words, John Kedenburg instructed me on the ins and outs of staying alive.

Most SOG teams were on intelligence-gathering missions in Cambodia and Laos, far from friendly help. Kedenburg was teaching me stealthy lore, such as how to pick out a sleeping location (R-O-N or Rest Over Night) an hour or so before dark on a side hill and in a thick noisy thicket. Then you'd circle back to the spot just at dark. The list of things to learn and do went on for days. When the time came for others to judge my merit on a local area training run, John Kedenburg was there to check my gear and me. I know I wasn't the only one John took under his wing. He was that kind of a person. In every photo from our days in Vietnam, you won't see John grinning or showing off. He's just the essence of cool, with a dashing mustache to go with his Cary Grant chin.

Joe Parnar. _Loucks Collection_

SOMETIME shortly after that first local training mission I was in the dispensary helping Doc John Probart and his assistant Bac Si, Joe Parnar, when word came in that a team was "inbound and on the ropes." When a team was in close contact with the enemy and could not find a landing zone, they could ask for a "McGuire Rig" extraction--four 200-foot ropes dangling from the underside of a helicopter. Each rope was coiled-up inside a weighted sandbag and thrown down through the jungle canopy as the helicopter hovered over the team. The actual McGuire Rig was a harness system that allowed a person to be carried at the end of each 200-foot rope. If Landing Zones were not available we would sometimes rappel out of the helicopter on these ropes using a rope and carabineer system known as the "Swiss Seat." This process was not without problems, namely:

It was often impossible to try to get a helicopter to hover over your location in single, double or triple canopy jungle while on the run.

If you had wounded to tend to or received a wound while being extracted, it would often lead to individuals falling from the ropes. It took two hands to hang on in the earlier versions of the McGuire Rig. More than one team member was lost from a thousand to 3,000 feet of helicopter elevation. Some of their bodies were recoverable; some became MIA--the dreaded Missing in Action label.

A McGuire Rig extraction. _Loucks Collection_

Once the team being extracted was in the McGuire Rig seats, the helicopter would have to lift the team vertically to the top of the jungle canopy before beginning any horizontal movement. If the helicopter--a "ship" in the parlance of the war--came under enemy fire from ground forces, then the team would often be dragged through the jungle canopy as the helicopter tried to continue the extraction and at the same time get away from the incoming rifle rounds. Many friends were lost or seriously injured from being dragged through the jungle canopy.

Once the team was successfully extracted, the helicopter often would have to fly more than 30 minutes before reaching a friendly base camp. If the flight lasted beyond 20 minutes your legs would go to sleep. Once back on ground, walking was impossible or extremely painful. On at least one occasion I had this unsettling experience.

Everyone in camp who did not have a critical job would run to the Landing Zone when word came in that a "team was inbound on the ropes!" It was always a frantic time. The news on whose team it was passed from friend to friend. It wasn't long before everyone knew that this time it was Kedenburg's team.

When the helicopters arrived we got the devastating news that John had given his seat to another team member, an indigenous soldier. John was still missing and not responding to radio calls. That was 50 years ago. It's hard to share something I tried to forget for more than 20 of those years. Our group was highly classified and we were ordered not to talk about our experiences. In 1990, SOG was finally declassified. To the best of my recollection here's the rest of the story:

John Kedenburg was the "One-Zero" of a team that had been involved in a running firefight for much of that day. Pursued by a large contingent of North Vietnamese soldiers--500 by one estimate--the team took cover in a bomb crater and set up a defensive position. One member of the team was killed in the firefight and another was missing, but John managed to direct the first rescue helicopter to their location. When three members of his team were aboard, he called in the second chopper. Together with his remaining three team members, John was in his seat and waiting for the hovering helicopter to begin the extraction. Just then, the missing team member burst from the brush. In a matter of seconds Kedenburg was out of his harness and directing that soldier to take his place. It was the instinctual action of a "One-Zero" imbued with a sense of responsibility for everyone on his team. The helicopter crew chief and door gunner reported seeing John running into the brush at the edge of the extraction zone, firing in all directions, as they were lifting off.

All this happened in a swirl of confusion. News that John was still on the ground was not received by the Air Force forward air controller or the U.S. Air Force jets scheduled to begin a bombing run John had requested once his team was extracted.

WHENEVER a team member was killed and had to be left behind or reported missing in action, a larger force would be organized to attempt a rescue or recover the body of a soldier killed in action. Sometimes we were looking for downed pilots. These were "Bright Light Missions."

Because of my close association with John, I immediately volunteered for the mission to find him. Even though I was as green as they come--a "strap hanger"--I was probably accepted for the mission because of my medical training, plus the fact that I was in training to join one of the teams.

The team leader was Sherman Batman--his real last name--a career soldier who had plenty of team experience. Mike Tramel, another of Kedenburg's good friends, joined us, together with 10 or 12 Montagnard troops. I spent much of the afternoon and evening getting my medical bag in shape and packing all my gear, just as John had instructed me.

John's teammates had been extracted from an area pockmarked with B-52 bomb craters. It was along a low elevation ridge. We believed we could get three helicopters in on one of the craters if they went in one at a time.

It worked. We managed to find a large crater that was close to the previous extraction point. With the help of a Special Forces soldier named Gerald Denison--code name "Grommet"--riding in a forward air control plane we were able to make our way right to the place where John was last seen. **1**

There was no sign of the enemy, so we began our search.

The Spike Team Washington patch designed by Loucks. _Loucks Collection_

We found John's body within 100 yards of the extraction point. Heartsick, we used our Swiss Seat ropes to pull the body away from its position in case it had been booby-trapped with a grenade. We searched John's gear for his crypto book, maps and mission notes. When we found the codebook we knew the enemy was not aware John had been left behind when the other team members were extracted.

The conclusion we drew from John's wounds and the fact that the enemy had not taken the valuable code book and radio was that bombs from our own jets had killed him. Every soldier knows that "friendly fire" tragedies occur in the heat of battle. In this case, communications were poor; there was a lot of confusion; everything happened fast. Moreover, the jets were doing exactly what John had previously requested. He had been running from the enemy and felt that they were close enough to request a bombing run as he was being extracted. None of this diminishes his heroism. It enhances his selflessness.

After recovering John's body and gear, we proceeded to the landing zone and placed plastic explosives on the trees that bordered the crater to allow a helicopter to land and depart fully loaded. Since I was the new guy and trained to heal versus blowing things up, I was assigned to one of the listening posts just outside our bomb crater. I remember how quiet everything was in front of me. I was on my stomach, looking through all the limbs, brush and ground debris when something fell in front of me with a thud, way too close for comfort. The next thing I remember is being sprawled inside the bomb crater as a major firefight erupted all around me. Evidently a North Vietnamese Army soldier had thrown some kind of concussion grenade as I was knocked unconscious and had lots of powder burns and minor shrapnel wounds to my face. It would be weeks before I could shave without a lot of pain.

In e-mail conversations decades later, Sherman Batman said he went looking for me when I failed to return with the others stationed at listening posts. He found me unconscious and somehow dragged or carried me back to the main bomb crater. When I came to, I asked what I could do. They told me to start throwing hand grenades. I'm not sure how many I threw, but it wasn't very many before one hit a tree or some other obstacle and bounced back toward the bomb crater. Luckily, it landed outside and no one was injured. Someone shouted, "Get those grenades from Loucks, and get them to someone that can throw!" Which was a very logical order! Losing that job didn't bother me in the least as I still couldn't understand why I was so groggy and weak. By this time we had injured comrades and I was busy treating the wounded. For 30 years I could not understand why I did not remember the first part of the fire-fight and why I was so weak when it came time to throw grenades. The call to Sherman Batman 20 years ago cleared up that little mystery. I am eternally thankful to Batman for saving my life.

Loucks with indigenous members of Spike Team Washington. _Loucks Collection_

I remember hearing "Grommet's" voice over the radio. "Oh my God," Denison said, "I can't believe how many forces there are around you!" I also have a distinct memory of hearing "GI, today you die!" in what would be best described as a cheap megaphone broadcasting enemy propaganda in broken English. I often wonder if my mind was playing tricks on me since Batman has no such recollection, though he was a lot busier than me.

The firefight lasted for hours. We lost four brothers in arms and everyone was wounded at least once. It's ironic but the injuries were of two extremes: You were either dead or wounded so superficially that you could continue fighting. In some ways it's almost as if I wasn't there as a medic because I have virtually no recollection of treating anyone for a life-threatening wound.

Although the helicopter gunships and Air Force jets did a lot to help our desperate situation, it was the Air Force "Sky Raiders" and their cluster bombs (CBUs) that really saved our bacon. In no way do I want to devalue the actions or help the helicopters and jet aircraft provided. However, when those vintage propeller-driven planes would come in with a load of CBUs they would clear an area for at least 100 yards. The Sky Raiders, which had seen action in World War II and Korea, could carry the equivalent of their own weight in bombs. Flying at slower speeds and lower elevations, they dropped their bombs with amazing accuracy. Everyone I ever ran into in Studies & Observation worshiped the ground the Sky Raider pilots walked on--or, more aptly, the skies they flew. It's a sad commentary that some in the U.S. Air Force did not feel the old planes could do a proper job, opting instead for modern jet aircraft. Our ground troops were fighting enemy troops, and we wanted the Sky Raiders!

Loucks with his gear. _Loucks Collection_

IN MY LIFE I've had a number of role models. In Vietnam, I often thought about "Sgt. Rock," one of my favorite comic book characters growing up. During that first tumultuous baptism by fire, I was convinced there was no way I was going to come through alive. We were totally surrounded by enemy troops. Numerous attempts to extract us had failed. The number of enemy killed by us and the air component must have been staggering. Yet they kept coming in greater numbers. Although I was so afraid I could taste the fear clotting in my throat, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "What would Sgt. Rock do in this situation?" For me the response was, "They may get me, but I'll take a few with me." It sounds corny now all these years later, but Sgt. Rock was there with me on that day to give me the courage to overcome my fears and fight as a team member against incredible odds.

Late in the afternoon after many returns for rearming and refueling, the Sky Raiders made enough passes that we were able to get three helicopters into the landing zone to extract the team. For some reason the decision was made to send me out with the first helicopter with our dead. The ship was loaded and I was the only live team member on board. It was a sobering moment. As the ship was lifting off I was sitting on the floor with my legs outside and my feet on the skids as I fired my rifle into the surrounding jungle. The door gunners evidently could not see anything because they were not shooting. I was yelling and screaming over the prop wash. "Shoot!" I shouted. Then both door gunners opened up with their M-60 machine guns.

Pretty soon I felt a terrible pain in my crotch. I just knew I had been shot through the butt. By then I was inside the ship, bent over at the waist and pointing to my behind as one door gunner looked on. "Blood? Blood? Blood?" I yelled. The door gunner couldn't figure out what was wrong but shook his head. Then I saw a pile of M-60 gun casings on the floor where I had been sitting. Instinctively I knew what had happened. In the excitement of battle I hadn't realized that the hot shell casings from the machine gun had built-up in my lap and crotch. I ended-up with first-degree burns to my inner thigh. Once I knew what had happened I slumped down on the body bags and slept until we arrived back at camp.

We had lost some of our Montagnard team members, and all of our American team members were wounded. Worst of all, our close friend John Kedenburg was dead. But we had retrieved his body and the vital crypto books.

Loucks at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis. _John Hughes Photo_

FOR THE ACTIONS John Kedenburg took in getting his team out of a dire situation during a running firefight, and for making the supreme sacrifice of giving his seat to another comrade, John was posthumously awarded our nation's highest award for valor, the Congressional Medal of Honor. John has not been forgotten as there is a Special Forces Association Chapter named in his honor. I am one of many former friends who become emotional every time we see John's name in one of our military history books. What he taught me surely saved my life.

I've talked to many former soldiers who remember how hardened we became in combat. During the Vietnam War there was no time to mourn for John or a score of other friends. In order to survive we became callous about death, trying to cover our despair in dark humor about someone "Buying the Farm" or numerous other euphemisms for the reality of death.

When I came back from Vietnam some nine months later it was on a stretcher in a hospital aircraft. For over a year I was so hardened to life in general that I began to feel I was no longer capable of feeling the emotion of love. I knew I loved my parents and family, yet I had extreme difficulty in showing any feelings. For me it was meeting a girl who would become my wife and lifelong partner that helped me get over the feelings of not being capable of loving someone. Now 50 years later, if I see a dead cat along the road I get emotional just thinking about the possibility that a child has lost a family pet. Tears I still have trouble showing but I know they are there.

I don't know if any of this will help anyone else, but for me it has been a struggle to put it all down on paper. I still feel I have not done a proper job of describing what we did, the difficulty of doing what we did, how proud we are of what we did as a group and finally how it's the best among us in life who ironically seem to be taken first. John was a mentor to many other young and inexperienced team members. That's the kind of person he was.

After the Bright Light Mission that recovered John's body, I served on a number of teams until being named to the coveted "One-Zero" position of a new team I named "ST Washington." I wrote to the Secretary of State back home, Ludlow Kramer, and told him about my team. He sent me a Washington state flag.

I'm proud of what we did. But I can't think of anyone I influenced like John Kedenburg influenced me and others like me. His life ended at 21 a half century ago. Mine has been long and eventful--all the more so for his example. My wife Donna and I are honored to be active in the remarkable Veterans Memorial Museum at Chehalis, a labor of love for countless volunteers and donors.

The events John Hughes and I have related here took place in the southeast corner of Laos on June 13-14, 1968. In an effort to make the story as accurate as possible I spoke with fellow teammates and others involved. There may still be errors. If so they can be laid at my doorstep and no one else's.

Here is what matters most: John Kedenburg's heroism is as immortal as the brotherhood of soldiers. I'll never forget him.

**Editor 's Note:** In the 1990s, an erroneous news story about MACV SOG--the secret Studies & Observations Group in Vietnam--prompted the Secretary of Defense to declassify a raft of records for a rebuttal. That opened the door for a dozen books based on oral histories and other first-hand accounts. Bryon Loucks' tribute to John Kedenburg adds new details to the record of the SOG teams operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1968.

**John C. Hughes & Bryon Loucks**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**Tired of Waiting**

* * *

One was a militant anti-capitalist who grew an Afro, discarded his given name and doubted the value of elections. The other was Jamaica-born, active in Young Democrats and a successful attorney. Each in their own way were radicals who agreed with Martin Luther King Jr.'s conclusion that "wait" has almost always meant "never." **2**

Fifty years after they moved into the vortex of the civil rights movement they stood in the packed gymnasium at Seattle's Franklin High School to remember a landmark event in the region's history. Sixteen black teenagers, students at Franklin wearing "Black Power" T-shirts, lined the basketball court as another student sang what is often called the Black National Anthem, _Lift Every Voice and Sing_.

Larry Gossett nodded and murmured "Yes! Yes!" while Lem Howell beamed as the soaring lyrics rang out. Gossett and Howell were there to commemorate a day in 1968 that spurred local blacks to action. In the five decades since each has immersed himself in civil rights causes.

Gossett helped found the Black Student Union at the University of Washington, ran a community-service agency in Seattle's predominantly black Central Area and was elected in 1993 to the King County Council, from which he pushed to change the county emblem from an imperial crown to an image of the slain civil rights leader, and to keep county policy faithful to its namesake's principles.

Lem Howell, emulating his hero Thurgood Marshall, saw lawyering as a kind of architecture upon which to build a more just society. He represented black contractors in a watershed federal court decision, persuaded a jury that police were not justified in fatally shooting a young black man planting a bomb, and has continued fighting for minorities facing discrimination and police misconduct.

Twyla Carter, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU national office in New York, considers Gossett and Howell mentors, going back to her time as a law student and public defender in Seattle. She recently told a new class of ACLU interns she didn't care what law school they attended because courage and conviction were more important. "That's what people are lacking and that's what stands out way more than how smart you are. You have to have the courage to speak up and do what's right. And that is what both Lem and Larry have."

ON THE MORNING of March 29, 1968, Gossett was in the UW office of the Black Student Union when a distraught Franklin High student, Trolice Flavors, called. Two black female students had been sent home for wearing Afro hairstyles. The day before, Flavors and another black student had been suspended after scuffling in the hallway with a white boy who was not disciplined. Black students were ready to burn Franklin down, Flavors said.

Gossett, a Franklin graduate, wanted to meet with students before they did anything rash. He and fellow Black Student Union members Aaron Dixon and Carl Miller "zoomed down" to Franklin. They met a group of students outside a campus hangout, The Beanery. Gossett didn't want to tell them what to do. That should be their decision. But he suggested they channel their anger into practical demands. The angry teens said they wanted the suspended students reinstated. And they wanted an Afro-American history class, recognition of their Black Student Union chapter and the hiring of a black principal or vice principal.

At about 12:30, around a hundred students and supporters marched toward the school chanting, "Beep, beep. Bang, bang. Ungawa. Black Power!" Many crammed into the small office of Principal Loren Ralph. It was the first sit-in by black students in Washington state history, Gossett says. They wouldn't leave, they said, until the superintendent of Seattle public schools agreed to their demands. The principal canceled classes and sent students home. (The only teacher who stayed on campus was Roberto Maestas, a young Spanish instructor who would go on to become Gossett's best man at his wedding and lifelong friend.) Police were alerted and a "sizable contingent" mustered in the parking lot of nearby Sick's Stadium, awaiting orders to storm the school and put down the uprising.

School officials called mediators, including representatives of the city's Human Rights Commission. The mediators convinced the demonstrating students to move to the auditorium to discuss their demands. They left the principal's office after a three-hour sit-in on Friday afternoon. They agreed their grievances would be aired at a Monday morning meeting of the Human Rights Commission.

After that five-hour hearing, the commission ruled that the suspended students should be reinstated. "A fight which led to the suspension did not, in fact, occur," said commission Chairman Ben Woo. A disappointed Superintendent Forbes Bottomly said he'd follow the commission's decision. He also urged the prosecutor's office to take action.

Early on April 4, the county prosecutor, Charles O. Carroll, filed charges of unlawful assembly against five young men: Larry Gossett, Aaron Dixon, Carl Miller, Trolice Flavors and Larry's brother, Richard Gossett, a recent Franklin graduate. **3** Two others were charged in Juvenile Court. At the same time, the school suspended nine students who participated in the sit-in. Unlawful assembly, a gross misdemeanor, carried a penalty of up to six months imprisonment. Bail was set at $1,500 for each of the five charged as adults.

Aaron Dixon (left), Larry Gossett and Carl Miller (right) talked to news reporters after they were arrested for unlawful assembly at Franklin High School. They received the maximum sentence--six months in jail. But their convictions were later overturned on appeal. _MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

The five were locked in the King County Jail when they heard the news that the apostle of nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr., had been assassinated in Memphis.

"NO, man, no man, this can't be real," Gossett said.

Tears welled up in Miller's eyes.

Dixon kicked and banged a steel table in the day cell, wishing he was out on the streets with protesters rampaging through the city.

Other black prisoners wanted to take their anger out on white inmates. But Gossett and his comrades urged restraint, reminding the black brothers that King preached non-violence and had been building a Poor People's Campaign across racial lines. "These cats are disadvantaged too," Gossett recalls saying about the white prisoners. "Let's start a dialogue. This is how we'll pay respect to Dr. King."

The next day, the shackled Franklin sit-in prisoners were led to court for a bail hearing. Superior Court Judge Frank D. James began the hearing in the packed courtroom by calling for a moment of silence out of respect for the loss of a great American. He then denied the prosecutor's stiff bail request and released the young men on personal recognizance. **4** The two juveniles appeared before Judge Robert Utter, later a Washington Supreme Court justice, who dismissed the charges against one and found the other only violated the vagrancy law. Outside Judge James' courtroom, Gossett's parents pleaded with him to stop his activism. He said he couldn't. He had a calling. And roots that reached to the Jim Crow South.

Gossett was born in a segregated wing of Seattle's Broadway Hospital. _Larry Gossett collection_

WORLD WAR II gave Seattle's economy an enormous boost, which brought an influx of blacks. Johnnie and Nelmon Gossett came north in 1944 to escape blatant discrimination in Texas. The next year Lawrence Edward Gossett was born in a segregated wing of Seattle's Broadway Hospital. The Gossetts lived in West Seattle housing projects until 1955. Nelmon had worked in a shipyard and as a janitor until he passed the test to become a letter carrier, his dream job. He wanted to buy a house in West Seattle but was told by real estate agents that "negroes" couldn't. Racially restrictive covenants and bias in the housing industry steered most blacks to the city's Beacon Hill or the Central Area, where the Gossetts settled. In 8th grade, Larry joined a street gang, the Junior Cobras, thinking it was cool. The Cobras soon had a rumble with a rival gang, the Cats, who brought knives and razors to the fight. Larry ended up with stitches on his chin and a scar still visible today. His father put an end to Larry's days as a gang member.

In 1961, Larry entered predominantly white Franklin High. By his senior year he was a starter on the school's basketball team. The other four starters were also black. A 5-foot-8-inch point guard, Gossett made news in his second starting assignment, scoring 21 points against Cleveland High. Against Franklin's rivals, the bigger, better Garfield Bulldogs, Gossett knocked down a long jump shot to tie the game as the clock ran out. He hit another big basket in overtime but Garfield won it with two free throws.

Gossett wanted to keep playing ball. But major colleges didn't recruit the undersized pass-first guard. He aimed to shine in junior college games, then transfer to a bigger school for his last two years. His father had other dreams. He wanted Larry to go to the University of Washington and focus on earning a degree. He set up an appointment for his son with the admissions office. Larry was short one semester of math. So he took geometry at night school and became a Husky in the winter of 1964.

By the summer of 1966, the Vietnam War was heating up. Gossett, just striving to graduate and get a good job, explored alternatives to the draft. "I didn't want to have to go to jail or Canada," he recalls. He applied to Volunteers in Service to America--VISTA--the domestic version of the Peace Corps. It would prove to be the "signature experience" of his life.

Gossett called working in Harlem the "signature experience" of his life. Above, a group of black teens on a Harlem street in 1970. _Jack Garofalo photo_

GOSSETT WAS dispatched to New York City to work for Harlem Youth Opportunities Inc., charged with providing tutoring and recreational activities to children. **5** When he got off the subway at 125th Street his senses were flooded with sights, sounds and ideas that announced a profound difference between Seattle's Central Area and central Harlem. Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and his rallying cry of "Black Power" caught fire in the country's most highly concentrated black community. In Harlem Gossett soon found "older brothers pointing out what to read." Then they'd discuss it with him--Black Power lessons he wasn't getting at the UW.

Gossett lived on 117th Street between 7th Avenue and the storied Lenox Avenue (now called Malcolm X Boulevard), memorialized in the writings of James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison. Gossett and his fellow VISTA volunteers surveyed one block and found 9,000 people living in tenements, including 1,300 kids. "It was a horrific concentration of black people, mostly poor and working class," Gossett says in a raspy cadence that seems to rumble up from his broad chest. "I had never seen anything like it. The poverty. It was easy for me to see what the cats on 125th were saying, 'We don't need reform. We need revolutionary change. We need complete empowerment for black people to take over their own community and control the economy.' "

When Gossett left for Harlem he characterized himself as a Negro, as somebody who wanted to do well in college and get a good job, maybe teaching, so he could live comfortably. Nothing else really mattered at that time. When he returned to Seattle 15 months later he was a Black man steeped in racial identity. His philosophy changed from integrationism to Black Nationalism, from capitalism to democratic socialism. He did not believe black people or any oppressed people could gain their freedom other than by transforming the capitalist economic system. Karl Marx suddenly had an appealing logic. "It made sense to me when I read that the people who do the work should be the ones who determine how the fruits of their labor is used. That made so much sense to me as a descendant of slaves," Gossett says. He came to see elections as a bourgeoisie plan to keep black people in their place.

He changed his name to Oba Yoruba. He changed his regular glasses to prescription shades. He changed his hairstyle to a towering "natural." He traded his collared shirts for dashikis. His appearance changed so much his mother walked right by him when she came to meet him at Sea-Tac Airport. And when he got home his Momma and Daddy and brothers and sisters kept mispronouncing his name. His friends couldn't seem to get "Oba" or "Yoruba" right either. He got tired of explaining and went back to being Larry Gossett. But the mission of revolutionary change for black people remained.

_MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

IN JANUARY 1968, Gossett and others formed the Black Student Union at the UW, with the aim of organizing chapters at junior high schools, high schools and colleges throughout Washington and Oregon. Their research found that among UW's estimated 30,000 students there were about 200 blacks, 20 Native Americans, and 10 Latinos. Of the 600 counselors who advised students, none were minorities until the first black counselor came on board in early 1968. They looked at 1,100 classes and could not find one that used a book authored by a minority, Gossett said. Their demands to UW President Charles Odegaard called for establishing a black studies program, recruiting more black administrators and faculty and recruiting minority and poor white students under a more flexible admissions policy. Gossett became a local spokesman for "black power," telling the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ it meant "self-determination, self-respect, self-defense and power by any means necessary." He and others started attending history classes at the UW, challenging professors to talk about colonialism and include a black people's perspective in their lessons. This was the backdrop for the Franklin sit-in. A few days after Gossett and other defendants were released from jail they drove to San Francisco for a Black Student Union conference.

At the conference the young activists saw a flyer about a funeral in Oakland for a young Black Panther, Bobby Hutton, who was killed by police just two days after MLK's death. On their way across the bay they bought some black berets and donned them as they approached the funeral. "I don't think any of us had ever experienced anything as somber and as sad as the funeral of Little Bobby Hutton," Aaron Dixon later wrote in his memoir _My People Are Rising_. That night they heard a fiery speech by Panther leader Bobby Seale, who soon came to Seattle. And with Seale's visit, a Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers was created at Dixon's house. Gossett was there, imbued with solidarity. It was the first sign that the punitive charges against the Franklin protesters had backfired.

On May 20, 1968, about 150 students and activists, including Gossett, marched in on a meeting of President Odegaard and the Faculty Senate. They reiterated their demands. After four hours, Odegaard agreed to meet all of them. Gossett was again in the news, his Afro rising steeply above his shades. More attention came with the June trial of the Franklin protesters. The trial lasted five days. The jury took less than an hour to find Gossett, Aaron Dixon and Carl Miller guilty. The judge sentenced them to the maximum sentence for unlawful assembly, six months behind bars and a $1,500 fine. "I thought I was in Jackson, Mississippi, rather than Seattle, Washington," Gossett says. The conviction was later overturned on appeal. **6** His activism began to connect with an increasingly larger community.

Gossett (standing left) was arrested three times for protesting with Tyree Scott (pointing) and black contractors shut out of government construction jobs. _MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

IN 1969 a black labor leader, Tyree Scott, began organizing minority contractors who found themselves shut out of jobs, even on public works projects funded by the anti-poverty Model Cities program. Scott, an ex-Marine and journeyman electrician, brought demonstrators to shut down work on the new Medgar Evans Pool near Garfield High School. Gossett was appalled that a public construction site in the Central Area, never mind one named for a civil rights martyr, was manned by an all-white crew. A young lawyer named Lem Howell was also drawn to the cause. Howell would go on to represent Scott and his Central Area Contractors Association.

The next year was even more eventful. Gossett and Black Panthers scaled fences to join the Indians occupying Seattle's Fort Lawton.That introduced Gossett to Native American activist Bernie Whitebear. Gossett participated in massive protests against the Vietnam War and the shooting of Kent State students by National Guardsmen in 1970. He joined United Farm Worker picket lines to boycott non-union grapes and lettuce. He was arrested three times while demonstrating with Scott's contractors. Gossett connected with like-minded others, including local Latino leader Roberto Maestas and Bob Santos, a champion of Seattle's Pan-Asian International District. Along with Whitebear and Gossett, the quartet became known as the Four Amigos and the Gang of Four. Even Gossett's marriage to Rhonda Oden in 1975 was dedicated to the cause. "To us the law of life is struggle," said their wedding invitation, which warranted a story in _The Seattle Times_. A television newsman quipped about Gossett's celebrity, "If I see him at one more demonstration I'm going to tell him to join AFTRA," the union for on-air media professionals.

Along the way, Gossett had been hired by the UW to oversee the Black Student Division of the new Office of Minority Affairs. He began recruiting minority students in Yakima Valley farm fields, on the Muckleshoot Reservation, in black pool halls and barbershops. "Anybody got a high school diploma?" he'd ask. He was looking for interest, not grade-point averages.

Gossett became lifelong friends with Latino activist Roberto Maestas (right) who was a young Spanish instructor at Franklin High School in 1968. _El Centro de la Raza_

In time, though, Gossett wanted to get down from the ivory tower and back to the grassroots. He quit his $1,250 a month UW job and began to moderate his radicalism, realizing that local elections could make a difference. In 1977 he founded a multi-ethnic group called MOVE (Making Our Votes Effective) with Maestas, Santos and Whitebear. Their door-to-door campaigning helped elect Mayor Charles Royer in a close election. As Gossett and other MOVE members went to work for Royer, the mayor was persuaded to make more money available to minority communities. Gossett then became executive director of the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), which helped the disadvantaged with a food bank, heating assistance, job-training and youth programs. He would spend 14 years heading the agency, helping hundreds of families a month. Everyone in the community knew Larry and CAMP, says Alexes Harris, a UW sociology professor who grew up in the Central Area. "CAMP was always a place you could go for support, for getting your lights turned back on, for getting food. They had an annual Christmas party where Larry was Santa Claus."

Gossett's marriage to Rhonda Oden was dedicated to the cause. "To us the law of life is struggle," said their wedding invitation. _Larry Gossett photo_

GOSSETT, who once dismissed elections as traps set by the ruling class, was elected to the King County Council in 1993. How to explain his conversion? Gossett says political experience, change in the nature of the struggle and maturity all were contributing factors. But the main reason was his joining Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and his surprise that Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign won Democratic caucuses in some Seattle precincts and contributed to record turnout. Four years later, Jackson finished second in the lily white states of Maine and Vermont and fought eventual nominee Michael Dukakis to a near draw in Washington's Democratic caucus, despite no television spending and no visits to the state by the candidate. Although Washington's black population was just over 3 percent, Jackson's 38-percent share of the vote gave Gossett hope for multi-colored meaningful political change.

A TV newsman said about Gossett's celebrity, "If I see him at one more demonstration I'm going to tell him to join AFTRA," the union for on-air media professionals. _MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

Upon his swearing in Gossett moved into a council office on the top floor of the King County Courthouse, which the jail occupied in 1968. He believes he is the only elected official in the U.S. whose office is located where his jail cell was. For the last 20 years Gossett has been the only person of color on the King County Council, which represents more than 2 million people. He's often acted as the council's social-justice conscience. Representing a swath of Seattle that stretches from Laurelhurst and the UW south to the Renton line, his work has ranged from creating a low-income fare for bus riders to protecting the civil rights of immigrants and refugees. In his last four elections he's not faced an opponent and has received more than 98 percent of the vote in each.

Surveying the last half-century, Gossett sees progress. The UW student body has become more diverse. Enrollment has gone from 96 percent white in 1968 to 44 percent white in 2018. (Black, Latino and American Indian enrollment in those 50 years has increased from 1 percent to almost 13 percent.) On the economic side, Gossett notes similar improvements. Since 1968 the percentage of Seattle blacks living below the poverty line has been cut in half. The share of Seattle's black population with middle-class incomes has tripled. He's also heartened by the Black Lives Matter movement.

But problems persist. In Seattle, black youth are concentrated in low-income families, with about 55 percent of blacks under the age of 18 living below the poverty line. Progress has also meant that some in a new generation of young blacks see Gossett as "The Man." Citing the disproportionate number of young black people locked up in the county's youth detention center, protesters have rallied and railed against plans to build a new juvenile facility in Seattle. The King County Council, including Gossett, unanimously voted to build new cells, courtrooms and offices. Voters then approved the $210 million plan. In the winter of 2018 Gossett encountered two young blacks near Garfield High School.

A 1969 mug shot of Gossett following one of his arrests.

"Hey, you the n***** that works downtown and made that decision to build that f****** new jail?" one asked.

"Yeah, my name is Larry Gossett and I'm on the King County Council and I am a politician," he replied.

"Yeah, mother****** we thought it was you."

Then they just walked away.

Slamming Gossett for supporting a new juvenile detention center isn't fair, says Alexes Harris, a UW professor and author whose expertise is juvenile and criminal justice. She points to the breadth of his career fighting for civil rights, "how he's empowered youth" and his legacy of "being principled, fighting for justice and giving a voice to the often marginalized."

Harris met Gossett when she was a Garfield High student, upset by the Rodney King verdict and local violence. Gossett came to a PTSA meeting, as a community member, and became an adviser to a student group that included Harris. "He seemed like he really understood the frustrations and sadness of young people," she says. Harris went on to volunteer for Gossett's first King County Council campaign and then interned in his office during her undergraduate years at UW.

Given her research, Harris also supports a new juvenile facility--which critics call a jail--because it's needed to house violent youth so they're not consigned to adult prisons where they're more likely to become victims. "And yes, we can do it in a more humane way and a culturally sensitive way, and provide rehabilitative skills. But we still need a space," she says.

Gossett and friends in solidarity at Franklin High in March 2018. From left, Elmer Dixon, unidentified, Gossett, George Noble, Stacia Hawkinson, Clifton Wyatt, Charles Oliver, Umeme Dinish. _John Hughes photo_

LEM HOWELL's roots are far different than Gossett's. But they are brothers in more ways than one.

"I'm in the justice business!" says Howell, explaining why he's spent a half-century taking on one difficult civil rights case after another. He's been that way since he was a child, he says. At the age of 9 he called the King of England, then still the sovereign ruler of Howell's native Jamaica, a "bad man." His uncle told him he could land in jail for uttering those words. "I thought, 'No, no, no, that's wrong. You should be able to say what you want.' " That free-speaking spirit led him to only one logical career. "I will always be my own person. I became a lawyer to have independence."

Lembhard Goldstone Howell was born in the rural St. Catherine parish, about 15 miles northwest of Kingston, on May 2, 1936, to Daisy Iona and Cleveland Alexander Howell. Lem was delivered by a midwife who turned out to be the great-grandmother of the woman he would marry. Lem's father drove a truck; his mother was a shopkeeper. Howell remembers walking to school barefoot. But his family lived comfortably by local standards, in a cement house with a big yard with an almond tree in the middle. When he was 10 his family moved to New York, settling at the edge of central Harlem, which by the next census in 1950 was 98 percent black. His mother died six months later, leaving young Lem with "the worst pain in the world." A high school teacher steered him toward classes such as advanced algebra and typing that would serve him well later. He was accepted at City College of New York. His father, a Merchant Marine seaman, had always stressed the importance of education. He'd point to his head and tell his son, "What you have up here no one can take away."

Howell won a scholarship from his father's Seafarers' International Union. He transferred to Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, a liberal arts school 75 miles from New York City. Fraternities weren't integrated but otherwise Howell says he and the other 18 black students were treated well. His proud father dragged a union photographer to Lafayette to document Howell's graduation day.

Howell, who had joined the Naval Reserves to avoid getting drafted by the Army, then went on active duty for four years. ("I wanted to sleep in a clean bed not a mud hole in the Army.") The young ensign served on the _USS General George M. Randall_ , a ship that transported troops to Europe, including Army Private Elvis Presley to his first assignment in Germany. "He went across the gangplank three or four times as movie cameras recorded it," Howell remembers.

"I became a lawyer to have independence," says Howell, who clerked for the Washington Supreme Court and was a state assistant attorney general before going into private practice. _MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

WHILE BACK in the U.S. he met his wife Pat on a blind date. The young couple discovered their linked Jamaica roots and were married in 1960. Lem went on to graduate from New York University Law School. Howell revered Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. But he believed lasting and widespread change would only come by changing the law. His greatest hero was Thurgood Marshall, the son of a Baltimore railroad porter who took his young son to courtrooms to learn how to argue. Founder of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Marshall won his first U.S. Supreme Court case at 32. He amassed a record of 29 victories in 32 cases before the nation's highest court. In 1954, when MLK was just being recognized as a civil rights leader, Marshall won a monumental decision in _Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka_. Marshall argued that segregation and "separate but equal" schools could never truly be equal. "He affected the statutory law in 17 states and practices in 22 states with _Brown_ ," Howell says of the man he calls "the general who led a judicial civil-rights revolution." Marshall became the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1967.

One of his greatest thrills, Howell says, was when he played the part of Marshall in a 50th anniversary re-enactment of the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments in _Brown_. Howell dyed his gray hair dark for the performance at the University of Washington, with state Supreme Court justices playing the parts of their federal counterparts.

After law school Howell received a Ford Foundation fellowship that would attach him to a governor's office to study politics and government. His choices boiled down to California or Washington. He figured his rewards were likely richer in a small pond and he came to Olympia. He volunteered for LBJ's 1964 presidential campaign and spoke at high schools around the state. He clerked for state Supreme Court justices the next year and was hired as an assistant attorney general. In 1966 he took a leave to head one of the more interesting alliances in Washington political history. In a ploy to increase voter turnout that November, Howell and the Young Democrats joined with Cam Hall, head of the Young Republicans, in what seemed a surefire cause. **7** They wanted to repeal Washington's "blue law" prohibiting alcohol sales and other business on Sundays. This was a time when drinks were swept off tables at midnight Saturday and patrons shooed away from lounges. State law, which had expanded an 1881 ban on fighting, horse-racing and dancing, made all kinds of Sunday commerce illegal. "You couldn't buy a Bible on Sunday!" Howell says, his voice rising in outrage. A Mount Vernon car dealer was arrested in 1965 for selling vehicles on Sunday. Buckley police cited journalists for breaking the law the next year when they reported on a publicity stunt involving unlawful Sunday shopping.

Howell's hero was Thurgood Marshall, founder of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund and the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice. _Yousuf Karsh photo_

Victory was not assured. Some labor unions liked the day off. Many church groups favored the ban as well. The Young Democrats didn't appear to have the troops or resources to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures to place their repeal question on the ballot. _Seattle Magazine_ said the effort looked "dubious" four months before Election Day. But Howell managed to sell the initiative to a religious constituency. He met with Seventh-day Adventists, who already argued that the Sunday blue law discriminated against faiths like theirs that held another day holy. Religious freedom was the main issue, Howell argued. Booze was a separate matter and the state Liquor Control Board would still have sway over alcohol regulations, he insisted. "Initiative 229 does not change Washington's prohibition of Sunday liquor sales," said the Voters Pamphlet statement in support of I-229, even though Howell's wink-wink campaign mailed signature-petitions to taverns. The Adventists bought his rationale and church members helped collect signatures, along with the statewide Restaurant Association. The campaign submitted a record-number of signatures.

The measure won 64 percent of the vote. And as Howell contended, repeal did not automatically bring more alcohol sales. The Liquor Control Board rules remained in place. But eight months later, the board--appointed by elected officials who understood what 64 percent meant--allowed Sunday sales of packaged beer and by-the-drink liquor.

IN 1968 Howell was ready to go into private practice. Racism was alive and well, according to _Race and Violence in Washington State_ , also known as the Kramer Commission report. Secretary of State Lud Kramer, a former activist Seattle councilman, oversaw the study. Riots and disorder were primarily rooted, the report concluded, in "long-term pervasive exclusion of those who are different from white middle-class America." This exclusion, "founded in both racial and cultural discrimination," permeated American life, the report said. Biased policing was also a factor in violence and disorder. The 61-page report was dedicated to the recently murdered Edwin Pratt. On a snowy January night in 1969, Pratt, a black community leader and director of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, heard what sounded like snowballs pelting his Shoreline home. He stepped out to investigate. The last thing he saw was a muzzle flash. A shotgun blast hit Pratt's face, severed his spine and killed him. The crime remained officially unsolved a half-century later, although the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ reported in 1994 that the killers were a couple of white thugs, Tommy Kirk, the shooter, and Barton Gray, his lookout. By then Kirk had been shot to death by Gray, and Gray had died in prison of a heart attack. _Seattle Weekly_ later reported that Michael Lee Jordan, another criminal, drove the getaway car. Jordan died in 2006. The investigation into Pratt's death remains open.

By September 1969, Tyree Scott had organized frustrated minority contractors. Despite all the federal Great Society money pouring into King County for public works projects, little if any landed in the wallets of black contractors. While their flamboyant young attorney, Howell, argued that government contractors had a duty to employ minorities under LBJ's Executive Order 11246, **8** Scott's group had shut down almost every public project in the county. In tense negotiations with King County Executive John Spellman, five influential members of the Associated General Contractors agreed to hire one black trainee for every four journeymen on a job. Each craft union was to have a ratio of its own. But unions remained defiant. "Bright and early on the Monday after the five white contractors endorsed the agreement, we sent black trainees to a construction site, and the unions immediately walked off the job," Howell said. He filed suit in federal court, alleging the unions were violating the black trainee's rights. Spellman, a former labor lawyer, was steadfast in support, noting that unions admitted their minority membership amounted to less than 1 percent.

Urban riots and disorder were rooted in widespread discrimination against minorities, concluded a 1969 report commissioned by Secretary of State Lud Kramer, a Republican.

Howell's first federal case remains the most far-reaching of his career. U.S. District Court Judge William J. Lindberg ordered the construction unions back to work, ruling his court had jurisdiction because racial-discrimination complaints trumped collective-bargaining agreements. Lindberg ordered four Seattle-area construction unions to halt discrimination against any person "because of his race or color." It marked the first time affirmative action was imposed on local governments and industries. "My wife, who doesn't believe in public displays of affection, kissed me and said, 'I'm proud of you,' " Howell recalls in a blend of New York accent and Jamaican lilt that sounds like jazz.

At a time when Seattle led the nation in bombings per capita, Howell plunged into the drama. He became the attorney for the family of a black veteran, Larry Ward, killed by Seattle police after he was caught trying to light a bomb at the unoccupied office of Hardcastle Real Estate, notorious for his perceived bias against blacks. Ward's death in May 1970 and the subsequent King County inquest into the shooting put Howell in the media spotlight.

Ward had survived a combat wound in Vietnam, but not shotgun blasts by Seattle police. He died a few blocks from his mother's home in the Central Area. Circumstances surrounding the early-morning stakeout and shooting begged questions. And the history of police shootings in Seattle inflamed community distrust. Crowds were so large the inquest hearing was moved to Seattle Center's Rainier Room.

Many blacks in Seattle viewed Ward's death through the long shadow of another shooting. In 1965 two off-duty officers, who had been out drinking with their wives, brawled in an International District restaurant with black men who said the white officers uttered racial slurs. After the fistfight, Harold Larsen--who had never identified himself as a police officer--followed some of the black men outside, took a pistol out of his shoulder holster and fired at their car as they were driving away. Robert Reese was struck in the head and killed.

Whenever a person dies at the hands of police, an inquest occurs, intended as a public hearing of the facts. A jury then decides whether the use of lethal force was justified. Reese's case led to a verdict of "excusable homicide" by an all-white jury. Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll charged Larsen's companion with provoking assault, but not Larsen for fatally shooting Reese. Carroll also charged four black men with third-degree assault. All were convicted. "Carroll may have felt he was being fair in deferring to the inquest" on Larsen, former county prosecutor Christopher T. Bayley wrote in _Seattle Justice_ , a memoir of his days as a young reformer. **9** But a local civil-rights leader, Rev. John Adams, decried the "Alabama-style" justice.

Howell appealed Reese's unsuccessful wrongful death lawsuit to the state Supreme Court. He argued that Officer Larsen was negligent in shooting at the vehicle carrying Reese. In a 5-4 decision, the court disagreed. The majority ruled the officer was justified in firing, allegedly at the car's tires, because he had reason to believe he had been the victim of a felony assault--although his assailants were only charged with a misdemeanor. "What a one-sided set of facts," Howell says, reading the majority opinion five decades later. "Give me a break!"

It was this backdrop that led to daily crowds of up to 600 people attending the Larry Ward inquest. During a typical inquest, a deputy prosecutor questioned witnesses but the victim was not represented, nor did anyone cross-examine witnesses, who tended to be police officers. The jury was selected by the inquest officer, in this case Leo Sowers, "who, it was rumored, kept a list of jurors in a drawer and simply reused them from one inquest to another." A former deputy sheriff, Sowers "made no secret of his partiality to law enforcement officers."

For Ward's inquest, the five-person jury included two black members. Jurors heard four days of testimony by 19 witnesses, 17 of them police officers. The event turned raucous at times. John Caughlan, a famous Seattle civil rights lawyer, interrupted on one day with a table-thumping condemnation of the inquest system as a "mockery of justice." His outburst drew cheers from the crowd of mostly blacks. Howell was allowed to question witnesses, but not directly. He had to submit written questions to Sowers. He focused on why police, already tipped off and staked out, shot Ward instead of capturing him to learn more about a rash of 30 bombings over 15 months in the Central Area.

Howell ran to be King County's top prosecutor in 1970 but another young reformer, Christopher T. Bayley (left), won the election. _MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection_

John Hannah, the officer who fired the fatal slugs into Ward as he ran down 24th Avenue, testified that he feared Ward was going to shoot at him. But it was determined Ward was unarmed.

In a 3-2 verdict the jury sided with Howell. One white juror, Rachael Hart joined the two black ones, Edward Russell Jr. and James Jackson Jr., in finding that Ward's shooting was not justified and he died by "criminal means." A crowd of about of 150 was still on hand when the verdict was handed down at 12:40 a.m. after four hours of jury deliberation. It was the first inquest decision to go against a law enforcement officer in King County in at least 20 years. Angry letters and telegrams flooded Mayor Wes Uhlman's office. One father, Leif Johnson, said he was discouraging his son from becoming a police officer in light of the inquest finding. Mr. and Mrs. S.M. Watson insisted Officer Hannah's actions "were normal and in the line of duty." Mr. and Mrs. W.L. Shoemaker wrote that the mayor kowtowed to the "demands of every radical group," but as law-abiding citizens, "We have demands too." A police spokesman said the inquest audience was allowed to sit on the floor, stand on chairs, walk around during proceedings and pass out revolutionary literature, "which obviously was intended to incite prejudice against police." Some 5,000 people gathered in front of police headquarters to show support for "law and order."

The verdict "divided this city and led to an attack on the inquest method of investigating such occurrences," reported _The New York Times_. Ross Cunningham, the thoroughly establishment editorial writer for _The Seattle Times_ , offered a more critical analysis. "Why is it," Cunningham asked, "that the white establishment did not rouse itself to the necessities for reform of the inquest system until a verdict came forth which in effect represented 'justice' for a black man? Isn't this further and conclusive proof of 'institutional racism?' Who can argue otherwise?"

Prosecutor Carroll declined to charge Hannah with a crime. Howell filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Ward's son, but the jury in that trial sided with Hannah.

Although rumors quickly spread through the black community about how Ward had been set up, key facts weren't known until after the inquest when Howell interviewed a petty crook. Alfie Burnett had driven Ward to the real estate office and given him a bomb made of three sticks of dynamite. During a sworn statement in the presence of a court reporter, Burnett told Howell he had been arrested months earlier for robbing a Seattle jewelry store. But he was released on bail after telling police he knew all about bombings in the Central Area and could help them catch the bomber.

It was Burnett who then hatched a scheme to bomb the real estate office. He had enlisted another man to help--and unwittingly act as the fall guy. When the appointed night came Burnett called the FBI to say the bombing was on. The FBI relayed the tip to Seattle police. But Burnett couldn't find his accomplice. The informant then turned to Larry Ward, a friend of his accomplice, to plant the bomb.

Ward was not political, nor disgruntled about Vietnam, according to friends and family. His mother said he was looking forward to taking a Civil Service exam scheduled for the day after he was killed. Howell believes Ward went along with Burnett as a way of helping his absent friend. As it turns out, several police cars were staked out near the real estate office. Ward was virtually surrounded when he tried to light the bomb. It was then that Officer Hannah opened fire with a shotgun.

Howell gave a transcript of Burnett's revealing deposition to a reporter named Ardie Ivie, who wrote an in-depth account of Ward's shooting for _Seattle Magazine_. Ivie got Captain John Williams, head of police intelligence, to confirm details of Burnett's role as an informant. "Somebody set this whole thing up. It wasn't the police department," Williams said, adding the stake-out lacked "proper supervision."

AFTER THE Ward case, Howell became even more resolute in his personal injury and civil rights practice. In 1978 he won a $720,000 judgment, then the largest such award in King County history, for a construction worker brain-damaged when he fell from a job site that lacked required safeguards, such as a safety net. The next year Howell triumphed in a state Supreme Court case that upheld affirmative action policies for Seattle firefighters.

Howell continued to take inquest cases for free with the condition he'd get first crack at a civil suit. There were very few wins. One involved Robert Baldwin. Police had gone to Seattle's Yesler Terrace housing project in 1984 to evict Baldwin over $110 in unpaid rent. Baldwin, suffering from mental illness, fatally stabbed Officer Michael Rabun with a sword and retreated to a 17-hour standoff with police. After failing to get Baldwin to come out, they peppered his apartment with tear gas and stun grenades then stormed it and shot 21 bullets into Baldwin's back. Retired Bellevue Police Chief Don Van Blaricom testified on behalf of Baldwin's estate that Seattle police failed to observe the industry standard by not waiting Baldwin out. But a jury found that Baldwin's negligence was 92.5 percent responsible for his death, with the police contributing the rest. That amounted to an award of $93.60 in damages to the estate of Baldwin and his four children. Howell called the 1988 verdict a "moral victory."

Most of Howell's inquest hearings were more disappointing, such as the case of Shawn Maxwell, 31, who led police on a chase in the University District after they stopped him for speeding. Emotionally disturbed, homeless and carrying a sword, Maxwell, was cornered in a backyard when he raised the sword and dared officers to shoot him. They did--four times--after their tasers failed to stop him. Maxwell was black, the officers white. "Fleeing from a traffic stop isn't justification for taking his life," Howell argued. During the inquest the officers' lawyer called Maxwell's death a tragedy. An officer broke down on the witness stand. While the jury deliberated what some saw as a foregone conclusion, District Court Judge Darcy Goodman invited Maxwell's mother and Howell into her chambers and gave Lisa Maxwell a bouquet of roses and told her she was sorry for the loss of her son. Siding with police, the jury found Maxwell was a threat to officers and they were justified in shooting him.

Howell saw lawyering as a kind of architecture for a more just society. _Lem Howell collection_

Howell kept fighting. He represented Romelle Bradford, who had won a "youth of the year" competition by the King County Boys & Girls Club in 2003. Bradford was a 20-year-old volunteer chaperone at a community dance in 2006 when rival groups began to make trouble. Bradford went outside to investigate, wearing a red "staff" shirt and an ID badge. As Bradford ran toward the altercation, a rookie Seattle police officer knocked him to the ground, handcuffed and arrested him. Charges of resisting arrest were later dropped.

Howell sued the city, claiming Bradford's civil rights were violated. A federal jury found police unlawfully arrested Bradford and used excessive force in detaining him. They awarded Bradford $269,000. Howell noted that Bradford had suffered an "unseen injury" because for the rest of his life Bradford would have to answer "yes" whenever a potential employer inquired whether he had ever been arrested.

Howell still mentors young lawyers and participates in judicial evaluations for the Loren Miller Bar Association, a group for black lawyers he played a part in founding. _Lem Howell photo_

As for his best courtroom performance, Howell points to a 2006 case in which a young father, Christopher Pratt, and his 5-year old daughter Alexis were killed when their car was torn in half by an exhausted truck driver who cut across freeway lanes and slammed on his brakes. The case haunted Howell because he watched home movies of little Alexis in her Halloween costume that reminded him of his own two daughters. "I don't want you to think it's a lawyer's trick," he told jurors about becoming emotional during the trial. Jurors awarded Alexis' mother and brother $11.3 million in damages.

He beams about his own daughters. Dr. Elizabeth Howell graduated from Harvard Medical School and is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Her research specialty is access to health care for minority women, an expertise that has led to frequent appearances on National Public Radio. Helen Howell got a diploma in legal studies at Oxford University and her law degree from Columbia University. She worked for President Clinton in Washington, D.C., and was Planned Parenthood's vice president of public policy before she returned to Washington state and served as deputy chief of staff and director of the Department of Financial Institutions for Governor Gary Locke. She now heads a Seattle nonprofit that serves homeless families and children. "I'm so proud of the values my kids have," Howell says.

Howell and his wife Pat (right) visited the state Capitol with his Lafayette College debate-team partner, John Piper Jr. , and his wife Margaret. _John Hughes photo_

Like Gossett, he sees progress in civil rights over the years. The inquest process has been improved, although more is still needed, Howell says. The legal community has been accepting of minority viewpoints, he says. Police reforms, focused on excessive force, are under way in Seattle thanks to a consent decree with the Obama Administration's U.S. Department of Justice. On top of that, minority lawyers such as Twyla Carter are willing to skip lucrative work in corporate law to be public defenders, even though they're staring at staggering piles of student debt. However, Howell says, the state took a "big step backwards" when 58 percent of voters approved Initiative 200 in 1998, prohibiting affirmative action. "Now we have do something about I-200," he says.

Howell suffered cardiac arrest in January 2018 and had a pacemaker implanted. He says he's not taking on any new cases. He spends his time traveling with Pat. (He has a framed photo with Rachel Maddow on a "progressive" cruise they took.) He still mentors young lawyers. And he still participates in judicial evaluations for the Loren Miller Bar Association, a group he was instrumental in founding for black lawyers who were once excluded from the American Bar Association.

"His fire and passion is still present in his grilling of judges," says the ACLU's Twyla Carter. "He's the real deal."

**Bob Young**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**C ROSSING THE COLOR-LINE**

* * *

**_" The name of the game is to put some economic flesh and bones on Dr. King's dream."_**

--Arthur Fletcher

When Arthur Fletcher announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor on May 3, 1968, his race made him such an electoral novelty that practically every newspaper in the state used the same identifier. He was "the Negro Pasco city councilman." As the campaign progressed and Fletcher became less of a literal dark horse, other labels were applied, including "former pro football player," "ex-shoe shine boy," "ice man" and "one-time janitor." When a reporter covering his campaign quipped that things must be looking up because a political columnist __had just called him "an articulate Negro," Fletcher nearly doubled over in delight. "And we're very musical and have shiny white teeth!" he declared, his laughter rocking the room.

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, wrote a groundbreaking book, _The Souls of Black Folk._ It begins with an observation that sums up Art Fletcher's star-crossed life as a civil rights trailblazer. "The problem of the Twentieth Century," Du Bois wrote, "is the problem of the color-line."

We're now in the second decade of the 21st century, 50 years after Fletcher crossed the color-line to win the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Washington has yet to elect an African American to one of its nine statewide offices or Congress. **10**

Though what-might-have-beens are intriguing--Could Fletcher have gone on to become governor or a U.S. senator?--friends and historians view Fletcher's narrow loss here in 1968 as America's gain. Fletcher spearheaded landmark Affirmative Action efforts for the Nixon Administration, served two other presidents and headed the United Negro College Fund, where he helped craft its eloquent slogan: "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Fletcher with Secretary of State Lud Kramer (standing), Slade Gorton, (left) the GOP candidate for attorney general, and Gov. Dan Evans. _Washington State Archives_

IN THE SPACE of one campaign stop in the fall of 1968 you could meet three different Art Fletchers: the arm-waving Baptist preacher, the spellbinding storyteller, punctuating his yarns with pauses that left listeners on the edge of their seats, and the persuasive politician who called himself "a practical militant."

Washington needed a full-time, activist lieutenant governor, Fletcher said. Rotary Club Republicans found him reassuringly, well ... articulate _._ Moreover, he was nice.

Slade Gorton, the GOP's cerebral candidate for attorney general, was often paired with Fletcher on the campaign trail. The future U.S. senator marveled at Fletcher's ability to win over white audiences. "It was great because Art could draw 400 people where I could draw 40," Gorton remembers. "It was also awful because it didn't matter whether I spoke first or second because I was a complete after-thought to the wonderful orations Art would come through with."

His traveling companions delighted in the mirth--black humor, if you will--that tempered Fletcher's anger over the racism he had endured since childhood. _Guess Who 's Coming to Dinner_, a movie featuring Sidney Poitier as a handsome black doctor engaged to the lovely white daughter of a newspaper publisher, was a box office hit that year. Straightening his tie in a mirror, Fletcher once quipped, "Guess who's coming to lunch with the Elks?" Former Secretary of State Sam Reed, a young gubernatorial aide when he recruited Fletcher to run for lieutenant governor, remembers Art bounding out of a motel bed one morning. Stretching his big arms over his head, Fletcher bellowed that he felt so good he'd like to take on a lion.

If Fletcher sometimes seemed bigger than life--the former Kansas football star was 6-4, 250 pounds--some of his stories were, too, but never outright fabrications. Reporters and headline writers, fascinated by Fletcher's colorful life story, did most of the embellishing, awarding him a law degree and Ph.D. he never earned or claimed. The truth was compelling enough. Fletcher's middle name should have been Resilient. Few knew all the troubles he'd seen.

BORN TO AN unwed mother in Phoenix three days before Christmas in 1924, Fletcher never knew his biological father. He was an adolescent flirting with trouble when his mother married Andrew Fletcher, a standup career Army man. "Cotton" Fletcher was a trooper with the U.S. 9th Cavalry, the storied black "Buffalo Soldier" outfit. He adopted Art. Sergeant Fletcher's rectitude became a powerful influence. When the family arrived at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1938--the umpteenth move of Art's young life--he was a strapping eighth grader poised to become one of the best football players in Kansas history.

While colored troops at Fort Riley were separated from whites, the schools in Junction City adjacent to the post were integrated. The town began to bustle in 1939 as war erupted in Europe and America set out to resuscitate its military. "Onto this scene came Art Fletcher, a big, street-smart kid with a bright smile and very fast feet," wrote Mark A. Peterson, a professor at Washburn University in Topeka, Fletcher's alma mater.

At Junction City High School, Fletcher became a three-sport letterman. It was in football, however, that he achieved fame. He scored nine touchdowns in his senior year and became the first black player named to the _Topeka Daily Capital 's_ team of Kansas all-stars.

Kansas was enlightened compared to the intractable racism of the Jim Crow South, yet the color line was still clear. When North American Aviation opened a bomber assembly plant in Kansas City, the company stated that no Negroes need apply. Fletcher said his indignation at inequality was heightened in junior high when Mary McLeod Bethune, a nationally known civil rights leader, spoke at a school assembly.

Energized by his celebrity as a football star, Fletcher rallied other black students to protest the practice of placing the yearbook portraits of black seniors in a section separate from the white graduates. The following year, the senior portraits were integrated alphabetically.

IN 1943, a few weeks after marrying his 17-year-old high school sweetheart, Mary Harden, Fletcher was inducted into the segregated U.S. Army. A year later he was a military policeman in Europe after the Allies fanned out from the Normandy beachheads to conquer the Third Reich. Fletcher was attached to the celebrated Red Ball Express, a 6,000-vehicle convoy tasked with ensuring George Patton's Third Army didn't grind to a halt for lack of supplies. Three-quarters of the truck drivers were African Americans, preferable perhaps to being a "mess boy" steward or cook on a ship or the back-breaking, dangerous work of loading ammunition. But being black in a white army replete with Southerners was a dicey proposition, Fletcher said. He often recounted the resentment he experienced as an MP because he was "big and mean and didn't take any shit." Black and white soldiers brawled constantly, he said. If you were black you always watched your back. Even some of the blacks "didn't like the fact" he had authority.

Sometimes Fletcher said it was "a German sniper" who fired the shot that nearly killed him on the night of March 21, 1945, as he walked alone down a dark street in a newly overrun village. Sometimes he said it could have been friendly fire because "you didn't know if you were going to get hit by the enemy or hit by your own." **11** There's no debate over the extent of the injury. Shrapnel or bullet fragments cracked Fletcher's ribcage, tore through his liver, spleen and small intestine before exiting above his left hip. A less robust man might have died then and there. He endured several surgeries and months of recuperation. Decades later when he related his close call Fletcher sometimes pulled up his shirt to show the jagged scars.

Fletcher as a star tailback at Topeka's Washburn University in 1947. _University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University_

After his discharge from the Army, Fletcher hoped to play football at a "big-time" university like Kansas, Oklahoma or Missouri. But they barred blacks from their squads. Other major-conference programs also refused to play schools with integrated teams. Fletcher was admitted to Indiana University, only to discover racism there was even worse. He couldn't even find housing for his growing family. Mary was pregnant with their third child. Fletcher enrolled at Washburn, which was founded in 1865 by Congregational churchmen. The university's namesake benefactor, Ichabod Washburn, was a church deacon and fervent abolitionist. He believed all God's children were entitled to an education.

For Fletcher, the GI Bill and a welcoming faculty added up to a life-changing experience. "Going to Washburn was the greatest decision I ever made," he always said.

Fletcher landed a variety of janitorial jobs to help support his family. "In spite of the load he was carrying, I never heard him complain about being underprivileged or overworked," Washburn's former football coach, Dick Godlove, wrote in 1966. "He had a tremendous ability to make and keep friends," including the president of the university. "Those of us who have known him will contend that Art Fletcher can do more good for so called civil rights than thousands of marchers and demonstrators simply because he is the type of man who proves by example that a negro can be a first class citizen." A good man, the coach was paying Fletcher a high compliment. Yet his words italicize the fact that in 1966 millions of Southerners still believed most "negroes" would never amount to much--and that marchers for "so called" civil rights were obstreperous.

IN 1947, his sophomore year, Fletcher emerged as a powerful tailback for the Ichabods. He was "harder to stop than a Santa Fe Streamliner," the Washburn yearbook boasted. Now unquestionably one of the top small-college players in America, Fletcher was reviled when the Ichabods invaded racist strongholds, even burned in effigy at opponents' pep rallies. But he was steadily winning the respect of opposing players and coaches, wrote Godlove, who doubled as Washburn's athletic director. "Art was all 'everything' in football during a time when negroes were just beginning to break into college athletics in these parts. A predominantly white football squad accepted his leadership and he ranked far above any team captain I've ever had. This was a time of great prejudice, particularly in hotels and eating places in Kansas. [But Art] was obviously such a fine person that over a period of four years, hotel and cafe managers did a complete about face as far as their accommodations were concerned."

By his junior year, Fletcher was also excelling in the classroom and emerging as a statewide political activist with the College Republicans. "For most African Americans in Kansas, the Democratic Party ...was the party of segregation, Jim Crow, and white Southern bigotry, while the Republican Party was the party of abolition and Lincoln," Professor Peterson wrote in a profile documenting Fletcher's Kansas roots.

During the 1947 session of the Kansas Legislature, Fletcher worked as a doorman and messenger. He landed a second job as a waiter at a Topeka hotel frequented by lawmakers and lobbyists. Like an attentive fly on the wall in dining rooms and capitol hallways, he observed the horse-trading that wins votes to pass laws. Fletcher always said that experience taught him more about practical politics than any poli-sci course. He participated in meetings aimed at forcing integration of Topeka's schools and later donated what he could to the cause. The eventual outcome was the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 ruling that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

Fletcher also met future Kansas governor Fred Hall, a young lawyer with a strong social conscience. In 1950, the year Fletcher graduated from Washburn with a degree in sociology, Hall was elected lieutenant governor--the stepping-stone office Fletcher aspired to in Washington State 18 years later.

Fletcher as a Washburn University student in 1949. _University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University_

FLETCHER'S CAMPAIGN in the summer of 1950 was for a spot on a pro-football roster. He and Mary now had five children, ages 1 to 6. He was a walk-on with the Los Angeles Rams, but cut from the team before the start of the regular season. He was jubilant when the Baltimore Colts called.

The 1950 incarnation of Baltimore's NFL team was a far cry from the legendary franchise that revived the Colts name a few years later. The team Fletcher joined lasted only one season in the National Football League before folding. He has the distinction--rarely remembered--of being the first black athlete to represent any Baltimore major-league franchise. **12**

Fletcher joined the Colts only three days before a home game against the Philadelphia Eagles and saw action as a defensive end in a relatively close loss. "He didn't set the world on fire," his coach told the Baltimore _Afro-American_ , "but I suppose he did as well as could be expected. He had not practiced for some time. ...We have very high hopes for him, though, and he seems to have great possibilities."

A week later, back in L.A. against the Rams, Fletcher caught two passes for a total of 18 yards in a 70-28 debacle. His great possibilities--a journeyman's job in the NFL to provide for his young family--ended that night in the lobby of a Beverly Hills hotel when the coach tersely informed him he was being released. Fletcher stood in a corner and wept as the coach walked away.

Some speculate that his wartime wounds--plus four rough-and-tumble years of college football--contributed to his failure to catch on in the NFL. An opportunity with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League didn't pan out either. Fletcher had a succession of menial jobs--delivering ice and working in a tire factory. But he persevered, always striving for a breakthrough to work commensurate with his education, his people skills and dreams.

Fletcher became active in the Kansas Republican State Central Committee, rising to vice chairman. In 1954 Fred Hall asked Fletcher to help rally black voters to his campaign for governor. Fletcher boasted he registered some 10,000. Come November the maverick Republican from Dodge City became the state's 33rd governor. Fletcher's reward was a job as assistant communications director for the State Highway Commission. On the side, as he traveled around the state, he sold used cars and became a booking agent for black musicians touring the Midwest.

Fletcher, an assistant coach with the Washburn University football team, and head coach Dick Godlove in 1958. _University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University_

AS SOON AS things were looking up, they always seemed to come crashing down. When Hall lost his bid for re-election in 1956, Fletcher was booted from his state job. His other enterprises went under, too. Deep in debt, he resorted to janitorial work and delivering coal. At one point he was also an elevator operator. A part-time coaching job at Washburn helped put food on the table. It was a depressing time.

Then, out of the blue, another opportunity. Fred Hall decamped to California to become an executive with a jet propulsion company in Sacramento. He saw to it that Fletcher was hired as an efficiency analyst, a job that proved to be "more show than substance." The racism the family encountered was also daunting.

In Berkeley in 1960, Art found a job with a tire company, and was soon offered a teaching job at the high school, only to have it fall through. The setbacks took their toll on Mary Fletcher, who suffered from clinical depression. On a fine fall day, Art was doing some typing when Mary said she was going to the grocery store. All five kids were in the living room. The radio was on. When the announcer interrupted regular programming to report someone had just jumped off the San Francisco Bay Bridge a palpable sense of dread filled the room.

"Daddy, where's Mama?" Art's oldest daughter asked.

Before long, two policemen arrived at the door.

"Mr. Fletcher, can you step out for a minute?" they said.

"Oh, no!" he cried.

For a while, Fletcher remembered, he just "walked around in a fog."

It was his undaunted optimism that pulled him through, says David H. Golland, a leading civil rights historian. His biography of Fletcher, _A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher and the Conundrum of the Black Republican,_ is set for publication in 2019. "He always believed things would get better. And if Mary's suicide was a far worse experience than most people face, Fletcher determined to make an equally extraordinary recovery ...one might even call it a rebirth. ...Out of the ashes of tragedy, the 35-year-old single parent found better employment, remarried and constructed a new family."

FLETCHER'S WORK on a steering committee promoting a school bond led to a job as the "special needs" teacher at an all-black middle school in Berkeley. He developed a self-help curriculum and volunteered for an after-school YMCA program for at-risk youth. By 1962, Fletcher was back on his feet financially and a candidate for the California State Assembly. He won the Republican nomination with ease and captured 25 percent of the vote against the longtime Democratic incumbent in the general election. It was an impressive showing, Golland says, given the fact that Republicans were a distinct minority in the district.

Richard Nixon, attempting a political comeback by running for governor--a disastrous decision as things turned out--dispatched his trusted advance man, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, to enlist Fletcher's help in boosting his authentic civil rights bona fides with black Californians.

Fletcher's civil rights philosophy was now fully developed. It was all about self-help. "He did not oppose government assistance for the needy ...but he wanted such assistance to be used only as a stopgap measure and worried that too much bred dependence and sapped the will to work."

Fletcher, his new wife, Bernyce, and two youngest children left California in 1965 for the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington. There, as the first director of Higher Horizons, a jobs program funded in part by the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty, he became "a unique hybrid of civil rights leader, politician and white-collar professional," Golland writes.

EAST PASCO, the Fletchers' new home, was the dusty, de facto ghetto of the sun-drenched Tri-Cities. An estimated 1,500 Negroes had been recruited to Richland, Kennewick and Pasco during World War II to construct the Hanford facilities that secretly produced plutonium for atomic bombs. They joined a few hundred old-timers who worked for the railroad. By war's end 1,200 African Americans were congregated in East Pasco, east of the tracks. The East Side Neighborhood Improvement Club and the NAACP pushed for paved streets and other utility improvements. The City Council and Public Utility District dragged their heels.

Tri-Cities lore has it that as late as the 1950s there was a sign on the Pasco/Kennewick Bridge warning black folks "Don't let the sun set on your back in Kennewick." There were, in fact, thousands of "sundown towns" across America, especially in the Jim Crow South, where the signs often told Negroes they'd best be out of town before dark. Art Fletcher's friend Jack Briggs, a retired investigative reporter and columnist at _The Tri-City Herald,_ says he tried for years to document that the sign actually existed. "But sign or no sign," Briggs says, "there certainly was a racial divide there." One that lingered for decades. Briggs covered an "anti-cop riot in 1970 when blacks burned down the 60-foot fir trees that flanked the old Franklin County Courthouse."

Vanis Daniels, a longtime Pasco resident, recalled in a 2011 interview that one of his cousins ended up "chained to a pole like a dog" on a Kennewick street corner in 1948 when police discovered him waiting for co-workers to come out of an all-white tavern with some beer. Jack Tanner, a Tacoma civil rights leader who went on to become one of the West's first black federal judges, led a march through downtown Pasco in 1963 to protest discrimination. He dubbed Kennewick "the Birmingham of Washington."

When Art Fletcher arrived, Pasco's 1,400 blacks represented 10 percent of the citizenry. Fletcher's ambitious agenda for Higher Horizons included a skills bank, on-the-job training programs and a neighborhood watch committee that combined crime prevention with mentorship programs for jobless youth. But some local state agency officials, whom Fletcher characterized as unreconstructed Southerners, thwarted his efforts. Members of the John Birch Society, poised to found their own weekly newspaper in Yakima, attacked Higher Horizons as communistic. Further, he'd been hired with the understanding it was a three-year project. He was misinformed. And out of a job within a year.

Fletcher found work as a minority recruiter for several Hanford contractors, secured a correspondence-course preacher's license and founded the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative. The co-op's first success was a service station that "quickly became the automotive shop of choice for local motorists." In his Fletcher biography, David Golland writes:

"The profits from the first year of the service station's operation led to the co-op's most remarkable achievement. The $4,000 was used as a down payment for an eight-acre, $37,500 commercial site, on which the co-op planned to construct 'a number of businesses, such as a laundromat, barber shop, branch bank, hardware store and drugstore...and education center and [co-op] offices.' "

The road blocks to success included the widening schism between impatient young black firebrands and old-guard civil rights leaders. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached non-violent resistance; Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, was an unabashed revolutionary out to destroy "both racism and capitalism." Sometimes, Newton said, "If you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up."

Fletcher worried that diplomacy was losing ground to radicalism. He proudly claimed to be a militant himself. "The difference between a militant and extremist," he told the _Tri-City Herald_ in the fall of 1967, "is the militant wants a share in developing a neighborhood while extremists are trying to burn them up. ...The longer nothing is done, the more extremists are able to convince persons to their points of view... [T]his force must be converted to technical militancy--the training of minorities with the know-how to fill these jobs."

An "Uncle Tom" to _militant_ militants and a spellbinding leader to older, more conservative blacks, Fletcher told reporters in 1968 that only 15 to 20 percent of the black folks in East Pasco trusted him. "I'm a great guy if they have problems I can solve. ...I'm great until the next problem I can't solve."

When he ran for the Pasco City Council in 1967, Fletcher expected problems, if not death threats. Sometimes the midnight callers sounded white, sometimes black. "I'm a color-blind lightning rod," he told a reporter with a shrug and a smile the following year when the political stakes were a lot higher.

FLETCHER'S CITY COUNCIL campaign boasted two influential friends: Governor Daniel J. Evans and Secretary of State A. Ludlow Kramer. They were two of the West's leading civil rights Republicans. Elected to the Seattle City Council at 29 in 1961, "Lud" Kramer pushed for an open housing law, while Evans was emerging as the leader of GOP reformers in the state Legislature. In 1964, Evans and Kramer bucked a Democratic riptide to win statewide office. By 1966, they were exploring ways to head off urban upheaval and create more humane conditions for migrant farm workers.

At Kramer's urging, Governor Evans visited Pasco that year to learn more about the Self-Help Cooperative. "It was impossible not to be impressed with Art Fletcher," Evans remembers. "Here was this imposing African American man who radiated charisma and intelligence and preached the importance of a 'hand-up, not a handout.' He was an apostle of the power of education to build self-esteem and change lives. I was thoroughly impressed with Art, his work and everything he stood for. I recruited him for our new Urban Affairs Advisory Council. That first meeting was just the beginning of a lifelong friendship. He should have been our state's first African American governor."

On November 7, 1967, with 59 percent of the vote, Fletcher was elected Pasco's first black councilman. In Seattle, Sam Smith, the persistent son of a Louisiana preacher, also won a City Council seat. The five-term state representative had just pushed through a state open housing law. In Tacoma, Jack Tanner, another former standout athlete and World War II veteran, got to thinking 1968 could be a banner year for Washington Negroes.

WITH EVANS AND KRAMER facing re-election in 1968, two enterprising young Republicans--Sam Reed and Chris Bayley--began brainstorming ways to mobilize college students for the campaign. Governor Evans was in a running battle with right-wingers in King County, the epicenter of Puget Sound politics. Kramer's civil rights work made him even more suspect. Birchers denounced both as soft on communism.

Reed, who had received a master's degree in political science from Washington State University the year before, was the 26-year-old staff director for the governor's Urban Affairs Council. Bayley, 29, was back home in Seattle to size up future prospects after his graduation from Harvard Law School. **13** They dubbed their brainchild "Action for Washington" and set out to recruit political activists on campuses across the state. "Before long," Reed remembers with a satisfied smile, "we had attracted upwards of 2,500 bright, idealistic young people." By the summer of '68 "the kids" were churning out yard signs, mimeographing fliers and staging doorbell blitzkriegs for "The Action Team for an action time."

Action for Washington's notable innovation was to field the first, and to date only, four-candidate statewide ticket in Washington history. Evans and Kramer already had their hats in the ring. When Slade Gorton, the transplanted Ivy Leaguer who became Evans' point man in the Legislature, resolved to run for attorney general, all Reed needed was a candidate for lieutenant governor. After watching Fletcher in action with the Urban Affairs Council--"all that energy and charisma and track record as a civil rights leader"--Reed saw Fletcher as their man. His life story ("good copy" in the parlance of the media) was fascinating. If they were going to stand a chance of defeating the entrenched incumbent, 58-year-old Democrat John Cherberg, why not make a bold stroke? If anyone had the moxie to break the color barrier in Washington electoral politics, Reed figured, "it was Art." **14**

Art needed convincing.

"His first reaction was to laugh heartily--that big, booming, infectious laugh of his," Reed remembers. "It took me a while to convince him I was serious. I assured him that his race likely would be more of an advantage than a handicap with younger voters. And with his speaking ability he could win over older white voters, too. Besides, I said, his whole career had focused on advancing opportunities for Negroes. Then, I got Dan Evans and Lud Kramer to talk to him. That did it."

THAT 1968 was a leap year somehow fit. It was as if the furies had extracted an extra day of fear and loathing because 365 simply weren't enough. The Pentagon upped the draft by 72,000 two weeks before the Tet Offensive; George Wallace announced his third-party bid for president; Walter Cronkite told America the Vietnam war was unwinnable; the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders pointed to racism and economic hopelessness as the root cause of ghetto riots; Eugene McCarthy won a remarkable 42 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, demonstrating that Lyndon Johnson was vulnerable. When Robert Kennedy jumped in, LBJ dropped out. Four days later, the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated on a Memphis motel balcony. Riots raged across the nation as Governor Evans, Fletcher and 9,000 other mourners marched to Memorial Stadium in Seattle to honor Dr. King's ideals. "Violence is the way of the coward," Evans told the crowd, his voice choked with emotion. "Nonviolence is the way of the hero." Fletcher told The Associated Press he planned to run for lieutenant governor to try and do his part to keep Dr. King's dream alive.

King County Councilman Larry Gossett, who helped found the Black Student Union at the University of Washington, and Nat Jackson, who succeeded Fletcher as head of the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative and became a key aide to Governor Evans, remember 1968 as the year "Negroes" became "blacks." By year's end, in fact, " _Negro_ had become a pejorative applied to those who would not stand up for themselves," historian Mark Kurlansky wrote. That October, _The Seattle Times_ used "Afro-Americans" and "black people" for the first time. It was in a story about a new black-owned Seattle clothing store featuring Dashiki blouses and other "colorful African designs." Fletcher officiated at the ribbon-cutting.

A handbill for an Action Team rally. _Washington State Archives_

IN MAY, with Bernyce at his side, Fletcher made his candidacy official. Touting the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative, he hoped to use "the power and prestige" of the lieutenant governor's office to take the program statewide. In that regard, he foresaw no conflict in fulfilling the lieutenant governor's duties as presiding officer for the State Senate, even if it were to meet every year, as Governor Evans advocated, rather than every other year. "If elected, I would demonstrate for the first two years how this could be made a meaningful office. Then I would submit a bill to the Legislature to expand its functions"--with no expectation of an increase in the office's $10,000-a-year salary. Pressed by reporters to address racial strife, Fletcher said there were two problems involved: "The Negroes' Negro problem, mainly poverty and lack of education. And the white man's Negro problem--the willingness to accept the Negro once he is ready to make his contribution. I've solved the Negro problem, and I'm ready to make my contribution. ... I'm a practical militant," he said. "I want change as fast as we can get it, but I am mature enough to realize that you don't get it overnight."

Jack Tanner, now a declared Democratic candidate for governor, lit a cigar and scoffed that the Republicans--white do-gooders like Evans and misguided blacks like Fletcher--didn't get it: "They want people to help themselves with that which they have not got."

The next four months were a blur. Momentum was so elusive that Fletcher thought about dropping out. But when Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon's leading opponent for the GOP presidential nomination, visited Seattle in July he met with Fletcher and Evans and all but endorsed Art's economic self-help program as a plank in the 1968 GOP national platform. The nation's Republican governors, with Evans leading the way, had already signaled their support. Impressed by the East Pasco project, Congresswoman Catherine May, the Republican from Fletcher's Eastern Washington district, introduced a "Community Development Corporation" bill that was gaining traction, with House Republicans at least.

Fletcher was unopposed for the GOP nomination until August 1, when Bill Muncey, the greatest unlimited hydroplane racer in history, entered his first dry-land race. With his boyish grin and bold driving style at the wheel of _Miss Thriftway,_ Muncey was the hero of the summertime Seafair crowds lining Lake Washington. Well-heeled conservative Republicans earlier had failed to entice Pat O'Day, Seattle's legendary disc jockey and concert promoter, to challenge Fletcher. But Muncey was not having a good year. He had finished only three of nine races, his marriage was in trouble and his political acumen was highly suspect. Asked if he had discussed his chances with C. Montgomery Johnson, the shrewd chairman of the State Republican Party, Muncey breezily replied, "Yes, we had a talk the other day. By the way, just what is his position in the party?"

Bill was going to need a bigger boat.

THE IMAGE of a mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy splayed on the floor of a hotel pantry, clutching a string of Rosary beads, was a metaphor for the summer of '68. When the fractured Democrats assembled in Chicago 12 weeks later, their convention hall was encircled by barbed wire fencing. "The National Guard had been mobilized and ordered to shoot to kill, if necessary," Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Haynes Johnson wrote.

It was a miracle no one was killed on the convention's third day when Mayor Richard J. Daley's police, reinforced by the soldiers, clashed yet again with war protesters. The Yippies, hippies and members of Students for a Democratic Society resisted vociferously, throwing rocks and screaming epithets. Live network TV captured a throbbing melee of nightsticks, rifle butts and tear gas, bloodied heads and broken noses. "Pigs!" the crowd chanted. "The whole world is watching!" Livid, the police were swinging their clubs with abandon. They smashed cameras and beat journalists and bystanders, even elderly onlookers and children. Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff, at the podium to make a nominating speech for George McGovern, denounced the "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago." Mayor Daley, his fleshy face flushed with anger, cupped his hands and shouted, "You Jew son-of-a-bitch!"--apparently oblivious to how Gestapo-like that sounded.

Miami Beach, where the Republicans gathered to celebrate the virtues of "Law and Order," was by contrast Kumbaya--at least on the surface. Keynoter Dan Evans told delegates it was "time now to reach inward--to reach down and touch the troubled spirit of America." He challenged them to adopt "a new agenda" focused on minorities, the poor and the nation's restless youth: "The problems of environment, of congestion, of urban decay and rural stagnation did not suddenly occur. They are the residue of years--even of decades--in which we devoted too much of ourselves to size and quantity and too little to shape and quality."

Fletcher pitched his self-help program to a panel of platform writers, noting that he had helped launch similar projects in Seattle and Spokane. It would take only relatively modest federal financing to jump-start neighborhood-owned corporations nationally and help blacks break the cycle of poverty, Fletcher said. He described self-help as the equivalent of "a foreign aid program to our own depressed neighborhoods, which are nothing but underdeveloped countries within our country." The self-help plank adopted by the committee "relied almost verbatim" on Fletcher's testimony.

Rockefeller's patchy presidential campaign and a Ronald Reagan boomlet were scuttled by Nixon's last-ditch "Southern Strategy" to secure a first-ballot victory. It included the selection of the largely unknown archconservative Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew as his running-mate. In so doing, Nixon kept Strom Thurmond and his band of unrepentant former Dixiecrat segregationists in the fold. Nixon also hoped to undercut George Wallace's strength in the South. Striving to simultaneously placate Goldwaterites and woo liberals, the "New" Nixon was his masterfully duplicitous old self. In his acceptance speech he co-opted Martin Luther King's cadences, repeatedly intoning "I see a day," before declaring, "The time has come to ... climb the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn of a new day for America..."

Nixon invited Fletcher to San Diego to brief him and Agnew on self-help programs in black communities. The result was Fletcher's appointment to the campaign's Committee on Urban Problems and Minority Affairs. It was an important development, Fletcher said, "because it means that they were listening to our advice in San Diego" and poised to make "an all-out appeal" to minority voters. In a quote he likely came to regret, Fletcher characterized Agnew as "a master technician."

MUNCEY, meantime, was proving so inept at politics that Lieutenant Governor Cherberg made it clear he considered Fletcher the opposition. Barnstorming the Tri-Cities, the Seattle Democrat sidestepped Fletcher's call for debates and told reporters the duties of the office had been "greatly expanded" during his three terms to include membership on the State Finance Committee and State Patrol Retirement Board.

By Labor Day Fletcher had campaigned in 23 of the state's 39 counties, buoyed by the energy of Action for Washington volunteers. Teaming Fletcher with Slade Gorton, the collegians scheduled "fly-in's" at a dozen campuses. The youthful secretary of state, Lud Kramer, sometimes made it a threesome. Gorton remembers being moved by Fletcher's eloquence, especially the day he eviscerated George Wallace, calling him "the little corporal from Alabama." When Wallace talked about "states rights," Fletcher said, "he really means the federal government took from him the right to exclude me from the human race."

Though virtually unopposed for the Republican nomination, Gorton had five formidable Democratic opponents, including John G. McCutcheon, a former Pierce County prosecutor, and Fred Dore, a veteran legislator. They seemed intent on out law-and-ordering Nixon and Agnew. McCutcheon declared he'd "heard the voices" of those who'd had enough of "violence in the ghettos, riots in the schools and colleges and crime in the streets." Gorton's rejoinder was one of the year's most riveting quotes. "I have always been for law and order," he told the Associated Press, "but too many people today use the phrase when they really mean 'keep the niggers in their place.' "

ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1968, Arthur A. Fletcher made political history. He swamped Muncey in every county to become the first black candidate to win a major-party nomination for statewide office. Evans, Kramer and Gorton also advanced. **15** There were fewer than 100,000 blacks in the state, Fletcher noted, adding that he hoped his campaign would give "other Negroes hope" and "free the white community of fears of the Negro."

Polling data--it would prove accurate--indicated Humphrey was leading Nixon in Washington State and Democrats were on the upswing up and down the ballot. Republicans stepped up their fundraising and set out to harness the youth vote. Every Action Team flier, full-page ad and TV spot featured Evans, Kramer, Gorton and Fletcher, striding forward side by side with clean-cut confidence. Fletcher was touted as "The Man With a Plan"--"tall, fluent, with a grasp of problems as broad as his hands"--a college-educated, ex-NFL player who could "transform the office of lieutenant governor just as he transformed the ghetto of Pasco. Not because he is black ... But because he seeks the office on the basis of brains, leadership and personal ability. And he'll work full time."

Lieutenant Governor Cherberg--"Cowboy Johnny" in his coaching days--still said he could see "no useful purpose" to a debate--especially after reporters contrasted his yawn-inducing appearances on campuses with Fletcher's charisma.

Fletcher and Gov. Evans celebrate their primary election victories in 1968. _Washington State Archives_

THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY fielded its own candidate--Donald J. Tait, editor of _The Yakima Eagle_ , the weekly newspaper funded by the John Birch Society. Tait, a former radio announcer and ad salesman, told a George Wallace rally in Pasco that Fletcher's self-help program was "aimed at providing bases for Communist revolution." Asserting that Fletcher was "far too heavyweight for Pasco," Tait added, "I think poor Mr. Fletcher is being used. I don't know by whom, but by someone pretty high up." There was a new "Manchurian Candidate" twist to the conspiracy theory. Tait reminded conservatives that Dan Evans had been considered for Nixon's running-mate and could be in line for a cabinet post should Nixon be elected. "Then we'll wind up with Mr. Fletcher as governor."

Fletcher punctuated his indignation with sarcasm. "I'm gratified to find that a poor and insignificant black boy who once shined shoes ...has managed to attract the attention of such an important conservative gentleman," he said. Then, with clenched fists, Fletcher said it was an insult to black Americans to suggest that the only way they could rise in a democracy was to become communists. By "painting red any black who says he is equal," the Birchers were just giving the Black Panthers more ammunition, he said.

The notion that Fletcher was part of a "plot" would pop up repeatedly during the campaign. The Teamsters echoed the theme in their own weekly. _The Washington Teamster_ enjoyed a wide readership thanks to the biting wit of its editor, Ed Donohoe, who needled the governor "and his vassals" by anointing them with sarcastic nicknames. Evans, an Eagle Scout, was "Straight Arrow"; Kramer "Lud the Dud," and Gorton "Slippery Slade." Fletcher never earned a moniker of his own but they hit him hard and often. One front-page column featured a photo that made Fletcher appear uber-dark and shadowy. If Fletcher was elected lieutenant governor, Donohoe warned, "he is practically governor, according to future strategy in high GOP echelons. The blueprint calls for Evans to take a 'free run' at Sen. Henry M. Jackson's seat in 1970--and if he is successful--Fletcher becomes the first Negro governor in the United States. ...The plan looks air-tight if the voters are sucker enough to buy it. ...Meanwhile, good old Art Fletcher knocks the constituency dead with a lot of pious palaver about the need for 'self-help, not hand-outs'--which is all fine and good--if his record in establishing ghetto co-ops in Pasco would back him up. To date, none are in operation."

"I had no intention of running against Scoop Jackson in 1970," Evans says. "And the notion that there was a plot to advance Art [to governor] was also preposterous. But we heard it with increasing frequency in the last weeks of the campaign. That was the real 'plot'--the effort to derail Art's chances at becoming lieutenant governor by spreading lies."

The Action Team countered with a paid, half-hour documentary, "The Fletcher Story," which aired on two Seattle TV stations, and a fund-raising luncheon at Seattle's landmark Olympic Hotel. The special guest was Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

The _Post-Intelligencer_ , Seattle's lively morning daily, endorsed the whole Action Team. _The Seattle Times_ endorsed Evans, Gorton and Kramer but opined that Cherberg (the publisher's old friend) should be retained. _The Tri-City Herald_ endorsed Evans but was mum on Fletcher and the other members of the team. Glenn Lee, the paper's flinty publisher, was wary of black power, former longtime journalists at the paper remember.

ON NOVEMBER 4, 1968, Dan Evans and Lud Kramer were handily re-elected; Slade Gorton eked out a 5,300-vote victory for attorney general--his election teetering on the absentee ballots for nine days. And Art Fletcher fell 48,000 votes short of becoming Washington's first black statewide elected official. In all, 1.23 million votes had been cast in the race. For two days Fletcher crossed his fingers that he might pull out victory in what he called "sudden death overtime." Cherberg's margin declined by only a whisker to 51.40 percent when all the absentees were tallied. Fletcher won East Pasco, but the rest of Franklin County voted Democratic as usual. The lieutenant governor thumped Fletcher in the Democratic strongholds of Pierce and Grays Harbor counties and even carried staunchly Republican Lewis County. Fletcher ran close races in King County, the state's most populous, and Spokane County, Eastern Washington's population center.

If a landmark election was a terrible thing to lose, Fletcher was upbeat, publicly at least. He cited the 79.5 percent voter turnout. "I had expected to lose by 150,000 votes if there were a big vote. Anything less than 100,000 is a moral victory," he said after graciously conceding to Cherberg via telegram.

For Fletcher, carrying conservative Yakima County by 184 votes amounted to a genuine moral victory. Donald Tait, the Conservative Party's standard bearer, scored only 785 votes in Yakima County, his home base--and some 11,000 statewide. But the damage inflicted by a mass mailing of the red-baiting newspaper edited by Tait, including an estimated 50,000 copies in Spokane County, may have cost Fletcher the election. The _Yakima Eagle 's_ front page featured a photo of Fletcher mowing his lawn. Not only was he big and black, his T-shirt was soaked with sweat. "Meet Your New Governor," the caption said. The _Eagle_ was distributed at high school and college football games in the days before the general election, Fletcher said. "I ran into it wherever I went." So did Gorton. "It was appalling," the former U.S. senator says. When Gorton studied the final returns he was struck by the fact that he had outpaced Fletcher significantly in key Eastern Washington districts.

Dan Evans sees King County as the difference maker. The former three-term governor has been parsing King County election returns for 70 years. In 1968, when King was still fertile ground for mainstream Republicans, he outpolled his Democratic opponent, John J. O'Connell, by nearly 93,000 there. Gorton's margin in King was 40,000. Kramer, a former Seattle councilman, rolled up a 166,000-vote margin. "Granted, Lud had a weak opponent," Evans says, "but look at John Cherberg's King County vote: He beat Art by 2,100 votes." Race and anxiety about race clearly were factors in the King County vote, Evans says. "People would tell me, 'I'm sorry about Art Fletcher, but it was a really tough choice.' An elderly Republican woman said to me, 'Governor, I just couldn't vote for Mr. Fletcher because I was afraid some radical Negro group would assassinate you to make him governor!' Some people voted against Art because he was black, but some who were inclined to vote for him bought into the Black Panther/communist plot story and were worried about me."

Fletcher's sense of humor was intact when he visited the governor's office shortly after the election. He encountered Ralph Munro, a young Evans volunteer carrying a tray of coffee cups. Informed that the governor was meeting with a dozen black clergymen from around the state, Fletcher relieved Munro of the tray, placed a towel over his arm, burst into the room and proceeded to perform a perfect parody of a fawning Negro waiter. "The room convulsed in laughter," says Munro, Washington's former longtime secretary of state. "It was classic Art."

"WATCH WHAT we do, not what we say," Nixon's first attorney general, John Mitchell, famously told reporters at his first press conference when asked if the administration actually planned to roll back or soft-pedal civil rights laws, as some of its Southern supporters were claiming. The signals certainly were mixed: Back-room promises vs. soaring rhetoric. At Miami Beach, Nixon vowed his administration would:

... build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America. Black Americans, no more than white Americans, do not want more government programs that perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation. They want the pride, and the self-respect, and the dignity that can only come if they have an equal chance to own their own homes, to own their own businesses, to be managers and executives as well as workers, to have a piece of the action in the exciting ventures of private enterprise. I pledge to you tonight that we shall have new programs which will provide that equal chance.

It was everything Art Fletcher espoused. Whether Nixon actually meant what he said remained to be seen.

In Miami and during post-convention strategy sessions, Nixon and Fletcher developed a genuine rapport, according to Fletcher biographer David Golland. The president-elect and George P. Shultz, the incoming Secretary of Labor, settled on Fletcher as their pick for Assistant Secretary of Labor. Shultz was an Affirmative Action supporter, much to the disdain of Strom Thurmond and hardnose conservatives like Agnew and Patrick J. Buchanan, the presidential speechwriter who maintained that racial preferences for black workers meant discriminating against white applicants "who had discriminated against no one."

Fletcher told Shultz he'd take the job on one condition--a bold move for an under-employed 43-year-old family man being offered a $38,750 federal job. Fletcher wanted the Office of Federal Contract Compliance added to the assistant secretary's purview. "Tasked with enforcing the non-discrimination clause in federal contracts as a means to enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the OFCC had the frankly awesome power to revoke federal contracts," Golland notes. It could also disqualify contractors from bidding on future work.

Shultz agreed, placing Contract Compliance in Fletcher's portfolio. In the months to come the nation watched as Fletcher placed himself in risky situations to advance minority hiring in the construction trades.

Nixon told aides that if the South came to see him as "the goddamnest integrationist there is" so be it--as long, at least, as the political calculus favored his re-election. John Ehrlichman, the Seattle lawyer who became a key Nixon aide and ended up serving 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, wrote in a 1982 memoir that Nixon championed the Affirmative Action plan to split the labor/civil rights coalition.

THE "REVISED PHILADELPHIA PLAN" presented to Nixon by Shultz and Fletcher revamped an executive order signed by President Johnson in an effort to force federal contractors in Philadelphia to hire more blacks. The revisions infused it with more power to impose minority-hiring goals and timetables on building trades unions and other federal contractors. Nixon gave it his imprimatur and Fletcher pushed ahead, even as the attorney general and comptroller general set to squabbling over the plan's legality.

The blowback came quickly. Protests erupted at construction sites in Pittsburgh, Chicago and other major cities in the fall of 1969. In Pittsburgh, blacks accounted for fully 16 percent of the population but only 1 percent of the skilled building trades workforce. The white contractors' organization, claiming it had made a good faith effort to recruit black apprentices, refused to do more. In Seattle, frustrated black contractors and their workers shut down work on King County's new Administration Building and a research facility at Harborview Medical Center. The 15 building trades unions in the state had only seven non-white apprentices among their 29,000 members. Governor Evans and King County's new executive, John Spellman, pronounced it appalling and jawboned the unions to open their ranks to minority workers.

Fletcher, the Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Nixon Administration, wades into a crowd of angry white construction workers in Chicago in 1969 for a hearing on Affirmative Action. _AP photo_

Fletcher endured a number of death threats in his life. His closest call may have been in Chicago on September 24, 1969, when he arrived to hold hearings on implementation of Affirmative Action in the local building trades. Upwards of 3,000 angry white construction workers blocked the entrance to the Federal Building, "pummeling a black motorist's car" and menacing a cluster of brave white women lobbying for union and job-site integration. Fletcher moved the hearings to a better-secured location, the U.S. Customs House, having received assurances from the White House it would send in federal troops if necessary. He shouldered his way through another cursing crowd of hard hats as some 200 helmeted policemen and U.S. marshals stationed themselves at entrances. A very large target, Fletcher was a profile in courage. Friends feared he wouldn't get out of Chicago alive.

When the shouting finally stopped, inside at least, contractors, unions and community groups agreed "to a voluntary plan to admit as many as 4,000 more blacks into the construction unions by the end of 1971." Fletcher described the experience as transformative--a moment when he "faced the elementary forces of life, racism and fear of loss of jobs," resulting in a battle of "naked power."

Fletcher talks with President Nixon in 1971 as he departs the administration to head the United Negro College Fund. _UPI photo_

A year later, the number of blacks employed as skilled workers on Revised Philadelphia Plan projects nationwide had jumped from 2 percent to 22.7 percent. By 1971, however, it was abundantly clear voluntary plans weren't working. And mandatory plans were now, to use the vernacular of the Nixon White House, "in variance with the administration's goals at this point in time"--chief among them securing the re-election of the president. Fletcher was disheartened. The Oval Office Watergate tapes document Nixon's visceral determination to "screw" his enemies and win four more years. Whatever it took included opposing minority-hiring quotas. In a Labor Day speech to an audience of cheering construction workers Nixon all but abandoned the Philadelphia Plan.

Fletcher was now expendable. "They were concerned that every day Fletcher remained as assistant secretary of labor they were losing percentage points in swing states," says Golland. "The Oval Office tapes captured either George Meany, the president of the AFL-CIO, or Peter Brennan, head of the Building and Construction Trades Council, telling Nixon that Fletcher wanted 'to be another Dr. King.' What's fascinating to our ears in the second decade of the 21st century is that they meant that as a bad thing! They basically convinced Nixon to get rid of Fletcher." Because Nixon genuinely liked Fletcher, they created a post for him at the United Nations working for Ambassador George H.W. Bush and couched it as a promotion. Bush and Fletcher would become close friends.

IN 1972, Fletcher became executive director of the United Negro College Fund. He helped elevate its slogan to greatness by insisting that one word had to be changed. Summoned to the offices of the Young & Rubicam ad agency, Fletcher was shown an ad with the tagline "A mind is a hell of a thing to waste." A licensed preacher himself, Fletcher observed that "hell" would be offensive to black ministers and their flocks. They tossed around "awful," "sad," "horrible" and "a pity" before they arrived at "terrible"--a Eureka moment if there ever was one.

A former Labor Department lawyer in the Johnson Administration bristled when Fletcher began being hailed as "The Father of Affirmative Action." The title Fletcher preferred was "The father of Affirmative Action enforcements"--a qualifier no headline writer would embrace.

From 1973 to 1989, Fletcher headed a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that focused on helping companies implement Affirmative Action plans. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford appointed him as his deputy assistant for urban affairs. Two years later, he unsuccessfully challenged D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, well aware that a Republican stood little chance in the heavily Democratic district. For Fletcher, the issues were what mattered.

Seeking the GOP presidential nomination, Fletcher addresses the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1995. _Ellis Lucia photo, Washington State Archives_

In 1989, Fletcher was appointed chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission by President Bush, serving in that post through 1993.

Two heart attacks and bypass surgery slowed the old civil rights warrior. But he was energized by anger in 1995 after Kansas Senator Bob Dole, an old friend, and other Republican conservatives reversed course on Affirmative Action. Fletcher wrote a blistering letter to every Republican in the 104th Congress before declaring his candidacy for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination. With the slogan "Send five and keep affirmative action alive," he set out to finance his campaign through $5 contributions. Fletcher delighted at being back in the fight. "People are saying, _' The original source is alive?_ My goodness, let's hear what you've got to say." At 71, he acknowledged the campaign was a crusade to "save my legacy."

Fletcher with President George H.W. Bush at the White House in 1990. _AP, University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University_

Arthur Allen Fletcher, an original source, died in Washington, D.C., on July 12, 2005, at the age of 80. His legacy as one of the 20th century's civil rights pioneers is alive. The color-line is dimmer but still bright. In a book he wrote in 1974 to express his frustration over backsliding in the war against discrimination, Fletcher wrote that he wasn't defeated, just seeking new ways "to carry forward the quest for justice and dignity."

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**The Keynoter**

* * *

The August 9, 1968, edition of _TIME_ featured the keynoter for the Republican National Convention at Miami Beach. It was 42-year-old Daniel J. Evans, described as the prototype of the party's dynamic "New Breed." Just 12 years earlier, Evans was a low profile Seattle civil engineer campaigning for the Legislature.

Now he was Washington's governor and mentioned as a possible pick for vice president. Evans told delegates the nation demanded "the fresh breeze of new energy" to honorably end the war in Vietnam and solve "the crisis in the main streets of America--a crisis of violence and stolen hope." It was time to "touch the troubled spirit of America" and solve the problems of the environment, of urban decay and rural stagnation. Three days later, Richard Nixon chose Spiro T. Agnew, the little-known governor of Maryland, as his running-mate. As he watched the Nixon administration implode over the next six years, Evans admits "what if?" sometimes ran though his mind.

He was on a shorter vice-presidential list in 1976, losing out to Bob Dole. After an unprecedented three consecutive terms as governor, Evans headed The Evergreen State College before becoming a U.S. senator.

Left: _TIME_ magazine's cover portrait. "The mouth and chin are all wrong," Nancy Evans declared.

Middle: Nixon/Agnew button _John Hughes collection_

Top Right: Evans and Nixon. _Daniel J. Evans collection_

Left page: Evans revs up the convention crowd with a two-handed victory gesture as he takes the podium in Miami Beach. _Daniel J. Evans collection_

**Taking the Pulse**

* * *

As he surveys the debris field of post-Obama politics in the divided states of America, pollster H. Stuart Elway flashes back to a street corner in Longview in 1960. He's 12 years old, standing beside his father, State Senator Harry S. Elway Jr.

"I'm running for Congress," Harry says, extending his hand to passersby. "Sure appreciate your vote!" Stuart offers each a campaign card featuring his dad's track record as a school board member, mayor and legislator. What's more, with Harry you'd get "a family man, union man, business man and sportsman."

Tall and slender with a boyish smile, 40-year-old Harry Elway exudes aw-shucks affability. He'd been a yell leader at Hoquiam High School and an Army sergeant during World War II. When he returned from the South Pacific, he joined the family plumbing business. His kid brother Jack, the family's star athlete, set out to become a football coach.

In 1952, backed by other young vets active in the VFW and American Legion, Harry Elway won election to the Legislature as an Eisenhower Republican from Grays Harbor, then one of the bluest counties in America. By 1960 he was simultaneously mayor of Hoquiam and a state senator, hoping to make it all the way to Washington, D.C.

Practically from the day he learned to walk, Stuart loved to tag along with his dad, who once wore an Uncle Sam outfit for a big parade. "Watch for The Elway Family Trailer 'stumping '60 style in your community!' " Harry's ads said.

Elway and his dad, State Senator Harry S. Elway Jr., R-Hoquiam, on the campaign trail around 1958. _Polson Museum photo_

In Longview, an influential mill town, several pedestrians recognized Harry from his rounds as an industrial supply salesman. Fellow VFW members greeted him warmly. "Then along came one old guy who scowled at Dad and started yelling at me," Stuart says, chuckling at the memory. "I don't remember Harry's reaction, but he probably told me something like 'You can't please all the people all the time. That's just politics.' "

From county fairs to crab feeds, Stuart Elway grew up steeped in politics: "Around 7, I got to be an honorary page in Olympia, sitting in the House chamber with the older kids. When my mom was staying with my dad during the legislative session, my grandma would put me on the bus in Hoquiam--I'd be wearing my little coat and tie--and my mom would pick me up at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Olympia." Some of Stuart's earliest memories are of walking through the marbled halls of the Capitol--a little boy standing in the rotunda, marveling at the dome. "I still get a feeling of awe every time I'm there. I met some amazing characters, too. My dad once roomed with William 'Big Daddy' Day, the Spokane chiropractor who became speaker of the House after dissident Democrats formed a coalition with the Evans Republicans in 1963. Most of my dad's friends in the Legislature were Democrats. When he was first elected, Harry was a card-carrying member of the Plumbers & Pipefitters Union." The D's and R's would have fierce fights over legislation, Elway says, "but when the day was done you'd find them in the bar at the Tyee Motor Inn, where a lot of legislators stayed, or some other watering hole. A lot of times I would go to the old Olympian Hotel with my mother. It was an ornate, gold-leaf place then. I had my first French dip sandwich there. We'd be sitting in a booth with a lot of the legislative wives. It was all very grown-up."

Senator Elway's campaign ad in the 1950s features his wife Lila and kids, Stuart and Jone. _Elway collection_

IN THE 1980s and '90s, while his cousin John--Uncle Jack's prize pupil--was shredding defenses as quarterback of the Denver Broncos, H. Stuart Elway III, Ph.D., was crunching numbers with such accuracy and innovation that Elway Research Inc. became one of the top public-opinion pollsters in America. Few doctoral candidates in political science have had as much experience in the science of politics at the doorbell level.

Stuart's dad was a card-carrying member of the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters Union. _Elway collection_

The older he gets, the more Elway looks like his dad, who died in 1995. Same smile, chiseled nose and lively hazel eyes. At 70, Elway's swept-back hair is thinner but still mostly dark. He looks at least a decade younger. "They say that if you can remember the '60s you weren't there," Elway says with a mischievous smile. "Put it this way: Some events are more clear than others."

When he turned 20 in the summer of 1968, Elway was part of a youth movement called "Action for Washington." If youth must be served, as the adage goes, what Elway learned in that tumultuous year gives him hope that a new generation--weary of ad hominem malice and the politics of polarization--will emerge to make America as great as he believes it can still be. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Elway reminds us, famously said, "You're entitled to your own opinions but you're not entitled to your own facts." In other words, whose news is fake?

"This increased polarization, this seeming intolerance for opposing viewpoints," troubles a man who has spent the last 43 years taking the pulse of the body politic. "It's the lack of a center where reasonable people can disagree but still work out a policy and enact it into law. Those trends are the issues of our time," Elway says. "I don't know how you run a government--a republic--if these sorts of trends continue or exaggerate even further."

If it's going to change, Elway says, young people will be the catalyst.

Fifty years ago, Baby Boom Democrats were cutting their hair to "Get Clean for Gene" McCarthy, the scholarly anti-war Democrat who challenged Lyndon B. Johnson. One McCarthy ad, headlined OUR CHILDREN HAVE COME HOME, featured the Minnesota senator surrounded by youth. "Suddenly they've come back into the mainstream of American life. And it's a different country. Suddenly the kids have thrown themselves into politics, with their fabulous intelligence and energy. And it's a new election."

Action for Washington mobilized progressive young Republicans to get out the vote. Dedicated to civil rights and disillusioned by the war in Vietnam, many were as liberal as their Democratic peers. Four years earlier, in 1964, Elway and many of his friends had been junior Goldwaterites. Now they viewed Governor Dan Evans as their political lodestar. A Rockefeller backer, Evans denounced the arch-conservative John Birch Society as "false prophets, phony philosophers and professional bigots."

Action for Washington was organized in 1967 by 26-year-old Sam Sumner Reed, a future three-term Secretary of State, and 29-year-old Christopher T. Bayley, a Harvard Law graduate who would make his mark as a corruption-fighting King County prosecutor. Reed's grandfather, Wenatchee lawyer Sam Sumner, was a Washington legislator early in the 20th century and state GOP chairman. **16** Bayley, from an old-line Seattle family, had been national vice-president of the centrist Ripon Society organized in 1963 by activist young professors and grad students from Harvard, MIT and Tufts. Horrified by the assassination of John F. Kennedy and troubled by Goldwater's defense of extremism, the Ripons set out to rally "a new generation" of moderate Republicans dedicated to progressive government "in the spirit of Lincoln." Their manifesto declared, "We feel strongly that the center strategy is the only responsible choice the party can take." The candidates promoted by Action for Washington in 1968 personified the center strategy. There was a bold stroke, too: "The Action Team" candidate for lieutenant governor, Pasco City Councilman Arthur Fletcher, hoped to become the first black statewide elected official in Washington history.

Sam Reed as a young gubernatorial aide. _Washington State Archives_

"WHEN Chris Bayley and I first started discussing the 1968 election year, the idea was to get young Republicans involved," Sam Reed remembers. "But the more we discussed it the more we realized we wanted to reach out to independents and Democrats who might be attracted to moderate candidates like Dan Evans and Secretary of State Lud Kramer, who earlier had been a force for civil rights as a Seattle City councilman. Slade Gorton had not yet decided to run for attorney general, and the idea of recruiting Art Fletcher was still down the road. We decided to call it 'Action for Washington' to give it a bipartisan flavor. It was open to young people of either party--or neither party. Most of our recruits turned out to be young Republicans like Stuart Elway, who was witty and smart, with great political instincts from all the campaigning he had done with his dad. Before long, we had attracted upwards of 2,500 bright, idealistic young people."

Jack Durney, Elway's pal from the Class of 1966 at Hoquiam High School, signed up on the spot. ("Stu was student body president and I was his veep. We were practically the only two young Republicans on Grays Harbor," Durney quips.) Other recruits included Jim Waldo, a Whitman College student with a precocious knack for fundraising; Randy Smith, a Harvard junior who proved adept at logistics, and Steve Excell, a UW sophomore who became a wizard at opposition research. Excell, now Washington's state archivist, remembers getting woozy from the acetone they used when silk-screening campaign posters. "It's possible that some people may have been smoking a little weed back then, but after two hours of cranking out posters you were already higher than a kite."

"It was an extraordinary year," Stuart Elway remembers. "At Grays Harbor College that spring, I was head of Collegians for Evans while Durney was chairman of Youth for Kramer. We got together with the Young Democrats and staged a mock convention, with Governor Evans delivering the key address. He told us he didn't care what party we belonged to. What mattered was that we needed to stop talking and start doing." Durney still has the newspaper clipping from that speech. "We're faced with an apparently unending war in Southeast Asia and growing turmoil here at home," Evans said. "In no segment of our society is enough being done to solve these challenges. We can't do all of it through government, or partisan politics. Active involvement by people of all ages from all walks of life is the only answer. Otherwise, we're going to fail."

Leaders of Grays Harbor College's Republican Club map their strategy for the 1968 elections. Stuart Elway, fourth from left, and his Hoquiam High School classmate, Jack Durney, sitting, went on to play key roles in Action for Washington. _GHC Nautilus yearbook_

"That summer, just before Durney and I enrolled at the University of Washington, we started working for Action for Washington," Elway remembers. "The Evans-Kramer-Gorton-Fletcher ticket was now in place. We needed foot soldiers for a campaign of and by young people. Action for Washington was not a party organization. It was its own autonomous organization. That was a crucial point--especially to us. It was also a mixed blessing, and minor irritation, to party elders. Sam Reed is right: We didn't care if our recruits were Democrats or Republicans. A number of young Democrats were especially attracted to Dan Evans.

A campaign ad for The Action Team. _Washington State Archives_

"One day Jim Waldo and I made a swing through Southwest Washington. In Lewis County, we met John Giese, a UW sophomore, and Rene Remund, a senior at Stanford. We proceeded to assemble 200 college students to doorbell Centralia-- _blitz the whole town_ --in one night. That's the kind of energy Action for Washington generated," Elway says. "We drove down from Seattle to Centralia in an old milk truck someone had donated. The 'grown-ups' in AFW weren't much older than we were, so they just let us do our thing."

Remund, who went on to practice law in Lewis County, remembers that in Centralia, a conservative town with few people of color, they made a strategic decision to omit handbills featuring Art Fletcher's photo--never mind that Fletcher was a fervent Republican, ostensibly "The Party of Lincoln." One union publication published dark photos of Fletcher to italicize his blackness.

"Art gave us a rousing pep talk after we finished doorbelling," Elway remembers. "And we got even more energized because he was so charismatic. That took place many times over the summer. He was a big man--6-4, a former NFL player--with a preacher's voice and a terrific sense of humor. He could light up a room of college kids. Man, you'd go away feeling like you were really part of something--and we were. I remember having discussions with the elders in big strategy meetings. We'd tell them how inspirational he was for our generation. 'If you want to keep us in, keep Art up front,' we'd say.

"Somehow I ended being the guy who wrote the press releases for Action for Washington," Elway continues. "I would hand-deliver them to the newspapers, AP and UPI. Other times, you'd do whatever was needed to advance the cause. One time I ended up driving First Lady Nancy Evans to a meeting in Longview in a borrowed VW Beetle. She was a trouper and a real asset to the campaign, with her progressive views on women's rights."

Polls indicated Evans and Kramer were well ahead, while Gorton and Fletcher were in tight races--Fletcher especially. Waldo remembers the day college students from Pullman and Walla Walla arrived to join collegians from the UW and Seattle U to canvass priority precincts in King County for Gorton and Fletcher. "For three days 175 to 200 students worked all day, then partied into the night. We knew we were making a difference." Waldo, an influential Tacoma attorney, remembers those days as a highlight of his half century of civic activism.

"We're waking up the Republican Party to the New Politics," Paul Peterson, an Action for Washington volunteer, told the UW's _tyee Magazine_ that fall. "It is coming to realize it can no longer afford to ignore its youth." Their "main goal" was to elect Fletcher, Peterson said.

It was "a huge disappointment" for Action for Washington when Fletcher lost to the three-term incumbent, John Cherberg, by 48,000 votes out of 1.2 million cast. A smear campaign by a right-wing weekly in Eastern Washington and opposition from the Teamsters and hard-hat unions likely cost him the election, according to Slade Gorton and Sam Reed. Cherberg, a Democrat, carried Lewis County, one of the state's most reliably Republican counties. Gorton also lost in Lewis County, perhaps because he and Fletcher had campaigned there together.

Evans and Kramer, as expected, easily won re-election, while Gorton was elected attorney general in a cliffhanger, prevailing by 5,000 votes. "Without Action for Washington my political career could have ended right then and there," says Gorton who went on to serve in the U.S. Senate after three terms as attorney general. "Those kids made a huge difference in my election. Without them I wouldn't have won. And they nearly won it for Art Fletcher, too. Stuart Elway was a political prodigy who obviously had learned a lot from his dad's campaigns. Jim Waldo, meantime, had a beard and ran around in bib overalls. But he was the only young guy I've ever come across who could raise money. He could charm birds out of the trees. Jim alone of all those young guys went out and talked to rich people and got money out of them. It was remarkable."

A civil rights pioneer, Art Fletcher was scooped up by the Nixon Administration as an affirmative action specialist with the Department of Labor. He also served in the administrations of Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush and headed the United Negro College Fund. He died in 2005. Elway, Gorton, Evans and many others who were in the political trenches with Fletcher in 1968 believe that had he been elected lieutenant governor he might have gone on to become the state's first African American governor or U.S. senator. Given what Fletcher accomplished nationally, however, Washington's loss clearly was America's gain, says Fletcher's good friend, Nat Jackson, a civil rights leader who served as one of Governor Evans' top aides.

YOU MAY BE wondering about the rest of another story--whether Stuart Elway's dad got elected to Congress in 1960. He did not, despite the efforts of his own army of teenage volunteers. Stuart remembers barnstorming Southwest Washington in a rented trailer festooned with Elway for Congress signs. "When I was 12 I saw every county fair in the nine counties of the 3rd Congressional District that summer."

The winner was State Rep. Julia Butler Hansen, a formidable Democrat from Cathlamet in tiny Wahkiakum County. Elway says Julia shrewdly encouraged a popular Aberdeen Democrat, Gene Neva, to enter the race, knowing his candidacy would split the Grays Harbor vote in the primary. Stuart's dad finished third in the race for the GOP nomination. Come November Julia won going away, undefeated in 41 consecutive elections in a storied career.

"Gene Neva and my dad were friends," Elway remembers. "They even looked alike. We'd go to their house for dinner. The story was that Republican Congressman Russell V. Mack, the Hoquiam newspaperman, told Harry, 'I want you to succeed me.' Of course he probably told that to 50 other guys. Then Mack died on the floor of Congress, and Julia saw her chance. Harry and Julia got along, too. It was nothing personal. Just politics."

Harry S. Elway Jr. went on to become assistant director of two state agencies--first with the Department of Labor & Industries and finally with the Department of Personnel, where he was an activist for affirmative action. He retired from state government in 1979 and opened a popular restaurant and sports bar in Tumwater. The back bar featured a photo of members of the clan huddled around John Elway after a Broncos' victory.

WEIGHING the events of 1968 vs. 2018, Elway vividly recalls the excitement of arriving at a major American university campus fizzing with energy--left and right and black and white. The Black Student Union was pushing for higher minority admissions and Black Studies courses. The Black Panthers were militating and the Students for a Democratic Society mobilizing against the military-industrial complex. Women's liberation activists were demanding equal rights, equal pay and safe and legal abortion on demand. Elway joined the College Republicans--not as square as that may sound today. "There was an important distinction in those days between the College Republicans--the progressive Dan Evans wing of the party--and the very conservative Young Republicans. We clashed a lot."

Elway and Richard B. Sanders, a conservative UW Law School student, dueled on the editorial page of the _UW Daily_ , with Sanders asserting that the "real reason" for the push to boycott grapes in solidarity with striking migrant workers was "to force the workers to accept a union they don't want." **17**

The divide between conservative young Republicans and liberal young Republicans was so wide, Elway remembers, that the liberal wing manufactured "Nixon-Maggie" campaign buttons that summer to demonstrate its support for U.S. Senator Warren Magnuson, a New Deal Democrat, in his race with Jack "The Giant Killer" Metcalf, a conservative state lawmaker. Nixon, meantime, promised "peace with honor" in Vietnam. And, ironically, "law and order" at home.

The Nixon-Magnuson button produced by liberal young Republicans. _Elway collection_

BY 1970, his senior year at the university, Elway was state president of College Republicans. "Thousands of us were marching on the freeways to stop the war. I gave the keynote address to the Whatcom County Republican Convention, speaking against the war in Vietnam. Basically my message was, 'Nothing that's going on over there is worth what's going on over here.' And Duane Berentsen, the county chairman--a future Speaker of the House and candidate for governor--got up and gave a 10-minute rebuttal. The debate over the war was raging everywhere, in everybody's household--in everybody's mind. I was having arguments with Harry Jr. They were never huge, but a couple got pretty elevated. And yet in 1970 when I'm going for my draft physical Dad is giving me advice to tell them about my knee injury from my high school days as a member of the track team. So he'd changed too."

After graduation, Elway joined Governor Evans' staff, first as a summer intern, then full time with the heady title of special assistant to the governor.

"In those days, there were 23 people in the governor's office, including the clerical staff. (It's now nearly 100.) My office is now a stairwell. I helped with the correspondence, monitored legislation and pretty soon was doing constituent work as the governor's representative in Spokane. Sometimes, I'd fly over in the State Patrol plane. Every two weeks I'd go to an office staffed by Gerri Reed, Sam Reed's mom, who was director of Evans' Eastern Washington office. She'd put a notice in the paper that the governor's guy would be in town. I would sit there all day and hear people's problems, then go back to Olympia and call Labor & Industries or some other agency and try to solve them. My hair's down to my collar and I'm wearing beads over the top of my tie. People would come in, do a double take and go, 'You're the governor's guy?' The governor didn't seem to care. If he did I wouldn't have been doing it. I had walk-in privileges to see the governor. That's the kind of office Evans wanted. We didn't have staff meetings. You knew what your job was; you knew what was expected and you set out to do it. I'd get a stack of letters each morning with 'See me' jotted on them by Jim Dolliver, the governor's chief of staff. He'd give me pointers on what to do. Dolliver was a remarkable person--a future chief justice of the State Supreme Court and one of the most magnificent people I've ever met. He was a champion of civil rights, backed equal pay for women and opposed the death penalty--a true intellectual who also understood practical politics. It was a real education in how a public servant's office ought to work."

Elway with Governor Evans in 1971. _Elway collection_

Was there a lasting lesson from that constituent work? "It's that real people have real problems and they depend on government to help them. Sometimes the bureaucracy really does screw people. And that's appalling. It's _their_ government." **18**

AFTER A YEAR with the governor's office, Elway learned he had been accepted to law school. Conflicted, he told Dolliver he'd rather stay. Dolliver smiled and nodded. "So I stayed an extra year--two in all. All the while, I got to live law school vicariously through Jim Waldo and a lot of other friends studying law. I started talking with Kirk Hart, who was on the UW Business School faculty, but was also a former pre-law adviser. He'd begin with, 'Tell me again about your obsession to go to law school.' I'd tell him and he would slice it all up, saying, 'All the guys lining up to go to law school thought they'd be sitting behind mahogany desks dispensing important advice, becoming partners and earning great money.' "

Disabused, Elway thought about running for the Legislature or some other office. "I weighed everything I'd learned from my dad being in politics--the toll it takes on families. I couldn't see myself sitting through a lot of hearings and meetings. Then one day Hart looked at me and said, 'Communications!' It was like the scene in _The Graduate_ where the old guy confronts Dustin Hoffman, the young college graduate worried about his future. 'I want to say one word to you,' he says. 'Just one word: _Plastics!_ There's a great future in plastics.' Well, communications was where the future was going to be, Hart said. It was great advice. Earlier, as an intern with the office of Planning & Community Affairs, I attended a conference in Seattle and heard futurist Robert Theobald say, 'Someday communications will replace transportation as the way to get together to do work.' That was the epiphany. What Kirk Hart said summed it up: 'In essence, if you don't want to be a lawyer, don't go to law school. Go into communications.' "

ELWAY ENTERED the master's degree program at the University of Washington's Department of Communications in 1972. His first class, fortuitously, was Professor Alex Edelstein's overview of public opinion research. A masterful lecturer, Edelstein is remembered as "a true Renaissance man" who in childhood barely survived the Russian Revolution. ****Edelstein worked at the _San Francisco Call Bulletin_ after high school and fell in love with journalism. As an academic who understood the mainstream press and the power of propaganda, "Edelstein ran and analyzed public-opinion polls, an interest that sprang from a dissatisfaction with what he felt were misleading news-media polls that sought quick responses to haphazardly shaped questions, rather than a real understanding of an issue. 'Poll respondents answer the question that is put before them, just as most of us eat the dinner that is put before us,' he wrote in a commentary. 'Public opinion in many cases is simply answers to the pollsters' questions.' "

"It was a perfect start to a master's degree," Elway says. "I learned there was more to polling than just asking questions. They have to be the right questions. The course blended my interest in communications with my interest in politics. Then, in 1975, as I was finishing work on my master's degree, I ran into Ross Davis, chairman of the State Republican Party and an old comrade from my Dan Evans/Action for Washington days. He asked, 'Can you do a survey?' I instinctively knew the first rule of consulting, which is to say 'Yes!' "

Elway's first survey helped elect a GOP candidate running for the Legislature in a special election. His second was for Rolland "Rollie" Schmitten, a personable Marine Corps veteran from Cashmere who went on to serve three terms in the Washington House of Representatives before heading the Department of Fisheries. "For Rollie, I did pie charts, which I hand drew with a compass and labeled with the typefaces that came on rub-off sheets. 'Wow!" Ross Davis said, 'we need to do more of this!' So we did. I started with a rented typewriter on the dining room table using the university's computer."

Elway did surveys for candidates from both parties, but abandoned partisan polling when he started conducting polls for _The Seattle Times_. In 1981, he took a year off to serve as chief of staff for Lands Commissioner Brian Boyle.

Elway received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1983 with a thesis exploring "Political Identification Among Independents." Elway Research Inc. was incorporated in 1985.

The depth and accuracy of Elway's political polling for _The Times_ led to his involvement with the newspaper's Front Porch Forum, a commitment to "civic journalism" that became a hallmark of the Blethen family's stewardship of the __newspaper. Working also with the Evans School of Public Affairs at the UW, National Public Radio and PBS, Elway oversaw focus groups and surveys, as well as town halls "designed to engage citizens in the civic discussion and giving them a voice in the coverage."

In 1994, when the political writers at _The Times_ were skeptical of Elway's polling data on the upcoming congressional elections, he wagered a buck on each of the Republican candidates. When the delegation switched from being 8-1 Democrat to 7-2 Republican, "he picked the pockets of every political reporter and editor in the building," former _Times_ editor David Boardman recalled. The newsroom learned an important lesson: Don't make political bets with pollsters--or at least with H. Stuart Elway.

"I liked being around a newsroom; being around the table with the reporters and editors working on the stories; thinking up questions, coming back and interpreting the results," Elway says. "The collaboration was energizing. It was immensely satisfying work. My dream job would have been being the pollster for _The Washington Post_." He laments the decline of general-circulation newspapers committed to rigorous investigative reporting--and the rise of short attention spans, with tweets masquerading as accurate polling. "I worked on a recent project with the Portland _Oregonian_ , once one of the great newspapers in the West. When I walked into that grand old building it looked like a neutron bomb had gone off."

Quoted in _The New York Times_ , _Time_ , _Newsweek_ and _The Economist_ , Elway emerged in the 1990s as the go-to expert on Northwest political trends. He prides himself on conducting scrupulously nonpartisan research. In 2009, he was named to the Communications Department Alumni Hall of Fame at the University of Washington.

In the fall of 2018, Elway jumped on a new opportunity to collaborate with first-rate reporters and editors. He entered into a partnership with Cascade Media, an alliance of KCTS9, Seattle's PBS affiliate; _Crosscut_ , the independent, reader-supported news site, and Spark Media, a film and digital media production company that has produced award-winning documentaries. Elway will continue to design and direct quarterly polls in collaboration with the _Crosscut_ news staff. "The poll will bring additional perspectives to _Crosscut_ and KCTS9, while they add new breadth and depth to the poll," Elway says. "I'm excited about the opportunity to enhance the public conversation in the Northwest."

IS POLLING trickier today, given the mercurial nature of the electorate and changing technology? "Absolutely," Elway says. "The industry has learned to deal with the cellphone world, but now it's migrating off phones entirely. It's going to be more on-line work. And to get a random sample--which is the gold standard--of an on-line audience is impossible. Sampling is a lot more complex. There aren't Yellow Pages or White Pages for email addresses. We do a lot of hybrid surveys. If we have a phone number, we'll call a person. If not, we'll write them a letter and ask them to go on line. The whole public opinion research industry is changing."

A decade ago, when Chris Gregoire was governor and Brian Sonntag state auditor, Elway Research oversaw two projects analyzing governmental performance audits. "We did town hall surveys and focus groups, including a random-sample, interactive statewide poll on live television with TVW. I don't think that had been done before," Elway says. "It involved so many aspects of what I do. Real people, not just some abstract random sample."

That said, carefully designed random samples increasingly document the frustrations of real people. In the spring of 2018, Elway Research surveyed 403 registered voters by phone for _The Spokesman-Review_ , KHQ-TV, the _Walla Walla Union-Bulletin_ , Spokane Public Radio and the _Lewiston Morning Tribune_. Using landline and cellphone numbers, Elway's researchers contacted Eastern Washington voters who cast ballots in at least two of the past four elections, plus a sampling of new voters who registered to vote since the 2016 presidential election. "Split by voters' views of President Trump and gender, Eastern Washington's electorate is highly polarized and possibly headed for the closest race in the 5th Congressional District in years," _The Spokesman-Review_ concluded.

That real people are becoming increasingly tribal troubles Elway and Slade Gorton, who turned 90 at the dawn of 2018. The former senator was in the political trenches in the 1960s when Republicans and Democrats were locked in mortal combat over redistricting. Gorton believes Washington's politically balanced redistricting panel--a citizen-enacted mandate--is now a model for the nation. But what can be done about the demographics of division in Washington State today? High-tech Seattle has become San Francisco North politically and the axis of statewide electability. Gorton remembers when Seattle routinely elected mainstream Republicans. Today, in what he has dubbed "The State of Space Needle," liberal Democrats reign supreme. A candidate seeking statewide office "can see all the votes he or she needs within the shadow of the Space Needle," Gorton says, adding that nationally "the two parties are now mirror images of one another in one respect: New people coming into the Republican Party almost always come in from the right. Then if they win and get elected to office and tend to moderate, they're overtaken by another wave from the right. In the Democratic Party, new people come in from the left--the 'Berniecrats'--and the same thing happens to them. So in my view the result is that in the 2016 presidential election both parties failed the American people because they left the center entirely unoccupied."

In 1968, Elway saw himself as occupying part of the center. Governor Evans summed it up in his third inaugural address, Elway says, when he declared, "I'd rather cross the aisle than cross the people."

"I haven't been a Republican for a long time," Elway says, "and I certainly wouldn't sign up now." In this, the veteran pollster is part of the state's long tradition of fierce resistance to party registration. Washingtonians want to be able to vote for the person, not the party. Nevertheless, there are two de-facto parties. The urban/rural divide, which Elway has documented for years, increasingly is the compelling issue in Washington State politics. "In the 2016 elections, the 'Politics of Resentment' was overlaid on the divide, with Trump carrying places like Grays Harbor that had been reliably Democrat since the coming of the New Deal," he says. "That resentment is more problematic to solve than the economic challenge. As Gummie Johnson, the legendary State Republican chairman, used to say, the economic thing is 'Simple but not easy: Give 'em jobs.' The resentment issue goes deeper than that. They want an economic future, but there's a visceral feeling of being disrespected. I think resentment had more to do with Trump getting elected than the economics. It's certainly related, but what pushed him over the top was resentment." Grays Harbor hasn't gone Republican, Elway says. It has gone rogue, saying it can't be taken for granted. Tired of it, in fact--with a jobless rate twice the state average.

Elway at a recent Foley Institute Forum in Olympia. _Office of the Secretary of State_

Denouncing any criticism as "fake news" and ginning up support with tweets--what passes for "Fireside Chats" in the 21s Century--Trump has masterfully capitalized on the politics of polarization, Elway says. "One of the recurring thoughts I've had lately is that I've literally been doing this my whole life--ever since I was 5. And it comes to this? Policies [designed to divide] are dangerous, and it's going to take a generation to unwind them. But the norms and mores being destroyed by Trump are possibly more dangerous because democracy can't exist if you have to enforce every law, every time. For a free society to function, people have to adhere to the mores, even if they know they are not going to be arrested for breaking a law. You have to have buy-in from the citizens. You have to have an abiding belief that, 'OK, I didn't carry the day. Majority wins. But we'll live to fight again another day with my worthy opponent.' That's what my dad believed. That's what he fought to defend in World War II."

Civility, conscience and integrity have to matter more than doctrinaire politics, Elway says, "as opposed to just getting power so you can undo the last guy's executive orders when it's your turn. There's this leap-frogging of parties whose first rule for action is to undo what the last party did. Well, how does that get us anywhere? It's the mores, the norms and the belief in the system that should endure. Someone said the founding fathers anticipated a president like this, but they didn't anticipate a Congress like this--one that supports a president like this. They thought it was going to be checks and balances."

Rene Remund, now a retired lawyer, remembers the most important thing he learned when he was 22, doorbelling in the summer of '68: "That a relatively small number of people committed to a purpose can make a change. The members of Action for Washington acquired a group understanding of the dynamics of democracy and went on to affect politics in the State of Washington for years to come. It was one of those drop-the-rock-in-the-water events where the ripples go out. Ultimately, however, they fade out. I believe we have reached that fade-out point because we have this failure of the center--the worrisome rural-urban divide that Stuart's research documents."

"I think we got more out of Action for Washington than we ever contributed," says John Giese, who went on to work for congressmen and governors. "It was a sense that you could actually do something--a confidence and understanding that there are ways to be more effective than just volunteering to doorbell."

In 1968, young people who saw injustice, a war prolonged by lies, and politics polluted by cynicism took to the streets. A half century later, Elway hopes that someday soon his polls will discover a new generation of young registered voters intent on making ripples that become waves. Maybe they'll call it #ActionForWashington.

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**Y OU RUN TO WIN**

* * *

**_" Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."_**

--The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Emmett Till's face was so horrifically disfigured it no longer looked human. Nevertheless, his mother was resolute: She wanted the world to see what Mississippi racists had done to her 14 year-old son after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. _Jet_ , the weekly Negro news magazine, printed the nightmarish open-coffin photos in its September 15, 1955, edition.

Nat Jackson, the great-grandson of plantation slaves, was 12 years old when he saw those pictures. They seared his soul. "I swore that I would change the world. We lived in rural Louisiana, where Jim Crow was brutal and the kids went to segregated schools with some hand-me-down books from white schools. What mattered more was that I was raised with the understanding that being a Jackson meant you are somebody. But you can't expect people to have opportunity when they're discriminated against."

Jackson and his equally undaunted wife, Dr. Thelma A. Jackson, arrived in Washington State in 1968 and soon became key players in the push for equal opportunity, Nat as an aide to Governor Dan Evans and entrepreneur, Thelma as an educator, college trustee and community activist. A half century later, the Lacey residents are still in the trenches.

Nat's understanding of civil rights springs from a childhood replete with civil wrongs. "We were poor but didn't know it because there were no 'poverty' standards in Louisiana when I was growing up," Jackson says. "We were living better than most other black people we knew, but we always shared. We always helped the least, the last and the lost among us. That, plus 'God first, then family,' was the Jackson family motto."

_John Hughes Collection_

The conundrum was that the Jacksons--"Daddy, Mother dear" and six kids--were fiercely independent yet still mired in what amounted to indentured servitude well into the 1950s.

"My people came here as slaves in the bottom of a ship, neither able to sit up nor move, chained in their own defecation for 17 days and 17 nights, then sold into the hell of enslavement the day after they were unloaded," Jackson says, his voice thick with indignation. And when they were finally "free," they had nowhere to go. "They stayed on their former master's land because they had no money--not even a wagon," Jackson says, chopping the air with his big right hand. " 'Well,' says the master, 'you darkies can stay on my place, do the farming and all the labor. I'll give you the seeds and the fertilizer. Then we'll split the profits," which in practice usually fell far short of 50-50. "That lasted right through part of my lifetime--11 years on a white man's land. I know what it's like to grow up being called 'nigger' by white kids riding to school in buses while I walked to school. If you were white you could go inside and eat. They'd serve me through a damn little hole-in-the wall window. I had to eat outside. So what does that do to you? You could get mean about it or take that experience and get committed, get determined, get strengthened, motivated."

Nat as a young man. _Jackson Collection_

There was another motivation. When Nat was 19, his 26-year-old sister, Cloraden, died of asthma in his arms. "I told her, 'Sis, I'll live for you!' What that meant was that her life had to be part of my life. ...So when someone says to me, 'You're 75 years old. Why don't you retire?' I say there's so much still to be done. ...We're doing better, but racism is still inherent in our institutions all over America, including our state. It's the young people who give me hope, get me refreshed. What's important to me is doing something every day to make this country better; to put your footprint on this world."

BESIDES BEING motivated, Nat Jackson may be the fittest 75-year-old in America. He jumps rope so fast--a national age-group record of 90 jumps in 30 seconds--his feet seem to disappear. It's an understatement to say he is passionate about physical fitness. "When you look at the rate of sickness and disease in America today, it's unparalleled," Jackson says. "People are being kept alive by medicines. They're on their diabetes medicine, their high blood pressure medicine, their fibromyalgia medicine. When I go out to a senior citizen center, they all applaud when I'm jumping rope, but they're sitting there with a plate of donuts. Longevity has not become important to us because we have adopted the mentality that freedom means we can eat anything we want any time we want, and 'If I get sick the doctor will fix me with medicines.' Most of the commercials on TV are for pharmaceutical drugs."

Nat and Thelma as college students and young marrieds. _Jackson Collection_

Jackson is a big, broad-shouldered man who radiates a sort of evangelical positivity. As Governor Dan Evans' point man for human services in the 1970s, Jackson was at the forefront of the battle for equal opportunity. Now he's carrying on the work of his friend and mentor, the late Arthur Fletcher, "the father of Affirmative Action" who went on to serve as president of the United Negro College Fund.

Nat Jackson and Thelma Harrison met at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Thelma, raised in Mobile, Alabama, shared Nat's passion for civil rights. She was impressed when she learned he had marched with Dr. King to a huge civil rights rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. Nat helped form a farmers' cooperative in Alabama and went on to receive a degree in vocational agriculture education. Married in 1966, the young couple arrived in the Tri-Cities in 1968. Thelma, a biochemist, had been recruited by Battelle Northwest at Richland. "And I was a ride-along," Nat jokes.

When he went looking for a job, "people told me I needed to meet Art Fletcher," Jackson says, smiling at the memory. The Pasco city councilman, an ebullient former pro football player, had spearheaded the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative. Now he was running for lieutenant governor. They bonded over breakfast and formed a friendship that lasted for 37 years. Jackson's sad duty was to help carry his friend's casket to a grave at Arlington National Cemetery in 2005.

Nat with his friend and mentor, Arthur Fletcher, in the 1990s. _Jackson Collection_

NARROWLY DEFEATED in his bid to become Washington's first black statewide elected official, Fletcher left the Tri-Cities to become Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Nixon Administration. Jackson, who had succeeded Fletcher as head of the East Pasco project, joined the state Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1972, he campaigned tirelessly for the state Equal Rights Amendment narrowly approved by Washington voters. And in 1973 he joined Governor Evans' staff as a special assistant, specializing in economic development.

"Art, meanwhile, was putting his life on the line to push Affirmative Action hiring goals for minority workers," Jackson remembers. "In Chicago in 1969, angry white construction workers almost beat to death a black guy they thought was Art. Nothing that bad happened here, but the white construction unions in Seattle were seething with anger when Governor Evans and [King County Executive] John Spellman refused to back down on their demands that minority workers be granted apprenticeships. That was just a microcosm of the discrimination I was seeing every day. The only black CPA in the State of Washington told me, 'I've submitted bids on 15 jobs. I've never gotten one.' The system was inherently racist."

Thelma with daughters Debrena (left) and Ericka at Lydia Hawk Elementary School in the North Thurston School District in the 1970s. _Lacey Museum, The Daily Olympian Collection_

Jackson says he and the governor underestimated the intransigence of the unions and white businesses, including some large corporations, in dealing with minority- and women-owned companies. "It was a constant struggle." Disgusted, Evans signed an executive order that mandated specific affirmative action goals. Conservatives were dead set against "quotas" for minorities. "Fletcher fought the same battle in the Nixon administration," Jackson remembers. "But Section 8(a) of the Small Business Administration, which Nixon expanded from an LBJ program, set the goal of awarding at least 5 percent of all federal contracting dollars to disadvantaged small businesses each year. It became the most successful minority business program in the history of the United States."

Evans' ambitious agenda was advanced by an agile staff. Jackson worked with pediatricians and legislators on both sides of the aisle to push through a 1974 bill requiring insurance companies to offer coverage for hospital and doctor bills incurred during the first 48 hours of an infant's life. It seems shocking today, Jackson says, but when Evans signed the bill into law 40 other states had yet to take similar action.

As president of the Thurston County Urban League, Jackson campaigned for legislation to suspend the liquor licenses of private clubs that practiced discrimination. His friend, Jim Dolliver, the Evans confidant who went on to become chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court, stood beside him at the hearing, declaring that the clubs' "freedom of association" argument was nothing but "a straw man" for prejudice. "Jim was an incredible human being," Jackson says. "The governor trusted him implicitly, and with good reason."

Nat Jackson, a wellness coach, has held national age-group jump-rope records for his dazzling speed. _Courtesy The Olympian_

Thelma Jackson, meantime, was busy coordinating a Work Options for Women--W.O.W.--program based at the Olympia YWCA. "A lot of people have mistaken our program as a bunch of radical women trying to force their way into the male job market," she told a forum in 1975. "It's not that at all"--unless it was radical to try and help female breadwinners rise above the poverty level.

Dr. Jackson launched a firm called Foresight Consultants to promote equity and diversity in education, and served on the advisory council for the implementation of legislation aimed at closing the achievement gap for African American students in the state. She also headed the Washington State Legislative Ethics Board and the Commission on African American Affairs. Her husband says one adjective won't suffice, but "remarkable" will do.

The Jacksons campaigned tirelessly for hate-crime legislation. When a black man in Texas was dragged to death by white supremacists in 1998, Nat attended James Byrd Jr.'s funeral, met with his family, set up a foundation to combat hate crime and hosted a website that generated international outrage. He made 13 trips to Texas.

Nat by then was a successful telecommunications entrepreneur, Rotarian and United Way volunteer. Thelma Jackson has served on task forces and advisory councils for four Washington governors. She served as president of the State School Directors' Association and headed the board of trustees of The Evergreen State College. She was also president of the North Thurston School Board five times during her 20 years as a member. She remains one of the state's leading educational activists and is an educator-in-residence at the University of Puget Sound.

Dr. Thelma Jackson, former president of The Evergreen State College Board of Trustees, is a noted educator and consultant. _Jackson Collection_

The legacy of MLK and their friend Art Fletcher has inspired two lifetimes of public service. The Jacksons also helped found New Life Baptist Church in Lacey.

IN 2018, the 20th anniversary of the passage of an initiative banning affirmative action by state and local government in Washington, the Jacksons have been working for legislation to "restore the fair treatment of under-served groups in public employment, education and contracting."

"In 1998 backers of Initiative 200 told voters that affirmative action discriminates against white people," Nat Jackson says. "The issue is equity. We warned that the initiative would dramatically reduce economic and educational opportunities for people of color everywhere in the State of Washington. Before the passage of I-200, state agencies and higher education institutions were spending 10 percent of their contracting and procurement dollars with certified minority and woman-owned businesses." Since the passage of I-200, that rate has declined to an average of 3 percent, according to Teresa Berntsen, the director of the Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises. The number of certified firms has declined by nearly half, she told a state Senate hearing. If the rate of spending would have stayed at the levels prior to I-200, an additional $3.5 billion would have gone to small minority and woman-owned businesses. "That's a huge takeaway," Jackson says."And it's even worse than that by my calculations. If you count what has been lost in municipalities around the state, it could be as high as $10 billion."

Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, says I-200 puts universities at a disadvantage when trying to enroll underrepresented students. ****But John Carlson, a leader of the I-200 campaign in 1998, maintains, "It's about principle. The most deserving should get the job, the most deserving should get into college. Bringing back a race-based admissions system would be divisive and wrong. Right now, almost 1 out of 4 students at University of Washington are Asian Americans. If I-200 is overthrown, Asian families will likely be the ones most hurt."

Thelma and Nat today. _John Hughes photo_

A bill to repeal the affirmative action ban failed again, narrowly, in the Legislature this year. "We're not giving up," Nat says. "We can't stop. It would irresponsible to stop. The implications are terrible for our state." Thelma is equally resolute. They have filed a counter-initiative.

WHEN ART FLETCHER left the Nixon administration as it retreated on Affirmative Action to shore up the president's Southern base, some said he had failed, Nat Jackson remembers. "He didn't fail." All of the affirmative action in this country today owes a debt to Arthur Fletcher. I followed his example. Governor Evans and Governor Spellman followed his example. When I became a businessman, all I wanted was just an opportunity to bid. Give me a fair opportunity, and I'll win. If you put me in the door, I'll win. When Nixon offered Art a job in the Department of Labor, he said, 'Mr. President, if you're talking about welfare, I can't help you. But, if you're talking workfare, _I can help you_.' That's the essence of 'quality of life': A decent job. Give black folks an equal opportunity and we'll succeed. When I was 13 I taught myself how to be a barber. My mother gave me a pair of hand clippers and some razor blades, and I went to work. Pretty soon I bought a new pair of scissors."

Before Fletcher announced he was running for president in 1996, he asked Jackson to serve on his campaign committee. "Everybody said Art knew he couldn't win," Jackson remembers. "They said it was just a token campaign to talk about civil rights. But Art thought he actually could be president. He thought he was gonna be president. If you're a Fletcher or a Jackson you don't run to come in second. You run to win. Art lived his whole life that way."

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**R ING, RING   
GOES THE BELL!**

* * *

If every picture tells a story, this one from February 13, 1968, should be in a time capsule as evidence the times were changing. The 30ish guy in the tailored sport coat, black slacks and tassel loafers, his reddish-brown hair carefully brushed back Philly-style, is Pat O'Day, the legendary Seattle disc jockey and concert promoter. Pat was the king of Top 40 radio from 3 to 6 weekdays in the Sixties. The jingle he wrote for his station is nostalgic catnip to hundreds of thousands of aging Puget Sound Baby Boomers. They can intone it on cue: "KJR Seattle, _Channel 95!_ "

Jimi Hendrix should need no introduction. The Garfield High School dropout is on the brink of international stardom. Miles Davis, another rebel with a cause, saw him as a masterfully original blues guitarist. Mick Jagger called him the "sexiest male in the world." Jimi has returned to his alma mater for a special pep assembly on the morning after a sold-out homecoming concert at the Seattle Center Arena.

Optically, O'Day and Hendrix are as incongruous a pair as Dick Clark and Little Richard (or Ryan Seacrest and Ozzy Osbourne). Jimi, who is 25, looks like a gypsy troubadour in moccasins and British pea coat, his electric hair stuffed into a jaunty Western hat banded with purple ribbon and silver hoops. His slightly bent left knee, downcast eyes and shy smile betray his what-am-I-doing-here nervousness, exacerbated by a raging hangover. He'd partied hard most of the night. But, hey, man, _Pat O 'Day_ was going to introduce him. Jimi's song "Spanish Castle Magic" was an homage to O'Day's prime concert venue in the 1960s--an old roadhouse with faux turrets midway between Seattle and Tacoma. A combo called the Rocking Kings, with 17-year-old Jimi on a $49.95 Sears Roebuck guitar, opened for another band at the Castle in 1960.

Pat and Jimi at Seattle Center Arena. _Peter Riches/Museum of Pop Culture_

"Look at him," O'Day says, studying the photo half a century later. "He's so cool. But when it came time to talk to a bunch of teenagers in the gym at his old school he was absolutely petrified. Scared spitless. It was really awkward. The Garfield student body was then predominantly black kids from the Central District, but Jimi's music wasn't exactly Motown. A lot of the kids didn't really know who he was. I grabbed the microphone and said, 'Standing before you today is a man who may soon surpass the Beatles in popularity!' Most of the kids applauded and cheered the idea a black musician from their school could displace an all-white British band. When I asked if anyone wanted to ask Jimi a question, one kid asked how long he had been gone. 'About 2,000 years,' Jimi quipped. Then a cheerleader with purple and white pompoms--the school's colors--asked him, 'Mr. Hendrix, how do you write a song?' Jimi mumbled something about 'Purple and white, fight, fight!' and said he always liked to hear the school bell. 'Right now, I have a plane to catch, so I'm going to say goodbye, go out the door, get into my limousine and go to the airport. And when I get out the door, the assembly will be over, and the bell will ring. And when I hear that bell ring, I'll be able to write a song. Thank you very much.' He waved goodbye with a sheepish smile and walked out the door without receiving an honorary diploma. The principal, Frank Fidler, shot me a look that said, 'Pat, you owe me one!' "

Jimi had left the building but not the stage.

Seven months later, as a summer of discontent was fading into a bumpy fall, the Jimi Hendrix Experience returned to Seattle in unconditional triumph. _Electric Ladyland_ , their new double album, rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard charts as Election Day approached. The Nixon-Agnew ticket was pledging "Law and Order" and an "honorable" exit from Vietnam. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Democrats' nominee, struggled to free himself from Lyndon Johnson's tattered coattails and images of Chicago cops thrashing anyone without a crewcut. Hendrix's virtuoso version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," a breakout single from the album, struck millions as an anthem for the year that changed the world. There was "too much confusion" and "no relief," Jimi lamented. Midway in the track, Jimi cuts loose on a soaring Stratocaster riff punctuated by a psychedelic slide up and down the frets. "It gave me chills," O'Day says, admitting that his tastes usually revolved--in fact still do--around Elvis, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles and the Ronettes.

Pat surrounded by admirers at a dance party in the 1960s. _Pat O 'Day Collection_

Early in his ascendency at KJR, O'Day began promoting dances and concerts featuring Northwest bands like The Fabulous Wailers, the Ventures and Sonics, as well as traveling stars like Ricky Nelson. "Every local band wanted to play the Castle," O'Day says, sea-blue eyes brightening at the memory, "and big-time artists like Roy Orbison--one of my all-time favorite performers--loved the energy of the crowds. Northwest kids knew their rock 'n' roll. When he returned home in 1968, Jimi asked me if I remembered the wired kid who was a fixture at the Castle, always hoping he'd be asked to sit in as a side man with other groups. 'That was me, Pat!' he said. I was flabbergasted. To me, Jimi was a jewel--just the sweetest guy you could imagine. We would sit and talk about hydroplanes and how he'd like to see the Woodland Park Zoo expanded. At heart he was just a Seattle kid."

BY 1968, O'Day's success as a concert promoter and high-key, wisecracking persona--not to mention KJR's Top 40 format--had bred contempt among the cognoscenti of the city's growing "underground." They branded him a greedy opportunist more interested in ratings and his piece of the action than "music that matters"--Buffalo Springfield, Dylan and The Byrds vs. "empty-headed crowd-pleasers" like the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Tom Robbins, writing in _Helix_ , Seattle's underground paper, lamented that Jimi Hendrix had been "sucked into the Pat O'Day syndrome with all of the phoney baloney implicit in that milieu" of "big-deal promo."

Fifty years on, O'Day leaned forward over his clam chowder at the Washington Athletic Club (Sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside--hooh!) and observed that it was all rock 'n' roll. "But if you were a purist in 1968 you weren't supposed to like Elvis, the Righteous Brothers _and_ Jimi Hendrix." Even after _Pet Sounds_ , Brian Wilson's brilliant Beach Boys album, left the _Little Deuce Coupe_ in the dust, some people still didn't get it, O'Day says. _Helix_ railed that O'Day had the effrontery to stage a LOVE-IN and charge admission. "They had bumper stickers saying 'Pat O'Day's a shuck' because music 'belongs to the people' and there I was, supposedly this crass promoter, charging $5 for concert tickets. Well, I know one thing for certain: Musicians appreciate getting paid. And you won't hear anyone say I didn't look out for the artists."

FAST FORWARD TO 1970. "Bridge over Troubled Water," fittingly, topped the charts as Nixon widened the war and the credibility gap became a crevasse. The Ohio National Guard mowed down four Kent State students during an anti-war protest, the Beatles broke up and Jimi Hendrix was dead at 27 of an accidental barbiturate overdose.

"Jimi's dad, Al Hendrix, asked me to fly to London and find out what was happening," O'Day remembers. "Tom Hulet, a Garfield High guy, was one of my partners at the time. We discovered the body was still at the morgue and nobody was doing anything. I had a letter from Jimi's dad, so they allowed us to claim the body. We bought a coffin and brought him home. It was one of the saddest duties of my life. What a tragedy. In my view, he's the greatest rock guitarist ever--a transcendent genius."

Hendrix's biographer, Seattleite Charles R. Cross, seconds the motion: "In rock music there has never been a guitarist as ground-breaking, original and impactful as Jimi Hendrix. Fifty years later he still ranks No. 1 in practically every poll. In modern rock he's unmatched. And Pat O'Day's impact on the Northwest music scene--booking shows, running KJR and influencing generations of listeners--is also unparalleled. He's the original Northwest rock legend."

Pat today. _Pat O'Day collection_

PAT O'DAY, a radio division honoree at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, now combs his silver hair forward, late '60s Mod-style, to frame his apple-cheeked face. At 84 he's alive and well, having survived a brain tumor and untold gallons of Jack Daniels and Stolichnaya. Trim and nimble, he's a walking, talking endorsement for Schick Shadel Hospital's touted 10-day, get-your-life-back addiction cure. Pat is exultant over a new brain-imaging study that yields evidence of reduced alcohol-craving after aversion therapy: "It proves what we've been saying all along."

Even coming down with a cold he sounds like himself. It's the same sandpapery baritone that narrated the after-school soundtrack of so many teenage lives in the 1960s. It was a stroke of George Lucas's genius that a disc jockey, Wolfman Jack, is a mostly unseen star of _American Graffiti_ , fielding requests for "Runaway," "Surfin' Safari" and "That'll be the Day." After promising that "16 Candles" will be the next platter, the Wolfman asks a lonely teenager what's happening in his town. _" All we got is you, Wolfman!"_ the kid says.

The young deejay at work. _Pat O 'Day Collection_

From Seattle, south to Olympia, north to Mount Vernon and east to the fast-growing suburbs across Lake Washington, Pat O'Day owned the afternoon airwaves, averaging 35 percent of the after-school and drive-time audience at a time when traffic was growing dramatically. Teenage car culture was in its heyday. Around the time the Lake City branch of the legendary Dick's Drive-In opened, Pat peaked at 41 percent. "Not only was he Seattle's No. 1 radio personality, with phenomenal market-share ratings, his company, Concerts West, became one of the major concert-booking agents in the nation," says Stan Foreman, a Northwest deejay and bandleader who went on to become Capitol Records' top executive in the Northwest.

MORE BALLARD than Belfast, Pat O'Day was born Paul Wilburn Berg on September 24, 1934, in Norfolk, Nebraska, the son of a coal miner turned preacher. His paternal grandparents, Johan Gustaf and Augusta Johnson Berg, were Swedish immigrants. O'Day's maternal grandfather, the Rev. Arthur Wilburn Marts, was also of Swedish extraction. But Arthur's wife, Zelda, appears to have Scots-Irish roots. Pat quips that this gives him some Celtic credibility. Without question, they were all uniformly devout.

Paul Emanuel Berg, Pat's father, worked in the mines in Iowa alongside his own father until the dust clogged his lungs and matted his eyes. "It was dark as a dungeon way down in the mine," as the song goes, but the Lord's light led Berg to the pulpit, as Pat puts it. By 1930, when he was 28, Pat's father was an ordained minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Meadow Grove, Nebraska, population 483. When Arthur Marts, a missionary with the American Sunday School Union, was passing through one Sunday and stayed for dinner, Berg learned Marts had a lovely, God-fearing daughter named Wilma. Paul and Wilma's three sons, Paul, David and Daniel, grew up steeped in the Bible at the Havelock Gospel Temple on the outskirts of Lincoln, Nebraska. Grandpa Marts visited often. "Like my dad, he was a great preacher," O'Day remembers. "He was also a lead-foot driver, speeding from town to town for Sunday School visits in the small towns of Nebraska. Sometimes he would do several sermons in a day, with the State Patrol on his tail. One time they pulled the distributor cap out of his car while he was preaching to try and slow him down."

In 1942, when Pat was 7, his father accepted the pastorate of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Tacoma. "After church on Sunday, my parents would always invite missionaries, visiting preachers or the choir director over for dinner, the mid-day meal. And of course things would immediately turn to the Lord." Pat and his brothers understood they were to be on their best behavior. But Pat, talkative and mischievous, couldn't resist joining the discussions. Bible study had left him with a streak of unorthodox skepticism. "One day in the middle of one of those conversations precocious Pat says, 'Did you know that Jesus didn't know the Earth was round?' My father says, _' What?'_ And I said, 'Well, the Bible says you should go to all four corners of the Earth and preach the Gospel to every peoples and nation. _Four corners._ So Jesus didn't know it was round!' I was given passages of scripture to read to help me mend my ways."

The Rev. Berg soon landed a regular radio ministry show on Tacoma's KMO, 1360, one of the state's pioneer stations. "Sometimes I'd go with him to the station. Regardless, I'd always listen. He didn't pound the pulpit, but he could move people emotionally. I knew then that I wanted to be on the radio. Every night I'd go into the bathroom and practice announcing into the bathtub because it made my voice resonate."

When O'Day enrolled in broadcasting school and began perfecting his delivery, he says he realized the secret to his father's success was being "one-on-one" with his listeners. O'Day points to Franklin D. Roosevelt's mastery of the medium during the darkest days of the Depression. With his patrician yet warm, reassuring voice, FDR used his "Fireside Chats" to communicate directly with the American people. "You felt like the president was right in your living room talking to you," O'Day says. One of his idols, Johnny Carson, told him no one summed things up better than Billy Graham:

"I had lunch with Johnny at the Brown Derby in Beverly Hills around 1966. I had always wanted to meet him--not just because he was a star but because we were both from Norfolk, Nebraska. I always joked that there was a mix-up at the hospital and I was supposed to be on NBC and he was supposed to be on KJR. That Johnny was born nine years before me ruins the story!

Holding a new Elvis record at KUTI-AM, Yakima, in 1958. _Pat O 'Day Collection_

"We talked about communications and he said something that just hit my heart because I was a huge fan of Billy Graham. Johnny told me that when he met the famous evangelist, Billy told him his philosophy was 'Talk to one person and you talk to everybody. Talk to everybody and you talk to nobody.' Billy could be at L.A. Memorial Coliseum, with 120,000 people, using an echoing public address system, and make a guy in the back row think that he was talking just to him. Whenever I was on the air, I'd look at the microphone and envision one person and talk to her or him. My father always understood the concept. It's why he had such a following."

THREE DAYS after Christmas in 1948, O'Day's father died of heart failure linked to TB and the damage coal-dust had done to his lungs decades earlier. The Rev. Berg was only 48. "My mother is now a widow with young three sons and virtually no money," O'Day remembers. "And I was 14 years old."

They moved to Iowa, near relatives, to regroup before landing in Bremerton in 1950. Wilma Berg began working in a Bible bookstore and immersed herself in child evangelism. Pat's earnings from an after-school job at a supermarket helped out. Then, during his junior and senior years, he left school at noon every day to work at a downtown department store. "We were poor. I had to work but I didn't resent it. I was glad to help. My mother, who lived just short of 100 years, was an amazing person--a true Christian lady. Her middle name was 'Grace.' "

O'Day graduated from Bremerton High School in 1953. He sang in the choir, but his claim to fame was being voted the classmate with the "best sense of humor." He attended Olympic College in Bremerton before enrolling in the broadcasting program at Tacoma Vocational-Technical Institute--now called Bates Technical College. His dream, from the beginning, was to be the afternoon deejay on KJR. In his Tacoma boyhood, it was the NBC affiliate, with an array of after-school adventure and mystery shows.

KVAS in Astoria, Oregon, in the fall of 1956, was the first stop on the backroads to a major market. "There, in between reading lost dog reports and funeral home ads, he developed his 'Platter Party' concept, which meant broadcasting rock hits from remote teenage sock hops on weekends--thus turning the previously sterile medium of radio into an 'event,' " wrote Northwest music historian Peter Blecha.

The young deejay--still going by Paul Berg--perfected his snappy, "faintly ironic" patter at KLOG in Kelso while staging teen dance parties at the National Guard Armory to supplement his $350 a month salary. That was actually a fair sum for a deejay in a market that size, O'Day says. The dance business, meantime, was generating $100 a week.

He arrived in Yakima in 1958, lured by the promise of the program director's slot and a hundred-dollar raise. It was there that he had one of the most bizarre experiences of his career. He was hosting the Saturday afternoon show on KUTI ("Cutie") when...

Suddenly something struck me. I turned around and there was this fellow standing there with a club, so I slipped off the chair and crawled under the turntable stand and into the next booth where I grabbed a microphone boom for protection. It turned out the guy was schizo-paranoid and had just broken up with his girl. He came after me because I kept playing "their" song--something called, get this, "Crazy Love"--and he thought I was mocking him. But the wildest thing came later. A few months afterwards he came to the station to apologize. I said, "Buddy, we've all got our faults. Let's just work on them together." We shook hands, and he left. But a little while later he came tearing back into the station and did a flying swan-dive leap over the turntables at me. I finally got him down, and it was a good thing I did. When they hauled him away they found a loaded shotgun in the front seat of his car. He'd gotten so mad he forgot the gun!

As "Pat O'Day," he made his Seattle debut on KAYO in the winter of 1959:

I told Ted Bell, the program director, that I wanted to change my name because "Paul Berg" didn't have any magic to it for a radio personality. I felt more like a Pat than a Paul, though I did have some mixed emotions because I was proud to be Paul Berg's namesake son. I thought Pat was a great name for me and my personality. So we kicked it around. If it was going to be Pat maybe something Irish would be good. I don't remember if it was Ted or me, but we settled on O'Day. It had to be spelled different from the big Seattle high school--O'Dea-- so it wouldn't be a rip-off. I legally changed my name to Pat O'Day soon thereafter. My mother, bless her heart, made the switch and began calling me Pat.

When KJR announced it was switching to a Top 40 format, O'Day landed his dream job. "On New Year's Day 1960, I went on the air at KJR for the first time," he recalls wistfully. "Little did I know it would be my home for the next 15 years." The rest is broadcasting history. O'Day was named the top program director in the nation in 1964 and 1965 and "Radioman of the Year" in 1966. He began announcing hydroplane races on Lake Washington in an era when rooster tails meant summer. By 1968, O'Day was such a household name that he was recruited to run for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket. O'Day's friend Jim Clapp and Clapp's formidable father, Norton, chairman of the Weyerhaeuser Company, promised to spearhead fundraising if he'd enter the race. "It was a fascinating moment. I told them I was flattered, but politics wasn't me. So they recruited my friend Bill Muncey, the famous hydro racer." **19**

O'Day ascended to station manager, all the while expanding his concert business and investing in real estate, cutting deals and hobnobbing with the stars. Notably, he recalls a pool party where he says Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who told their wildman drummer, Keith Moon, to lighten up a bit because drum kits were more expensive to replace than guitars after the obligatory set-ending bash-fest.

O'Day dabbled in cocaine and marijuana, but his drug of choice was whiskey:

When I decided I was drinking too much Jack Daniels, I switched to Wild Turkey. Next, it was Stolichnaya vodka. I was a happy drunk all the while. Never got angry. It would turn my creative juices loose. I would forget business and become an artist. The drinking allowed me to get business out of my mind and write material for my radio show. What's the saying--'wooden leg'? I could drink enormous amounts of booze and never lose my equilibrium, oblivious to what it was doing to my body. A lot of times I went back on the air after a four Jack Daniels lunch and no one could tell. I was capable of drinking a fifth of whiskey a day. Then came the intervention. Schick Shadel Hospital changed my life--maybe saved my life.

I had a dear friend, Dan Sandal, who owned Daniel's Broiler restaurant. I did all of his marketing and advertising. I came up with some fun things and his business was booming. My deal with Dan was that aside from a small fee I could eat and drink at his restaurant with my other clients free of charge. One day his bartender said to him, "Do you know that Pat drinks half a fifth of Stolichnaya at lunch." Dan said, "Oh my God" and starting keeping an eye on me. So it was Dan who put together an intervention in May of 1986. My father-in-law had graduated from Schick five years before. So there I was--embarrassed and humiliated and pissed off. I went to Schick vowing I would beat the system, thinking I'd go in for two weeks and get them off my back. Well, I walked out two weeks later and never had another drink. I felt like a new human. The beauty is that you leave there and it's over with.

If the old deejay sounds like an evangelist, it's because he is. Cured, O'Day became the voice of Schick Shadel's radio and TV commercials and invested in the Burien hospital, now owned by a Texas-based health care provider. He still gives the welcoming address to each incoming group of patients. "I've sent hundreds of addicted people through the program--everyone from radio guys to Seahawks. A lot of people who've heard my testimonials over the years think it's hype. The 12-step, talk therapy people hate us. But it's scientific and it works."

In 2012, good friends and Pat's wife of 37 years, Stephanie, were increasingly alarmed by his memory lapses--more like abrupt black holes than Alzheimer's. Stephanie, a land use attorney in San Juan County, "is nothing if not tenacious," Pat says, so he was marched to the Emergency Room. A CAT scan revealed a massive tumor. "The doctor in the ER department told me I had inoperable cancer and only a short time to live. But another doctor ran in and said, 'We better do an MRI and be sure,' and 2½ hours later they told me, 'It's benign! You can be operated on!' The Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at the Swedish Neuroscience Institute gave me a new lease on life. I walked out of the hospital four days later feeling like a new man."

ASKED TO share something most people don't know about him, O'Day thinks hard for several seconds before saying, _" That I'm conservative._ I'm a traditionalist. Patriotic. I cry at the _Star Spangled Banner_." Above all, he says he hates dogmatism and the decline of civility. Those who branded him a low-brow "shuck" back in the day, will consider the following soliloquy proof positive they were right all along:

I despise the quirky areas America has turned since the drug-infested days of the late '60s. I hate it that the entire generation that was in college and academia at that time was so poisoned by drugs and leftist propaganda. _And now the students are the professors_. I had my doubts about Vietnam, but I hated the vilification of our troops--and that all cops were being called "pigs." I'm appalled at ingrained bias. I would say it was alarming if 90 percent of the professors were Republicans, so it's equally alarming to me that 90 percent are Democrats. It makes me feel bad that it happened in my lifetime. ... And now we're legalizing marijuana. Where did it say that America needed another intoxicant? And one that's so easy to hide? People driving cars totally intoxicated yet they don't show the signs like with alcohol; kids going to school eating marijuana cookies. So we have done a great disservice to our youth by decriminalizing it. It's part of the mentality that came out of the late '60s. And academia today encourages all kinds of lunacy and "freedoms."

OK, Pat. Tell us how you really feel. So how about afternoon radio today? "I don't listen to music stations with any enthusiasm. I listen to a lot of talk radio," he says with a shrug. Unsurprising, in light of the last paragraph, O'Day says he finds KIRO's Dori Monson--the sworn enemy of bureaucratic nincompoopery and taxpayer-fleecing schemes--compellingly provocative. "He talks to people one on one" and does his homework, O'Day says. And he "really enjoys" KIRO's 3-7 duo of Ron Upshaw and Don O'Neill and their witty sidekick, Rachel Belle. _" She's good."_

When it's music he wants, O'Day tunes to "countrified stuff because they're still using block chords and harmonies, recording with real instruments, and the songs are all about storytelling."

To Pat, the oldies are still goldies. His all-time favorite is "Be My Baby," one of Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" hits for the talented Ronettes. "One weird guy. But a great producer!" O'Day says, laughing. "Roy Orbison's 'Only the Lonely' still moves me every time I hear it after all these years, and 'Georgia On My Mind' is Ray Charles at his most brilliant. I still love a lot of the Beach Boys tunes."

Best concert ever? "Led Zeppelin at Tampa Stadium. May 1973. Sold out show. 57,000 fans. Great band. Fireworks. Four-dozen white doves. Robert Plant was turned on like you can't believe and the crowd was stunned. So was I."

Proudest achievement? "The success I was able to design and orchestrate with KJR. We were breaking ground. TV had destroyed radio, but then it had a rebirth in the '60s. We were making it up as we went along. We set standards that have never been topped or equaled, and that's a shame because radio is still capable of such things today. There's no regard for real programming. People haven't changed. Radio has changed."

Any advice from the vantage point of 84? "Stay busy! You only get one shot on this earth. How can you waste one day of it?"

Could he sing a certain jingle for the State Archives?

"Sure." Pat O'Day leans into the tape recorder and intones "KJR, Seattle..."

He interrupts himself, saying, "I'm not in good voice today. Let me try it again."

He clears his throat and nails it:

"KJR, Seattle, _Channel 95!_ "

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**M ARK TWAIN WITH AN ILLEGAL SMILE**

* * *

In what _TIME_ magazine deemed "the year that changed the world," Tom Robbins embodied the Altered States of America. Robbins, 36, was an Air Force veteran, grad school dropout and seasoned journalist. He had been an art critic for _The Seattle Times_ until he famously quit one day by calling in "well." By 1968 he was mustache-deep in counterculture. He hosted a free-form radio show called Notes from The Underground on non-commercial KRAB, "the only station in America with macrobiotic kilowatts." He wrote for _Helix_ , Seattle's underground paper. He found his writing voice there, he declared, with a concert review the previous year. It began: "On July 23 and 24, Eagles Auditorium was raped and pillaged, anointed and sanctified by The Doors." Reviewing Jimi Hendrix's 1968 "homecoming" Seattle concert, Robbins called the revolutionary guitarist "Oscar Wilde in Egyptian drag" and said, "What he lacks in content, he makes up in style."

Previous page: Robbins said he modeled his writing philosophy on Bonnie and Clyde: "I believe in one man, one woman, together, taking risks, living on the edge." _Mary Randlett Photo_

Seattle's distractions proved too much, though, for the aspiring novelist who hailed from North Carolina hill country but fell for Washington's firs and ferns, its sloughs and salmon. In 1968, Robbins decamped to tiny South Bend in Pacific County where he and his girlfriend Terrie Lunden rented a place for $8 a month. They grazed on restaurant leftovers she brought home from waitressing. "I finally figured if I was going to write this book, I had to get out of town," he said.

"This book" turned out to be _Another Roadside Attraction_ , a fantastical novel of outlaws and Buddhism, mischief and metaphysics, erotica and exotica. It hung on an earthy but mystical couple who open a hot dog stand in Skagit County that comes to host the mummified corpse of Jesus. You probably can't imagine what happens next.

Published by Doubleday in 1971, _Another Roadside Attraction_ won the Washington Governor's Writers Award. _Rolling Stone_ magazine called it the "quintessential counterculture novel." The _Los Angeles Times_ said Robbins was the new Mark Twain. But the hardcover edition sold like bad fish. Fewer than half of the initial 5,000 copies were bought.

Then a Ballantine Books editor took home a copy of _Another Roadside Attraction_ one night, looking for orphaned hardcovers to reprint as paperbacks. Ten minutes into it, Leonore Fleischer said she was "howling with joy at the zany little novel." Ballantine bought the paperback rights for $3,500. It printed small runs, no more than 15,000 at a time. The orders kept trickling in as dog-eared copies of the paperback were passed among friends, stashed in knapsacks and backpacks. One day the Harvard Coop, the official bookstore of the storied university, ordered 600 copies. **20** "We're home," said the Ballantine sales manager.

"Doubleday had guessed wrong about who would pay the price of a clothbound copy; they were right about who would buy the book. The amorphous 'young,' especially on the West Coast, took it to heart," said _The New York Times_. The zany little novel __was "more attractive as a $1.95 paperback than it had been in bourgeois full dress."

Robbins' second novel was published in 1976, written in his new home, Skagit County. The protagonist of _Even Cowgirls Get the Blues_ was a beautiful bisexual model with freakishly large thumbs. Soon the two books topped 2 million copies sold.

Robbins' first novel won the Washington Governor's Writers Award. His characters suffered, died, stared down tyrants and still opted for "joy in spite of everything." _Washington State Library_

It wasn't until 1980's _Still Life with Woodpecker_ , though, that Robbins hit _The New York Times_ bestseller list. Subsequent novels also made the list, including _Jitterbug Perfume_ and _Skinny Legs and All_. "He's one of those writers who clicks, and clicks hard, with some people," said _Slate_ magazine.

In an early interview, Robbins said his writing philosophy was modeled on the bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde: "I believe in one man, one woman, together, taking risks, living on the edge." But there was more. A theme in his first two books was "joy in spite of everything." His characters suffered, died, stared down tyrants and still opted for joy. And Robbins seemed to relish playing the jester, or more accurately, the trickster, "a figure other cultures have used as a vehicle for mythology and mirth." The role fit comfortably on a smart aleck who called his family "a southern Baptist version of _The Simpsons_ ," and once led the neo-Dada Shazam Society's "happenings" with names such as, "A low-calorie human sacrifice to the goddess Minnie Mouse." (At that "happening" Robbins encountered a dazed docent, the wife of a Seattle surgeon, muttering, "Somebody put a fish down my blouse.")

What distinguished Robbins' work from other trippy, rainbow-filled novels was his writing skill and precision, according to Fleischer, the senior Ballantine editor. He was serious about frivolity. That touch was still on display in his 2014 pseudo-memoir _Tibetan Peach Pie_. Asked what it felt like when his consciousness went _inside_ a daisy on a life-changing LSD trip, Robbins said, "Like a cathedral made of honey and mathematics." Here's his description of his adopted Oz: "Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain."

Robbins once called Pablo Picasso--collect--from Seattle's Blue Moon tavern. Picasso supposedly refused to accept the charges. _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_

While major writers such as Graham Greene and Thomas Pynchon have praised Robbins, some critics tend to frown on his work. He's been accused of "goofily overheated prose," tortuous digressions, "all sorts of heavy, bogus wisdom" and wearing an "illegal smile." One suspects some of the critics have a "narrowness of experience," as Robbins might say. "Anyone who still falls for the lie that my readers are callow airheads should spend some time perusing the fan mail that fills one huge drawer of a file cabinet in my office (I've only saved the cream of the crop, of course)," Robbins says via email. "This very week I've received epistles from two mature readers recounting how my novels dramatically changed (and are still affecting) their lives. Who was it who said, 'Let the jackals howl. The caravan rolls on.' "

With the possible exception of Hendrix, Robbins is the top emissary of arts and letters whose rise to prominence can be traced to the Washington of the 1960s. But unlike Hendrix, who died at 27, Robbins is still dispensing all sorts of wisdom at 86.

After we reached out to Robbins via email, the phone rang early one morning at our office in the state library. "This is Tom Robbins." There wasn't a detectable trace of the drawl that lingered during his KRAB radio shows. (He describes his voice then as the "vocal equivalent of week-old roadkill on a Tennessee truck route in mid-July.") A creature of habit used to putting words to a blank page, Robbins asked if we could send some questions his way, so he could sketch his thoughts.

I knew that Robbins bridled at the perception he's a "'60s writer." ( _Another Roadside Attraction_ is his only book set in that stormy decade and he swears he doesn't write under the influence of anything stronger than a full moon.) I also thought of him as fiercely smart, with little patience for the banal. If it were up to me, I told him, I'd ask about the tragedy of the tomato sandwich, a deep passion we share. Or _that_ review of The Doors. ("Enter if you dare, my children, exit if you can.") But 1968 was our task at-hand, turf where Robbins seemed reluctant to trod. I sent him a bundle of questions about South Bend, societal changes 50 years later, technology, Hendrix and The Doors, "bad" drugs, and more. I was hoping to find a key that would unlock the doors to Robbins' wisdom.

The _P-I_ newsroom had its share of Merry Pranksters. Robbins once wore a gorilla suit to work. Walking by, Managing Editor Lou Guzzo said, "Robbins, you never looked better." "Disney on Ice" characters visited the _P-I_ and gravitated to Robbins' desk. Why? Go ask Alice. _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_

He responded like someone sentenced to a life of Protestant work ethic. He got cracking, supplied updates, and when hindered by a serious eye infection and a dental problem I didn't dare drill down on, he only asked for a day or two of leniency. (I don't recall ever mentioning a deadline.) He sent more than 2,000 words that answered several of our questions, weaving together the immortality of the '60s, his pleasant time in South Bend (despite its undignified reaction to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination), Jimi's disappointing homecoming concert, and the '60s demise at the hands of "boogie" culture and substances that didn't expand the mind, but fed the reptile brain. Ever the joy-hunter, Robbins remains optimistic about Washington state in 2018 and our ability to "expand our vision, deepen our consciousness, damp down our egos"-despite our economy's constantly tumbling dice. His advice: "bless the dice, and cheerfully get on with the game."

**Bob Young**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**" LET TOM RUN"  
ROBBINS ON 1968**

The "Psychedelic Sixties" seems to have replaced the "Gay Nineties" and the "Roaring Twenties" as "the decade that will not die"--and for far more serious and significant reasons. In politics and sexual mores, in music and fashion, in art and advertising--and especially--in social behavior and spiritual orientations, that "decade" that in Washington State didn't fully manifest itself until late 1965 and peaked in '68, not only left an indelible imprint but is referenced (nostalgically, derisively, or both) more often than any other period in our history.

Maybe it's sentimental if not actually ridiculous to romanticize the Sixties as some embryonic golden age--obviously, this fetal age of enlightenment aborted--yet while it lasted the period was extraordinary. (And it was a hoot!) From the "be-ins" in Seattle's Volunteer Park to the "trips festivals" at Eagles Auditorium, from the anti-war marches down Fourth Avenue that often resembled Mardi Gras parades to the on-going arguments about Buddhist philosophy in back booths at the Blue Moon Tavern, it seemed a time when a significant little segment of Seattleites was realizing its moral potential and flirting with its neurological destiny. Eventually, of course, the old existential ferry boat--Complacency to Agitation/Agitation to Complacency--resumed its regular run, but it was nothing short of ecstatic while it lasted.

"The Doors are carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians," Robbins wrote about the band's first concert in Seattle. The Doors so enjoyed his 1967 review they gave Robbins one of their gold records. (Above) Robbins reads that review at a 50th anniversary celebration for The Doors at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP). _MoPOP photo_

Olympia photographer Mary Randlett's portraits of Washington artists and writers are known for their "effortless intimacy." She photographed Robbins while he was writing _Another Roadside Attraction_ and later in his adopted hometown, La Conner. _Mary Randlett photo_

Now I'd like to make it clear that the Sixties in no way motivated me to abandon journalism for fiction. I dictated my first story to my mother at age 5 (probably better than some of the stuff I've produced recently) and planned from that age on to write books. By 1967, at age 35, I felt that I was finally ready. I had a specific theme in mind, had a setting and characters. What I didn't have was my voice (how my written words sound to the mental ears of a reader). In July of that year, I attended the first concert in Seattle by The Doors, staying up very late that night writing a review of the concert for _Helix,_ our local "underground" __newspaper (the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ didn't object to me moonlighting a bit). The next morning, when I read over my inspired review (The Doors were so taken with it they later gave me one of their gold records), I realized for the very first time that I might write my novel less like a journalist and more like a **poet.**

That review, since you asked, was written in the largely unfurnished attic of an old house on Seattle's Ship Canal, a block-and-a-half north of Ewing, just out of range of a suicide jumper from the Ballard Bridge. I may have been stoned earlier in the evening, but I was totally straight when I wrote the piece. (I've never written stoned. The one time I attempted it, I found myself mostly just captivated by the ink soaking into the wood pulp. It was like watching baby spiders drink water.) The Doors review was not edited. To this day, for better or worse, would-be editors appear challenged by my writing. The really good ones seem to just throw up their hands and "let Tom run."

My first novel ( _Another Roadside Attraction)_ was set in the Sixties, __my second ( _Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)_ in the period's aftermath, but that shouldn't brand me as a "Sixties writer" any more than Hemingway could be deemed a "Spanish writer" or a "revolutionary writer" because his early literary success was colored by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Yes, we did each write about public events in which we were participants, but Papa's themes and my own were infinitely larger than either of those particular historical periods. And by the way, while the main protagonists of _Another Roadside Attraction_ (Amanda and John Paul Ziller) were in a sense Sixties archetypes, they could also be said to embody Eurydice and Orpheus from Greek myth. The seven novels I've published since have nothing whatsoever to do with the Sixties.

In South Bend, where I holed up to write free from on-going Seattle distractions, I made a couple of friends (and mentored a small group of high-school boys), but mostly kept to myself, just writing and hanging out with my girlfriend. The town proved somewhat of a redneck reservation. For example, the local tavern erupted in applause when news arrived of Martin Luther King's assassination. The editor of the weekly newspaper would surely have published a protest against my presence in town had he not known that I was working weekends at the _Seattle P-I._ I don't know how the locals voted in 2016, but I suspect 90 percent of the men would trade every tree in Pacific County, every oyster in Willapa Bay, for just one month as a billionaire with a fashion-model wife. It isn't that these guys are stupid or mean, but, rather, the unsuspecting victims of a socio-economic system that might legitimately fear its fate were its working-class citizens to start peeking through cosmic windows and climbing the winding staircase of higher wisdom. In any event, I was treated courteously in South Bend, and remain thankful for the quiet, physically charming, and affordable refuge it provided.

Just as music presided over the birth of the '60s, Robbins says it was present at the era's demise, which he lays at the hands of "boogie culture" and substances that didn't expand consciousness. "While never truly awake, boogie never sleeps," he says. _Helix/PaulDorpat.com_

If psychedelic drugs gave birth to the Sixties, then music was the midwife, the nanny, the pediatrician. It was music that cemented the movement, held its varied members together, allowed it against all odds to flourish and spread. Largely underground, of course, especially in the beginning, it was the uncommon common denominator, the outward expression of a shared internal awakening.

Particularly instrumental (pardon the pun) were the new rock bands emerging in San Francisco: Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, even the short-lived group with the greatest band name ever: Stark Naked & the Car Thieves. Then along came the Beatles.

(There were a few good bands in the Seattle area, as well, but they developed a bit later, and at the moment I can't recall their names. Obviously, there was the great Jimi Hendrix, but he was little known to Seattle's white population before Monterey Pop in 1967. Incidentally, Hendrix's "homecoming" concert at Seattle Center was a disappointingly subdued affair. Where was the proclamation, the standing ovation? Where were the cheerleaders from Garfield High? I was working on the copy desk at the _P-I_ the night news of Jimi's death came over the AP wire. The night editor, who despised anything related to "dirty hippies" and their culture, wadded up the bulletin, tossed it in the trashcan--whereupon I retrieved it, took it into the managing editor's office, and explained that the victim was a local product and an international star. The next morning it ran in all of our editions.)

Yes, music presided over the birth of the Sixties--but it was also present at the era's demise. In the summer of 1971, a huge rock festival had been organized to occur in Grand Isle, Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Festival organizers had brought over a noted holy man from India, and the guru was to open the three-day festival by chanting while squatting in the lotus position on the lip of the stage.

Considering that Asian mysticism had permeated the psychedelic movement almost from its inception, this wouldn't have seemed at all inappropriate. However, the robed guru had barely begun to "Ommmm" when a particularly loudmouthed attendee down front yelled, "F*** you! Let's boogie!") And there followed a festival-wide chorus of "Yeah! Yeah! Boogie! Boogie!"--and thunderous applause. The poor chanter was hooted off the stage.

When the following day I learned of this, I turned to my friends and announced. "Well, that's it. The Sixties are over." And, alas, that proved correct. Psychedelic culture was about to be replaced by boogie culture.

In contrast to mind-expanding psychedelics, the boogie culture's sacrament of choice was good old-fashioned inhibition-shrinking booze, fast being augmented with cocaine and meth amphetamines: substances that confuse, inflame, and ultimately eradicate consciousness; that agitate the old reptile brain and cause the aforementioned existential ferry to run in tight circles.

The triumph of these "bad" drugs over psychedelics may be attributed to the fact that generally we humans seem more comfortable being shut down a bit than opened up too far, prefer the confusion we expect to the revelation we do not; favor tweaked familiar over full-blown radiant strangeness; choose fantasies that inflate the ego over those that supplant it; are neither intellectually nor emotionally conditioned for ecstasy or enlightenment. As Hermann Hesse put it in _Steppenwolf,_ "The magic theater is not for everyone."

Now here in Washington, where our rainy climate has a natural tendency to turn a person inward, and perhaps, too, because of the area's longstanding connections to Asian traditions, exemplified by the school of "mystic" painters (Tobey, Graves, Anderson, et al) that flourished here, boogie culture was slower to triumph than elsewhere. But even in 1971 it was hardly absent. One night that same summer, I was taking the air out on the deck of the 1890's Tavern in La Conner, as inside couples danced to a raucous rock band; when my attention was drawn to a young man and woman who sat opposite one another at a picnic table. The pair was silent, without expression, almost comatose--except that every now and then the man would stare at the woman and mutter, "Boogie." Then, after two or three minutes, the female would raise her head and say to him (without expression), "Boogie." This periodic exchange continued over and over until eventually I had to flee, but for all I know it might have gone on until closing time. Or even thereafter. While never truly awake, boogie never sleeps.

A food fight broke out at a 1966 "happening" in Kirkland organized by Robbins. He encountered a dazed docent muttering "somebody put a fish down my blouse."

Americans were introduced to psychedelics and cybernetics at approximately the same time. A coincidence? To what degree the one might have influenced the other is difficult to determine, although Steve Jobs made it quite clear that LSD played a significant role in his development of the personal computer. In Zen it is said that "a big front has a big back," but while I've neither experienced nor witnessed a "bad trip," one needn't be a technophobe to note the "big back" of our electronic renaissance.

In truth, of course, it was technology that helped make us human. When our early ancestors commenced to employ stone tools, a permanent gulf widened between them and our simian cousins. We were empowered, evolving as hunters and eventually farmers and merchants. We also got good at killing and exploiting one another, at taking what wasn't ours. Big front, big back.

The spread of electronics has stimulated advances in commerce, aviation, and medicine. It also has turned significant numbers of the population into virtual humans, into a race of zombies staring endlessly into lighted screens, both large and tiny, ignoring nature, ignoring life all around them--except to the extent that the screen has now usurped life. If the biggest pollutant muddying the waters of human consciousness has always been the narcissistic ego, well, the advent of social media has been to narcissism what red meat is to a hungry wolf.

Problems ranging from over-population and social divisiveness to road rage and intrusive audiences (at concerts, quiz programs, and reality TV shows) may be laid at the stamping feet of the neo-narcissists: these days, every noisy onlooker, whether or not he or she has paid any dues--seems to think he or she ought to have a share of the spotlight. It may be a case of democracy swallowing its own tail.

What effect the latest technologies will have on imagination is yet to be determined, but I suspect it will be minimal. Wasn't television supposed to have killed off imagination back in the Fifties? The fact is, truly creative imagination has always been a rare commodity. Humanity has entertained group enthusiasms; experienced group deceptions, even group hallucinations, but creative imagination has ever been the province, the gift of singular individuals, usually working on the fringes of a society with which it frequently is at odds.

Washington State was founded by fortune hunters, men hoping to strike it rich in timber and furs. In 1968, the timber business, though having given ground (if that's not a contradiction) to aircraft production, was still flourishing, and no economist was predicting that our powerful log train might soon be overtaken by a sleek little high-tech trolly. Today, logs seem less essential to our economy than logarithms. In the game of life, for a state as for a person, the dice are always rolling.

Just because 2018 isn't strobe-flashing with promise like 1968 doesn't mean we can't expand our vision, deepen our consciousness, damp down our egos, bless the dice, and cheerfully get on with the game.

**Tom Robbins**

**April 2018**

**" MY LIFE IS EDUCATION"**

* * *

The anticipation is palpable as the crowd rises to catch a glimpse of her. The P.A. system throbs with booming beats to introduce the guest of honor at her 90th birthday party. Dr. Maxine Mimms descends the stairs, surrounded by an entourage, and advances regally with a sparkling cane. She wears a huge white-brimmed hat decorated with cowrie shells. **21** With a proud smile and grand wave, she meanders through the crowd, greeting old friends, touching children. Smartphones held high capture her charisma.

Widely known in African American circles, Maxine Buie Mimms is an educator and counselor who works with schools all over the United States--globally, too, including her friend Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. She is best known, however, for her work as founder of The Evergreen State College's Tacoma campus. "Mimms is a feisty and outspoken academic whose unorthodox style has often ruffled feathers in the placid Pacific Northwest," _Essence_ magazine wrote in 1997. "Yet her provocative educational philosophy has also produced results." When a visiting historian read her that line, she smiled and chuckled: "Put that in there. I would like that for my tombstone, too!"

Dr. Maxine Mimms celebrates her 90th birthday at The Evergreen State College Tacoma campus. _Lori Larson photo_

In a cottage at water's edge in rural Mason County, she often receives visitors. She is a teacher, a preacher and a healer. Her one-bedroom home serves as both classroom and sanctuary. It's filled with African art, artifacts and photos. A slew of awards hide in the bathroom, perhaps so they won't intimidate visitors. She may be flamboyant, but she is humble. Dr. Mimms has been on a mission to serve her whole life. She sees no reason why 90 should slow her down. "This phone rings 24/7," says Isa Nichols, her confidant and dear friend. "She is solving the problems of the world sitting in that chair."

An hour east, you will find Mimms' legacy--or "longevity," as she puts it--in a far more urban environment. As you enter The Evergreen State College building in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood you are greeted by a bold, bright African mural. Just inside the door there's a framed portrait of Dr. Mimms, donning a mortarboard, as founder and former executive director of the Tacoma program. She calls her Ph.D. a "Ph.WE" because her career has been dedicated to helping under-served, marginalized populations rise through education.

The events of 1968, often characterized as "The year that changed the world," significantly impacted Mimms' outlook on her role as a leader. "The murdering of a Martin Luther King and the Kennedys was very painful. But you have to re-image, 'What does that mean in terms of you, Maxine?' " she says, framing the question rhetorically. "Well, I had to increase my studies. I had to look at theology. I had to absolutely say, 'What does liberation theology mean to me? What does it mean for me to have met Martin?' What privilege I had. I had to rise with confidence and do something about it. So in me, their farewells forced me to do a capital Hello. And in that, that's why you have the Tacoma campus."

MAXINE MIMMS joined the faculty of the fledgling Evergreen State College in Olympia in 1972. The innovative liberal arts school had opened the previous year, just four years after Governor Dan Evans and legislators signed off on legislation that recognized a need for a state college in the South Sound area. A huge cohort of Baby Boomers were departing high schools. Leaving tradition behind, Evergreen caused a stir by not giving traditional grades, gauging achievement instead with in-depth narrative evaluations. It prides itself on interdisciplinary courses that combine academic departments. Clearly, it was born out of the 1960s. The students it attracted proved it.

The Evergreen State College Tacoma campus on 6th Avenue in 2018. The mural was a student project, designed with symbols that represent the different ethnic communities that have lived in the Hilltop neighborhood. _Lori Larson photo_

"When I got down here it blew me away it was so white," Mimms remembers. "I had just left Washington, D.C., and I almost had a heart attack. I couldn't believe I had participated in that much whiteness and that much clear blackness--and then come down here. They had green hair. They had on robes. They had dogs. I had never seen anything like that in my life. It's the best thing that ever happened to me because Evergreen helped me to grow up and mature and not be so judgmental. When you're confined you can be judgmental about stuff you don't even know about."

Dr. Mimms in the 1970s. _The Evergreen State College (TESC)_

Mimms was commuting to the college's sprawling Cooper Point campus from Tacoma, which at the time had two respected private colleges but no public institutions with affordable tuition other than community colleges and trade schools. **22** "Every bone in me would resist," she remembers. "My soul was crying and sad because I was not able to work with people whose skin color looked like mine." There she was, a self-described "middle-class African American woman, Southern-bred," bringing her skills and body to "a European model" college. "I couldn't do it."

While eating at Browne's Star Grill on MLK Way in Tacoma, she overheard two women talking about "a horrible woman" who left to teach in Olympia when she should be teaching her own community. Mimms approached them. "They were two black women. One had a child with sickle cell anemia, and she was wondering how she would ever be able to go back to school with all the responsibilities she had. These women had been saying there was no one in Tacoma in the four-year education system who would help people like them."

She knew what she had to do.

Starting in 1972, Dr. Mimms and her neighbor, Dr. Betsy Diffendal, began teaching in their homes. Mimms would start her instruction in Tacoma at 5 a.m., leave for Evergreen at 8 and work in Olympia until 5. She kept up that schedule until 1984 when she started teaching full-time in Tacoma.

Mimms would instruct students any way she could, anywhere she could, with whatever resources were available. Students registered for school in Olympia but she held classes in Tacoma. "That's how I hid the students, because if I had gone and asked permission and worked with committees to start a campus it would have never happened. I'd still be meeting committees. They came to my house every day. They brought their husbands and their children, their books and supplies. We filled up every chair and sofa in the living room. Sometimes there were 15 around the dining room table."

INSTRUCTION AT HOME was nothing new to Mimms. She had watched her mother, Isabelle, teach a neighbor how to read at their kitchen table in Newport News, Virginia. After church, they always had chicken, potato salad, string beans and visitors. "It was just a formal, wonderful conversation. My father insisted that we agree at the table on topics and all kinds of current events. After the dinner we were forced to disagree, but respect the disagreement. So therefore I can hear all kinds of opinions and I never take it personally," Mimms says.

Born on March 4, 1928--or "March Forth," as Mimms puts it with a wry smile--she was one of five children. Her parents, Benson and Isabella (DeBerry) Buie were descendants of African American farmers in the Carolinas. "The vocabulary in my house was 'improvement.' It was always improvement. Negro improvement," says Mimms, explaining that her father was a "Garveyite," a follower of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican orator who promoted the back-to-Africa movement that led to Rastafarianism. ****Garvey was popular in the 1910-1920s with blacks around the world who envisioned displaced Africans coming together and forming their own country. Garvey taught "a separatist philosophy of social, political and economic freedom for blacks." By 1920 Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association boasted 4 million members. Garvey once spoke to 25,000 people at Madison Square Garden, preaching pride in African history and culture. **23**

Saturday market on the streets of Newport News, Virginia in1936. _Paul Carter collection, Library of Congress_

Garvey's black-pride philosophy led Mimms' father to encourage his children to speed walk everywhere during the Great Depression. He told them it was for their health. In reality he refused to let them experience humiliation on segregated city buses. When they went to the opera, Maxine wondered out loud why all the performers were white. "My father told me that all the real performers came out late at night when it was past our bedtime, and we were all home in bed."

Benson Buie also taught his children "how to paint with language." Maxine learned to combat negativity by shifting "the image of that language that might have caused you an issue."

The family lived near Hampton University--an historically black private school--that drew many African American orators. Maxine listened to lectures by Howard Thurman, a theologian, author and civil rights activist who was a mentor to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Marcus Garvey reads the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World at Liberty Hall in New York City in August 1920. _UCLA African Studies Center_

Her parents' sense of racial pride and drive for self-improvement are the benchmarks of Mimms' long, eventful life. She doesn't focus on the difficulties in her lifetime. In fact she flat-out refuses to go there. "As a black woman born in the South, I reversed everything. I will not allow myself to spiral into negativity. I refuse to!"

You should always "be truthful," she counsels. "But if they murdered a Kennedy, a King and all, I had to see the murder as a season. Because you must remember that loss hits the heart. You've got to stay alive... Bobby Kennedy's humanity might have impacted me. My humanity may have impacted _him_. We all know each other. You can't withdraw. I don't believe in the concept of retreats. I don't like retreats. I like advances. I don't think anybody with any social justice consciousness needs to go on a retreat. Retreat to what? That's showing defeat in your spirit."

THAT THE BUIE children would go to college was not in doubt. Mimms holds a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University, a master's from Wayne State University in Detroit and a doctorate in educational administration from Union Graduate School. Mimms remembers her experience moving through the ranks of higher education in the era of segregation. Black educators spotted the brightest kids and gave them marching orders. Maxine remembers it all so vividly:

Back in those days ... I didn't know there was separation between high school and college. It was mandatory in our neighborhood to go to college. They just ran together. ... Black teachers would say, "We're going to need five doctors. Henry, you're a 4.0 student. Helen, you're going to go to..." They told me I was going to go into medicine--hematology.

I got to Virginia Union and I noticed that you couldn't do science and run and chase men. And that's what I had wanted. I had never seen that many men. I knew Sam (McKinney), I knew Martin (Luther King Jr.), Adam Clayton Powell. Sam and Martin were at Morehouse. And the Morehouse men used to come to debate the Virginia Union men. Lord have mercy!

I was taught how to get words to make an image. That's what the black schools were all about. And that's why you find successful preachers and successful doctors because [with] everything you did your vocabulary had to paint a picture for your community. So we were forced to become [healers].

You met your husband and your wife at college. Met a good girl; met a good man.

MAXINE MET Jack Mimms in Detroit. The two were married, and headed west in 1953 when Jack took a job with the Boeing Company in Seattle. They bought a home in Bellevue. The irony was that it had once belonged to a Japanese family sent off to an internment camp during World War II. Maxine worked as an elementary school teacher in Seattle and Kirkland, including Leschi--Jimi Hendrix's alma mater. Those schools were predominantly African American. Maxine was a working mom with three young children: Ted, Toni and Kenneth.

There was an incident when Ted, the eldest, was only 4. They were visiting a friend who had a young son of her own. When the two boys became suspiciously quiet, Maxine went to check on them. They had been pretending they were hiding from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve when they got locked in a chest. Maxine administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Ted and slapped the other boy to revive him. The incident made the front page of _The Seattle Daily Times_. In adulthood, Ted Mimms observed that he might have suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation had his mother not been so decisive. Growing up, as he drifted off to sleep, she told him he was a brilliant boy who could do anything he set his mind to. "My mother sees the genius in everyone and it is this that we celebrate," he says.

_Maxine Mimms collection_

IN 1968, Mimms was hired as the project director for a teacher in-service sensitivity training program for Seattle schools. The effort was financed by the Civil Rights Act. The headline in _The Seattle Times --_"4 Negroes Named As Administrators In Seattle Schools"--underscored the novelty of blacks in key supervisory roles. Mimms' position was created out of a turbulent time within the school district. Since the 1950s, civil rights leaders had tried to convince the Seattle School Board that the schools had to be integrated. Though segregation on the West Coast was not as obvious as in the Jim Crow South, Portland, Pasco and Seattle were sharply divided along racial lines. In Seattle, de facto housing segregation--"redlining"--resulted in neighborhood schools that were predominantly black. Most of Seattle's African American community was concentrated in the Central Area. Black parents and civil rights leaders set out to force integrated schools. First they had to convince the School Board and Seattle citizens that it was a problem, since there was a commonly held belief that children should attend schools in their own neighborhoods. At the time, Seattle had 13 "black" schools and more than a hundred "white" schools, according to a flyer disseminated by the NAACP, the Congress for Racial Equality and the Central Area Civil Rights Committee. Meantime, black students accounted for 9.1 percent of total enrollment in the Seattle School District. Here's how the numbers played out at the "black" schools:

Horace Mann Elementary, 95 percent; Leschi Elementary, 89 percent; Harrison Elementary, 83 percent; T.T. Minor Elementary, 80 percent; Madrona Elementary, 79 percent; Coleman Elementary, 76 percent; Stevens Elementary, 45 percent; Washington Junior High, 66 percent; Meany Junior High, 49 percent. At Garfield High School, black pupils made up half the student body. Moreover, 75 percent of all black high school students in the district attended Garfield.

The statistics buttressed a major problem for Seattle: the perpetuity of discrimination in society. Dr. Ronald J. Rousseve, an Associate Professor of Education at Seattle University, put it like this: "Stereotypes, racial epithets, unconscious prejudices, and both subtle and overt discrimination are still so pervasive in our society (and this includes the Pacific Northwest), that children from different social backgrounds cannot possibly learn to relate to one another as individuals if they are kept separated most of their childhood years."

Many ideas had been bounced around over the years. There was no easy solution because de facto segregation was so entrenched. Civil rights leaders mulled a school boycott. They knew it had to be well organized, and resolved to take a cue from boycotts staged by civil rights leaders in the South and form "freedom schools" so students would still receive instruction.

Many of Seattle's churches supported the boycott. But the city's influential afternoon daily, _The Seattle Times_ , editorialized that "no major public agency in the state has shown more concern about racial problems than the Seattle Public Schools." The schools' "primary function is education, not social reform. They inherited--they did not create--racial imbalance in Seattle neighborhoods." Governor Dan Evans, a progressive Republican, was also wary of a boycott. "I'd much rather see the talents of civil rights leaders and of the community as a whole working out a solution, rather than protesting a problem," Evans said. Civil rights leaders countered that they had tried for more than a decade to work out a solution but they had gotten nowhere with the School Board.

Phillip Swain, the School Board president, explained a 1963 policy that the board "has a responsibility to promote racial understanding within its broad obligation to provide a high-quality education program for all pupils" while "reaffirming its faith in the concept of the neighborhood school." What that meant was the schools would likely remain segregated like the neighborhoods, but the School Board was willing to invest in quality teachers and programs for the predominately minority schools.

"Compensatory education does not compensate for the feelings of inferiority that negro children have," said Bernard Pearce, a Leschi Elementary School teacher and Central Area parent. "This does not mean that the teachers are inferior or that the curriculum is inferior, but the situation is inferior."

In 1964 a voluntary transfer program was instituted to help correct racial imbalance, but funding was always an issue. Civil rights leaders did not consider voluntary transfers to be a strong solution to de facto segregation.

The NAACP, the Congress for Racial Equality and the Central Area Civil Rights Committee vowed on February 23, 1966, to carry out a boycott, having "given up hope that any serious plan to integrate the schools would be considered." The groups stipulated that a boycott could be averted if Seattle Public Schools met two conditions:

Develop and publish a comprehensive plan to integrate the schools within a reasonable period of time...

Begin immediately a program of compulsory in-service training for all school personnel in human relations, with an emphasis on the understanding and acceptance of racial minorities in previously all-white schools.

That second stipulation brought Maxine Mimms into the picture in 1968 as director of in-service training for Seattle teachers. A year later as Black Student Unions lobbied for curriculum changes, Dr. Mimms declared, "The young black militants must wake up to the fact that what they need is not separate black history courses, but an American history course that recognizes the black. What we are doing is assuring separation, which is the new name for segregation."

A student at the time, Teresa Banks, wrote that she wanted integrated schools because "you have to grow up with other races to be able to work well with them. You can't just grow up with your own race and then go into a world that has mixed races and do good work."

Civil rights leaders claimed success as roughly 3,000 students participated in the two-day freedom schools all around the city, March 31-April 1, 1966. So many students showed up that they had to find other spaces to open classrooms. African American students and parents reveled in having black history taught in the context of the United States.

The integration of Seattle Public Schools would take many forms in the years to come, including "magnet schools" and controversial mandatory busing in the 1970s. In light of recent statistics, you could argue that de facto segregation has crept back into Seattle's schools due to socio-economic factors. Gary Ikeda, general counsel for Seattle Public Schools, told _The Seattle Times_ in 2008, "The challenge now is to foster diversity without mandating it."

Seattle Schools now have a Department of Racial Equity Advancement, which "advances the cultural transformation of Seattle Public Schools--the changes in policy, people, and practice necessary to create a culturally responsive organization that ensures racial equity and the success of every student."

Earlier this year, Dr. Mimms met the 35-year-old black woman charged with overseeing in-service training for Seattle teachers, her old job. She's "gorgeous, pregnant, trying to teach white people, _again_ , how to be courteous. There is so much rudeness. ...This is 50 years later and ... they just changed the name. Mine was civil rights, human relations." The new person has a Ph.D. in trauma organization, Mimms notes, quipping, "Don't ask me what that means."

What it means is that a lot of things haven't changed.

WE NEED TO REWIND: It was in 1969 that Arthur Fletcher, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, called Mimms to join him in Washington, D.C. A charismatic former college football star, Fletcher had been the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Washington in 1968. Narrowly defeated, he would have been the first African American statewide elected official in state history. President Nixon tasked the former Kansan with promoting Affirmative Action on federal contracts. Mimms went to work as special assistant to the director of the Labor Women's Bureau. Its director, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, was the first African American woman to head the bureau and the highest ranking woman in the Nixon Administration. In 1968 Koontz had made another first as an African American when she became president of the National Education Association. She established the Human and Civil Rights Division. Mimms remembers Duncan as "a powerful and creative woman."

Asked if she ever got to meet the president, Mimms says, "Mmmhhh. And he was a crook. I learned a lot in the Nixon Administration about policies and colonization and this kind of thing. He was a genius at pulling people in, and he needed a lot of attention. Very insecure man."

In the 1970s, the Women's Bureau focused on "addressing and eliminating discrimination against women and minorities in the workforce." The bureau also played a role in Title IX, the civil rights act that stipulated no one could be excluded because of gender in any federally funded educational program.

_LLyn De Danaan photo_

"Millions of women are holding a job and running a household," Dr. Mimms said in 1970, dismissing the "myth" that a woman's place is in the home. "But it's very complex and not for everybody. The point is that the dimensions of the house should not define a woman's place. A woman's place is where she is needed." In 1986 she observed: "We were born women; we would be fools to be against ourselves."

Today, asked whether she considers herself a feminist, Dr. Mimms' puts it this way: "I'm a black woman. I'm never a feminist. I'm a woman. I don't have to declare another piece of language. I'm a woman, so I'm a womanist. Feminist is assumed under my existence."

MIMMS RETURNED to the Pacific Northwest in 1972 when she joined the faculty at The Evergreen State College. She remembers the educational climate like this:

The State of Washington wanted a new school, but it wanted a site-based satellite of the University of Washington. And at that time you certainly were not going to be able to do the traditional departments--the traditional academic disciplines. ... A lot of people don't understand one of the reasons it's such a _great_ school is that it was able...to look at social justice as a part of the curriculum, no matter what discipline. And it gave an expansive image to the way you can change problem solving. So you had art teachers in the physics department, or you had physics people in the sociology. You're trained in education to be separate. That's why you have departments, and you have a whole language of those departments. So you're not able to talk other than at some cocktail party and pretend that you are interested in that person's project. Evergreen stopped all of that. We had to talk--not because of, _in spite of_. And you had to begin to learn as grownups how to model collaboration and not competition. And that's why Evergreen is suffering now because we're back in the world of competition, and "How will we win?" And the aggression is _huge_. Students of color are beginning to be caught up in "it's better to win and be competitive rather than be collaborative with shared dialogue and move social justice and liberation along." It's a challenging time in the world right now. It's a good time to be alive.

The Evergreen's Native American Studies faculty in the late 1970s. Seated left, Mary Hillaire, Steven and Betsy Diffendal, Russ Fox. Standing left, Lovern King, David Whitener and Mimms. _TESC_

By 1983, Evergreen Tacoma was seeking formal status. It boasted 150 graduates with bachelor's degrees from its informal campus. _The Olympian 's_ Virginia Painter came to check out what was happening. She wrote: "Black students form the majority of the program, although others participate, too. Unlike some other programs that focus on the black experience, this program is pitched almost entirely toward traditional liberal arts, experience in all the academic disciplines. They work on scientific and political analysis, and learn how government works by attending local public meetings and assessing the decisions and their implications."

The Evergreen Tacoma campus moved out of Mimms' home and into a few different sites before it's permanent location on 6th Avenue. _TESC_

Dr. Mimms' philosophy has remained steady throughout: "If we could just understand we are all different, but we are all geniuses. The need to recognize that within our own community there are people who think like Plato, paint like Picasso and meditate like Buddha."

She invited her friend Odetta, the famed singer, to teach at The Evergreen State College in Olympia in 1989. Described by MLK as "The Queen of American folk music," Odetta taught "Bridging the Gap Between Art and Living."

Evergreen's Tacoma campus has awarded 2,706 degrees since its inception, a number Mimms had never heard until a historian for the Office of the Secretary of State mentioned it. She paused to savor the statistic. "Almost 3,000 and I have lived to see it!" she declared with a grin. "I never asked for a number because I never wanted to know. You must remember what white people do with statistics. They use it as data, and then they can be against something else. I can start competing with this entity and that institute and lose sight of where I am. When you start working with data you can begin thinking data and statistics are evidence versus the content of the human character."

The Tacoma campus' motto remains: **" Enter to Learn, Depart to Serve"**

It was through Odetta that Mimms met Maya Angelou, who became a sister friend. _Maxine Mimms collection_

Graduates come from all walks of life. Take Anthony Norman, who is 44 and owns a construction business. He just graduated and hopes to earn a Ph.D. in public policy and development starting in the fall of 2018 at Tuskegee University in Alabama, a historically black university that has forged a relationship with Evergreen Tacoma. "The subject matter here... put me on a path so that I could observe that the things that happened in my life, to myself, to my family, were more than just a series of unfortunate circumstances," Norman says. He mentions that he, his father and his brother have been gunshot victims. His studies made him more aware of structural patterns of inequity. "When you can look at the intricacies of things, you can try and see closer to the root of the problem. Rather than just cutting down a blackberry bush that keeps growing, you can actually dig down there and get the root out."

Dr. Mimms engages students in discussion. _TESC_

A 2013 graduate, Monica Alexander, has become the first and so far only African American female to be promoted to the rank of captain with the Washington State Patrol. "My Evergreen Tacoma experience was exceptional. I felt like I attended class with family. We argued passionately, cried collectively and supported each other whole-heartedly. We encouraged each other and respected each other's goals and aspirations."

In 2018, the average age of Evergreen Tacoma students was 38. According to a 2015 report, "91 percent were employed or in graduate school or a professional program one year after graduating. Of those, 18 percent were both employed _and_ in graduate school or a professional program."

The Evergreen Tacoma campus graduates gather around Dr. Mimms in Olympia in the early 1990s. _The Evergreen State College_

Though working adults, they are still required to attend school full time. "I don't like part time," says Dr. Mimms. "I don't encourage it. I'm from the generation where I like to stretch myself--stretch cognitively as well as physically. When we reduce our philosophy to part time, we produce a bunch of lazy people."

In order to avoid competing with local community colleges, Evergreen Tacoma offers only upper-division courses. A Pierce County student can attend community college for the first two years then enroll at Evergreen Tacoma. Tacoma Community College even has a "bridge program" in conjunction with Evergreen Tacoma.

Dr. Mimms retired as director in 1990, marking 18 years at The Evergreen State College.

Mimms talks about her experience in the civil rights movement at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in 2013. _Spc. Nathan Goodall photo, JBLM_

SHE HAD AN AWAKENING in her mid-70s when she traveled to Kenya for two weeks on a Cultural Reconnection mission. She went back six more times. Dr. Mimms had been to Africa as a tourist, but this trip was designed to immerse her in Kenyan culture. "It wasn't a trip. It was an experience. It changed my life," she says emphatically.

The mission's goal is to forge friendships through deep conversation with Kenyan colleagues. The African American participants encounter "a piece of their ancestral homeland" and come away with "stronger sense of self." The Cultural Reconnection's founder, Dr. Marcia Tate Arunga, is a Seattle native. She described a story from the first mission when African Americans tried to explain to the Kenyan elders the significance of their journey. They related how African Americans from many parts of Africa were captured, taken to the coast and shipped away, leaving few if any record of their lineage. Listening to this story one of the elders lit up with an epiphany. "Oh, you are the Stolen Ones," she said simply. Dr. Arunga went on to explain:

This elder had been taught, throughout her life, to include prayers for the "stolen ones" when she prayed for her ancestors. The Stolen Ones were children who had gone to a village market and never returned. Legend had it that one day a traveler revealed how, when he was on the coast, he had seen hordes of children being boarded onto boats. He suggested to the villagers that their lost children might still be alive. The elder shared that she had never fully understood the significance of the Stolen Ones. Now she did. The descendants of the Stolen Ones were sitting before her. These women were her family.

Watching the elders in Africa impacted Dr. Mimms' own ideas around aging. "In Kenya, elders are not accommodated when they board a bus or walk long distances. Yet they don't complain. In fact, many live with joy." She says elders are "inconveniently independent," suggesting that this might be a better model for aging here as well.

There's a skit Dr. Mimms performs from her recliner in the living room of her Mason County home. She explains how people who get to be a certain age develop a routine. They wake up, shuffle over to the recliner with a cup of coffee, kick back and turn on the news. Then they get frustrated, and decide it's time to eat. So up goes the recliner handle. They might get dressed or stay in a terry cloth robe, then shuffle back over, pull that handle again and fall back into the seat. The TV remote control is always close, as is a blanket. She points to her own blanket, explaining old people get cold. So they're watching TV and they start to get a little sleepy. They shut their eyes. Suddenly they feel a breeze, unfold the blanket and pull it over their lap. Before long, they're napping again.

Always the educator, Dr. Mimms speaks at The Evergreen State College in 2016. _TESC_

Dr. Mimms pulls her blanket over her lap and shuts her eyes. Then she springs up to explain how they wake up a little while later. And before you know it the day is done and they have had very little contact with the outside world.

When Dr. Mimms retired she noticed that when she talked with friends, the conversations inevitably descended into complaining about aches, pains and ailments. She concluded her terry cloth robe was too comfortable, so she burned it. In other words, she has rules for herself that keep her spry at 90. She reads four books a week and doesn't care what they're about. It's the reading that matters. People of her generation took baths instead of showers. She believes Epsom salts and baking soda have kept arthritis away.

She gets dressed each day in her beautifully elaborate African-inspired wardrobe, accessorized with an array of fascinating rings and jewelry, mostly fashioned from stones and shells. And she only visits the doctor once a year, around her birthday.

She takes her role as the village elder very seriously. She doesn't email or own a smartphone but she always has her telephone nearby, poised to counsel and console.

Dr. Mimms talks with The Evergreen's Upward Bound participants, a precollege program that aims to "support low income high school students in becoming the first in their family to obtain a college degree." _TESC_

"SHE'S A MENTOR, not a mother," says Dawn Mason, a former member of the Seattle City Council who considers herself a protege. African Americans of all ages--girls and young women in particular--arrive at her home to absorb her wisdom. Maxine Mimms isn't baking pies; she's fostering knowledge and an understanding of their history and their culture. She gets a kick out of watching children from the city search for shells on her beach, learning there is nothing to fear in an unfamiliar environment. She wants her oral history transcript to survive in the Washington State Archives so that history remembers the old black lady who lived in the woods and "wasn't afraid of no bears."

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Dr. Mimms was at Dawn Mason's house celebrating. "You young ones, you think this is natural," the octogenarian said. "But to see old white men in red ties saying, 'I pass on a legacy to a 46-year-old black man,' it's unbelievable to me. He is talking about being President of the United States. It just blows me away."

Peering through the lens of an educator, she views Obama's successor as a rich little boy whose parents, the educational system and the electorate failed him--and America:

[W]hen this little boy was standing in the corner, and [other] children threw a ball at him, he picked it up and threw it over the fence. And they brought him into the principal's office and said, "Donald, that's not nice!" And Donald's daddy came down and bailed him out. You never hear Donald Trump talking about his mother. He's afraid of his daddy. Finally Donald got in trouble, so they sent him to boarding school to not be a "punk"--to be a man. He is angry. And now Donald Trump, 71 years old, whatever he is, says to America, "I am so lonely, I am still playing with toy soldiers." He's got generals around him. Eisenhower warned us about "the military-industrial complex," and we're in it. We're in a coup. And when [Trump] said, "I want to see a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue!" I cried. But it is not Donald Trump. It's us. We allowed it. We cleared a pathway for him.

In her retirement years, if you can call them that, Dr. Mimms has spearheaded the Maxine Mimms Academy, which provides a classroom for students who have been suspended or expelled from Tacoma schools. The academy offers mentoring to get students back into the public school system and teaches them how to succeed by channeling anger, frustration and intellectual lethargy. Other programs are offered, too, including horticulture and job training.

She also founded "Let the Strings Speak," a nonprofit that describes itself as a collaboration "of the music from the Pan African Culture that sustains and feeds your soul. ...As educators, we believe that the sounds from the string instruments reduce the noise level in our development, and learning raises the energy and allows us to reach for excellence."

Dr. Mimms' message for educators today is this: "Have joy in the design to make people continue with hope." She believes the future of education is in field trips and getting children out of the classroom, interacting with one another.

Mimms with visitors in her Mason County home in 2018.

The Living Arts & Cultural Heritage Center in Bremerton was created out of this vision--yet another great idea hatched in her living room. "We've been sitting here for years with the celebration of hidden history and all the ancestral stuff," says Karen Vargas, the co-director of the center. "We've got an underground in our building. And we've got a rooftop. It's for all of us--all our history; all our culture; all our life stories; _who we are_. We've got sacred space."

From left, Dr. Ruth Kelly-McIntyre, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Maxine Mimms celebrate Angelou's birthday. _Maxine Mimms collection_

In 2017 the center opened in a temporary location. The capital campaign is working to secure a permanent building being designed by Johnpaul Jones, the Northwest architect and artist who created the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Dr. Mimms plans to donate some of her personal collection to the center. It will include The Maxine Mimms Visioning Room.

There has been talk about renaming Evergreen Tacoma in honor of Dr. Mimms. She is reluctant, saying she doesn't need the recognition. Her legacy is carried on by keeping the campus funded. She's nervous that adding her name would dilute the mission. "This is in our hearts," she said. "A building could go and close up forever, but a Tacoma campus will always be here. No one will ever take it away. And even when I die I'm coming back to make sure of it."

Dr. Mimms' has made some influential friends in her lifetime, including Dr. Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey, who sent 90 white hydrangeas from her personal garden to celebrate Dr. Mimms' birthday. Angelou's grandson, Elliott, officiated the festivities, which attracted a diverse crowd of admirers of all colors, creeds and persuasions. There were dashikis and kilts, flowing robes and T-shirts.

Maxine Mimms and Maya Angelou were born only one month apart. At Evergreen in 2007, Angelou summed it all up in the rich cadences of her unique voice:

Dr. Mimms is a sister friend of mine, and she invited me here all those years ago. She had been a professor and she realized that there was an Evergreen Olympia. But there was not a place for poor black men and women over 18, and poor Native American, and poor white, and poor Latino, men and women to visit, to go to school. She began to harass the state, and this black woman began Evergreen ... the Tacoma branch was begun in her kitchen. ...So many people came--blacks and whites, Spanish-speaking and Native American. She broke the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. I know that Maxine Mimms is a rainbow in the clouds.

Stevie Wonder's joyous "Happy Birthday to ya!" echoed around the jam-packed room at Evergreen Tacoma at her 90th birthday party. Dr. Mimms was dancing in the middle of a giant circle that formed around her. "Let me tell you about the hat," she said. It featured cowrie shells as a sign that slavery no longer has currency. "So the hat told me, 'You can get up and move!' Them cowrie shells were talking to me. I got up. And then I threw the cane! But then I walked back and got it."

Mayor Victoria Woodards presents her very first key to the City of Tacoma to Dr. Maxine Mimms at her 90th birthday party. _Flyright Productions, LLC photo_

Tacoma's new mayor, Victoria Woodards, a proud African American, presented Dr. Mimms the key to the city. Governor Jay Inslee's proclamation called her a shared treasure. And Larry Gossett, the King County councilman who was in the trenches of the Black Power movement 50 years ago said it takes only four words to sum up Dr. Maxine Mimms:

"She is the light!"

**Lori Larson**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**D ISABILITY RIGHTS PIONEER**

* * *

The Summer of Love's soundtrack by The Doors and Sgt. Pepper was still wafting around VW vans. The first issue of _Rolling Stone_ magazine was about to hit the streets. And Baby Boomers were weighing the dare posed by Jimi Hendrix's debut album: "Are you experienced?" It was September of 1967.

Instead of following psychedelic guru Timothy Leary's advice to "turn on, tune in and drop out," 24-year old Ralph Munro was writing letters from his Seattle apartment. He had a new "special friend," Terry, a 7-year old who lived at the Fircrest School in Shoreline.

"I work with him, buy him clothes, teach him as much as possible and try to provide some of the extras that institutionalized children don't receive," Munro says in a letter seeking donations for an upcoming Christmas party for people with disabilities, or, as they were then called, "the handicapped."

A big man who exudes warm confidence, Munro remains best known for his five terms as Washington's secretary of state, his campaign to stop transforming killer whales into circus animals and his fondness for kilts and bagpipes. Not so many realize he was also a pioneering figure in the state's disability rights movement. Through two bits of serendipity on one 1968 day, Munro would come to work for Governor Dan Evans. And he would use every opportunity after that to get Terry in front of the governor, so he'd have a poignant reminder of the plight of thousands of children in the state.

Ever the Scotsman, Munro dons a kilt any chance he gets; here with his son, George, in 1986. _Washington State Archives_

IN HIS YOUTH, Munro was not exactly a choir boy. Yes, he was student body president at Bainbridge High School and Western Washington State College where "everybody was his friend." But he had a mischievous streak that got him sent home from college his freshman year. And after returning and graduating, he still wasn't on a clear career path. He worked in food service, at the state Legislature, and for Boeing. He tried to enlist in the Army but was rejected.

His concern for disabled children was kindled a few days before Christmas 1966. Munro got a frantic call from his landlord, who helped organize annual Holiday Cruises for the Handicapped on Puget Sound aboard the steamboat _Virginia V_. The guy scheduled to cook hot dogs on that night's cruise didn't show. Munro's landlord asked if he could help. "Sure," Munro said. Aboard the historic steamer, packed with more than 100 adults and children, food was served, carols sung and pictures snapped with Santa. Munro spotted Terry Sullivan sitting alone in a corner of the boisterous party. Abandoned by his mother, the developmentally disabled boy didn't talk. Afraid of men, he was very hesitant when Munro approached him. After that night, Munro felt a bit discouraged. "I went home that night and frankly, I cried," he said in a 1971 interview with public television. "I was ashamed of myself for not knowing more about retardation and individual problems the mentally retarded face. Inside I was just angry that more wasn't being done."

Munro had been rejected by the Army and was looking for a way to serve his community when he met and befriended Terry Sullivan in 1966. _Sullivan collection_

On Christmas morning, Munro decided to bring Terry a few presents and scope out Fircrest. "I was determined I would at least try to be his friend." Munro was chagrinned he wasn't serving his country like his buddies in Vietnam. Eager to enlist, he had gone to the Army induction center in Seattle one morning. But he was rejected, classified 4F because of a heart murmur and pectus excavatum, or a sunken chest. "I felt terrible about it," Munro says. "I was working at Boeing during the day and thought, 'Yeah, I'll start going out and working with these kids.' And I really liked it." So began decades of friendship between Terry and Ralph.

"Ralph led me through some remarkable years in advancements for the developmentally disabled in this state," Dan Evans said when Munro retired after 20 years as secretary of state. "Ralph was the one who taught me how to care."

Munro sidesteps the praise from the three-term Republican governor. "He cared before me. But it was interesting that Terry became a change agent in many ways. Every piece of legislation that was proposed, that related to handicapped people, the governor would ask, 'How does this relate to Terry?' He was thinking, 'How does this affect an individual kid?' "

Disabled people were still shunned by society in the 1960s and stuck in state institutions. But progress came as advocates, including Munro, positioned themselves under the umbrella of the civil rights movement. Munro had a hand in the state's revolutionary Education for All law; it gave _all_ children a right to public schooling, which allowed many parents to keep their kids home instead of confining them in institutions. He got Evans to spend part of a day in a wheelchair in a crusade for the state's first accessibility requirements. He helped expand state law to protect those with "sensory, mental and physical" disabilities from discrimination. He co-authored and led the campaign for Referendum 37, steering $25 million in state bonds to building group homes and job training facilities around the state. As the state's top elections official, Munro even published the first Braille voters' pamphlet in the state.

"Ralph was the one who taught me how to care," says former Gov. Dan Evans, here playing with Darwin Neely, a developmentally disabled boy. _Washington State Archives_

Seven former and future governors, from Al Rosellini to Chris Gregoire, chortled through Munro's December 2000 retirement gala. They roasted his globetrotting. They needled his work ethic. During a spoof of Hollywood Squares, they were asked, "What _does_ Ralph wear under that kilt?" Near the end of the bash, a somber Munro thanked Terry for his friendship and asked him up to the dais. Then 40, working and living independently, looking sharp in a suit and tie, Terry stopped to shake Evans' hand. Then he and Munro clasped hands while the esteemed audience gave them a long loud ovation.

MUNRO'S COLLEGE YEARS sound more like outtakes from _Animal House_ than _The Miracle Worker_. After a day of grueling exams his freshman year, Munro and friends drank a lot of beer. For five hours. "We were very drunk," Munro recalled in an oral history for Western Washington University. They wanted to crash a school dance and Munro, tall and skinny, took a flight of stairs in one leap. Unfortunately, the Dean of Student Activities was standing at the bottom. "I hit him pretty square and he went down. That was pretty much the end of my college career for that year," Munro said. The Dean of Men called him into his office. "We aren't going to formally boot you out. But you're out," he told Munro. "You're going to go home for a quarter and see if you can grow up a bit." When fall came around, Munro was on "disciplinary and social probation," ergo no student activities or athletic events and lots of studying.

Fun-loving Munro was known for his pranks, but even then the student body president stood out as a leader. _Washington State Archives_

On Columbus Day 1962, his mother, a teacher, had a heart attack in her classroom and died the next day. Munro, his two brothers and his father, an electrician at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, were devastated. "I returned to Western a pretty lonely kid," Munro said. He kept his grades above the required 2.5 GPA and became more involved in campus activities and politics, including Young Republicans, mainly because his family had been Republicans.

"We probably drank too much beer, probably had too much fun. But we did go to class and we did do political science stuff," said Dean Foster, who was active in the campus chapter of Young Democrats and was elected student body vice-president as part of a coalition with Munro atop the ticket. They became good friends, often stopping to chat in the halls of the Capitol when Foster was chief of staff for Governor Booth Gardner.

Protests against the Vietnam War were just picking up momentum when Foster and Munro were upperclassmen at Western. Campus politics focused more on the civil rights struggles of blacks in the south. Foster's most keen memory of Munro was when the student body president defended the right of the American Nazi Party leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, to speak at Western. "The local American Legion and I believe Republicans and a local radio station went crazy," Foster says. "And Ralph spent a lot of time working with them, saying, 'This is OK. We students are adults. We can hear this.' And he helped calm that down." Rockwell was an "absolute wacko," Munro said, but free speech is a core value of democracy.

The pranks didn't come to a complete halt. A fan of Johnny Cash, Munro and his roommate one night wired their dormitory intercom so it piped loud country-western music into every room while they slipped off to Canada. He and a roommate stole a Bellingham department store Christmas tree early one morning while a pal distracted store decorators by banging trash can lids in the alley out back. Another doozy sprang from the shocking realization that Bellingham then legally dumped its garbage directly into the bay. Munro and a couple friends borrowed an old black car. Munro wore a hard hat. A friend dressed in a suit. They drove to where a bulldozer was pushing heaps of trash into the water. They pretended to be environmental officials. "This is grossly illegal. This dump is closed," Munro told a grizzled older man pushing bulldozer loads. The bulldozer operator stepped down, eyed the "officials" suspiciously, and said, "Fine by me." Munro and friends drove away. They later heard their ruse sent ripples through City Hall.

An education major, Munro planned to do his student teaching at Bellingham High. But first there were debates about his complexion. "I had, all through college, a terrible complexion. The worst complexion of anybody I ever saw," he says. "They were very worried that the students would tease me and I wouldn't do well student-teaching. But I'd had that complexion for a long time and I just didn't let it bother me." Walking down the hall on his very first morning teaching at Bellingham High, a big football player looked at Munro and raised his middle finger. What was the aspiring teacher to do? "I went over and grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him down to the principal's office and threw him in a chair and said, 'This young man was making inappropriate gestures in the hallway.' That was the last of my problems at Bellingham High School."

When they first met Terry didn't speak, but with Munro's help he soon said dozens of words. _Sullivan collection_

With a newly-minted degree in education, Munro could make $5,000 a year teaching or $7,000 a year working at Boeing, which was then "hiring any warm-bodied individual that had a college degree." He opted for the latter and spent the next couple years bouncing between Boeing, the food business, and jobs in the state Legislature when it was in session. He rarely went a few days without visiting Terry. "I'd say to my buddies, 'You guys all go to the tavern looking for cute women. All the cute young women are working at Fircrest.' "

He took Terry for a car ride one day and as they cruised down 15th Avenue Northeast a Fircrest bus went by. Terry looked up and said, "Bus ride." Two syllables. Munro was amazed. The kid could talk. A few days later Terry said "church" after seeing a steeple in the University District. Soon after, Munro saw a Fircrest speech therapist struggling to get Terry to name animals in a book. Munro asked the teacher how he might help. "What he needs is someone to take him to the zoo and show him these animals, but I just don't have time," the therapist said. Living just blocks from the Woodland Park Zoo, Munro jumped at the opportunity. He felt like an extension of Terry's professional teacher. He began to fathom all that volunteers could do. They could provide transportation, help with recreation, assist with meals, build community support and provide love. Terry seemed to like having a friend, someone to hold his hand and hug him now and then. That didn't take any special skills or degrees. Munro was hooked.

Unlike many volunteers and advocates, Munro didn't have a personal connection to the developmentally disabled, other than knowing the daughter of a summer neighbor, John Hauberg. He did, though, help his mother collect donations on Bainbridge Island for the March of Dimes and Children's Hospital. "It became family custom. We weren't wealthy. We didn't have money," he said of growing up on Bainbridge Island. "But we donated time."

Then a bolt of fortune-actually two bolts on the same day-put Munro on a path to bigger things. It started on the afternoon of March 21, 1968, memorialized in Governor Evans' calendar with the note "Fircrest 3 pm." Evans went out to Shoreline to dedicate a new building at the institution. As a temporary supply clerk in the Legislature, Munro had more than once set up a microphone and speaker for Evans in the rotunda outside the governor's office. "So he kind of knew who I was," Munro says. Now on more familiar turf, Munro walked over to Evans after the ceremony, explained that he was a volunteer and introduced Terry, whose vocabulary had grown to more than 50 words. Evans was fascinated. Munro asked if the governor wanted to see the "backside of Fircrest." Evans nodded. Munro took him to one of the old World War II barracks that housed 60 adults, with just one attendant working overnight. The staff may have been dedicated, but they were too few. "It was just warehousing," Munro says. As interested as Evans seemed, Munro thought, "We'll never see him again."

A few hours later, Munro was working a catering job at Seattle Center. It was a banquet for an organization, Job Therapy, whose volunteers helped state prisoners prepare for their release. He didn't even know Evans was speaking that night. Munro was scraping food off dishes when Betty, the lead waitress, came back, grabbed him and said, "I think the governor is talking about you."

What? Munro stuck his head into the Rainier Room. Evans was winding up his talk about volunteerism and his visit to Fircrest where he met a young boy who had learned how to talk. Munro later followed the governor out to his car. Still wearing his slop-covered apron, he thanked Evans. "You call my office," the governor said. "I want to talk to you."

Munro scheduled an appointment in Olympia. He spent about five minutes with Evans. "I want you to write a report for me," Evans told him. "Nothing big, nothing long, just what we need to do to get more volunteers."

The next month, April 1968, Evans told reporters he wanted to encourage an army of citizen volunteers, especially in endeavors requiring compassion and understanding, such as helping with prisoner rehabilitation, aiding retarded youngsters and tutoring underprivileged children. "It's a known fact that a high percentage of retarded youngsters in our institutions, if they are given sufficient training and help, can improve enough to return to a home environment. But it takes volunteers such as I met recently met at Fircrest School..."

After two chance meetings in one day in 1968, Munro would become coordinator of volunteer services for Gov. Dan Evans. _Washington State Archives_

Munro became a recurring figure in commencement speeches Evans gave in the following months at St. Martin's College, Eastern Washington State College and the University of Washington. "Show me the critics, the protesters, the youth who believe there is no hope to be found and no service to render-and I will show them where they can make a difference...I will show them one single individual man who devotes every spare hour from his job and his family in helping mentally retarded children to find and grasp the joys of life."

In June, Evans appointed a committee to study volunteerism. Not yet 25, Munro was named to lead the group. Their first meeting was "like sitting on a high voltage power line," Munro recalled. Their three-page report called for creating an office of volunteers under the governor, providing insurance for volunteers, and most importantly, recommending that professional staff use volunteers.

The next year, Evans made Munro the state's first volunteer coordinator. "My job was to go out and convince agency directors that they needed volunteers involved," he says. "You would think unions would go crazy. But I'd sit with union leaders and say, 'Look, this is not to replace anybody. What we want to do is have you use volunteers.'"

Munro produced a brochure that Evans liked to tout. Over pictures of campus demonstrations, its front cover said only, "Where the Hell Were You Last Spring?" Inside, it said, "Well, Here Is Where You Should Have Been." It listed various community needs such as student tutoring. "It was somewhat controversial," Munro says, "but Dan personally OK'd it."

Young Munro began to grasp his privileged position. "I realized-and it's so hard to believe when you're that age-I was somebody the governor listened to. I realized that what I told the governor better be important. It better be the real stuff."

His flash of insight soon met with a new branch of the civil rights movement.

IN THE 1960s PEOPLE with disabilities still did not have access to public transportation, telephones, bathrooms and stores. Parents of children with intellectual or developmental disabilities had only two options unless they were quite wealthy. They could keep a child at home and spend their days trying to help that child, who was often unwelcome at churches, restaurants, even family gatherings. Or, they could confine their children to a state institution, often far from home, where poor conditions and abuse were not uncommon - and parental guilt was a by-product.

Doctors did not always appear sympathetic. Katie Dolan, a Seattleite instrumental in changing Washington law, was told she was to blame for her son Patrick's autism. (Conventional medicine then held that autism was caused by a mother's emotional detachment.) Janet Taggart, another Seattle mother at the vanguard of activism, read in one book that children with "mental retardation"-her daughter Naida had cerebral palsy but was initially diagnosed as retarded - should be dressed in drab clothing because bright colors would only draw attention to them. "It was a very dark time in our country's history," says Sue Elliott, executive director of The Arc of Washington State, a group that has advocated for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for more than 80 years.

Children with disabilites were still shunned by society in the 1960s, leaving many parents to provide care at home. Janet Taggart (above) felt so isolated with her daughter, Naida, she took out an ad looking for mothers like her. _Becoming Citizens, Family Life and the Politics of Disability._

If parents were lucky enough to find a receptive school or treatment program they could afford, their children were often kicked out because of their unpredictable behavior. A group of Seattle moms helped build an alternative school system in the late 1960s, first run out of church basements, then the non-profit, Northwest Center, dedicated to educating kids rejected by schools. Dolan came to realize her deep-seated grief was rooted in her inability to embrace her son's diagnosis 15 years earlier. "It was his life that I have never accepted. I finally saw him as Patrick Dolan and not as the person I wanted him to be-to dress up in clothes and behave in certain ways. I was always trying to find a doctor or school or a way to cure him." Then she met Taggart and other moms with a similar mindset. They were a new breed of activist. They didn't want to make changes in their kids, but in the system itself.

So where to start?

Washington's revolutionary "Education for All" law was largely the work of four women and two law students. Left, Janet Taggart, Katie Dolan, Cecile Lindquist, Gov. Evans, Evelyn Chapman, George Breck and Bill Dussault (inset). Munro gave them the idea that _all_ children should have a right to attend their local public schools. _Becoming Citizens, Family Life and the Politics of Disability._

Four of the Northwest Center founders-Dolan, Taggart, Evelyn Chapman and Cecile Lindquist-were chatting in 1969 with Munro. He suggested something as bold as the women: "Why don't you write a mandatory law that children with disabilities will be served by public schools?"

The ignorance reflected in state law was shocking. Some policies had been influenced by the Eugenics movement in the 1920s and had never been updated. State education code said that children who were afflicted with "loathsome and contagious diseases" including epilepsy and cerebral palsy were not allowed to be served by public schools. Some 33,000 children with disabilities in Washington were not enrolled in schools, a state study found.

"They always said our children are uneducable, therefore they didn't qualify for education rights," Dolan said. The women named their committee Education for All.

Soon, University of Washington Law School students George Breck and Bill Dussault were on board and researching. Dussault focused on the idea that education and civil rights were entwined, by Washington's state constitution, by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and by court rulings in cases such as U.S. Supreme Court decision _Brown v. Board of Education._ They drafted 29 versions of the Education for All bill before they had H.B. 90, "An Act relating to educational opportunities for all handicapped children."

They didn't have professional lobbyists, or help from the education establishment. What's more, their radical idea was that we must have a broader view of education. It should be more than the usual academic programs, Cecile Lindquist said. It should include whatever could be done to enhance a child's potential. The team kept a constant presence at the Capitol. They created dossiers on every lawmaker. They knew who had a child or relative with a disability, whose wife was a social worker or teacher, who kept a Bible on their desk.

They traveled statewide to secure sponsors and support. They also had an ally in Lindquist's cousin, Governor Evans. "I bet there were 15 to 20 experts who came into the governor's office and said, 'these people aren't educable,'" Munro recalls. "The governor's response was, 'Everyone is educable.' Maybe you're not going to teach them how to do mathematics or teach them how to do science projects. But they're going to learn basic skills."

The citizen activists were told it would take several years and cost at least $50,000 to get such a law passed. It took them one year and less than $500.

The team was later invited to Washington, D.C., to meet with powerful U.S. Senator Warren Magnuson. Each of the women spoke about the importance of the whole nation following Washington state's lead. An awkward moment of silence ensued until Magnuson looked at one of his aides and roared, "How come nobody ever told me this?"

Magnuson vowed to change the law. In 1975 the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act passed.

"It was a group of four middle-aged women and one young attorney, along with Ralph, who created a huge, huge change in the way children and others with disabilities were served," says Sue Elliott.

Munro downplays his role. Evans credited the families who had taken up the cause. "It didn't take huge amounts of money. It didn't take paid lobbyists. It took citizens who cared."

MUNRO'S NEXT PROPOSITION: What if the governor spent a day in a wheelchair to demonstrate the architectural barriers faced by people with physical disabilities?

According to Jim Dolliver, who was then Evans' chief of staff, Munro's pitch to the governor went, "You're going to have to sit in a wheelchair all day long to see what it's like and to see why we need to have these things like cuts in the sidewalk and other helps for persons who are handicapped."

Some complained that the idea was demeaning. One state agency director told the governor, "My wife's in a wheelchair, it's very degrading." The point was just the opposite, Munro replied. It was to create access and a semblance of equal rights.

On the morning of Oct. 4, 1972, Evans edged his wheelchair out of the governor's mansion. "He eased his way down the serpentining mansion driveway, over curbs, around construction sites and up the small wooden ramps at the back door of the Capitol," according to the Associated Press.

Munro got Gov. Evans to spend a day in a wheelchair to better understand the lack of public accessibility. Joining Evans were his sons, Ken Scheelhouse, an advocate for the disabled, and the press. _Washington State Archives_

Skinned knuckles would be nothing unusual that day, David Ammons of the AP wrote, with the governor colliding "occasionally with walls and other objects." Getting in and out of a car was one of his biggest challenges. "A sobering experience," Evans called the six hours he spent in the chair. "That six-inch curb looked about as impossible as a six-foot wall."

Munro, then a 29-year-old special assistant to Evans, had two ideas he wanted to push into law. "Before every legislative session the governor would take us all to lunch," Munro says, "and ask us to explain what we saw as priorities. For me, things like discrimination in the workplace and wheelchair access were top of the list."

Senate Bill 2039 called for the construction of new public curbs to have at least two ramps, or cuts, per block that were wide enough and properly sloped to accommodate wheelchairs. The cities of Bellevue and Seattle had already started providing such access and sent Munro letters saying the costs were negligible.

That summer, Paul Dziedzic was a recent college graduate home in Lacey, looking to do some volunteer work for the state. A friend of his father, who knew Munro as a fellow bagpiper, told Dziedzic, "Why don't you talk to Ralph?"

Munro took Dziedzic into the governor's office and explained that a woman in Olympia had called him, complaining that the state Capitol campus was not accessible to her wheelchair. She wanted to know what the governor was going to do about it.

Dziedzic spent most of the next month pushing the woman, Lois Meyer, around the campus. "Literally to every building and floor, with me pushing and Lois taking extensive notes on her lap," Dziedzic says. "It was an obstacle course that most of the time you couldn't navigate." (The Legislative and General Administration buildings, for instance, each had a single accessible entry if you happened to know where they were located.) Meyer and Dziedzic wrote a report that detailed the need for change.

The curb-cut, or wheelchair access bill passed in 1973. Then it was on to House Bill 445, which aimed to amend the state's anti-discrimination law so that people couldn't be denied jobs because of "sensory, mental and physical" handicaps.

It ran into opposition from the powerful Association of Washington Business, which claimed the bill would require employers to hire the handicapped. "NO WAY," Munro wrote in a memo. "No business would have to hire anyone who isn't equally capable." The bill was backed by veterans' organizations, the AFL-CIO and groups advocating for people with disabilities. Still, in the spring it was stuck in the Senate Rules Committee, where many bills went to quietly die without the witnesses or evidence of a floor vote.

"We desperately need help with this bill," Munro wrote in a memo to senators. "This is the most important handicapped bill of the session. It has passed the House 92-4 and Senate Rules is the last roadblock. Will you help?"

Munro took the unprecedented step of bringing a handful of people in wheelchairs into the Rules room to lend some leverage. "No one was quite sure what to do. They didn't want to throw us out and didn't know what to say," Munro recalls. State Senator Harry Lewis of Yelm barged into Evans' office. "Munro has wheelchairs in the rules room," he complained. "Well, I think they're citizens, Harry," Evans replied.

John Cherberg, the Democratic lieutenant governor, lobbied to get the bill through the Rules Committee. "John had been a football coach. He had been around kids. He knew handicapped people," Munro says. Evans signed the bill into law in May 1973.

Next up: giving people with disabilities a voice in the Governor's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. The federally-funded group "really weren't doing much," Munro says, besides sponsoring a "Miss Wheelchair" contest. Evans named Meyer to chair the committee with Dziedzic as its executive director.

The group swelled to 100 members, with more than half of those being people with disabilities or their family members. Advocacy groups had tended to segregate by type of disability. Blind people had different priorities than people who used wheelchairs, and so on. These differences diluted their power and increased the sway of establishment advisers and bureaucrats. But the civil rights concept united people and the expanded committee "became a cross-disability voice in state government," Dziedzic says. "The disability community got inside state government."

Dziedzic went on to serve three more governors, including a stint as the director of the Washington Department of Services for the Blind. And then he continued to work in the field of vocational rehabilitation. An aspiring journalist when he met Munro, Dziedzic says he was "pretty much a blank slate" on disabilities. "People I got to know with disabilities, including Lois, had their lives together," he says. They didn't want sympathy. They wanted a voice, a place at the table. "I had a front row seat to watching that given birth," he says. "I got to be part of the civil rights movement. Ralph cut the pathway."

"He saw this as a civil rights issue, not as poor people who needed pity. He saw them as people whose rights were being abridged," says Norm Davis, Fircrest superintendent for 10 years.

It was no fluke that Dziedzic's work began with Munro taking a call from Lois Meyer. "He was wide open for those stories," Dziedzic says, whether it was wheelchair access or witnessing whales, during a Sunday sail with friends, gruesomely captured in Puget Sound. (Munro fought to end the practice and had an orca, otherwise known as J-6, named after him in tribute.)

MUNRO'S WORK WAS ROOTED in relationships. He seemed drawn to those who needed help most. "He really likes to support people who he thinks are underrepresented, the invisible population, people who were discounted," says Davis, who was also director of the state's Division of Developmental Disabilities.

Along the way, Munro's influence helped Terry become one of the first children in the state to move from an institution to a foster home. And he helped persuade Evans to spend more state money on group homes. One night, after Munro had brought Terry to the governor's Christmas party for staff and family, he returned home to find his phone ringing at 9 p.m. He picked it up. "What in the hell, you, dammit," fumed Wally Miller, the budget director. "He was like Donald Trump," Munro says. "He'd rant and rave and get all ticked off." His beef this time? "Well, the governor saw some kid you brought in the mansion and now he wants $15 million for handicapped education and I don't have the money and you sonuvabitch, you screwed up the whole budget!" Miller didn't have anything against disabled people, Munro says. But it was late December and he had the state budget wrapped up and buttoned down. Now he had to take it apart and remake it. "Terry did have an impact," Munro says.

"Terry became a change agent in many ways, Munro says. "Every piece of legislation that was proposed...the governor would ask, 'How does this relate to Terry?' " _Sullivan collection_

Jim Dolliver, the Evans' aide who would become chief justice of the state Supreme Court, said, "The fact that in this community we have cuts in the sidewalk at the corners so a wheelchair can get up and down from the street is nothing more than the extended shadow of Ralph Munro. He is the one who pushed this, and all he had done for the handicapped persons will never be known."

EVANS HAD FINISHED his third term as governor by January 1977 and newly elected Dixy Lee Ray was taking over the office. The transition was not friendly. Munro had some serious cases on his desk and he begged to meet with Glen Rose, his successor as the governor's adviser on education. Rose said Dixy had told her staff not to meet with any of their predecessors. Munro kept pleading. He and Rose eventually met secretly in a Federal Way bar. "Crazy," Munro says. "I handed over the files."

Munro "really likes to support people who he thinks are underrepresented, the invisible population," says Norm Davis, who ran the state's Division of Developmental Disabilities. Terry keeps this photo of Ralph and Karen Munro on his wall. _Sullivan collection_

Munro was married with a baby on the way. He and his wife Karen moved to Bainbridge Island. He went back into the food business for a year or so. But the ferry commute and long hours were too much. So Munro quit. He went to see John Hauberg, an heir to a timber fortune and a philanthropist who had been a Bainbridge summer neighbor. Hauberg was the father of two children with development disabilities and was involved in the Foundation for the Handicapped (now Lifetime Advocacy Plus).

Munro came with two proposals. He would write a booklet for judges and their clerks about the state's new guardianship law. Then he would travel the state explaining to court officials how the law worked and how it would help children like Terry get out of institutions. Munro's second proposal was to write a $25 million bond issue for facilities around the state, such as sheltered workshops and group homes, to serve people with disabilities.

Hauberg agreed to pay Munro to carry out the work. He got the booklet printed and met with judges around the state. Guardians are crucial to people like Terry, says Bill Dussault, one of the Education for All attorneys, who went on to write state guardianship laws. Courts wouldn't consider someone like Terry competent to give "informed consent" to access to their own medical records, Dussault says. Without a guardian, they certainly wouldn't have legal authority to move themselves out of state institutions. "Guardianships made a big difference in getting people out of state institutions," says Davis, the former Fircrest superintendent. Along with scores of people with disabilities, Munro then pushed the $25 million bond measure, leading a 1979 statewide campaign for the referendum he co-wrote with Dussault. He visited newspaper editors across the state, often working in tandem with a disabled person or a representative from an advocacy group. Pitched as "jobs and homes for the handicapped," Referendum 37 passed with 67 percent of the vote.

Munro had made more friends around the state. He was thinking about running for the state Senate, but realized he probably had more supporters around the state than in his own Kitsap County. He began campaigning for secretary of state. It was a post that a mentor, Lud Kramer, had used as a broad platform to take on social justice issues and urban unrest. Munro's opponent was Clark County Auditor Ron Dotzauer, an energetic Democrat and Vietnam War combat medic who became the youngest county elected official in the state in 1974. People with disabilities worked hard for Munro. "We had evenings where we would have disabled and wheelchair folks at 15 to 20 key downtown Seattle intersections from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.," Munro says. "They would sit there and hold up my signs on sticks. Same for the Husky and Seahawks games." He won with 51.3 percent of the vote.

As the state's top elections official, Munro made polling places more accessible and printed the first Braille voter's pamphlet. _Washington State Archives_

AS THE STATE'S top elections official, Munro ushered in a number of changes to make voter registration easier and encourage turnout, such as the state's "motor voter" law allowing citizens to register when they apply for or renew a driver's license. "I had a lot of ideas for changing election laws in Washington, all of which Ralph has accomplished," joked Dotzauer, his vanquished election opponent.

Munro didn't stop caring about people with disabilities. He remained Terry's legal guardian until several years ago. He continued to be part of a relatively small group of people that shaped the focus and direction of the disability rights movement in Washington, says Dussault, whose career spanning five decades has centered on disability rights.

As for his top accomplishment, Munro points to community meetings he attended over the years - and the quiet people who'd sit in the back of those gatherings.

"The meetings might have been about a new voting system, or putting ramps for handicapped people into voting places. They'd just sit there and wait until the meeting was over. And this happened time after time. And they'd walk up and say, 'Mr. Munro you don't remember us but when our boy got raped in the Monroe reformatory you got him transferred to solitary. And we just want to thank you.' Well, all the time I worked for Evans I had all those individual cases. It wasn't hard work...But those people never forgot. They weren't Republicans or Democrats, they weren't anything. But they never forgot. And that's what I'm most proud of. It sounds kind of self-serving to say it, but it's true."

TERRY NOW LIVES in a nice house on a cul de sac in Marysville, with two other men with disabilities and a 24-hour caretaker. He has his own bedroom, adorned with framed photos of he and Munro. Terry looks young for 59, at a trim 135 pounds, with a neat goatee. He worked for 30 years sorting recyclables. Now he polishes parts at a workshop for Boeing. He also attends classes and activities. He spends holidays and goes camping with his foster family who think of Terry as just family, says his foster sister Kellie Derum. "That's right, Kellie," Terry says, recalling a family camping trip.

"He feels empowered and enriched because he has a job, and pays taxes, and lives in a home," says Derum, who became Terry's guardian after Munro relinquished the duties because of Terry's distance from Olympia.

Munro remained Terry's legal guardian until several years ago when his foster sister Kellie Derum (left) took over the duties. Terry, 59, now lives in a nice house on a suburban cul de sac with two other men and a caretaker. _Bob Young photo_

Community-living options for people with disabilities are so much better than they were in 1968, Munro says. "Much better, Ralph, much better," Terry says.

Munro started as a volunteer. He remained one in retirement: ringing a bell for the Salvation Army before Christmas, helping at his neighborhood elementary school, going to East Africa year after year, helping to eradicate polio by administering vaccine drops one child at a time.

"I see people today trying to find fulfillment in all these screwy places," Munro said on the eve of his retirement. "If people would just go down to their local school and walk in and talk to the first-grade teacher and offer to volunteer, they'd find a hell of a lot more fulfillment than they'd find in the spa at Palm Springs."

**Bob Young**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

Community-living options for people with disabilities are so much better than they were in 1968, says Munro. "Much better, Ralph," Terry says. _Bob Young photo_

**A S WEEPING LEGACY**

* * *

A trio of Mountaineers club backpackers had spent five days in the Cascades near the north end of Lake Chelan when their serenity was shattered. A helicopter buzzed over their snowy campsite, its rotor blades slapping the crisp air. It was ferrying equipment to a mining expedition in the jagged wilderness some called the American Alps.

Stewing over the miners' incursion, Polly Dyer and Phil and Laura Zalesky later sat in a Stehekin cafe awaiting a ferry. Their ice axes caught the eye of Jane McConnell, who was in town to collect her mail. She came barreling toward their table.

"Oh, you've got to meet my husband," McConnell told the three strangers. Grant McConnell, a University of California professor, was passionate--almost religious--about the Stehekin Valley. He had recuperated from a World War II injury in a cabin there. He believed the majestic North Cascades deserved national protection.

The importance of this chance meeting of the McConnells and the nascent Seattle conservation movement in the summer of 1955 "would become increasingly clear over the next decade," says Olympia historian Lauren Danner in her book _Crown Jewel Wilderness_.

The Stehekin encounter sparked a connection between Washington and California conservationists that helped politicize and professionalize local amateurs. It accelerated a budding movement of middle-class professionals who had the leisure time to savor and defend the natural world. And it propelled a local concern into a national cause.

With crucial support from U.S. Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, the American Alps would be spared from mining and clearcutting.

On October 2, 1968, amid the war protests, assassinations and riots that shook the world that year, came a bright spot, the political equivalent of a mountain meadow. With the stroke of a pen, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the North Cascades National Park, Washington's third national park. It stretches from the Canadian border to the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area.

Central to the long campaign for the North Cascades was Polly Dyer, a cheerfully tenacious Seattleite whose living room became a sort of academy for coffee-chugging, envelope-stuffing, stamp-licking activists.

Scoop Jackson may have been the single most important player in creating the park. And Patrick Goldsworthy was probably the most prominent of local activists. But Polly Dyer, who shied from taking credit, is one of the less celebrated characters in the drama. She embodied the new breed of conservationist. ("Environmentalist" hadn't yet been coined.) She was at the vanguard of women in the movement. And she'd leave a sweeping 50-year legacy before she died in 2016 at 96.

Although she was one of the few women conservationists in the 1950s, Dyer said it didn't occur to her she was unusual. _Phil Zalesky photo_

At the time of the helicopter sighting, Dyer was already leader of the Mountaineers' Conservation Committee, and was researching the North Cascades for wilderness protection. She then became co-founder of the North Cascades Conservation Council, which spearheaded the push for a national park.

Nearly every conservation leader in the Pacific Northwest learned how to fight for wilderness in Polly and John Dyer's large living room, said Dick Fiddler, the Sierra Club's vice-president. They'd be "sitting at the long Dyer table, drinking Dyer coffee and absorbing Dyer wisdom." John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, Fiddler noted, then quipped, "and most of the rest of us can't figure how he did it without Polly."

Dyer "didn't shout because she didn't have to," says former Governor Dan Evans, a lifelong avid outdoorsman. The three-term Republican came to support the North Cascades park and first worked with Dyer to regulate billboards. "She was the best prepared person I think I've ever run across on issues. She knew the facts. It wasn't just a pitch based on emotion, although there was plenty of that because she had put a _lifetime_ into this."

Dyer's decades of organizing, training, strategizing and buttonholing came at a personal cost. The thing she loved most--hiking or at least getting outside on a sparkling day--took a back seat to the endless meetings and letter-writing. That work was anything but glamorous, says Dyer's goddaughter, Laura Dassow Walls, author of a 2017 biography of Henry David Thoreau. "These were real tedious discussions, legal and technical stuff. But that's what it took. What makes this remarkable is that Polly got that. And she was OK with it."

IN THE BEGINNING, this was a Polly-meets-Johnny, backpacker love story:

In the spring of 1945, Johnny Dyer was a young chemical engineer in Ketchikan. Though World War II was grinding toward an end, Johnny was still manufacturing Vitamin A to sharpen the night vision of American bomber pilots. Alaska, not yet a state, was the far-north front lines of the war, the battle of the Aleutian Islands having raged for more than a year in 1942-43.

Dyer often turned to recreation as a kind of therapy. He developed ulcers while a student at the University of California at Berkeley. His doctor told him to "get outdoors, walk, exercise." So he joined the Sierra Club, became a serious rock-climber and was among a quartet of the first climbers to scale the peak of Shiprock in New Mexico.

Polly and husband Johnny Dyer were together 63 years, until his death in 2008. _Dyer collection_

Meanwhile, Pauline "Polly" Tomkiel had followed her father's latest Coast Guard assignment to the same isolated fishing village. She couldn't afford to go to college. And she saw Alaska as an adventure she didn't want to miss. She landed a job as a secretary for the Coast Guard. **24**

Johnny first spotted her at a folk dance. Failing to arrange a date, he headed home very disappointed.

He didn't squander his second chance.

Six weeks later, Polly and her current boyfriend hiked up 3,000-foot Deer Mountain outside Ketchikan. At the summit they encountered Johnny, whose cap sported a red Sierra Club Rock Climber pin.

Polly's boyfriend was fascinated at the way Johnny had rigged his skis to his backpack. Johnny was more interested in Polly. He ended up sending the boyfriend home with the skis. Johnny and Polly continued hiking together.

During a break, Polly buried her orange peels in the snow. She's a conservationist at heart, Johnny thinks. As Polly would later tell the story, she went up Deer Mountain with one man, and came down with another.

In six weeks Polly and Johnny were engaged. (They're wed on August 7, the day after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.) Polly liked to say she married into the Sierra Club. It wasn't long before Johnny's work as a chemical engineer supported Polly's work as a conservationist.

The Dyers visited the McConnell's Berkeley home in the fall of 1955, just months after the Stehekin meeting, to discuss ways to protect the North Cascades. When the McConnells' eight-year-old daughter Ann was introduced, she was told that Mrs. Dyer wanted to protect the North Cascades wilderness. "In that case, you are welcome in our home," Ann responded.

Polly followed up by hosting a meeting the next year with Grant McConnell, Patrick Goldsworthy, the Zaleskys and a dozen other Mountaineers.

In 1956, Polly put her secretarial training to use in a way that showed how attention to detail could lead to significant results.

The setting: a tense meeting between conservationists and Conrad Wirth, the National Park Service director, at Sea-Tac Airport. The subject: summer rangers in the Olympic National Park had tipped Dyer and Phil Zalesky that "salvage logging" was being used to take as many big trees out of the park as possible. Polly took shorthand notes of the meeting with Wirth, writing on her lap, just below the table-top they were sitting at. Wirth said there would be no more salvage logging in the national parks, period. Dyer transcribed her notes and sent them to Wirth to check for accuracy. "I guess I did say it," he admitted. "I didn't know I was being recorded."

Polly (far right) organized a 22-mile beach hike led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a Washington native, (center pointing) to protect a threatened stretch of Olympic National Park. _The Seattle Times_

Thanks to Dyer's note-taking, Wirth couldn't backtrack from his unofficial statement changing national policy.

Olympic National Park, Dyer's great passion at the time, also became a showcase for her talent at connecting and organizing people.

A road-building proposal in 1958 threatened a particularly primitive stretch of coast from Lake Ozette to Rialto Beach. Dyer arranged a three-day 22-mile hike of the shoreline with U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas--valedictorian for his Yakima High School class--conservationists and journalists. She called the hike a "walking national town meeting." In photos, Dyer stands at the periphery, but still cuts a striking figure with her wood-frame backpack, tin cup on her belt, and cheekbones that suggest her mother's native Hawaiian ancestry.

The road plan fizzled. The North Cascades beckoned.

McConnell, who was friendly with David Brower, had written the Sierra Club leader in late 1956. At the time, he felt the conservation movement was fragmented and drifting. He was relieved to learn, from Dyer and gang, that somebody else was worried about the North Cascades. He thought it might prove a national test for wilderness protection. He told Brower it was time for a single-purpose group to lead a North Cascades movement. The group should be local and small, its sole mission to "preserve the scenic wilderness of the northern Cascades." Brower agreed.

Happy to let others take credit, Polly was often at the edge of photos, as in this one with Sierra Club leader David Brower (center) and William O. Douglas (right). _Museum of History and Industry_

The new watchdog was named the North Cascades Conservation Council, or N3C. Its members were political amateurs for the most part. Goldsworthy was a University of Washington biochemistry professor. Phil and Laura Zalesky were Everett schoolteachers. Polly Dyer had previously described herself as a "footloose, fancy-free housewife." But, like Grant McConnell, they had economic security and they cared deeply about their natural surroundings. The Sierra Club lent its experience and a national luster to the cause, says Danner in her comprehensive book about the creation of the North Cascades park.

Scoop Jackson later told N3C President Goldsworthy, "I can't give you a national park, but if you get up a big enough parade, I'll step out front and lead it."

The council got busy working on the North Cascades and national wilderness protection. "Wilderness cannot and should not wear a dollar sign," Polly Dyer told a U.S. Senate committee in 1957, as the second-largest copper company in the world was poking around Glacier Peak in the North Cascades. "It is a priceless asset which all the dollars man can accumulate will not buy back."

The N3C printed an 11-page brochure, _Are You Aware?_ , about the North Cascades peaks, so sharply serrated that the seven-mile Picket Range alone features 21 peaks, with names such as Fury and Terror, over 7,500 feet high. The Sierra Club produced a stirring half-hour film that described the North Cascades as "an amazing wilderness of rugged Alps...unsurpassed anywhere in the United States." Polly Dyer lugged the film around and showed it over 100 times to groups around the state. The Sierra Club later produced a lush coffee-table book about the North Cascades, that included photos by Ansel Adams, sent to every member of Congress. In 1960 Dyer became a rare non-Californian on the Sierra Club's board, further linking Evergreen and Golden State conservationists.

She left her mark on the 1964 federal Wilderness Act, which has led to the protection of over 100 million acres of backcountry. That law defines wilderness as "untrammeled by man." Dyer supplied those words. The Wilderness Society's Howard Zahniser, who drafted the legislation, credited Dyer for the term, recalling how she used it so effectively to describe the imperiled beaches in Olympic National Park.

" 'Untrammeled' means not caught up in a net. It was kind of typical for her to latch onto a lovely word," says her goddaughter, Laura Dassow Walls, now the William P. and Hazel B. White professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Polly passed on her love of the natural world to goddaughter Laura Dassow Walls (right) who wrote an acclaimed biography of Henry David Thoreau in 2017. _Laura Walls collection_

The Dyers moved in 1963 to Seattle's Lake City neighborhood. They picked their new house because its living room was large enough to host meetings. "I do think Polly saw herself as the glue," says Walls, recalling the meetings her parents took her to when she was a child. (Her mother edited the N3C's _Are you Aware?_ brochure.) "She was a profoundly social person who wanted to pull people together...That was the only way you could do the work. There were no conference calls, cell phones, computers. It was social. You all got together for a work party. It was all face to face."

Dyer still found time, though, to take her goddaughter hiking. Walls remembers riding in Dyer's Volkswagen Beetle, with "MARMOT" vanity plates, bouncing up remote roads to a hiking trail. "I'll never forget the thousands of snow geese Polly and I startled once on Skagit Flats, and how they rose up and around us in flickering, deafening clouds of white."

WASHINGTONIANS HAD ADVOCATED for a North Cascades park since the late 1890s. But those voices were muted by hunters, miners, loggers and locals who saw a park or protected wilderness as a threat to their lifestyles and livelihoods.

The balance was shifting. Washington's population increase during World War II outpaced every state but California. The Boeing-fueled growth continued. Between 1940 and 1960, the state's population grew 64 percent; King County's swelled by 85 percent.

Many of the people who came were educated and affluent. The booming middle class increased the appetite for outdoor recreation and parks accessible by car. Coincidentally, they also increased the demand for more timber for their houses and furnishings. And when they hiked in Northwest forests they saw evidence of more logging and clearcutting.

Scoop Jackson could see changes in his hometown of Everett, a timber town transitioning to an aerospace hub. Washington hadn't led the country in timber production since 1938. Thirty years later, Boeing employees in Snohomish County outnumbered timber workers almost three-to-one.

Jackson had impeccable standing with labor unions. "They were his people," says his son Peter Jackson. "He began his work as sort of a timber Democrat." But he also appreciated the Cascades from childhood hikes and camping trips.

Known for his hawkishness on communism, Jackson's ambition was to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee. Instead, in 1963 he found himself heading the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, charged with overseeing federal public lands. Jackson's ascendance was something of an accident. It happened only because President John F. Kennedy asked incumbent Interior chairman, Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, to lead the relatively new Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

Stars were aligning. Many of JFK's "best and the brightest" stayed during LBJ's administration. JFK appointees such as Department of Interior Secretary Stewart Udall would prove key allies to the conservation movement.

With publication of Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_ in 1962, the roots of an environmental movement were taking hold. Public sentiment mounted for preserving the North Cascades. More than 22,000 petition signatures, collected mostly between Seattle and Everett, were entered into the Congressional Record.

With the stroke of a pen, President Johnson created the North Cascades National Park on Oct. 2, 1968, with crucial support from U.S. Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson (r). _National Parks Service_

Still, Jackson was coy about his stance on the issue. "I think from the outset he wanted a park," says Peter Jackson. "I think he wanted it for his legacy."

But before he had staked his position, Jackson had floated a compromise of sorts. He suggested taking 59,000 acres out of the Olympic National Park so that they could be logged. It was clearly an attempt to pacify the timber industry before he announced his preference for the North Cascades, Danner says. The reaction from conservationists was quick and hostile. Jackson dropped the idea.

Historian Hal Rothman saw a tipping point, a moment when the environmental movement took precedence over the old extractive economy. "It was an acknowledgment that things had really changed," Danner says of Jackson's retreat.

In January 1967, LBJ told Congress it needed to act to preserve places of "irreplaceable beauty," including the North Cascades. "I think we owe one to Scoop," the president reportedly said, advocating a park.

(Peter Jackson thinks LBJ's sentiment was a response to Scoop's loyalty during the run-up to the 1968 election. Jackson had stuck by the president, despite Bobby Kennedy's looming candidacy, before LBJ dropped out of the race on March 31st, worn down by Vietnam, public criticism and the prospects of a grueling re-election campaign.)

In March, President Johnson requested a bill to create a North Cascades National Park. Washington's senators, Jackson and Warren Magnuson, co-sponsored it as Senate Bill 1321, which proposed 570,000 acres as the North Cascades National Park, adjacent to the Ross Lake National Recreation area of 100,000 acres. (The park and adjacent recreation areas now comprise 685,000 acres.)

Opposition was full-throated. Hunting, logging and mining interests testified in public hearings that they should not be deprived of their livelihoods by urban elites and their pristine playgrounds.

"At first we were amazed at the lack of concern for the welfare of the whole country exhibited by the proponents of the new North Cascades Park, but we are now convinced that they are completely selfish in their desire to set up another vast area as a private club for their own personal enjoyment," said Marion Newkirk, representing the Washington State Grange.

Called the American Alps, the North Cascades are so sharply serrated that the seven-mile Picket Range alone contains 21 peaks over 7,500 feet high. _Daniel Hershman photo_

Newkirk went on to ask if the wealth of the city dwellers was inherited from ancestors who had wrested it from the soil--"an opportunity they now want to deny others."

William O. Pearson, mayor of Sedro Woolley, said he resented the Seattle and Sierra Club activists trying to change local ways. "We resent the fact that the wishes of the people of this area are being ground beneath the heels of people who have little personal knowledge of the area, people who help extend the tentacles of mushrooming cities but deny us the pleasure and use of our hinterland."

In response, Jackson would politely point out how little the park designation would affect hunting and logging.

A federal study had claimed no major hunting areas would be inside the proposed park and less than I percent of the area proposed for protection contained commercial timber.

After hearings in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Wenatchee and Mount Vernon, Jackson didn't even have a chance for a floor speech, the Senate so quickly passed his bill by voice vote.

The North Cascades National Park and adjacent Ross Lake National Recreation Area had more than 750,000 visitors in 2017. But the park itself, with only six miles of road, accounted for just 23,000 of those. _National Parks Service_

But when the legislation went to the House for consideration, it hit a snag: Jackson's counterpart in the lower chamber, Rep. Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat from Colorado. Aspinall's district was largely agricultural and he didn't see the point of wilderness protection. A key moment in the standstill came during hearings held by Aspinall. At one juncture, Gov. Evans was being queried about the state's preference. Asked what he wanted if the choice was between no park and a large park, Evans (who still has the REI card he acquired at 15 in 1941) said a large park. Aspinall was also unhappy that Jackson's committee was holding up a bill Aspinall wanted passed. Among other things, the bill would've allowed a study of diverting Columbia River water from Washington to Colorado for irrigation. Appreciating the importance of the Columbia to Washington's economy, Jackson opposed it and wouldn't budge. Finally, the two struck a deal. The Columbia River study was dropped from Aspinall's bill, which then won Senate approval, and he passed Jackson's bill out of his House committee. Washington got its third national park.

Such a negotiated outcome--conservationists were disappointed the park wasn't larger--seems improbable today. "In 1968 you have a very similar situation," Danner says. "Political strife, wilderness preservation support, support for environmental protection...There are so many parallels across this 50-year span and public support is similar in ways. Yet we have a federal government today who seems bent on ignoring it as opposed to a federal government who was responsive, at least in the environmental sphere."

All of which is concerning given that national parks face a $12 billion maintenance backlog, declining per capita attendance, the prospect of increased visitor fees, and existential threats from climate change. The North Cascades park's more than 300 glaciers lost up to 40 percent of their volume between 1984 and 2007. Forest fires are more frequent and damaging.

The park has another problem, some say. Of the national parks in the lower 48 states, its attendance was second-lowest over the last two decades, with just over 23,000 visitors per year. That ranks ahead of only Isle Royale in Michigan, which requires a five-hour ferry ride to visit. (Ross Lake National Recreation Area, which is part of the North Cascades complex, had 759,656 visitors in 2017.)

Some may like it the way it is. But Danner believes the North Cascades park, with just six miles of road, needs to be more accessible. It and other national parks need to attract visitors who reflect the country's diversity, she says.

THE NORTH CASCADES was just a part of Polly Dyer's legacy. Her credits include: founding board member of the Alliance for Puget Sound Shorelines, education director for the University of Washington's Institute for Environmental Studies, and president of Olympic Park Associates, a watchdog group, from which she led the fight to add spectacular Shi Shi Beach and Point of the Arches to the park. She won awards from the League of Women Voters, Washington Environmental Council and Sierra Club. Her tradition lives on in the Polly Dyer Cascadia chapter of a national group, Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

At the age of 89, she and Goldsworthy went out on the Baker River Trail in Whatcom County with a newspaper reporter and photographer to pitch a campaign for expanding the North Cascades park. "Using two hands to lift a leg over a fallen log, Dyer has never lost her passion for hiking, or conservation," wrote Lynda Mapes of _The Seattle Times_.

As she approached her 90th birthday in 2010, Congressman Jay Inslee paid tribute in the _Congressional Record_. "My family and I have hiked the trail and slept under the stars on land she fought hard to save for future generations," Inslee said. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn proclaimed her birthday "Polly Dyer Day."

Although she was one of the few prominent women conservationists in Washington in the 1950s, Dyer said it didn't occur to her she was unusual.

"She was a profoundly social person who pulled people together," says goddaughter Laura Dassow Walls about Polly (far right), who organized a beach hike she called a "walking national town meeting." _Bob and Ira Spring photo_

Talking about one of her mentors, the Seattle Audubon Society's Emily Haig, Dyer said, "Nobody's looking at whether it's a woman or a man; she's just a leader, is what it amounts to."

Dyer invited herself to industry meetings in Seattle and Portland "all the time," she said. "I still remember, in the old Olympic Hotel, being the only woman in a room of 500 men, but not even thinking about it until after it was over with."

Still, gender norms were sometimes a consideration, she said. Early in her activism she would identify herself as Mrs. John Dyer. (Polly and Johnny, who never had children, were together 63 years, until his death in 2008.)

What most distinguished her from others in the cause?

"Polly Dyer Day" was proclaimed by Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn on her 90th birthday. Congressman Jay Inslee also paid tribute in the Congressional Record. _Laura Walls collection_

"Humility," Peter Jackson says without hesitation. "She had grace and presence. She was perfectly happy to let others take credit." Jackson, a board member of the nonprofit North Cascades Institute, pointed to photos of her beach walks with William O. Douglas. "She is literally way in the background though she was the chief organizer...Her greatest attribute may have been her greatest downfall from a public relations perspective."

"It goes back to that cheerful tenacity," Danner says, "and she just didn't care about credit. She cared about the outcome. And when you focus on the outcome and you put your ego aside and you're positive, you will probably get some stuff done."

Her straightforward civility won respect from adversaries. Dyer reminded Weyerhaeuser CEO Jack Creighton in 1994 that a company executive had once called her a "black hat." A few days later, Creighton sent her a big white Stetson.

Dyer said her militancy had limits. "I'm not the kind who will put sawdust in the crankcases of snowmobiles, even though I might like to...I don't go so far as to vandalize something even though I might be opposed to it."

Nature writer Tim McNulty, who considered Dyer a mentor, called her a coalition-builder. "I've heard politicians as well as government officials joke that no one could say 'no' to Polly. I think it was simply because she wouldn't let them."

At 89, Polly took a news reporter out to Whatcom County to pitch a campaign for extending the North Cascades Park. "Dyer has never lost her passion for hiking, or conservation," wrote Lynda Mapes of _The Seattle Times_.

Her goddaughter Laura Walls recalled how Polly impressed upon her the "10 Essentials" for hiking. (And so impressed her that Walls says she spent almost as much time packing and unpacking, checking and rechecking, as she did hiking.) But it was the "11th essential," Polly's love of nature, that powered her activism, Walls says. Nature was her Bible. And the North Cascades and Olympic National Parks were her children.

**Bob Young**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**A LMA MATER COMES OF AGE**

* * *

Unsurprisingly, there's a big purple W on Norm Dicks' favorite windbreaker. He came of age at the University of Washington. And when he departed with a law degree in 1968 he landed a job as an aide to Warren G. Magnuson, the canny old lion of the United States Senate. A 1929 graduate of the UW Law School, "Maggie" surrounded himself with young Huskies and taught them how to mush. Dicks was a fast learner. He went on to serve 36 years in Congress, only once winning re-election with less than 58 percent of the vote. Pundits called him "Washington's third senator."

Dicks' years at the university are like bookends to the history of one of the most tumultuous decades in American history: The Sixties. "It was an incredible time to be a student at a major university," Dicks remembers--especially on the day in 1961 when he watched John F. Kennedy stride toward Edmundson Pavilion to address the university's centennial convocation. The young president spoke of the need for Americans to be, "above all else ... united in recognizing the long and difficult days that lie ahead." Kennedy's words were tragically prescient.

_Rick Dahms photo_

The struggle for civil rights and America's escalating involvement in Vietnam stoked student activism. "In the spring of 1963, we rose up and fought to keep the bricks from being paved over in the 'Quad'--the university's historic main quadrangle," Dicks remembers. "It was amazing--the first time we had really stood up for anything against the administration." He was a member of the student Board of Control, which initiated an "Open Forum" for outdoor oratory on campus. "Then when Kennedy was assassinated there was a sense of collective shock. We all ran over to the HUB and watched the news unfold on TV, with Walter Cronkite announcing that the president was dead." Homecoming was canceled.

Five years later, above all else, America was divided. An arson fire caused $100,000 damage to the ROTC building and the newly organized UW chapter of the Black Student Union denounced "institutionalized racism." Dicks joined a group called Young Washington Inc., mostly comprised of law school students. They had been recruited by Washington Attorney General John J. O'Connell to push an initiative for constitutional reform and help boost his campaign for governor. The students staged a sit-in at the state Capitol, hoping to secure a court test of the measure's constitutionality.

April was the cruelest month. Robert F. Kennedy, whom Dicks hoped would become president, announced to a stunned crowd of supporters that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered in Memphis. Two months later, RFK was dead, too. "Then we had the chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It's hard to believe all that was 50 years ago," Dicks says, shaking his head. "And Vietnam was on the nightly news _every_ night. It still seems so shockingly real--the war, the protests, the riots. Television had emerged as the most powerful media. It played a huge role in bringing home the drama."

So much had changed since the fall of 1959.

WHEN DICKS enrolled at the university, he was literally a fair-haired kid campaigning for a spot on the football team. Fast and agile at 6-1, 195 pounds, he was a standout two-sport athlete from West Bremerton High. Athleticism was in his gene pool. Affability came naturally. His tenacity sprang from working-class roots.

Horace De Valois Dicks, Norm's father, was a Navy veteran who worked at the Bremerton shipyard. He was born in Jamaica to British citizen parents of English, French and West Indian extraction. "My grandfather died when my dad was 3," Dicks says, marveling at the saga that followed. His grandmother, a stenographer, moved to New York to find work. "My dad remained in Jamaica for a while, living with uncles, before re-uniting with his mother and two siblings in Manhattan." After high school, Horace Dicks joined the Navy to see the world and learn a trade. He became a skilled electrician and a fearless amateur boxer.

When Horace arrived in Bremerton, he met a fetching local girl whose father was a shipfitter. They were married in 1940. Norman DeValois Dicks, a big, blond baby, was born 10 months later, his brother Leslie in 1944. Eileen Dicks was a nurturer who never missed her sons' games and played a mean game of gin rummy. Horace was an even-handed disciplinarian whose mantra was "work hard, play hard and get a good education."

Every conversation with Norm Dicks is punctuated with anecdotes and digressions. One story invariably leads to another. He remembers the sage advice Congressman Tom Foley gave him before his first meeting with House Speaker Tip O'Neill. "I said, 'Mr. Speaker, Tom told me to remind you that my mother's name is Cora Eileen O'Hara!' And O'Neill said, 'Norm, I think you're going to be on the Appropriations Committee!' "

Dicks' laughter rocks the dining room at the Alderbrook Inn overlooking his beloved Hood Canal. It's so infectious no one looks annoyed.

He didn't tell O'Neill that his grandpa, Roy O'Hara, was a Republican, albeit a pragmatic one.

"Here's another good story," Dicks promises, wagging his salad fork. "Grandpa O'Hara loved politics. He was one of Congressman Tom Pelly's best political contacts in Kitsap County, so Pelly's top staff person assumed I was a Republican and urged me to apply for a military academy appointment. I went to my grandfather and said, 'Grandpa, Mom and Dad are both Democrats and I like Jack Kennedy so I think I'm going to be a Democrat.' And my grandfather says, 'Well, it'll be a lot easier getting you elected in Kitsap County.' "

"A likable personality, intelligence and leadership are the qualities of the president of National Honor Society, Norm Dicks," the editors of the West Bremerton High School _Catlog_ wrote in 1959.

Getting elected, especially in Kitsap County, was never a problem for Norm Dicks. The only election he ever lost was instructive. It was in his senior year in high school. "I was defeated for student body president. It was a great lesson. I had gotten a little too full of myself. I learned how important constituent relations are." His classmates voted him the most popular boy in the Class of '59.

Dicks also learned how to study, thanks to the erudite woman whose lawn he mowed. (Grandpa O'Hara had arranged both the job and the tutoring.) "What she taught me seems so simple: Take copious notes on every lecture. Outline everything you read for the class. Then put the two together and review it all before the test."

AT 18, Dicks graduated from a gritty shipyard town to a world of major-college athletics, fraternities, sororities, Twist contests at sock hops and home-game Saturdays replete with pageantry. It was the last year of the Eisenhower administration and the cusp of the New Frontier. Sigma Chi's sweetheart wore a strapless formal and the "Husky Honey" hostesses greeted UW teams at the airport when they returned from combat, hopefully victorious. Dicks' goals were to win a spot as a starter on the football team, excel in the classroom and join one of the top fraternities. Soon after pledging Sigma Nu, which was heavily invested in campus leadership, his fraternity brothers named him their election coordinator.

Dicks posted a 3.75 grade-point average for his first quarter of college. "Some of the assistant coaches called me down and said, 'What's this honor roll thing? You must be cheating!' I said, 'No I'm not! I study!' So from then on I was their academic guy. In my junior year, Coach [Jim] Owens, who liked the fact that I was a good student, comes up to me and says, 'I want you to run for the Board of Control because they have control over our budget.' So now I'm on the ASUW Board of Control."

"Dizzy" Dicks rated high praise for his defensive tactics during the 1962 season. _Tyee yearbook, 1963_

The yearbooks from Dicks' first years at the UW are time capsules from an incredibly white world. There were fewer than a hundred minority students among the university's 23,300 undergraduates during his freshman year, 1959-60. Charles Odegaard, the university's new president, was a visionary Ivy League intellectual intent on elevating the UW to the first rank of American public universities. But diversity was not on the fast track. In Dicks' days as an undergrad, the handful of African Americans at the university were almost all athletes. George Fleming, a fleet halfback and clutch-time kicker, was the co-most valuable player in the Huskies' 44-8 upset victory over Wisconsin in the 1960 Rose Bowl. Fleming was elected to the Legislature in 1968 as Dicks was headed for the other Washington.

DICKS' TEAMMATES nicknamed him "Dizzy" because he was a natural-born raconteur--not because of a concussion he sustained during practice in the fall of 1962. _The Seattle Times_ illustrated the impact with a photo of what happened to a football helmet liner when a 16-pound lead weight was dropped on it from a height of 12 feet. "Witnesses estimate the dimensions of that [dramatic] dent match those on the headgear Dicks turned in" after the full speed, head-on, helmet-to-helmet collision with a teammate. "That the Husky linebacker was not killed is a marvel of science," sportswriter Bob Schwarzmann wrote. "Without the protection [of his helmet] the result to Dicks' skull would have matched the dimensions of a stepped-on egg." Dicks shook that one off. They gave him a new helmet, "and the next day I was kicked in the side of the head. It cracked the helmet and I was laid up with a concussion. I'm now on my third helmet...I'm a pretty expensive item," he told the sportswriter, laughing.

Dicks shakes his head in wonderment 56 years later as examines a yellowed clipping featuring the photo of the crushed helmet liner. "People like to quote Lyndon Johnson as saying 'There's nothing wrong with Jerry Ford, except that he played football too long without a helmet,' " Dicks says. "Actually, Johnson had an even better line. 'Jerry's a nice guy,' he said, 'but he played center, so he saw the world upside down!' "

Big John Meyers (No. 79) and Norm Dicks (No. 63) were two of the most durable Huskies in 1961. _Tyee yearbook, 1962_

Dicks cackles. Then his brow furrows again. "I'm really fortunate that I never had a serious head injury. I led the team in tackles in 1961 and 1962. My first start was at Champaign-Urbana against the University of Illinois in 1961. Bobby Monroe, one of our running backs, comes up to me right before the game and says, 'Dicks we're going to see what you're made of today!' I had to play the whole game because everyone else at my position was injured. In those were days you played both ways, offense and defense. I made 13 tackles, 12 assists and two interceptions. We won 20-7 and I was player of the game. Afterward, I said, 'Well, Bobby, was that good enough?' "

His play was way better than good enough in the 1962 Apple Cup, played before a record crowd of 35,700 at wind-whipped Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane. It was the last game of Dicks' college career. With 55 seconds remaining in 21-21 deadlock, Dicks intercepted a pass and plunged two yards to the WSU 7-yard-line. The Huskies took the lead with a field goal and added a safety when they swarmed the Cougs' stellar quarterback, Dave Mathieson, who had passed for 363 yards. Five points in 20 seconds produced jubilation among the 17 UW seniors. They carried Dicks off the field on their shoulders. "It was about time," he said in the locker room. "I've dropped three interceptions, and the guys have been giving me gas all year." Dicks remembers Mathieson as a warrior. "I'd have felt like less of a person if we'd played for the tie," the old Cougar said years later.

Gladiatorial nostalgia can't dispel the fact that football was a dangerous game back then, Dicks says. "And it's still dangerous, even with far better helmets and other gear." The new research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head, worries the former Husky gridder. "I told my sons that my advice for my grandchildren is 'Don't let them play football.' Flag football is fine, but tackle football is dangerous. I've even thought about donating my brain to the UW Medical School to see why some players who sustain concussions have cognitive problems later in life while others don't. We've lost a lot of guys I played with in that era, so it would be worth a study. Others I played with, including fraternity brothers, are alive and well, closing in on 80. Several had brilliant careers in business and the professions. I seem to have done all right, too. I loved playing football, but I'm one of the lucky ones. I didn't sustain any permanent injuries."

DICKS, an academic standout by any measure, was named one of the top scholar-athletes in the conference in 1961 and 1962. He enrolled in law school in 1963 after receiving his degree in political science, but dropped out before long because he was "completely spent" from the rigors of maintaining honor-roll grades while playing varsity football. He worked for Boise Cascade as a corrugated box salesman before joining Kaiser Gypsum as an administrative assistant to the manager of its Seattle plant.

When Dicks re-enrolled in law school in 1965, the campus was in the throes of change. No longer happy to be "honeys" pursuing an "M.R.S." degree, UW coeds won an end to their dorm curfews. The spring 1968 edition of _tyee,_ the student magazine, explored "The New Morality," including the notion that "it's ludicrous to declare it's wrong to have sex with anyone you're not married too." The Students for a Democratic Society conducted a mock war crimes trial that indicted the university for complicity in the Vietnam war and racism. And _tyee_ offered a detailed primer for white folks on how not to be a "racist dog pig." For starters, "Who you calling 'Negro'?--"the term is 'black.' " On the afternoon of May 20, 1968, three dozen members of the Black Student Union invaded the university's administrative offices, demanding changes in admission policies and Black Studies classes taught by black professors. There were only around 200 black students among the university's 30,000 undergraduates.

The sit-in ended four hours later when the administration agreed to double black enrollment and hire more minority staff and faculty. A month earlier, at a campus memorial for the slain Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President Odegaard declared racism had to be "purged" from the university. Now he announced that the number of black professors, "already up to 10 from one in the previous year, would increase to 15" through special recruiting efforts. The University also set out to conduct research projects and training sessions in Seattle's Central Area, home to most of King County's blacks. Wary black activists declared, "We see the University as an imperial power and the ghetto as a colony."

A student demonstration on the University of Washington campus in 1967. _tyee magazine, Autumn 1967_

THE TIMES were changing, but love is always in the air. Dicks and five friends organized a singles group called The Never on Friday Club. When Suzanne "Suzie" Callison, a vivacious young woman who worked at a travel agency, showed up one night Norm wasted little time in asking her for a date. "Everyone knew who he was," Suzie remembers, but she had no idea he was a big man on campus. Though she had deep Seattle roots--her grandfather, George W. Dilling, was mayor in 1911--she grew up in Eastern Washington and graduated from the University of Arizona. Norm and Suzie had their first date in June of 1967, got engaged in July and were married in August.

Before his third year of law school, thanks to his support of John J. O'Connell, Dicks secured an internship with the Washington State Attorney General's Office, which was aggressively promoting consumer protection. He also had a life-changing conversation with Senator Magnuson's 35-year-old chief of staff, Gerald Grinstein. The son of the UW football team's doctor, Grinstein was a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. His dynamism as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee had elevated it to a leadership role in consumer protection.

"We had talked for about 45 minutes, focusing on Senator Magnuson's work in appropriations and consumer protection, when Jerry says, 'Why don't you come and work for the senator as a legislative assistant?' I figured I had about 5 to 10 seconds to decide my future. I said, 'I'd love to do that, but I have an obligation to John O'Connell I just can't walk away from.' " Grinstein was impressed.

Dicks and Magnuson in the early 1970s. _University Libraries, University of Washington Special Collections, PH Coll 638.3036 Warren G. Magnuson photograph collection_

Dicks passed the bar exam in the middle of O'Connell's campaign for governor. When the attorney general lost to Dan Evans, Dicks called Grinstein. Magnuson had just won his fifth term in the Senate with a campaign slogan that italicized his consumer protection legislation: "Maggie Keeps the Big Boys Honest." Norm and Suzie packed all their stuff into a baby blue Ford Mustang with a rooftop carrier and headed east. They arrived in D.C. on November 17, 1968.

"I was a legislative assistant--and a junior one at that," Dicks remembers, "but I got to spend a lot of time with the senator." Magnuson loved the energy Grinstein and his successor, Stan Barer, brought to the office. The late Norm Maleng, a UW Law School standout who went on to become King County prosecutor, was an earlier Commerce Committee intern for Magnuson. There was a ton of talent in Magnuson's milieu. Nixon's domestic affairs assistant, John Ehrlichman, told Jermaine Magnuson that her husband's young aides were "always buzzing around everywhere." So she dubbed them "bumblebees." Grinstein presides when alumni of the colony get together, Dicks says.

Every day was like a master's-degree program in the art of political deal-making. Magnuson, in action, was actually more artist than professor. In his 31 years in Congress, he had sponsored landmark consumer protection legislation, promoted groundbreaking medical research and, perhaps most notably, "shepherded through a deeply divided Congress the most controversial section of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964--Title II, which outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, transportation facilities, and theaters." During his final 12 years in the Senate, Magnuson would protect Puget Sound from supertankers, help save the American fishing industry and rescue the Northwest's iconic orcas from becoming circus animals. It was an extraordinary last hurrah.

The senatorial tag-team of Magnuson and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson was one of the most formidable in American history. "And I got to work closely with both," Dicks says.

AS DICKS was learning the ropes, Nixon's pledge to end the war was proving easier said than done, racial tensions were rising and Boeing was about to be in big trouble. Inflation, fueled in part by the cost of the war, produced a disastrous debut for the 747 jumbo jet. Then in the winter of 1971, the U.S. Senate rejected funding for the SST, Boeing's Supersonic Transport. "I worked on the SST for Magnuson--and for Senator Jackson as well--because it was an appropriations issue. Losing the SST was a blow that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Boeing," Dicks says. "The British and French built the Concorde, which never was a real success commercially. But the reality for the time being was that Boeing had over-extended itself with the 747, and 65,000 workers lost their jobs between 1968 and 1971. Handling the 'Boeing Bust' was my biggest responsibility. We passed three bills that extended emergency unemployment compensation and authorized food stamps in addition to surplus commodity distribution. Magnuson also pushed through $5 million in grants to the Neighbors in Need program."

The state weathered the storm because there was a bipartisan sense that "we're all in this together" rather than political grandstanding, Dicks says. "Wes Uhlman was mayor of Seattle, John Spellman was King County executive and Dan Evans was governor. Spellman's father had been an assistant coach when Magnuson was on the Husky scrub team at the UW in the 1920s. They all respected Magnuson because he could work both sides of the aisle. That's one of the big lessons I learned from him. After we passed that legislation to help ease the impact of the Boeing Bust, I remember one of my great moments as an aide to the senator. We were riding over to the Senate in a little underground train at the Capitol and Maggie said, 'You just won me two gut victories. _I will never forget it._ You're just like me, Norm. You love comin' up here every day and gettin' something done.' It was the only time he said something like that in the nine years I worked for him. That was very important to me," Dicks says, savoring the moment all over again.

Another illustrative story was sure to follow--one that speaks volumes about "The Dance of Legislation," the title of a classic book about the legislative process written by another former Magnuson aide, Eric Redman. Dicks tells it this way:

One night after we passed the Airport & Airway Development Act of 1970, I was in the hallway right outside Magnuson's office. The press secretary was arguing with someone over who was going to take Maggie home because the senator had to be driven. Mike Mansfield, the majority leader, was walking by because his office was right next to Magnuson's. "I'll take Maggie home," he says. "I've got something I want to talk to him about." We said, "Oh no, Mr. Leader, you don't have to." And he said, _" I want to do it."_

The next day I got a call from Senator Mansfield's top guy, Charlie Ferris. He says, "Norm, Maggie and The Leader drove home together last night." I said, "I'm well aware of that." And he said, "Well, we want to introduce an amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age to 18. Normally we'd have Senator Kennedy do it but he's out of the country. We want Magnuson to do it." So now this is my new assignment. I called the Judiciary Committee and talked to Kennedy's people. They said there were two ways to make it happen. One was a constitutional amendment, which is very difficult, requiring a two-thirds vote of both houses and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Alternatively we could do it legislatively and see if lowering the voting age survived a test in the courts. Of course, I went for the easier route because when you worked for Maggie you wanted to get things done.

So the legislation comes over from the House. The House did not want any amendments. But we have Maggie argue, "Hey, we've got these kids under 21 fighting in Vietnam. They ought to be able to vote!" The amendment passed like 67 to 18. Big vote. Then we worried it was going to die in the conference committee negotiations between the House and the Senate. But 84-year-old Manny Celler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was facing a challenge from Liz Holtzman, a young lawyer who said he was out of touch. Celler needs all the votes he can get, so he says, "Hey, we want 18-year-olds to be able to vote!" The House approves lowering the voting age. People worry Nixon will veto the bill. But he wants it, too. He signs it and asks the attorney general to expedite a court test. Oregon and Texas challenge the law. Then it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court on an emergency action. The court, on a 5-4 decision, says you can lower the voting age to 18 in federal elections by legislation, but you can't do it by legislation in state and local elections. So we prepared a constitutional amendment to clarify the situation. Congress passed the 26th Amendment in March of 1971 and the states promptly ratified it. Lowering the voting age to 18 was first proposed by Senator Kennedy. But Senator Magnuson played a key role in making it happen. That's often overlooked by historians. And if we hadn't opted to achieve it through a majority vote in Congress it wouldn't have happened. If we had tried to do it as a constitutional amendment we couldn't have pulled it off.

That's the kind of stuff you get to do when you're working for a senator who is liked by everybody, number three or four in seniority, chairman of the Commerce Committee and Chairman of Health, Education and Welfare Appropriations with half of the budget under his jurisdiction. That's enormous clout.

It was a real education. Every day.

As Magnuson grew older, his step slowed by diabetes, some whispered that his mental acuity was also waning. They chuckled at his gaffes and malapropisms, especially when he called French President Georges Pompidou "Poopidoo." But that was just the senator's whimsical side. Dicks has a rest-of-the-story footnote to a widely repeated, ostensibly embarrassing telephone conversation between Magnuson and Wilbur Mills, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:

We needed more money for unemployment compensation during the Boeing Bust. So Magnuson gets on the phone and says, "Orville, we really need your help on the unemployment comp."

"Okay, Warren," Mills says. "I'll take care of it. Don't worry." Click.

"How did I do?" Maggie asks his staff. I think it was Stan Barer who said, "You were great, senator, but it's 'Wilbur,' not Orville. You had the wrong Wright brother."

Magnuson doesn't say another word.

A few years later, after Mills left Congress in the wake of a scandal over his antics with a stripper named Fanne Foxe, he became a lobbyist. I spotted him in the House members' dining room.

"Mr. Chairman, welcome back!" I said. "We miss you. You know, I work for Senator Magnuson and I was there in the room when he called you and referred to you as 'Orville.' "

Mills smiled. "Well, when Maggie and I were in the House together we went out for drinks. And one night I asked him, 'Do you mind being called 'Maggie'? And he said, 'My friends call me 'Warren' and I prefer 'Warren.' What about you?' And I said, 'Well, my father wanted to name me Orville-Wilbur Mills. But, my mother wouldn't allow it. So, that's how I became Wilbur.' And Maggie says, 'Which would you have rather been, Orville or Wilbur?' And I said, 'I think I would've rather been Orville.' And Maggie said, 'For you and I, it'll always be Orville!' "

Dicks with House Speaker Tom Foley of Spokane. _The Seattle Times_

"We underestimated our senator," Dicks says. "Always a mistake."

Dicks also remembers the day he handed the senator a three-page memo, which Magnuson quickly scanned.

"Senator," he said, "you didn't really read that."

"Ask me a question," Magnuson said. Dicks asked a seemingly tough question. Then another. And another. "He answered them all. He was amazing. He had incredible smarts. Not everyone will say that. But I dealt with him every day. Unfortunately, the cameras caught him stumbling on the steps of _Air Force One_ in 1980 when he arrived with Jimmy Carter to review the damage from Mount St. Helens. It made him seem even older than 75. That was devastating."

Slade Gorton sent Magnuson into retirement by emphasizing that after 44 years in Congress Magnuson deserved the thanks of a grateful nation--and a gold watch. He wanted to be "Washington's Next Great Senator!"

Four years earlier, at the age of 35, Dicks had won a seat in Congress and a spot on the Appropriations Committee--perhaps because his mother was Irish. Maggie was impressed but not surprised.

DICKS WEATHERED the Gingrich insurgency of 1994 when five of his fellow Democrats in the House--Maria Cantwell, Jolene Unsoeld, Jay Inslee, Mike Kreidler and, shockingly, Speaker of the House Tom Foley--went down to defeat. Dicks soldiered on with the patience and persuasion he had learned working for Magnuson. Dicks became an expert on defense and national security issues, and in 1998 was awarded the CIA Director's Medal for his service on the House Intelligence Committee.

The Washington State congressional delegation in the 1980s. Sitting, from left, Senator Slade Gorton, Congressman Joel Pritchard and Senator Dan Evans. Back row, from left, Congressmen Rod Chandler, Al Swift, Norm Dicks, Tom Foley, Sid Morrison, Mike Lowry and Don Bonker. _Washington State Archives_

After 30 years on the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Interior and Environment, he was elevated to the chairmanship in 2007. Three years later, he became chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Bringing it all back home, Dicks secured federal funds to revitalize downtown Tacoma and the historic waterfront of his home town, Bremerton. The Tacoma project is anchored by the UW's thriving second campus, the Union Station courthouse and four museums. Dicks brokered the historic land claims settlement with the Puyallup Tribe and spearheaded removal of the two dams on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula.

"When I wanted something done in the House for our delegation, I always went to Norm first," Slade Gorton said in 2012 when Dicks announced he would not seek a 19th term. "I am a considerable admirer."

In 36 years in Congress, Dicks never forgot the lessons he learned from Magnuson and his days as a Husky linebacker: Take care of your constituents and do your homework.

He returned home often, developed a great staff and campaigned door to door every two years. "On the football team, we always said you should never take anything lightly. You had to be prepared for every game. That's the way I approached elections. You need to make sure people know you still want the job."

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**W INNING THEM OVER**

* * *

Fraser at the University of Washington in 1966.

For a sociology major, being at the University of Washington in 1968 with 30,000 other human beings under 30 was like watching the seeds of change sprout in a petri dish. Karen Fraser taped a McCarthy for President poster in her apartment window. At 24, it was her first overt political statement. She was in grad school, pursuing a master's degree in public administration as the campus roiled with debate and dissent during one of the most tumultuous years in American history. It played out in demonstrations on the quadrangle; around the black-and-white TV sets in the Husky Union Building where students gathered to watch Walter Cronkite's reports on the war in Vietnam; in classrooms and residence halls and in the pages of the _UW Daily_ and _tyee_ magazine. So much had changed since 1962, her freshman year, especially for women. Most "coeds" had grown weary of fraternity-sweetheart objectification. They were intent on "leading lives worthy of emulation," as _tyee_ put it.

Fraser, a soft-spoken yet persuasive feminist, would become the first female mayor of Lacey, a progressive county commissioner and for 28 years an influential state legislator--a Democrat admired on both sides of the aisle for her common sense and civility.

Given her contemplative personality, it's unsurprising that Eugene McCarthy, the professorial anti-war senator from Minnesota, was Fraser's pick for president in 1968. "He seemed so genuine," she remembers. Thousands of other college students across America agreed. The boys cut their hair to get "clean for Gene," and the girls donned their best dresses. The young volunteers descended on New Hampshire for the year's first presidential primary. On March 12, McCarthy turned the political world upside down. His strong runner-up showing to a sitting president underscored Lyndon Johnson's vulnerability. Two weeks later, LBJ announced he would not seek re-election. The making of the president 1968 became a free-for-all punctuated by assassinations and rioting. For McCarthy, genuineness wasn't enough. Come November, the "new" Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was perceived as old news, irreparably damaged by the Johnson administration's conduct of the Vietnam War. "Looking back, it's hard to believe it all happened in one year," Fraser says.

McCarthy volunteers greet their candidate. _Christine Howells Reed photo_

Ever since grade school, Karen Fraser had been studying society and wondering why things were the way they were. Her undergraduate degree is in sociology, with departmental honors.

SHE WAS BORN just before the end of World War II. Her 1950s Eisenhower-era childhood in northeast Seattle was a life-skills class in the sociology of changing times. Fraser lived in the same house from first grade through her graduation from Roosevelt High School. But there were a few twists--and an underlying conflict--she believes helped her become successful in public life. Her father was an Irish immigrant, which gave her an awareness of other countries and some of the challenges immigrants face. Her mother, born on a farm in Duvall in rural King County, was an artist, which contributed to Fraser's life-long appreciation of the arts. Karen also remembers her mother's stories about the workplace discrimination women faced.

There was one more thing "of nearly overwhelming" significance: Her parents divorced when Karen and her brother Bill were in grade school. "Divorce was exceptionally unusual in those days," she remembers. "There was quite a stigma associated with it, including toward children of divorced families, so I always kept this fact to myself. The divorce had a major influence on my sense of wondering about things: 'Why did this happen to my family?' It didn't happen to anybody else's family that I knew. In the summer, my brother and I would go down to California and stay with our dad. So we kind of grew up with two lives--one here, one there."

The divorce was not amicable. Karen learned to navigate the tension, here and there.

"Although we lived with him only part of the year, our dad taught us many things. He enjoyed engaging in 'argumentation and debate.' It was his favorite class at the University of Washington. I grew up becoming accustomed to discussing differences of opinion and being comfortable engaging in discussions with men.

"After the divorce, our family finances plunged. Bill and I were frustrated when our mother said we couldn't afford either a car or a TV. I began developing personal scheduling skills by arranging to see my favorite TV shows at various neighbors' homes. My brother and I were so intent about the car issue that by the time we each turned 16, we owned our own 'junkers.' We experienced vastly more personal freedom and independence during our childhood and teen years than nearly all our friends."

In fourth grade, Karen learned something that to her didn't make sense. A teacher explained how pronouns worked. Sometimes "he" could mean both male and female but "she" was always female. "I remember wondering, 'What's that about?'

"I loved to listen to the news on the radio. One day I realized there were no women newscasters. So I asked my mother why, and she said, 'Well, it's because they don't have authoritative voices.' It struck me as strange, but I just took it in. That's kind of been my style all my life: I take it in, think about it and incorporate it later into my perspectives."

When she was 13, Elvis topped the hit parade with "All Shook Up," a perfect metaphor for the year's biggest banner headline: The Russians had launched _Sputnik_ , a satellite that ushered in the space race and raised the specter of a world dominated by communism. "I had a nightmare that Russian soldiers were coming over our back fence," Fraser remembers with a little shiver and a smile. By her senior year at Roosevelt, things were more ominous. After a tense summit with Nikita Khrushchev, a belligerent bowling ball of a man, President Kennedy told _TIME_ magazine he had never met a more frightening person. "I talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in 10 minutes," Kennedy said, "and he just looked at me as if to say, 'So what?' "

As a high school senior, Fraser researched and wrote a report weighing whether every house should have a bomb shelter. She concluded it would be a good idea. That class, Contemporary Problems, taught by a highly regarded teacher, Earl V. Prebezac, triggered her interest in politics. "Every day we had to read the front page and editorial page of _The Seattle Times_ to be ready for a pop quiz. Another major assignment was to pick an advocacy organization to study." She selected the American Civil Liberties Union and rode the bus downtown in the middle of the World's Fair excitement to interview an ACLU staff member. "I was totally fascinated by everything I was reading about national and world affairs and the importance of politics in serving the public interest. It was all new for me, as my family was non-political." She never planned to go to college anywhere other than the University of Washington. "Our parents deliberately moved to northeast Seattle for the specific purpose of being close to the university. During my six years at the UW, the world changed dramatically. When I look back on those years and put my life in the context of the times it seems even more remarkable."

FRASER ARRIVED in Olympia as a Ford Foundation legislative intern on a snowy day in January of 1967, driving an old car with an inoperative heater. Long stretches of Interstate-5 were incomplete, especially along the Nisqually Delta, shimmering in refracted sunlight.

"I had just graduated from the UW. All my worldly goods were in my car," she remembers wistfully. "And my legislative internship turned out to be totally life-changing"--simultaneously daunting and exciting. She was the only woman among the five UW political science students selected for the program by Dr. Hugh A. Bone, a revered longtime professor and dean of the UW Political Science Department. Launched by Bone in 1956, the internship program soon became a national model. Fraser was doubly lucky that the legislator leading the program was the redoubtable Representative Mary Ellen McCaffree, R-Seattle, a former president of the Seattle League of Women Voters and a master of what she called "politics of the possible."

With the Legislature set to convene three days later, Fraser went looking for a place to stay. "I went to the YWCA on Union Street because motels seemed awfully expensive for someone on a student budget. All the rooms they had were occupied. However, the woman who answered the door must have taken pity on me. There I was--young and cold, standing there in the dark with my little suitcase. She said I could spend a few nights on the overstuffed couch in the building's cavernous unfinished basement for $1.50 a night. I could never have conceived then that 50 years later, to the day, I would end up retiring as a senior member of the Senate."

The Ford Foundation's goal was to encourage state legislatures to become more co-equal with the executive branch. "Their major strategy was to improve staffing," Fraser says. "The Washington Legislature back then had very little permanent staff and only a few interim committees. That meant interns were put in actual line positions." At 22, Fraser became the sole staff person for the House Health and Welfare committee. "Standing committees during the legislative sessions back then had no analysts or attorneys. There was no staff training either. So, you'd just show up on the first day of session and start figuring it out! My job called for maintaining all records of the committee, including typing up amendments on a typewriter using carbon paper. And they had to be perfect. No erasures. Otherwise the Chief Clerk's Office wouldn't accept them. I also kept records of the committee's votes, which occurred behind closed doors.

"The Legislature, back then, did not print or disseminate committee schedules. My job was to type up the committee hearing announcements on a small orange form. Then I'd walk around the Legislative Building and tape the notices on various marble pillars. That was it for notices of public hearings! The Washington State Association of Counties assigned its session intern the job of contacting committee clerks daily about the next day's hearings. He would daily mimeograph the list he compiled and place stacks of them in strategic locations around the Legislative Building. Everyone relied on them.

"Something similar occurred with status-of-bills report. The Legislature didn't prepare those either. As a public service, the Association of Washington Industries (precursor to the Association of Washington Business) assigned a staff member to try and prepare daily listings of the ever-changing status of bills and place them around the Legislative Building."

Fraser did a double take the first time she saw the legislators' desks. They were piled high with bill books. No computers, no cellphones, no fax machines, no TVW, no Internet. Every day each legislator received a complete set of bill books. Amendments on varying sizes of paper were pasted onto the bills, and the increasingly unwieldy mound was laced together with long shoe strings.

The late 1960s saw a major transformation in the legislative process and the growth of state government. Fraser had a front row seat. Thurston County's population was growing at a 39 percent clip, with escalating diversity. Sleepy towns like Yelm were sprouting subdivisions. Olympia was to have a new four-year school, The Evergreen State College, authorized by the Legislature in 1967. "Everything was changing," Fraser remembers. "More issues. More _complex_ issues--growth management, the environment, social services, transportation. All of this increased the size and complexity of state government, including the legislative branch." Yet the help-wanted ads in the newspapers still listed men's jobs and women's jobs separately.

Fraser as a young economist with the Washington State Department of Highways. _Lacey Museum, Ken Balsley Collection_

"I was the only female intern. The interim committee I was assigned to after the session adjourned had never had a woman be anything other than a secretary. I still didn't grasp the full import of my presence. Professor Bone came down in the middle of the summer to check on how we interns were doing. He came into my office, closed the door, pulled up a chair and leaned forward. 'You know what?' he said with a smile in a slightly conspiratorial tone. 'You won them over!' I thought, 'Huh? What's this about?' I've always been kind of a straight-arrow, nose-to-the grindstone, try-to-do-a really-good-job type of person. Totally surprised, I said, _' Won them over?'_ And he said, 'Well, you know because you're a woman. They thought it would create trouble. But they found that you worked out fine.' "

Fraser alternated attending graduate school full-time and part-time while working for the Washington State Department of Highways. First, she was hired as an administrative intern by another former Ford Foundation Intern, Roger Polzin, to assist with departmental monitoring of bills. (Polzin was just beginning what became an outstanding career in state government as an administrator for several state agencies.) Later, she was hired as assistant legislative liaison, a new type of position in state government, reflecting the growth in the Legislative Branch.

"I was surprised about many aspects of the workplace as it pertained to women. For example, I remember that they routinely referred to 'man hours' for employees. I'd never heard of that. It seemed to me that it should be 'staff hours.' I felt strongly that women deserved equal rights, equal opportunities and equal respect in society."

AS A MEMBER of the Washington State Women's Political Caucus, Fraser took a leadership role in the painstaking process of identifying, interviewing and endorsing candidates for local and state offices. "Having worked for the Legislature, I understood that it really matters who's there. We needed to elect more women. And when I became a state agency employee I thought I ought to join the Washington Federation of State Employees and do my part with my dues and my participation to support their efforts to promote salary increases and improved benefits. Membership was voluntary back then."

A regular delegate to State Labor Council conventions, Fraser was part of a coalition of women from several unions. They pushed through a resolution to create a women's committee. "It was controversial," she remembers. "A lot of the old guard was nervous about it. _Everything_ about women was controversial. In many respects it's still so. A lot of employment situations for the average woman are different than those for the average man."

When Fraser joined the rapidly growing National Organization for Women, her "first big campaign" was a landmark event in Washington State history--a ballot issue to add an equal rights amendment to the State Constitution. It passed by 3,300 votes out nearly 1.3 million cast. In Thurston County, the margin was 11 votes, "so, our strong campaign in Thurston County did count," Fraser says. That campaign also triggered a change in state law to mandate election recounts for ballot measures. An automatic recount is now required if a ballot measure or a candidate wins by less than one half of one percent.

In 1973, Fraser made her own history as the first female member of the Lacey City Council. Two and a half years later, her fellow council members elevated her to mayor--another first for a woman. That she was young--31--and a women's rights activist was highlighted in every headline. **Lacey Takes A Ms. Mayor,** _The Daily Olympian_ declared. The capital city daily noted that she was a legislative analyst for the State Office of Community Development.

During 1973-74, Fraser was the State Legislative Coordinator for NOW, overseeing the legislative lobbying activities of chapters around the state. In her spare time, she loved being outdoors--skiing, backpacking and mountain climbing, sailboat racing and cruising. She owned and raced her own sailboat, usually with an all-woman crew, in races sponsored by the South Sound Sailing Society. She won the first race series she entered and ultimately collected a shelf full of trophies.

BY 1977, "the state had established a State Women's Council, legalized abortion, liberalized divorce, enacted a law giving women equal access to credit, added an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution, ratified the proposed ERA to the federal constitution, and elected its first female governor, Dixy Lee Ray," Cassandra Tate notes in a HistoryLink.org essay. "Even so, inequities persisted. In Washington, as elsewhere, women typically earned less than men for doing the same kind of work. Restrictions on how much women could lift and how many hours they could work limited the kinds of jobs they could hold. Few women held leadership positions, from student body president to corporate executive. The Seattle Police Department employed only three female officers; there were no female firefighters in the fire department. The state's public colleges required female students to be in their dormitory rooms by a certain hour, usually 10 p.m.; male students could stay out as long as they liked."

Mayor Fraser with Governor Dixy Lee Ray. _Lacey Museum_

The summer of '77 found Fraser making plans for two big events: a wedding and the federally-sponsored International Women's Year Conference in Ellensburg. She was engaged to Tim Malone, a senior assistant attorney general, with the nuptials set for August. Meantime, she was a member of the conference planning committee. "Little did I know what I was getting into--with the conference, that is, especially when someone said, 'Well, Karen, since you are the only general-purpose government elected official on the committee why don't you be in charge of elections for state delegates to the national convention set for Houston in November?' I agreed because I assumed that being in charge of elections would fit well with getting married six weeks later. How wrong I was!"

An ad hoc coalition of conservative women--including Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals--set out to storm the ramparts and prevent "radical women's libbers" from dominating the delegation to the national convention.

Fraser dislikes labels. "I'm a mixture of conservative and liberal myself. Put it this way: Some women sincerely believed NOW and the ERA endangered 'traditional values.' Their clear intention was to overwhelm the conference."

ERA demonstraters march through Seattle in 1978. _MOHAI_

Based on advance registrations, organizers expected around 1,300 attendees. A couple of days before the conference was set to open, Fraser got a call from the chairwoman. "Fifteen-hundred more people were headed for Ellensburg. My absolute focus was on running a fair election. Now I had double the turnout. The federal rules for voting at the state conference mandated that only people from the State of Washington could vote. And now there were a lot of out-of-state license plates in the parking lot." Each faction--pro-ERA and anti-ERA--placed observers at the election check-in points to double-check IDs. About a hundred ballots were challenged.

At 4:15 a.m. Sunday, the Election Committee announced that the pro-ERA forces had won all but one of the 24 delegates to Houston. Fraser remembers the cacophony of cheering and anguished outcries. "The conservatives were in disbelief, because they had 'won' most of the policy resolution votes in the plenary sessions. What they didn't know was that when pro-ERA forces learned that the anti-ERA forces were going to try to dominate the conference they accessed every pay phone available to call their friends back home. They urged them to drive to Ellensburg immediately and register and vote. Most of them drove right back home after voting since there were no hotel rooms available for miles around." That strategic move increased the total number voting for delegates, but it did not affect the number of votes on resolutions since the reinforcements arrived too late to participate in the plenary sessions.

_Washington State Historical Society_

Fraser and the other conference leaders were careful to maintain a secure chain of custody of the ballot boxes they borrowed from county auditors. Fraser loaded the locked boxes in her old Volvo and drove directly to Seattle. Conference leaders, two attorneys in tow, met her on a downtown corner with an armored Brinks truck.

A recount that included 80 contested ballots changed the outcome by only one delegate, and a district court judge dismissed an attempt by the Concerned Women's Coalition to block the contested slate of delegates. Opponents of the ERA alleged "all kinds of things, including the notion that ballots were dumped in a cardboard box," Fraser remembers. "This was absolutely false. There was zero evidence of any ballot tampering.

"I had never heard of a 'deposition' before, and now I was doing one, in the company of my three on-edge attorneys. The pro bono attorney for the plaintiffs was a member of a Seattle law firm whose managing attorney was my uncle. And I'm getting married in the middle of all that!" Fraser chuckles at the memory. "Fortunately I married an attorney (a Harvard Law School graduate no less) so when we went to the Houston conference, Tim found it all very interesting. I was still emotionally exhausted."

Fraser is gratified that equal rights for women--in America at least--are now viewed as "normal." But that's a danger, too, "because a lot of young women don't realize how new this is, and maybe that it's still a little bit fragile. And you look at countries around the world where women live in horrible legal, political, social, economic, financial, family situations, and you go, 'Oh, my.' So, you shouldn't take anything for granted. ... I guess the main thing is you have to stay politically active and politically tuned in."

ELECTED TO the Thurston County Commission in 1980, Fraser was one of the few Democrats to survive the Reagan Revolution. As a county commissioner, her work on land-use policies helped pave the way for the Growth Management Act adopted by the Legislature in 1990. Her environmental achievements at the county level are also extraordinary, including heading the task force that developed the landmark watershed plan for the Nisqually River Basin.

In 1981, Fraser and Malone were founding members of the Sister City Association between Olympia and Yashiro (now Kato), Japan. The following year, after a quick course in introductory Japanese, they were enthusiastic members of the first Olympia delegation to visit Yashiro. The warmth of their hosts and the rich culture they discovered led to a commitment to promote friendship between Washington and Japan. Karen was moved by "the exceptionally warm reception" they received at the welcoming ceremony in Yashiro. "When I was born, our two countries were horribly at war. This experience demonstrated clearly to me that international relationships can change things. Tim and I decided we wanted to do our part to grow these friendships."

Fraser and Malone's adopted daughter was born in Japan.

The Olympia-Yashiro association became one of the most active Japanese sister-city associations in the state, with regular adult and student exchanges. Fraser and Malone welcomed hundreds of Japanese visitors to Olympia over the years. Malone served on the sister city association board and as its president for two years. As a state senator, Fraser took on a leadership role to promote the Washington State-Hyogo Prefecture Sister State relationship. She was the prime sponsor of a legislative resolution establishing governmental, educational, cultural and business links between Washington State and Hyogo Prefecture. She also headed the Washington State Planning Committees for the 50th and 55th Anniversary celebrations of the sister state relationship. In 1989, Fraser was one of four Washington State Legislators invited to visit Asia University in Tokyo in connection with its student program at Western Washington University in Bellingham. She explored potential contractual relationships between Washington community colleges and educational institutions in Hyogo Prefecture.

Consul General Yamada awards Fraser the Order of the Rising Sun. _Consul General of Japan photo_

In 2017, Fraser received a high honor in recognition of her role in advancing Washington-Japan friendships. The Emperor of Japan conferred upon her the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.

Fraser was the first female president of the Washington State Association of Counties. The statewide credibility she achieved for her work with local governments, the Women's Political Caucus and NOW gave her the standing to promote progressive legislation. She championed equitable pay for public employees, open government, public safety, environmental quality and outdoor recreation. She also co-chaired the host committee for the historic first ever U.S. Women's Olympic Marathon Trials, held in Olympia in 1984.

FRASER WAS elected to the Washington House of Representatives in 1988 and to the State Senate in 1992. On her first day in the Senate, her colleagues selected her to head the Ecology and Parks Committee. She played an influential role in environmental policy throughout her Senate career, championing Puget Sound water quality control, oil spill prevention, salmon recovery, waste management and parks and recreation

Fraser ascended quickly to the Ways and Means Committee, serving there for more than two decades. For six of those years, she was either vice chair or chair of the Senate's capital budget process. She wielded major influence on spending for higher education facilities throughout the state; K-12 school buildings; environment and natural resources projects; outdoor recreation; economic development; the state's Capitol Campus; community social and health services facilities and local arts, historic and cultural facilities.

Notably, her Senate Democratic colleagues elected her to serve as caucus chair. She also served for many years on the Senate Rules Committee, the powerful gate-keeping body that determines which bills go to the floor for a vote.

In 1994, Fraser was tapped by The Asia Foundation to serve as an Environmental Fellow with the Thai Parliament's House Environmental Committee in Bangkok. Her major role was to assist with the second annual meeting of the Asia and Pacific Parliamentarians' Conference on Environment and Development. For about a decade, she attended subsequent conferences of this organization as a voting delegate, paying her own way.

FRASER IS particularly proud of having been the prime sponsor of legislation to promote the Enhanced 911 technology that eliminates the need for a caller with an emergency to provide an address. After her bill passed the House, she was disappointed that the Senate was dragging its feet because the legislation contained a small telephone tax to fund the life-saving service statewide. "Small rural counties could never afford this service on their own," she remembers. The Senate's condition was that the issue be referred to voters as a referendum. Fraser and a team of supporters reluctantly agreed. They put together a robust statewide campaign. The plan was embraced by the voters. "Today, everyone takes this 'enhanced' service for granted," Fraser says, "but it was not always so."

Fraser gives a lot of credit for her ability to achieve so much in the Legislature to Brenda Fitzsimmons, her key assistant for 28 years. "Brenda was so competent at organizing and managing our office and exercising excellent judgment as high-pressure situations would come along. She was totally dedicated to public service. I could not have done it without her, and I am forever appreciative."

While serving in the Senate, Fraser also joined the adjunct faculty in the Master of Public Administration Program at The Evergreen State College. She teaches courses on state government, legislative process and environmental policy.

Fraser receives the "Lifetime Citizenship Award" from the League of Women Voters of Thurston County in 2016. _Washington State Senate_

The late Ray Moore, a legislator whose political career spanned five decades of Washington history--as both a Republican and Democrat--created a stir around the Capitol in 1999 when his legislative oral history was published. Possessed of a caustic wit, Moore pulled no punches in his thumbnail sketches of lawmakers he regarded as over-rated, including Gary Locke and Maria Cantwell. This is what Moore had to say about Fraser nearly 20 years ago:

When we get this population increase by 50 percent, which may happen in the next 30, 40 years, what happens then? Not only to water, but also to sewage? Nobody thinks ahead. We do have somebody in the Legislature who is thinking ahead right now--Senator Karen Fraser from Olympia. She's someone in the Senate who truly puts societal long-term solutions first. ... Except for Fraser, no one takes the water shortage as an omen of the future seriously. Pollution of air, water, and land is now at the turning point. We either put in place an orderly process using a 100-year plan for water, air, sewer and other public needs or continue as we are, doing little or nothing. ...

Fraser is one of the heavies in the Senate. If you want to know about a piece of legislation that is in her committee, or another committee on which she sits, she knows, and can discuss it in depth. ...

She started out as a city council person in Lacey, then mayor, then county commissioner, then House member, now in the Senate. Not only did she hold these positions, but she left a legacy of efficiency as a model for those who follow.

"I think she's arguably the most successful political figure in the history of Thurston County," said Mark Brown, who served on the Lacey City Council with Fraser and later succeeded her as mayor. "She really has pretty much covered all the bases in terms of state and local government. You can look almost anywhere and find something she's contributed to."

THE UNEXPECTED death of Fraser's husband in 2013 was a huge loss and terrible shock. They had been married for 36 years. "We had a wonderful, very happy marriage," Karen says. "We were amazingly compatible and shared so many interests and values. Tim had a high-level career with the state Attorney General's Office--litigating the laws. And he had a great appreciation for the importance of my legislative work--making the laws. He loved the profession of law and being part of the Attorney General's Office. For many years, he was the coordinator of appellate litigation. He was very intellectually oriented, a fabulous writer and widely appreciated for his sense of humor and hospitality."

They had hiked and backpacked throughout the Cascades and Olympics, trekked in the Himalayas and Alaska. There were many 10K runs and two marathons each. "We even survived building a new house together!" Karen says, laughing at the memory. "Because of his steady, enthusiastic support, I was able to serve so long in public office."

An avid outdoorswoman, Fraser played a key role on the Nisqually River Basin Task Force. _Barb Lally Photo_

Karen's resolve was to continue to remain active as a legislator and in community and civic affairs.

When she retired from the Legislature in 2017, the Thurston County League of Women Voters presented her its Lifetime Citizenship Award. The Olympia and Lacey city councils renamed a five-mile trail in her honor. She was, after all, a trail blazer. The other awards, before and after retirement, fill two pages.

She's justifiably proud of her role in founding the Washington Women's History Consortium because it sprang from her initial experience a half century ago as a history-making woman who "won them over"--followed by decades of working with "so many talented, dedicated people" in the Women's Movement. "This major chapter of Washington history must not be lost," she says emphatically.

Fraser will be long remembered, one reporter observed, for her intelligence, civility and "efficiency over flash." With her trademark quiet humor, she quips that with a little more flash she might have been among the top two primary election finalists for lieutenant governor, instead of finishing third in an 11-person race in 2016. (In Washington, the top two vote-getters in the Primary Election go on to the General Election, regardless of party affiliation.)

In what's supposed to be "retirement," she remains one of the state's most energetic voices for civic activism. Senator Jeannie Darneille, the Pierce County Democrat whose career is steeped in volunteerism and gender equality, says Fraser's presence at the Capitol was important to securing legislative funding for the 2020 centennial commemoration of national women's suffrage. "No one has been more dedicated to the women of Washington than Karen Fraser," Darneille says.

At the conclusion of a recent presentation on her 50 years in Thurston County, Karen invited questions from the audience. A man in the back row piped up, _" Does anyone know anyone who does not like Karen Fraser?"_ The room erupted in laughter and applause. She blushed.

"That's nice to hear," she said with a modest smile.

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**A P OLITICIAN OF HIS TIMES**

* * *

Wes Uhlman, Seattle's youngest mayor of the 20th century, hadn't been in office long enough to grow his sideburns stylishly longer when federal agents demanded a meeting. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms wanted the city's help in raiding the Black Panthers' local headquarters. They said President Richard Nixon backed their plan. Uhlman knew similar raids around the country had been bloody. Chicago police shot Fred Hampton, the local Panther leader, in his bed, unarmed. "In bed. That was the one that really got me," Uhlman says. "It looked like they were just going out and killing people." **25**

Uhlman knew from his own police department that Seattle's Black Panthers were few in number and not physically threatening. They supplied the black community with free breakfasts. The new mayor didn't want to create martyrs in a city already as edgy as the amphetamine-injecting crowd dimming the hippie vibe in the University District. He told the agents they wouldn't get his help. What's more, if shooting erupted the city would investigate who fired first. "They stormed out of my damn office like you can't believe," Uhlman says nearly five decades later, still wearing a crown of silvery hair that gave the square-jawed young mayor a look of steely resolve.

The political legacy of 1968 bloomed at Seattle City Hall when Uhlman, 34, took office. He defeated the establishment candidate, Chamber of Commerce leader Mort Frayn, in the fall of 1969, to become Seattle's first Democratic mayor in nearly three decades. Uhlman proved to be a "politician of his times, and the sweeping political and cultural revolutions of the '60s paved the way for the changes he made," wrote Emily Lieb for HistoryLink. In a few short months, Uhlman named Latino civil rights activist Cesar Chavez "First Citizen" of Seattle, flew flags at half-mast for student protesters killed at Kent State by the National Guard and closed I-5 express lanes so University District protesters spilling onto the freeway could march downtown. That was just prologue to two turbulent terms in which he directed Seattle's transformation from "musty and crusty" to something more modern and tolerant. Uhlman joined a cadre of dashing mayors, such as Boston's Kevin White and New York's John Lindsay, trying to save cities from decay, danger and middle class flight.

After Kent State students were killed by the National Guard, UW protesters marched toward downtown on Interstate 5 until police diverted them - peacefully - to exits. Two days later Uhlman opened I-5 express lanes to 15,000 protesters. This time police taped daffodils to their nightsticks. _MOHAI_

"Uhlman was arguably the most powerful, and perhaps successful, mayor in the city's history," wrote Ross Anderson of _The Seattle Times_ in a look back at the city's first 50 mayors. Under Uhlman, Seattle saw its first Bumbershoot festival, first mayoral proclamation for Gay Pride Week, first ride-free transit zone, first Women's Commission and Office of Women's Rights and the city's first black department heads. He presided over the opening of the Burke Gilman Trail, restoration of Pioneer Square and the Pike Place Market, construction of the Kingdome, public funding for historic preservation, the arts and more. "No mayor will ever be able to put together that kind of list again," said Paul Schell, Seattle's 50th mayor. "And all this from a mayor that nobody ever liked very much."

It wasn't all Pleasant Valley Sundays for Uhlman. He inherited a police payoff scandal that ran from vice cops to the top brass. Seattle led the nation in bombings. His cops killed a black Vietnam vet who was planting a bomb, inflaming racial tensions in a city deeply segregated by restrictive home loans and covenants barring minorities from most neighborhoods. The Boeing Bust crippled the local economy and psyche. Rattled voters rejected a mountain of federal funds for light-rail because they'd have to pay one-third of the total tab. Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market had dates with wrecking balls. Uhlman's aggressive advocacy of affirmative action and other runs around civil service and cronyism provoked a mutiny, with firefighters and City Light workers pushing a recall vote to the ballot. "Our prematurely gray mayor," wrote Teamster editorialist Ed Donohoe, "is also prematurely dumb." If those that weren't challenges enough, the most powerful man in the free world disdained Seattle's mayor.

Uhlman was in a White House basement room, trying to finagle a new radio system for his police just weeks after he effectively raised his middle finger to the president by refusing to help the ATF raid the Panthers. Uhlman's condemnation of "gestapo-like tactics" made national headlines. Norm Dicks, then a young aide to powerful U.S. Senator Warren Magnuson, was sitting next to Uhlman when Nixon's top domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman, burst in.

Dicks, who went on to serve 18 terms in Congress, tells the story with relish:

"We're downstairs in a windowless room around a table, and all of a sudden--Boom!--through the door-- _and it was Boom! --_and here is John Ehrlichman on fire!

"And he says, 'Wes, you've embarrassed the president; you've embarrassed me. Why wouldn't you let us do the raid on the Black Panthers?' "

"Uhlman was pretty stunned. I was stunned. Here was one of the most important people in the country jumpin' on ya."

Uhlman said something like, "I had to do what I had to do."

Then, "all of a sudden Ehrlichman spins around and says, 'We won't forget this. We won't forget this!' And walks out of the room. I didn't say anything. I just sat there and listened. Then we were all like 'Oh my God!' " **26**

UHLMAN'S VENTURE into politics was something of an accident. Wesley Carl Uhlman was born in tiny Cashmere (population 1,465 in 1940) in Chelan County. Both of his paternal grandparents were born in Switzerland. His father was a Pentecostal minister. The family moved around, following his pulpit assignments, from Moscow, Idaho, to Aberdeen, Washington. But Uhlman said his parents didn't at all influence his decision to become active in civic life. "They didn't share any of the values I had then and have now," he says. "My mother was very conservative. She was always saying--I'll put it mildly--unkind things about black people." (Uhlman has been married since 1993 to Carolyn Purnell, a former prosecutor and King County deputy executive, who is African-American.)

After getting his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, he married a classmate, Laila Hammond, and returned to the UW for law school. In 1958, the second-year law student and his friend Jim Wanamaker, visited the 32nd District Democratic headquarters in the Wallingford neighborhood. They wanted advice on how to get more students to join their campus chapter of Young Democrats. "They just dismissed us," Uhlman says. Over coffee in the student union building the next morning, he and Wanamaker plotted ways to expand the Young Democrats. Uhlman urged his friend to run for office. But Wanamaker, whose mother was a former legislator and state superintendent of public instruction, was uncomfortable with the idea. So they flipped a coin.

Uhlman first ran for office after losing a coin-flip with a friend. He became a state representative at 23. _Washington State Archives_

Uhlman lost. He became a 23-year old candidate for state representative.

"We didn't have any money. We had one piece of literature. So we set out to doorbell the district. We practically lived at Dick's hamburgers," he says. The district had voted for moderate Republicans, like much of Seattle then. In the November election, Uhlman, an unknown, faced incumbent Hartney Oakes. "Hartney was old school," Uhlman says. "He was old, too." Oakes called Uhlman "the boy."

The upstart who campaigned for change and new blood was blessed by a tailwind. Republicans had put a statewide right-to-work initiative on the ballot. Unions hotly opposed Initiative 202, driving up Democratic turnout. Uhlman surprised everyone, including himself, when he and his $600 campaign prevailed, making him one of the youngest lawmakers in state history. **27** "I didn't even own a suit," Uhlman says.

Bespectacled and bow-tied in his first official photo for the Legislature, Uhlman worked hard, was comfortable with budgets and rose in the ranks to become the chief budget writer in the House. One source described Uhlman's focus as so intense that he seemed "stuffy." He only slept five or six hours a night and was usually up before 6 a.m. He sometimes worked seven days a week, sharpening his "passionate but middle-of-the-road brand of liberalism" influenced by John F. Kennedy. His friends tended to be other politicians and attorneys. He was part of a gourmet-dining group and active in the Methodist church.

Having put aside his law practice, Uhlman adopted an "up or out" philosophy about politics. In 1966 he moved up to the state Senate. But as he looked around he saw a lot of white-haired men. "I thought, 'I don't want to grow old sitting in one of these chairs in the Washington State Senate.' "

The Seattle League of Women Voters, led by Phyllis Lamphere, would give Uhlman a path to the mayor's office. A Seattle girl who bootstrapped her way to Barnard College in New York and jobs at Boeing and IBM, Lamphere called herself a "fanatic" about government structure. In Seattle, the City Council wielded much more power than the mayor. Department heads submitted their budget requests to councilmembers not the mayor. The result, Lamphere argued, was a decentralized, unfocused and inefficient city government not befitting a city of Seattle's size, never mind one with its 21st century ambitions. After a couple years of lobbying, Lamphere and the League got their "strong mayor" law passed in 1967. In any city with more than 300,000 residents, it decreed, the mayor would appoint a budget director. "Money is the oxygen of bureaucracies," says Don Stark, a former Uhlman budget director. The change shifted enormous practical power to the mayor. An amendment to the city charter made it clear that Seattle had a chief executive--not nine of them on the council--and it was the mayor.

In a quest to understand the enigmatic Uhlman, one Seattle journalist even wrote about his dance moves and a short story he penned as an undergrad. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

HAVING LEARNED the mysteries of political power, Uhlman "concluded that Seattle was handicapped by mayors who had none." He supported Lamphere's legislation and was poised in 1968 to move up to the mayor's office, now that Seattle would have a strong executive for the first time. He announced his campaign in early February 1969. Uhlman was the youngest in a 10-man field that included Secretary of State Lud Kramer, City Councilmember Sam Smith, state Senator Fred Dore and former Republican Party leader Mort Frayn, who ran a printing and publishing company.

Uhlman campaigned on neighborhood preservation and mass transit, but also crime and public safety. The city's chief problem, he said, was citizen "alienation," or "a feeling of people that they simply don't have access to City Hall." All the while, Uhlman's youth positioned him as a fresh alternative to the clique of businessmen who ran city affairs from the posh Rainier Club.

His no-drama campaign didn't slip or stumble. With 29 percent, Uhlman was the top vote getter in the primary. Frayn, the business community's candidate, also advanced to the November ballot with 20 percent of the vote.

Reporters, especially those from out of town, tended to see little difference on issues between Uhlman, a centrist Democrat, and Frayn, a moderate Republican supported by Governor Dan Evans. "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job," declared a _Los Angeles Times_ headline. "Seattle Mayoral Rivals Differ in Age Not Views," agreed _The New York Times_. Notably, both candidates did not campaign on "law and order," then a kind of code for clamping down on hippies, blacks and feminists.

Uhlman pledged to be an "activist" mayor, willing to try the untried. "Sure, we'll make some mistakes," he said.

The race for the $26,250-a-year job was about age, appearance and attitude. That spelled trouble for Frayn, 63, a former state legislator and Speaker of the House. "Mort and I debated on television several times," Uhlman says. "Mort was not very eloquent and I could speak a little better. People saw that change, old and new."

Did they ever. It was the Generation Gap coming through their TV antennas. And this time father didn't know best. Uhlman appeared in living color, it seemed, while Frayn was frozen in black-and-white. Uhlman evoked a "Kennedy-like style" with the "matinee idol look" of New York Mayor John Lindsay. Frayn "looked and acted like Mr. Fuddy Duddy," one writer said. The Republican was also compared to Casey Stengel, the baseball manager known for scrambling the English language. Frayn's "struggle with syntax" was satirized by his own staff in a parody entitled "What Did He Say?" Uhlman, by comparison, exuded "an Ivy League appearance--but with a Puget Sound flavor."

While the downtown establishment backed Frayn to the hilt, Uhlman pledged to be an "activist" mayor willing to try the untried. "Sure we'll make some mistakes. But we won't make the worst mistake of all. We won't sit still and do nothing."

Uhlman lived in northeast Seattle in a brick house with a fenced yard. Frayn resided in Broadmoor, a gated community. Uhlman's campaign took a photo of the Broadmoor entrance with a guard standing out front, and then one of Uhlman's modest house on 34th Street Northeast between the Ravenna and View Ridge neighborhoods. Uhlman's TV ad said, "This is where Mort Frayn lives. He wants to be your mayor. This is where Wes Uhlman lives." The ad captured the change people wanted, Uhlman says.

It didn't hurt that labor unions liked Uhlman based on his record in the Legislature. Their endorsements were a major plus. The city's daily newspapers were a different story. Both the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ and _The Seattle Times_ backed Frayn. _Helix_ , the city's underground paper, gave Uhlman a limp endorsement, wishing he was less square. On election night, a large crowd of cheery Uhlman supporters gathered at a downtown restaurant. "There were all ages; many were mod-clad persons in their 30s, 20s and teens," observed _The Seattle Times_. Uhlman won in a landslide, with 64 percent of the vote.

On a post-election respite in Hawaii, a photographer caught Uhlman and his wife, Laila, lolling on the beach. _AP photo_

In a post-election profile by _The Oregonian_ , Uhlman sounded like a mythic figure who slayed a bygone giant and brought a new order to Camelot. Even as a child, the boy wonder was "always questioning" and "always seeking answers," said his father, the Rev. Werner Uhlman. "Youth's the story," his son said of his victory. Operating out of a dingy office with a tavern and go-go joint nearby, Uhlman's young team "outmaneuvered Frayn at every turn and they broke the back of the downtown business establishment at the same time." Young voters were fed up with the status quo, surmised _The Oregonian_. So they anointed one of their own. **28**

Right on. Except Uhlman was born a decade before the Baby Boom and hardly counterculture. He was a preacher's son and a real estate attorney. He served in the Army National Guard. And he had a matter-of-fact remoteness that some found curt, not magnetic.

AFTER THE ELECTION, the city's business leaders invited the new mayor to the fourth floor of the Rainier Club, the establishment's lair. Uhlman, who had a reputation for being unforgiving to those who crossed him, came through the door and said something he's regretted ever since, because it didn't make his new job any easier. "I looked around and said, 'This looks a lot like Mort Frayn's finance committee.' There was an appalling silence," he recalls, "because they were going to try to compromise me and they knew then it was going to be tough. I shouldn't have done it but I couldn't help it."

Already awaiting Uhlman were the problems of financing a shaky city budget, a failing transit system, awful traffic, morale difficulties in the Police Department and strained relations between blacks and whites. On his way to Hawaii for a post-election respite with his wife, Uhlman found himself caught in the midst of a protest by black contractors at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In solidarity, he ended up singing a few bars of "We Shall Overcome" with them.

On Maui, news photographers caught Uhlman and his wife lolling on the beach, looking Kennedyesque except for his black socks with white sneakers. Back in Seattle, journalists were looking past the "John Lindsay of the West Coast" narrative for a deeper understanding of the new mayor. Was he a law-and-order liberal? A chameleon-like opportunist? A master of special-interest politics, who compiled a list of all the janitors in his legislative district?

David Brewster, a writer for _Seattle Magazine,_ even addressed Uhlman's dancing style ("strenuous arm-pumping and energetic head-bobbing") and a three-page short story the new mayor wrote as an undergrad. The story "portrays a man reluctant to commit himself in any open way, uncertain which side of himself to put forward," Brewster concluded. In the end, Brewster's sharpest insight may have been getting Uhlman to assess JFK and his more passionate younger brother. "You could say that Bobby Kennedy was more attractive than John, because he made very clear his burning convictions," Uhlman said. "But John Kennedy, who was much cooler, had more detachment and kept himself apart and open, got a lot more accomplished. I don't think Bobby could have got much done, or even gotten elected."

SEATTLE ENDED 1969 with a dubious distinction, Uhlman would tell the U.S. Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations. It was the nation's bombing capital. The Emerald City had more bombings per capita than any other city between February 1969 and July 1970. It saw 90 incendiary devices set, mostly by anti-war and racial discrimination protesters. Although "the bombings are most probably being perpetrated by individuals acting on their own initiative," not at the direction of radical groups, Uhlman noted. Most bombs were simple, made with three to five sticks of dynamite. The majority were set in the University District and predominantly black Central Area. Two people had been killed, both bombing suspects. One died when explosives blew up in his hands; the other was fatally shot by a policeman. The situation was so volatile that the Nixon Administration scrapped plans to ship surplus nerve gas through Puget Sound. (There were also lawsuits, protests and legislation aimed at blocking the shipments.)

Just a week before Nixon stopped trains and ships from hauling the poisonous munitions through Washington, a bomb that never detonated pushed Seattle's race relations to a flash point. In the early morning hours of May 15, 1970, ex-convict and police informant Alfie Burnett woke Larry Ward, a 22-year-old decorated veteran, home two months from Vietnam. Burnett wanted Ward's help in planting a bomb at a Central Area real estate office notoriously unfriendly to blacks. But Burnett had first called the FBI, telling them the Black Panthers were going to strike.

While Burnett waited in a car, Ward placed a bomb outside the unoccupied real estate office at 24th Avenue and East Union Street. Alerted by the FBI, Seattle police were staked out in unmarked cars, their shotguns aimed at the doorway. The first blast from Officer John Hannah just missed Ward, who took off running down 24th. An unmarked car followed Ward, who was unarmed. Hannah leaned out and pumped two shells into Ward, the heavy-gauge steel balls ripping through his heart and lungs. He died on the sidewalk.

The incident put Uhlman in a bind. Trying to balance Great Society idealism with public safety, his overarching theme was to bill the city as a safe place. But Seattle's image as dangerous and explosive was making national news. Uhlman told Police Chief Frank Moore he wanted the bombings stopped. Period. "We'll do it, mayor, and I won't tell you any more than that," Moore said. "Fine," Uhlman recalls saying. "In those days they were doing all kinds of things you'd be appalled at. I'd be appalled at, if we knew all the details. They were doing a lot of wiretapping, illegal wiretapping. They didn't tell me to save me from the fallout."

The Rev. Sam McKinney and other community leaders came to City Hall demanding answers about Ward's death and the bloody justice handed out by police. Uhlman had them steered into a conference room on the 12th floor. He told the chief to put photos of Ward's shotgun-riddled body out for McKinney and others to see. "They were horrible pictures. They just blew him to pieces," Uhlman says. He came in and addressed the group. "I have to say a couple words you're not going to be happy about. What has happened to him is going to happen to the next bomber who sets a bomb in Seattle. A bomber is a bomber is a bomber."

Uhlman made headlines when he refused to help federal agents raid the local Black Panthers, co-founded by Aaron Dixon, above. _Seattle Magazine_

"We never had another bombing," Uhlman says. "The word was out. I'm not necessarily proud of it. But I was really frustrated that we had to stop his stuff because I had seen what was happening in other cities. And we weren't going to let that happen in Seattle."

Uhlman told the U.S. Senate that Ward's death may have deterred other bombers. But he quickly retreated from suggesting that police act as judge, jury and executioner. "The application of justice is properly and exclusively the job of the courts," he said in a press release issued later on the day of his Senate appearance.

Boeing bet heavily on the new 747 "which proved too big in a market that was suddenly too small," leading to 45,000 layoffs in the Seattle area. _Boeing Images_

An inquest, held whenever police used lethal force, was filled with protesters and concerned citizens. In a 3-2 vote, the inquest jury found that Officer Hannah's claim of firing in self-defense was not justified. But prosecutors refused to indict Hannah. The jury's verdict was later thrown out because it was not unanimous. A civil suit was filed on behalf of Ward's son seeking $1 million in damages from Hannah. A jury found in favor of Hannah.

Uhlman's "reaction to the murder of Larry Ward was typical of most mayors' reaction to a police shooting of a black man, then and now," says Elmer Dixon, a founder of Seattle's Black Panthers. Today, nearly 50 years later, he is an executive diversity consultant. "The fact is, Larry's death was an assassination. The question is how much was (Uhlman) aware of surrounding his death?"

In his first State of the City speech, Uhlman described Seattle as "uneasy." The first year of the new decade had seen a "bitter outpouring of feelings," he said. "Too many citizens want to take the law into their own hands... All of us regret that a young man, caught in the act of lighting a bomb, refused to obey police orders to stop and was killed by police action in the line of duty."

Meanwhile, another kind of bomb was ticking, one beyond Uhlman's power to control.

SEATTLE IN 1970 was a company town riding high on Boeing, which had bet heavily on developing a supersonic transport, the SST, and the world's first jumbo jetliner, the 747. While the Uhlman administration was figuring how to sequence its grand plans, the mayor received an unexpected call one morning. It was Boeing CEO T.A. Wilson, a gruff engineer and civic powerhouse. Wilson wouldn't tell the receptionist why he was calling, just that he had to talk with her boss. "Well, disaster happened," Uhlman says. The aerospace industry, it turns out, had vastly inflated forecasts for airline passenger growth. That over-reaching optimism collided with inflated prices, driven by the Vietnam War, Great Society programs and industry complacency. Travel plummeted. Airlines tightened their belts. Boeing had staked the equivalent of its net worth on the 747, "which proved too big in a market that was suddenly too small." Boeing's SST crashed when Congress balked at its rising costs and environmental impacts. It was cancelled in March 1971. In a little over a year, Boeing cut 45,000 jobs in the Seattle area alone. Seattle's unemployment rate was double the national average.

The "Boeing Bust" curtailed Uhlman's grand plans. "We had no other major employers. We had to button everything down." _The Seattle Times_

Fear and darkness reigned. "We had no Microsoft, no Amazon. We had no other major employers. We had to button everything down. Put away our grand plans and just plan to survive," Uhlman remembers. "That was the main challenge of that year and the following two years really."

In May 1970, Seattleites got a second crack at taxing themselves to build a regional light-rail system. A 1968 vote on the Forward Thrust bond issue received a majority (51 percent) but it needed a 60 percent supermajority. Former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton called that decision the "stupidest 'no' vote the people of Seattle ever cast." The federal government had promised to pay for two-thirds of the project's cost.

On the Sunday before the second vote, Uhlman's staff hustled him to a handful of different churches. At each, Uhlman would dash in and give his pitch, encouraging parishioners to appreciate the opportunity and act selflessly. But when that Tuesday's ballots were tallied, the second Forward Thrust package suffered a resounding rejection. Opposed by the Boeing aeromechanics union and the King County Labor Council, just 46 percent voted to tax themselves $440 million for light rail. "The next day I was down," Uhlman recalls. "But I got to thinking about it." Throughout Seattle, people had suddenly packed up and left for jobs in California or Texas. Every block seemed to have its disappearing neighbors, including Uhlman's. "Right down the street there was a guy who had been a Boeing engineer and they packed up and left town in the middle of the night. My brother was a Boeing engineer and he was laid off. It hit everybody." Middle-class people got water from their neighbors' hoses. Houses sold for less than they had 20 years earlier. People were afraid of the future, Uhlman concluded, and afraid to saddle themselves with a tax increase, even if Uncle Sam was picking up the lion's share of the tab. Things were so bleak that Uhlman recalls being driven to work one morning and not seeing another car on the southbound freeway. On another morning, the mayor told his driver to beep at a car sporting a "Honk If You Love Jesus" bumper sticker. That car's driver replied by giving them the finger. "People were pretty negative then," Uhlman says.

Uhlman joined a cadre of dashing mayors, including John Lindsay, right, of New York, trying to save cities from decay, danger and middle class flight. Seattle lost nearly 64,000 residents between 1960 and 1980. _New York Daily News, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University_

Seattleites couldn't even turn to the national pastime for relief. The city's first major league baseball team, the Pilots, fled to Milwaukee after one season in Sick's Stadium (an adventure immortalized in pitcher Jim Bouton's tell-all 1970 book, _Ball Four)_. The Pilots were the first team in baseball history to last just a single season.

Other wounds were self-inflicted as Uhlman's rookies made mistakes. The most publicized one involved an aide's premature discussion of a potential "third baby tax" aimed at slowing population growth, then a hot topic. Uhlman apologized for unduly alarming people. "I want to make it clear I am not proposing a tax on babies, which of course the city has no legal authority to do," he said.

DON STARK WAS STATIONED at an Air Force base in Oklahoma, getting his MBA on the side, when he saw a newspaper story about a hip young mayor in Seattle with a model of a 747 on his desk. Stark had grown up in Seattle and was hoping to find a job that would bring him home. Here was Uhlman in _The Daily Oklahoman_ pitching for urban America. "It just struck a chord with me, reinvesting in our cities," Stark says. It was the fall of 1970. Home for the Christmas break, he went to a job fair and met a city recruiter talking up "provisional civil service," one of Uhlman's ways to skirt civil service rules and seniority. "They saw I had a MBA. Damned if they didn't hire me. In a couple weeks they take me up to the mayor's office. He's pretty cool. How can I be any happier than that?" In an administration brimming with young people, Stark was quickly introduced to their way of doing things. "We had just given 18-year-olds the right to vote. And the mayor said, 'We have voter registration responsibility. We're going to do something about that.' So we borrowed some vans from City Light and sent them out to city parks to get people registered. This was how Wes operated," says Stark who went on to become Uhlman's budget director at 32.

Barbara Dingfield was another Baby Boom idealist who had come of age admiring JFK. She had a master's degree in urban economics from Columbia University and had worked on minority home ownership and affordable housing in the Boston area before moving West with her husband. She was a feminist determined to have a career and family. Uhlman hired her to work on downtown projects, then promoted her to run his Office of Policy Planning. She became the second woman in his cabinet and its youngest member at 31. "I would say, honestly, I probably did get the position because I was a woman and he wanted to have more women in leadership positions," says Dingfield, who went on become a real-estate development executive and Microsoft's director of philanthropy in the 1990s. "I think a lot of people felt they had an opportunity in City Hall. I made a lot of friends with other women in City Hall who similarly had really responsible jobs."

Dingfield wouldn't go as far as Stark, who says, "Our boss was a star." Presiding over a provincial city in a far corner of the country, he lacked the wattage of New York's Lindsay and Boston's White, she says. But early in his first term Uhlman was a guest on _Meet the Press_ , a Sunday morning television institution. And he made a cameo appearance in _Harry in Your Pocket_ , a 1973 movie about pickpockets filmed partly in Seattle. Uhlman played a victim.

He was different from most politicians, including other Seattle mayors, Dingfield says she has gotten to know over the years. The laconic Uhlman didn't seem to have the same ego and craving for approval. "I would say there's a certain calm to him," she says. "I never saw him get furiously angry or boisterous. He was sort of, 'I'm here to do my job.' He relied on staff, which I really respect. I mean, he hired good people and he respected those people. And used them appropriately."

He often set up debates among staff before he made a decision. Dingfield recalls sleepless nights when the city was considering investing in nuclear plants proposed by the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, or "Whoops" as it became known.) "Gordon Vickery, who was at that time head of City Light, was totally gung-ho," Dingfield says. "And Wes asked our office to do an analysis of whether this was a good investment."

Dingfield's analysts concluded that Seattle didn't really need the nuclear plants, which would've substantially raised electricity rates. The plants would provide power when the city hit peak demand. But the city could manage most of the time with its hydro-power and buy surplus power elsewhere, or reduce demand through conservation. In front of Uhlman, she disagreed with Vickery and argued the nuke plants would just buy a little more leeway at a steep cost.

Uhlman had a knack for hiring top-shelf talent without the usual bona fides, including Walt Crowley, a journalist disenchanted with radical politics (above taking notes at Garfield High School during 1969 riots). _Alan Lande photo from Rites of Passage by Walt Crowley_

They mayor sided with her.

"He was gutsy and got things done," Dingfield says. "I don't think he worried constantly about the political fallout of what he might say or do. In other words, he sort of led with confidence...He was willing to say, 'We're a new generation. I'm not just beholden to the white establishment. And male establishment. I'm willing to hire different people.' "

One of the people Uhlman hired was the late Walt Crowley, a long-haired radical and journalist who grew disenchanted with the dysfunctional left, their hypocrisies, purity tests and unobtainable utopias. He wanted to help people. Crowley became an unofficial mediator in disputes between merchants, police and U-District "street people." He also founded a youth hostel and social service agency. "He was one of my favorite people," Uhlman says. "He led a protest group into my office. My first glimpse of him was to look at his forehead. He had this hat on with a big red star. He was a radical. But he was well-spoken and clearly smart. So I called him up a few days after that and said, 'Walter, I want you to come work for me.' " The city's Model Cities Program--the linchpin of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty-- hired Crowley. He went on to run Uhlman's controversial Community Service Centers, or "Little City Halls," which aimed to serve alienated residents, but critics saw as political fiefdoms.

Hiring Crowley illustrated Uhlman's knack for spotting top-shelf talent that didn't have the usual bona fides, says Marie McCaffrey, Crowley's widow and co-founder of HistoryLink.org, an online encyclopedia of Washington history. Uhlman made Bob Gogerty, a charming and pugnacious political operative, a deputy mayor even though Gogerty had dropped out of high school at 16 to join the Marines. Gogerty later formed a consulting firm with Don Stark and came to be regarded as perhaps the sharpest political thinker in Seattle. Uhlman "looked at people not for what their politics were, but how well they could do the job," McCaffrey says.

Uhlman's innovations were aided by simpatico City Councilmembers such as Phyllis Lamphere (right, part of a "bed-race" for charity with the mayor). _Phyllis Lamphere collection_

WITH BOEING'S NOSEDIVE and a shift in federal priorities from urban Great Society programs to the Vietnam War and space exploration, Uhlman's staff improvised like Jerry Garcia in the spiraling depths of a Grateful Dead jam. ("It appears that our cities must first become either military bastions or areas of outer space exploration in order to receive adequate federal aid," Uhlman quipped in his first State of the City speech.)

"I decided we needed to do something serious about making sure people were in our city and going to stay, to keep our retail core," Uhlman says. (Seattle's population would decline by almost 64,000 between 1960 and 1980.) He proposed a tax on parking to pay for better bus service. The City Council dismissed that idea. An aide, Keith Kirkpatrick, came up with a more radical notion: let people ride the bus in downtown Seattle for free. "No one had ever tried if before in the country," Uhlman says. Buses would move more quickly downtown if passengers boarded through both front and rear doors without fishing and fumbling for exact fare. More swift service would encourage transit as an alternative to driving, reducing congestion and pollution. And it would help tourism as well as feed the economic health of downtown retail and office core. No one knew what such a service would cost Metro. "Uhlman's policy planning director, Don Munro, remembers commenting, 'That's the $64,000 question.' It turned out to be the answer, and Seattle contributed $64,000 to launch the first year of Metro's 'Magic Carpet' zone." The free zone was later expanded north into the area known as the Denny Regrade with financial support from real-estate developer Martin Selig.

"Ridership downtown basically doubled," says Chuck Collins, then King County's chief administrative officer and later its transit director. "Wes, to his credit was a big force in the retention of a vital downtown." The free rides ended in 2012, after 39 years, because a funding squeeze threatened to reduce countywide bus service. **29** It was a short-sighted decision, says Katie Wilson, general secretary of the Transit Riders Union. "It was sort of a concession to suburban Republican councilmembers who saw free rides as a benefit Seattle got that their constituents didn't."

Uhlman was at a meeting of mayors in New York when he had a brainstorm for lifting Seattle's dismal spirits. John Lindsay took the visiting executives to the Mayor's Arts Festival in Manhattan. "I was terribly impressed," Uhlman recalls. "I called my little staff together and said, 'We're going to have a mayor's arts festival here in Seattle.' " Uhlman said he'd call a few people and round up some donations to get it started.

Artist John Moehring, known for his psychedelic concert posters, decorated a Seattle bus to promote ridership. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

The city announced a free "people-oriented" 1971 festival that would use nearly all of Seattle Center for the first time since the 1962 World's Fair. Scheduled for August 13-15, the shindig offered light shows, inflatable sculptures, dance, theater, music, visual arts and more, including a Hot Pants contest. The only out-of-town headliner, if you can call him that, was country singer Sheb Wooley, a regular on the TV series _Hee Haw_. With little publicity, Festival '71 attracted more than 100,000 people. Pundits called it a "big box of gift chocolates" and a "populist grab-bag." Festival '72 dropped the country twang, noted Seattle historian Paul Dorpat, and still added 50,000 or so celebrants.

It appeared the annual festival was a success, and Uhlman appointed a committee to chart its future. "And so they came back with recommendations on how to make it bigger and better. And the first thing on the list, I looked at it and said, 'What do you mean change the name? I _like_ the mayor's arts festival."

Uhlman asked what name they were proposing.

"Bumbershoot,' " said Dave Hughbanks, head of the committee.

"What," Uhlman asked, "is that?"

Hughbanks explained that "bumbershoot" is slang for an umbrella. And the idea was to signal that some moisture wasn't going to stop fun in Seattle. Plus, in the burgeoning world of music and arts festivals there were no others with that name. The 1973 edition covered five days and brought 200,000 visitors. From there, the festival grew in crowd size, stature and ticket prices.

Uhlman showed similar creativity (or was it Swiss pragmatism?) with bicycles. After the first Earth Day in 1970 and subsequent gas shortages, bicycling was in vogue. The mayor went on a mass ride during 1971's "Earth Week" and later pedaled at Green Lake with King County Executive John Spellman to promote bike commuting. In 1972 he successfully lobbied state lawmakers to allow gas tax revenues to be used for building bike lanes. Seattle created its first Bike Master Plan that same year. Uhlman was just getting started. The Burlington Northern railroad wanted to abandon an old line that ran from Ballard--once the "shingle capital of the world"--past the UW campus and then north along Lake Washington. One of Uhlman's staffers hipped the mayor to the idea of acquiring the 14-mile stretch of old tracks to use as a multi-purpose trail. Exercise, ecology, scenery. What could be better? But property owners along the route balked, fearing a trail would disturb their privacy, lower their property values and even bring crime. They came up with slogans such as "Hike in the Woods, Not My Backyard." Some of Uhlman's Northeast Seattle acquaintances stopped speaking to him. But the city persevered, bought the property and started tearing up tracks. By 1978, the year Uhlman left the mayor's office, a paved multiuse path was completed from Kenmore to Wallingford's Gas Works Park. It's now a blacktop strand of Seattle's DNA, running all the way to Ballard's Golden Gardens Park on Puget Sound.

Uhlman received a Bumbershoot Founder award in 1974 for the music and arts festival he launched in 1971. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

Uhlman also aroused anger with his support for gay rights. By 1975, activists were looking to revise the city's Open Housing Ordinance--as they had Seattle's Fair Employment law two years earlier--to make it illegal for landlords to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Landlords fought the proposal and City Council debate dragged on for more than a month. Uhlman announced he would sign the anti-discrimination law if it reached his desk. The council then passed it by a single vote. **30**

These legal victories paralleled Seattle's new celebration of an annual Gay Pride Week, started in the summer of 1973. As Pride Week events grew in size and scope, Seattle's first Gay Pride March was scheduled for 1977. Encouraged by activists, Uhlman decided to commemorate the parade with a historic first, declaring June 25 to July 1 to be Gay Pride Week in Seattle. His proclamation urged "all citizens to recognize and support the efforts of our city to make this community one which truly does treat all its citizens with a fair and equal hand."

Not all citizens agreed. Calls poured into the mayor's office. Uhlman says he'll never forget the day his receptionist was frustrated to tears:

"Mayor, I just can't work here anymore...You won't believe what they're calling you."

"I believe it, Pam," Uhlman remembers saying. 'But you come sit down back here."

He sent Ed Wood, one of his deputy mayors--"a tough guy"--out to be the receptionist.

"Don't take any s*** off those people," the mayor ordered.

Uhlman promoted bike commuting in 1971 with King County Executive John Spellman. Seattle developed its first Bike Master Plan under Uhlman. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

Reactions also included letter-writing campaigns and picketing outside City Hall. "I think all of this focus on 'queers' is disgusting," wrote Joyce Lunstroth of Lacey. "I should think that if you own an apartment and you don't want 'queers' living in your building than you should have the right to refuse them." Uhlman replied: "I believe years of misunderstanding and misconceptions have led our society to hold some of the false stereotypes you have mentioned. This in turn has led to a senseless form of discrimination, one based often on ignorance, not fact."

Uhlman describes his politics then as "centrist" but closer to libertarian on social issues. "I didn't want other people to butt into my social regimen and I didn't want to do that to them. I was almost radical, I'd say, on the social issues. I was more than libertarian because I'd push for advancement on some social issues, not just leave your hands off." In response to an angry letter from a Seattle constituent, Uhlman wrote, "I must share with you one of the most important teachings of Christ, from Matthew 7:1, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' "

WHEN HE CAME into office Uhlman was appalled at how few minorities worked for the city. Seattle's population in 1970 was 12.6 percent non-white. But only 7.6 percent of the city's full-time jobs were held by minorities. The fire and police departments, along with City Light had the most bleached workforces. More than 98 percent of the Fire Department was white. The Police Department was 97.6 percent white and City Light 95.3 percent. "I just felt it was an issue of fairness that our workforce ought to look like Seattle," Uhlman says. He scheduled meetings with every department head, armed with statistics about their personnel. When he met with the head of the Parks Department he mentioned there was not a minority in a position of authority in the entire department. "He said, 'We've had trouble when we promoted one of them to be a supervisor. People just won't work for them.' I said, 'That doesn't work for me.' " Uhlman made progress in a year, with minorities increasing to 9.7 percent of the city's 10,000-member workforce. By 1973, the percentage of minorities in full-time city jobs stood at 13.6 percent. It would grow to 15 percent by the time Uhlman left office.

Uhlman demanded more from city employees, in a productivity program run by Walt Hundley, right. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

"We pretty much turned the bureaucracy upside down," Don Stark says, "down to the fingertips of dogcatchers." Uhlman created new departments, including the offices of Human Resources and Community Development, which "consolidated a number of older city agencies into more efficient and assertive bureaucracies with strong constituencies such as the elderly and neighborhoods." He also hatched the Office of Policy Planning and Office of Management and Budget; the latter kept tabs on other departments' spending, hiring and promotion practices. His personnel director Jack Driscoll "ran roughshod over civil service and unions to pursue an aggressive affirmative-action program." Uhlman appointed the city's first black department heads: Buildings Department director Al Petty, Fire Chief Claude Harris and City Budget director Walt Hundley. An influx of federal money, secured by Senator Magnuson, chairman of the crucial Appropriations Committee, fueled the new departments, their expanded missions and an increase in the number of city jobs. "I practically lived in D.C.," Uhlman recalls. "Senator Magnuson had a table for me put up in his office, I spent so much time back there testifying and begging for money."

Uhlman had campaigned on making citizens feel they had access to City Hall. And he opened up city government like never before. Besides the Little City Halls, he created the Landmarks Preservation Board, the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority, the Women's Commission, the Mayor's Festival Committee, the Seattle 2000 Commission that defined future goals for the city, and more.

Other Seattle mayors have gone in the opposite direction, disempowering neighborhood councils, saying they tended to represent older, affluent obstructionist homeowners. Not Uhlman. "As an elected official one of the lessons I learned early on is that the citizens, particularly the activist citizens are not your enemy. They're your friends. You're going to differ. You're going to say, 'OK, we don't agree on that.' But they're not your enemy. I think they're a threat to some elected officials or at least are perceived to be. I don't really think they're a threat. But if you perceive them to be, then they are."

Uhlman's innovations, shakeups and hiring practices rubbed some the wrong way. He worked well with most of City Council, particularly its younger members who were part of a bipartisan reform-minded group called Choose an Effective City Council (CHECC). But more conservative Councilmember Liem Tuai challenged Uhlman's bid for re-election in 1973. At one debate, Tuai questioned whether an Uhlman backed anti-discrimination ordinance went too far by protecting political radicals and gay people in the city hiring process. "Is he in favor of hiring homosexuals for all jobs in the city?" Tuai asked. He also accused Uhlman of cronyism in hiring. Uhlman finished second to Tuai in the primary. But the challenger's negative attacks were cited as one reason why the November results were reversed, with Uhlman winning a second term by more than 5,000 votes.

Ill will was festering within Uhlman's workforce as he demanded increased productivity in return for pay raises. City Light was the cradle of the revolt. Workers were irate at Superintendent Gordon Vickery, a hard-nosed fire chief until Uhlman moved him to City Light to weed out "nepotism, favoritism, wasted motion, and goofing off." In just a year, Vickery had got rid of hundreds of employees, had others prosecuted for theft and changed staffing policies to hire more women and minorities--and fewer relatives. Vickery was a "mean tough sonuvabitch," Uhlman says. "I said, 'Gordon I want you to take that outfit on. They're a bunch of malcontents and they're anti-black. It's just a club over there...Would you take that on for me? You're the only guy I can think of who can do that.' And he did."

Vickery's employees went on an 11-day wildcat strike in 1974 to protest his management. That didn't lead to Vickery's ouster, so they went after Uhlman. The firefighters' union joined City Light workers in a campaign to recall Uhlman. "It was really about who's running City Hall," Stark says, "the people who were elected, or employees and unions?" Dissident employees aimed their ire at Hundley, the black budget director, claiming he was incompetent in their formal recall charges. "Instead of taking me on directly, they took on Walt Hundley because he was black," Uhlman says. "They picked the wrong guy. He took them on wherever they wanted to go. He just devastated them. Wherever the audience was they thought this guy knows what he's talking about."

The recall initiative received just 37 percent of the July 1975 vote thanks in part to an influential bloc Uhlman had run against four years earlier. The downtown establishment found it easier to support the mayor who had insulted them than his union foes.

King County Executive John Spellman (left) thought he'd face Uhlman (right) in the 1976 governor's race. Neither counted on competing against Dixy Lee Ray, everyone's smart eccentric aunt. _Paul Dorpat photo_

KING COUNTY EXECUTIVE John Spellman, a moderate Republican, was expecting the governor's race in 1976 to unfold like _High Noon_. It would be a showdown between him and Uhlman, the top two politicians in the state's largest county, their offices a block apart. Spellman and Uhlman had collaborated on projects such as the Kingdome, which opened in 1976. But Spellman thought Uhlman was overly ambitious and relished a match with the mayor, who had made enemies for his perceived coddling of hippies and blacks, and missteps such as the "baby tax."

It was a rivalry mainly for the public's attention and Spellman was at a disadvantage because county government wasn't sexy, says Chuck Collins, then King County's transit director. Spellman and Uhlman would nod at each other, but there was no backslapping. "The Wes I saw was very matter of fact. If you had a 10-minute meeting it would last five."

The campaign season began as Spellman expected, with Governor Dan Evans declining to seek a fourth term. In the contest for a rare open seat in the governor's office, Spellman's logic of a face-off with Uhlman seemed sound. Driven by his "up or out" credo, Uhlman took a shot at the Governor's Mansion, thinking a Democrat would prevail in the pall and lingering stench of Watergate. Blue-collar patriots with "America, Love It or Leave It" bumper stickers had turned against the president. When Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, cynicism soared. In this climate of disgust, sprouted the presidential hopes of a Baptist peanut-farmer from Georgia. Spellman and Uhlman had not accounted for the Year of the Outsider. It was that era's version of "drain the swamp." The 1976 governor's race would pit two mavericks against the big city gunslingers.

The first was Dixy Lee Ray, a scientist and former University of Washington professor. Nixon had appointed her to the federal Atomic Energy Commission, although her expertise was marine biology. A Tacoma native and tomboy who climbed Mt. Rainier at age 12, she changed her birth name, Marguerite, in part to honor the leading general of the Confederacy. She lived outside Washington, D.C., in a 28-foot trailer and was fond of wearing knee socks and bringing her poodle Jacques to work. When the Atomic Energy Commission was phased out in 1975, Ray became assistant secretary of state. She soon abandoned that post, however, and returned to Washington state, complaining that her boss Henry Kissinger had slighted her. She waded into the governor's race not even sure of her own party preference. She opted for her confidant Lou Guzzo's spur-of-the-moment divining that she was a "conservative Democrat." She was one of those quirky unfiltered personas, like Ross Perot, who periodically beguile American voters. Her "Little lady takes on big boys" campaign slogan had understandable appeal.

Ray, a one-term governor who proved unpopular, effectively ended Uhlman's political career.

On another end of the spectrum stood Marvin Durning, a Rhodes Scholar and environmental lawyer aghast at Ray's adamantly pro-nuclear views. Durning's enthusiastic embrace of an income tax and other progressive planks gave him a stubborn appeal with the Democratic Party's left wing. He was supported by the King County Democrats and the Washington Education Association, the powerful teachers' union with 35,000 members. With Durning siphoning votes from Uhlman's left flank, the mayor's strategists bet on toughening up his image in a play for winning the center. Bob Gogerty took some responsibility for an ad that he later believed backfired. It was a straight-on close-up of Uhlman saying, "If you're a criminal, don't vote for me." But Durning's role as spoiler was the main reason Uhlman did not capture the Democratic primary nomination.

Seattle's mayor won 22 of 39 counties but ended up trailing Ray by fewer than 7,000 votes and less than 1-percentage point in the results. "I lost by less than one vote per precinct statewide," Uhlman says. Durning received 136,290 votes, good for 16 percent. Spellman, who collected fewer votes than Uhlman but won the GOP primary, was left with the challenge of campaigning against everyone's eccentric smart aunt. He lost.

"If Durning (or Wes Uhlman) had won the 1976 Democratic primary, the state would have been spared the tumultuous four years of Washington's last really bad governor, Dixy Lee Ray," wrote Joel Connelly, the longtime _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ political columnist. Four years after winning the governor's office, Ray was denounced at the Democratic State Convention by Senator Magnuson who declared, "This state is not going to be a dumping ground for nuclear waste and there are not going to be any supertankers on Puget Sound!" The incumbent wasn't even her party's preferred candidate for governor. Ray lost the primary to state Senator Jim McDermott.

Uhlman's credo about political life was "up or out." After failing in his bid for governor, he turned to a lucrative career in real estate. _King County TV_

UHLMAN SPENT the next 13 months finishing out his political career. "I figured, 'OK, up or out,' " he recalls. "It was made easier by the fact I had two boys who were going to be going to college shortly and I needed some money. The mayor's job did not pay very well. I had to give up my practice completely. So I decided to go back to practicing law, making some money. And I was criticized when I was asked a question at a public forum. I said, 'I want to go out and make a lot of money.' Two people at the meeting said, 'Well, that's not a very good goal in life.' I said, 'For me it is.' "

On a sort of farewell tour around the city, Uhlman gave a short talk in the Rainier Valley thanking people for helping him be mayor. A woman approached him. She thanked Uhlman for saving her sons' lives. Uhlman didn't know who the slight black woman was, or what she was talking about. "My sons are Elmer and Aaron Dixon," she said, "and they were in that building at the time they wanted to do that raid. I just want to thank you for their lives."

The Panthers had a different perspective on Uhlman's decision, Elmer Dixon says. The Panthers' headquarters in the Central Area was fortified with sand bags, steel window covers, carbines and shotguns. "Our position was that by not authorizing the raid by the ATF agents he saved their lives not ours. We were tipped off of an impending raid by a local TV reporter, Don McGaffin, that the 'pigs' were coming to attack long before Wes intervened so we were fully prepared for their arrival."

Uhlman visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on a 1971 trip. He was known as a supporter of Israel. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

There was another sequel to the Black Panther story. After he left the mayor's office, Uhlman served on the board of directors for several businesses. One of those developed nursing homes. He was at their board meeting in Taos, New Mexico, having dinner, when he looked across the room and saw John Ehrlichman, who had gone to prison for his role in Watergate. Uhlman had known Ehrlichman before his White House days, when they were both young Seattle attorneys specializing in real estate law. Uhlman hadn't seen him since that 1970 dust-up in the White House basement. "I waved over at him. He waved back and he came over as fast as he could."

Ehrlichman grabbed a chair next to Uhlman.

"The last time we met wasn't very friendly," Uhlman remembers saying.

"Wes, I've learned _a lot_ since then," Ehrlichman said. "I've changed _a lot_ since then. I think I'm a different person actually."

UHLMAN'S HOUSE on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill offers a panoramic view from the Space Needle to the UW. During a three-hour interview, the former mayor only asks for two quick breaks. One to visit the restroom, the other to check the closing of the stock market on his smart phone:

"I do a lot of trading," he says. "Hmm. You're not going to believe this. The Dow Jones is down 920 points. My Apple is down. My GE is down. My United Health is down. My Amazon, oh jeez, it's down 64. Amazon is down. Nothing you can do about it. The time when you lose money in the stock market is when you sell."

And then he's back to stories of battling City Light. It might surprise some that Uhlman, the mayor under whom Seattle's politics tilted irretrievably leftward, is an unapologetic capitalist. ("There are those who think he was an unapologetic capitalist before he left," says Ross Anderson, a former reporter for _The Seattle Times_.)

After City Hall, Uhlman focused on his law practice and a lucrative career developing real estate. He owned hundreds of apartments in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. But not in Seattle, he says, wanting to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He still owns commercial buildings in California, Ohio and Texas. He became a leader of the Seattle-King County Apartment Owners Association and the Association of Washington Business. In keeping with what some saw as his socially liberal and economically conservative politics, Uhlman campaigned against repeal of Seattle's civil-rights protections for gays and lesbians and later opposed expanded legal rights for renters.

"No mayor will ever be able to put together that kind of list again," said former Seattle mayor Paul Schell of Uhlman's accomplishments. Schell is second from left in this City Hall reunion of mayors Greg Nickels (l), Gordon Clinton (center), Uhlman and Norm Rice (right). _Seattle Municipal Archives_

The former mayor acknowledges that he "couldn't get elected dog catcher in this town" in 2018. His campaign contributions to Republican candidates Rob McKenna and Dino Rossi would alone disqualify him. "I'm way too conservative," he says. But Don Stark doesn't think it's a matter of Uhlman moving to the right so much as it's the Democratic Party's swerve to the left. "That's what really moved here."

Marie McCaffrey, HistoryLink's chief, doesn't see Uhlman as an ideologue of any stripe. "He's a pragmatist," she said, and "when he does something he wants to do it well." That went for hiring City Hall staff, developing real estate, and his hobbies of beekeeping and growing prize dahlias.

Uhlman's reign as mayor begs the question: do the events shape leaders, or do leaders shape the events? "Under different time and circumstances, I don't think Uhlman would've been so successful," says Ross Anderson. "The timing was just perfect." Uhlman was helped by working with simpatico City Councilmembers such as Phyllis Lamphere, Bruce Chapman and Randy Revelle. And he was able to accomplish key goals such as saving Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market thanks to Senator Magnuson's ability to steer what seemed like unlimited amounts of money to Seattle. There were other advantages. Unlike some blighted, smoldering cities, Seattle was still attractive. And those who did flee to the suburbs were replaced by young professionals abandoning other parts of the country. Even the Boeing bust had its benefits, Anderson noted. Newcomers could buy attractive homes for less than $20,000, helping to preserve neighborhoods.

But Uhlman also had good instincts. He balanced the competing impulses of dispersing power to residents and consolidating authority in the executive branch. His liberal social policies gave Seattle an image as tolerant. That one word, perhaps above all, is the key ingredient to spurring America's post-industrial high-tech hives, says economist Richard Florida, author of _The Rise of the Creative Class_. Cities that demonstrate the most openness to immigrants, gays, artists, eggheads and eccentrics--different types of people and new ideas--rank the highest in Florida's "Tolerance Index." Along with Boston, Portland and San Francisco, Seattle stands near the top of the index.

Uhlman also seemed to understand that too many politicians either don't surround themselves with good staff, or don't listen to the good staff they've hired. "When a decision needed to be made, he would pull key staff into his office and go around the room, listening to every point of view," said former aide Dave Marriot. "Then he would make up his mind and away we go."

Chuck Collins saw two local political talents emerge in the 1970s "with no limits on how far they could go." One was Dan Evans, the three-term governor and U.S. Senator. The other was Wes Uhlman. "The amazing thing is he went gracefully into the night. I don't remember him whining or complaining," Collins says of Uhlman.

"He seemed a politician who didn't need a whole lot," says Anderson. "He was a pretty self-contained guy." Uhlman acknowledged to Anderson that he wasn't as popular as some of his successors. "People who go into politics because they want to be loved quickly find out they can't accomplish much."

**Bob Young**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**C ITY GIRL LEAVES BIG MARK**

* * *

Minnie Hagmoe was always inspiring her daughter Phyllis. Plucky and adventurous, Minnie became the breadwinner when her alcoholic husband went missing. Like her relatives, she worked for the City of Seattle, where her long career included dispensing licenses for the 1962 World's Fair and procuring a truckload of pachyderm manure to fertilize her yard and grow "corn that summer as high as an elephant's eye." Her friend Emmett Watson joked in a _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ column that Minnie never learned the word "can't." She built much of her house herself and sewed her daughters' clothes when she wasn't working a second job to pay for their dance lessons. In her _first_ retirement, Minnie ordered a new VW Beetle, picked it up in Switzerland and drove it around Europe and as far as India, often scooping up hitchhikers for companionship.

Phyllis, who started dancing before kindergarten, grew tall and lithe. She swam across Lake Washington at 11, with her father rowing alongside. She won a scholarship to Barnard College in New York where she soaked up Broadway plays, music at Harlem's Apollo Theater and modern dance studying under Martha Graham.

Tragedy cut in on enchantment. Her father died a vagrant while she was in college. She was widowed at 22, five months after marrying an Army officer. But like her mother, Phyllis didn't stand still. After working at Boeing and IBM, she married psychologist Art Lamphere and became a leader in the League of Women Voters and Forward Thrust, a massive King County infrastructure upgrade. She leapt into politics and made historic changes to her beloved hometown.

In her first full year on the Seattle City Council in 1968 Phyllis Lamphere helped push through an Open Housing law in sharply segregated Seattle. She had already left a huge, if little noticed imprint on the city before joining the council. She spearheaded a change in state law giving Seattle a "strong mayor" form of government. That shift of power from nine back-scratching council members to a single executive would transform a decentralized, clubby City Hall to one with a unified vision and accountability. Politically, Seattle joined the big time.

1967 campaign flyer. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

But Lamphere's ambitions weren't always in synch with Seattleites. She was on the other side of preservationists in their historic campaign to save Pike Place Market from redevelopment. When she reached for her dream job of mayor--after trouncing male opponents in three council elections--she was judged the eminently qualified frontrunner. But voters spurned her in a stinging defeat. She lost, in part, because her own campaign took a back seat to breaking another glass ceiling. She had become the first woman president of the National League of Cities, which required extensive travel.

Wounded, she didn't stop contributing. She went on to be a driving force in the development of the Washington State Convention Center, built over Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle. Roused by a symphony conductor's put-down of her hometown as a cultural "dust bin," Lamphere kept an eye on opportunities for enrichment. More than anyone, she was responsible for the Convention Center's sophisticated art collection and galleries, one of the largest programs of its kind--free to the public--in the U.S.

Her senior facility apartment is not far from the bustling convention center.

Her activism was all part of the family tradition, says Lamphere, 95. "You didn't think of anything else. You thought about what you'd do for the city."

LAMPHERE'S GRANDPARENTS traced their roots to Germany, Austria, Norway and Sweden. Both sides of the family came to Washington in the 1890s. One grandfather opened Seattle's first art glass business. The other was a carpenter for the City of Seattle. Aunts and uncles also worked for the city.

Her parents, Ernie Hagmoe and Wilhemina "Minnie" Smith, married in 1918. They met after Ernie became good friends with Minnie's brother and frequently visited the Smith home, a gathering place for a gang of outdoorsy, athletic teens. Blue-eyed and handsome, Ernie climbed Mt. Rainier. Pretty and spirited, Minnie was a starter on the basketball team at Lincoln High School. She once pinned a teammate to the locker room floor for stomping on her uniform.

Phyllis was born in 1922 in Swedish Hospital. Seattle's population then had swollen to more than 300,000. It would soon elect its first female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes (but not another for 91 years). Ernie and Minnie bought a bungalow in the Wallingford neighborhood. Ernie worked in the city's Water Department, where he fell in with a "bad" crowd. She worked in the city's voter-registration office. Phyllis remembers a sunny childhood with her older sister Eve, full of swimming, biking, softball and dance recitals. **31**

Then the Great Depression hit. People couldn't pay their mortgages or rents. Clusters of improvised shacks, or shantytowns, sprouted around Seattle. The largest, dubbed "Hooverville," occupied an expanse of tidal flats south of downtown, where an NFL stadium now stands. Its population peaked at more than 2,000. Ernie lost his job and the family lost their house, as he spiraled deeper into depression and alcoholism. The family moved from one apartment to another. For Minnie and the girls, ketchup sandwiches were a staple.

Phyllis began dancing at an early age. _Phyllis Lamphere collection_

Minnie taught her girls self-reliance at an early age, putting Eve on a train to Portland alone at 4. "Mother didn't believe in corporal punishment, but boy, could she deliver a lecture," Lamphere says in her memoir, _The Life of a City Girl_. She stressed the importance of excelling in school and the arts. Phyllis took her first job with the city at 13, dishing out ice cream at a Woodland Park concession. She made the honor roll at Lincoln High School and choreographed dance routines. In the yearbook she described her ideal life as "dance, eat, sleep, have fun."

Lincoln High yearbook photo. _Lamphere collection_

Older sister Eve had won a scholarship to Barnard College, the women's undergraduate college of Columbia University. Phyllis was spellbound by tales of Eve's adventures in upper Manhattan. Barnard was the only college she wanted to attend. She too won a scholarship and headed east. A math major, Phyllis kept her grades up to hold on to her scholarship. But the real learning often happened outside the classroom. She studied with modern dance maven Martha Graham (around the time Sir Thomas Beecham, the world-famous English conductor, made his cultural "dust bin" dig at Seattle). Barnard students got discounted tickets to The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall and Broadway theaters. On weekend nights they'd hop on a subway, go to downtown hotel ballrooms and nurse beers while dancing to Big Band swing. They ice skated in Central Park and heard Ella Fitzgerald's jazzy scat-singing in central Harlem.

Phyllis was tasked with greeting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at Barnard College. _Lamphere collection_

Lamphere was deputized to greet Eleanor Roosevelt when the First Lady came to speak on campus. Pacing anxiously outside Barnard's main gate, Lamphere was surprised that the president's wife emerged from the subway station at 116th Street. **32** No limousine for her. "I remember mostly the intensity of her deep blue eyes and the softness of her voice as contrasted to the stridency that had been described in the press," Lamphere later wrote.

Barnard proved the turning point in Lamphere's life, the ideal setting to hone her leadership skills. All class officers and leaders were girls. "We didn't have to make way for the handsomest boy or the best male athlete to take the helm, which was the unwritten rule of the day in most colleges."

After graduating, Lamphere had promised herself she would go home to save her father. But he died of pneumonia, a vagrant, during her junior year. He was 47.

Phyllis's mom, Minnie Hagmoe, finagled a load of elephant manure from a circus to fertilize her yard. _Lamphere collection_

IN 1943 Lamphere headed back to Seattle and moved in with her mother in the house she was building in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. Lamphere went to work for Boeing where she helped create her own job: Director of Women's Activities. The goal was to prop up the spirits of women who had come from all over the country to work on assembly lines, often without any family or friends to lean on. "We set up every conceivable activity a Boeing employee might crave," Lamphere says, including sports, socials and volunteer work.

One night while volunteering downtown she met a handsome soldier with a southern accent. David Grady Arnold was an Army cargo officer on a Navy ship. After an eight-month courtship the charming Georgia native and Lamphere were married. Five weeks later Arnold shipped out. After several months, his letters stopped coming and her queries went unanswered. Lamphere heard rumors that Arnold was last seen running for cover when a Japanese kamikaze suicide pilot plunged into the ship off the Philippines on December 28. "I was told he was right where it hit," she says. But the story was unconfirmed officially. Desperate, Lamphere quit her job and went to Washington, D.C., to get answers. She learned he was the only Army man on a Navy ship. His death had slipped through the usual reporting channels.

With World War II winding to a close, a friend arranged an interview for Lamphere at IBM. In no time, she was on a train back to New York for a job at a "magnificent wage." Lamphere, the math major, was assigned to a salesman with major accounts on Wall Street. She helped prepare monthly statements and convert accounts to punch cards, which stored data for reading by a processor. She then moved up to a research lab where she worked on an early relay computer.

Seeking the marriage she felt cheated out of, she wed IBM salesman Walt Cowan in 1947, although she was concerned about his drinking and temper. In 1949, Lamphere delivered a daughter, Deborah. But Cowan's temper had not improved and the couple parted five months later. Lamphere was a single mother. And she had been bitten by the political bug.

Coming from a family of Democrats, she was excited about Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential campaign. On election night Phyllis watched results at her sister and brother-in-law's house with a few of their friends. Television was in its infancy. So was computer technology. That night Walter Cronkite and CBS news, aided by a UNIVAC computer, called a victory for Republican Dwight Eisenhower. **33** Not a good night for Democrats, but Phyllis met Art Lamphere, a graduate student completing his Ph.D. in psychology. They married the next year. Soon Art had built a patient base for his practice and Phyllis was pregnant. She gave birth to Barbara on January 13, followed by Claudia on December 30. The family was complete.

AS THE girls grew, Lamphere got involved in the Democratic Club of the 34th District. She also joined an effort by the League of Women Voters and other civic groups to advocate a "strong mayor" form of government in Seattle.

Lamphere called herself a "fanatic" about structure. You couldn't succeed without the right structure, said the former IBM systems analyst, and Seattle's was all wrong. The mayor was largely a figurehead. The council held the real power. Each member controlled the budget for a different slice of the government. One oversaw police, another transportation, another City Light, and so on. "The problem is that's decentralized government," she says. "There is no straight line of authority. There's always a power struggle if you don't have the structure to act in unison."

A West Seattle resident, Lamphere campaigned for a new bridge that voters approved in 1968. _Lamphere collection_

Lamphere became the league's chief lobbyist in Olympia for a strong mayor bill. City officials fought back. Lamphere and the Committee for a Strengthened Seattle Government didn't succeed in their 1965 effort. But she kept at it for two years, driving to Olympia every day the Legislature was in session. Her dedication led _The Seattle Times_ to say "the words 'league' and 'Lamphere' are synonymous." State lawmakers grew more receptive. Lamphere's bill said any city with a population over 300,000 would be required to put budget authority in its mayor's hands. Lawmakers from other cities could grasp the rationale. "It's a growth issue and power issue that they could see themselves confronting at some point," Lamphere says. She also thought Seattle would attract a higher caliber mayor with such a change.

Others took note of Lamphere's growing stature. Mayor Dorm Braman appointed her in 1967 to the organizing committee of Forward Thrust, which was readying a bond issue package for the 1968 ballot. She would become the group's vice-president. Running for office seemed the next step. She was advised, however, to wait for the "woman's" seat on the council, held by Myrtle Edwards, to open up. Lamphere scoffed at that.

It was time to sweep out the chummy old council. She declared herself a candidate with the slogan, "She's Bright, She's Knowledgeable, She Cares." The Municipal League rated her "outstanding." **34** Her campaign was supported by a young bipartisan group determined to modernize city affairs. The energetic activists of Choose an Effective City Council, or CHECC, also backed Tim Hill, a progressive young Republican. Lamphere dispatched the incumbent, Ed Riley, in the primary, winning almost four times as many votes. She walloped another male opponent, George Cooley in the general election. Hill and Sam Smith, a Democrat seeking to become the first African-American on the council, were also propelled into office by voters ready for change. "New Blood Will Shake Up City Council," declared one headline.

Lamphere and fellow City Council newcomers shook all of Seattle in 1968 when they pushed through a law barring discrimination in housing sales and rentals. _Seattle Argus_ , _Lamphere collection_

AT THE start of 1968, when the new council members were settling into office, it was still legal in Seattle to discriminate against minorities when renting apartments or selling houses. And discrimination was rampant. Restrictive covenants and deeds blatantly barred minorities from living in large swaths of the city. **35** Bias in the real estate industry kept brokers from even showing houses to minorities in most areas. In 1960, more than three-quarters of Seattle's black population lived in one neighborhood, the Central Area.

State lawmakers attempted a fix with a 1957 law that outlawed discrimination in home sales that involved federal or state funds. One African-American family decided in 1959 to test the law. Robert L. Jones and his wife put down a down payment and a signed earnest money receipt offering to buy a house from seller John O'Meara. Their check and receipt were returned by O'Meara. The Jones family filed a complaint with the state. Their case made it to the state Supreme Court, which sided with O'Meara. Although he had a loan insured by the Federal Housing Authority, the justices said that did not constitute "publicly assisted housing."

Civil rights activists tried a local route, proposing a city ban on discrimination. Owners of apartments argued that such a law was "dictatorial" and "confiscatory." The City Council and mayor stood pat. After a long public hearing one day in 1963, a group from the Central District Youth Club occupied the mayor's office, in what was believed to be Seattle's first sit-in. But all they got was an ordinance creating the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

Under continuing pressure, the council punted the decision to voters. Property owners advertised heavily for their freedom. Four council members appeared in ads as opponents of a new law. When ballots were tallied in the 1964 election, Seattle had shot down the Open Housing law by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

Attitudes began to change with the advent of the federal Civil Rights Act, scenes of police brutality in southern states, and voluntary integration programs by some Seattle sellers and landlords. But housing discrimination remained legal in Seattle until April 19, 1968, two weeks after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Led by Sam Smith, the new council members pushed through an anti-discrimination law. "That was our biggest move," Lamphere says, "and bitterly fought within the council."

Then they were on to opening up City Hall. "Until we came along, there were no open meetings," Lamphere wrote in her memoir. "Public testimony, if any, was 'invited' at the discretion of the committee chair. Most decisions were reached in council officers and merely ratified at the official Monday City Council meeting."

She and CHECC set out to change the rules of operation. All the meetings became public. Hearings were held in council chambers and anyone could testify. Agendas were published in advance.

LAMPHERE SOON found herself embroiled in a battle over revitalizing Pike Place Market. City planners had crafted a strategy in which the core of the market would be maintained but new development would encircle it. Opponents saw a threat to the market's charm, its low-income housing and the very soul of Seattle. Led by Victor Steinbrueck, a University of Washington architecture professor, opponents rallied around the slogan, "Save the market."

Lamphere said her plan would do just that in the long run. But Steinbrueck, who had worked on her campaign, was soon leading picket lines, hoisting a sign that said, "Is Phyllis Lamphere really a friend of the market?"

She tried to develop a compromise. But a citizen initiative pushed the decision to Seattle voters. On November 2, 1971, they resoundingly approved a seven-acre historic district around the market, killing the urban-renewal plan she supported. A "victory for the people," Steinbrueck called it.

Phyllis often did a soft-shoe number with fellow City Councilmember Paul Kraabel for the Metropolitan Democratic Follies. _Lamphere collection_

AFTER WINNING a third term with 75 percent of the vote, Lamphere became the first woman (and first non-mayor) elected president of the National League of Cities. In 1977, she decided to run for the open mayor's seat. The publisher of the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer,_ Robert E. Thompson, touted her credentials. He wrote an endorsement headlined, "One Whose Name Must Lead All the Rest for Mayor." Lamphere was the only one of the qualified candidates born and raised in Seattle, wrote Thompson. She had a keen mind, an "awesome" depth of knowledge, a firm handle on the city's problems. "And she has national stature."

That last point, however, would prove double-edged. National League of Cities duties had her leading a conference at the United Nations, lunching with _Washington Post_ publisher Katherine Graham and crisscrossing the country. What's more, the "outsider" trend that dominated elections the year before--launching a quirky scientist, Dixy Lee Ray, into the Washington governor's mansion--lingered. But with a twist of sexism. Ray's abrasive persona and creeping unpopularity led some to say they wouldn't vote for another woman. "This is ridiculous," the _P-I_ endorsement of Lamphere said. But it was a view Lamphere campaign volunteers said they encountered among some voters.

As president of the National League of Cities, Lamphere greets U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977. _Lamphere collection_

Another problem was that four council members had entered the race, splitting votes for the "insiders." Charley Royer, a TV journalist, and Paul Schell, who oversaw the preservation of Pike Place Market, were the leading "outsiders."

On top of that, Lamphere lagged behind others in fundraising and her campaign didn't seem connected to neighborhoods. The candidate herself created some problems. In an interview with reporter Ross Anderson of _The Seattle Times_ , she demonstrated "the same pleasing blend of earthy sophistication and humor, the same highly expressive face, the same mastery of words." But Lamphere also called herself a "systems person" and her jargon-laden vocabulary had a tendency to "drive Council, staff and reporters literally to distraction." Voters too, apparently.

Lamphere finished a distant fourth in the primary election. The outsiders, Royer and Schell, advanced. "Chalk me up as a little old lady whose bubble burst when she failed to become mayor of the city she loved," Lamphere later said.

Crushed by the rejection, Lamphere quit the council the next year to take a job in Seattle with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Her territory as regional director of the Economic Development Administration included the western states and American territories in the Pacific. But when President Ronald Reagan took office he slashed her agency's budget and wanted her to move to Denver. She quit in a scorching resignation letter.

The early frontrunner in the 1977 mayoral race, Lamphere watched the disappointing results with her husband Art and daughter Claudia. _Lamphere collection_

LAMPHERE WAS back to being a civic activist. In 1981 the state Legislature authorized the governor to appoint a nine-member board to design, construct and operate a convention center, financed by the hotel and motel tax. Lamphere was among the select team that included Jim Ellis, the mastermind behind Forward Thrust.

The goal was to attract meetings of scientific and professional organizations to Seattle to boost tourism and the regional economy. Lamphere believed Seattle needed to establish itself as a global center but wasn't even on the list of possible meeting places for groups such as the Red Cross and World Bank. The board boldly decided to build the convention center over Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle--without ever closing freeway lanes.

From the beginning Lamphere insisted that the building feature public art. She saw it as an opportunity to offer free art appreciation and education in a central part of the city. Her big break came when a private partner, who was going to construct shops along the center's escalators, went bankrupt. Suddenly, open storefronts were replaced by meeting rooms with bare outside walls. Looking at those nice corridors, she said, "Oh my gosh, that's an art gallery."

She put together a group of art experts. They tapped the state's Percent for Art requirement for public construction budgets. They installed sculptures, paintings and photos inside and outside the $186 million Washington State Convention Center, which opened in 1988.

Lamphere recommended creating a nonprofit Convention Center Art Foundation to provide the means for obtaining works as gifts or long-term loans. The center's public art program has showcased both permanent works and more than 150 rotating exhibits. The four-story gallery exhibits have displayed Northwest artists such as Ann Gardner, Hilda Morris, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson. Each year some 600,000 convention center visitors, both tourists and locals, have free access to art, one of Seattle's underappreciated troves.

"You can't miss the art when you go to this place," Lamphere says.

Take that, Sir Thomas Beecham.

Lamphere would serve on the convention center board for just over 20 years, stepping down after an expansion of the center was completed in 2001 and new art exhibits were dedicated the next year.

Lamphere lives just a few blocks from the Washington State Convention Center, whose board she served on for 20 years. _Horizon House photo_

LAMPHERE had lost her husband Art to a heart attack in 1987. She later lost her most profound influence when Minnie passed away just short of her 101st birthday. But Lamphere kept trying to make her city better. In her 80s, as a board member of Seattle Parks Foundation she helped lead a dramatic makeover of Lake Union Park with the cornerstone addition of the Museum of History and Industry to Seattle's fastest growing neighborhood, teeming with Amazon workers and vertical cubicle farms.

How does she feel now that Seattle and its 700,000 residents have gained some of the recognition she sought? "I am of mixed minds," she says. She's concerned about overpopulation and the soaring cost of housing. She's hopeful that thoughtful development will maximize the positives and ameliorate the negatives. "That's the real test." This much is certain. She's delighted that Seattle voters in 2017 elected Jenny Durkan, the city's first female mayor since 1926. "About time," Lamphere says. "I think she's going to do well."

Lamphere played a key role in bringing the Museum of History and Industry to Seattle's Lake Union Park. _Seattle Parks and Recreation photo_

**Editor 's note:** Phyllis died on November 13, 2018 just as this book was going to press.

**Bob Young, Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**" Doing something extra"**

* * *

From a hilltop rambler he says cost "an arm and a leg to build--$30,000!"--in the early 1950s, Jim Ellis surveyed Lake Washington shimmering in the spring sunshine and reflected on his eventful life. It was 2010. His visitor complained that driving from Olympia to Seattle took two hours. "It's going to get worse before it gets better," Ellis said, shaking his head.

It's not as if he didn't warn us.

The Space Needle and Monorail put Seattle on the cover of _LIFE_ and a host of other periodicals in 1962. "But when the world's fair was over we weren't ready for 1970, let alone Century 21," the visionary civic activist said.

It was Ellis who mobilized a task force of young Seattleites in 1958 to rescue Lake Washington from the run-off of suburban sprawl--20 million gallons a day of raw and partially treated sewage.

His second act was an omnibus 1968 bond issue called Forward Thrust. It funded parks and recreation projects, sewer and arterial highway improvements and a sports stadium that, after some fits and starts, made Seattle a major-league city. The Forward Thrust proposition that failed twice--rapid transit--haunts Seattle a half century later. "Freeway" has become an oxymoron.

In 1968, Ellis worried that King County--some dubbed it "Pugetopolis"--was becoming "lemming-like ...masses of self-centered people" marching "sightless into a sea of blinking signs and tin cans."

"When we created Metro to clean up the lake, they called it 'a blend of Big Brother and Communism,' " Ellis said. "Forward Thrust was dismissed as 'the full employment act for bond attorneys,' namely me and my law firm. If you listen to the naysayers you'll never get anything done. I've always liked to get things done."

HE'S 97 NOW, in the sunset of a life well lived. Forward Thrust was a half century ago. His autobiography--binders filled with fastidiously annotated transcripts--remains unfinished. But his legacy is secure, his prescience remarkable.

There was a time, however, when Jim Ellis was "so consumed by grief, guilt and anger" over the death of his brother, Bob, an Army infantryman during World War II, that he didn't know if life was worth living.

Ellis handed his visitor a photo of a log cabin the brothers built in the summer of 1937. "My father, who loved the outdoors, bought a piece of property along the Raging River in the Cascade foothills. He decided it would be a good lesson in self-sufficiency for Bob and me to build a cabin--all by ourselves. I was 15 years old; Bob was 13. Our kid brother, John, was only 8, so he stayed home. Our father dropped us off with our two dogs, food, tools and tents and said, 'Go to it.' By the time school started, we had a pretty decent cabin. We called it 'Hermit Heaven.' It was a wonderful learning experience."

Another photo features Bob. He's taller than Jim; otherwise they might have passed for twins. They were that close, too.

When Pfc. Robert L. Ellis's life ended at 22 in Germany just as the Allies were strangling the Third Reich, Jim was a meteorologist at an Army Air Forces base in Idaho. "I was devastated," Ellis said, his voice thick with emotion. He walked over to the windows and gazed out on the lake. He has told this story innumerable times because it's therapeutic, so central to the person he became. But each time, when the emotion wells up, it's 1945 all over again. "Mary Lou and I were newlyweds, but I told her I wanted to volunteer for combat duty. She shook me by the shoulders and told me I had to get hold of myself. Did I want to try and get myself killed to make up for Bob's death? What would that accomplish? 'Why not make your life count for his?' she said. She was right. I got hold of myself and decided I would do something extra in my life to try and make the world better."

After law school at the University of Washington, he set out to do just that.

By the late 1950s parts of Lake Washington were unsafe for swimming. This photo from 1958 was part of the campaign to create the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle ("Metro") to oversee sewage treatment. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

FORMER governor and U.S. senator Dan Evans, then a young civil engineer, remembers the first time he saw Jim Ellis in action, doing something extra: "In 1953, when I plunged into civic life, Seattle's Municipal League was infused with the energy of young veterans with college degrees. Jim, a graduate of Yale, was the League's 32-year-old attorney. Wiry, with intense eyes and a disarming smile, Jim isn't very big, yet he is one of the most persuasive human beings I've ever known. His vision for a model community--clean air and water, greenbelts, rapid transit, parks and recreation accessible to all--was punctuated by painstaking preparation. Jim put in so much work ahead of time that he knew the answers before you came up with the questions. He is the greatest civic activist in Seattle history."

In the 1950s, long before there were any federal environmental programs, one of the biggest challenges to cleaning up Lake Washington--famously once posted with "No Swimming" signs--was convincing all the municipalities to cooperate. Emmett Watson, the popular _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ columnist, put it this way: "One of the charms of democracy--and one of its exasperations--is that each town council, each committee, each city government, is an ego unto itself." Ellis sent his troops "out on the revival circuit to try and open a lot of closed-door minds."

Ellis during the Metro campaign. _Seattle Times photo_

In 1956, future U.S. senator Slade Gorton was a Columbia Law School graduate fresh from a stint in the Air Force. He signed on as a member of the Municipal League's speakers' bureau, the Town Criers, and volunteered to make the rounds of service clubs in the suburbs. It was a tough sell that taught him a lot about retail politics. "Jim preached that regional problems required regional solutions," Gorton remembers. "Seattle was going to vote for Metro. Everyone knew that, but there was a lot of opposition outside the city--in Renton, Redmond, Issaquah and the other suburbs, not to mention rural King County. I got to go to places where the vote was going to be five- or six-to-one against it." Opponents styled the "Metro Monster" as an octopus whose tentacles would strangle any opposition to "Seattle rule and domination."

Opponents of Metro portrayed the plan as an octopus that would strangle any opposition to "Seattle rule and domination." _Seattle Municipal Archives_

The plan was scuttled by suburban voters in March of 1958. So Ellis shrewdly pulled back the boundaries here and there to jettison the losing precincts. The revised plan was resoundingly approved in a second vote that September.

W.T. Edmondson, the internationally respected zoology professor at the University of Washington, wrote that Ellis seemed "to have had a knack of bringing out the best in everybody." Ellis, characteristically modest, has always said the title of his book will be _Friends Along the Way --_"about all the people who didn't get credit for all this stuff."

"BY 1965 forecasters were predicting that King County's population might double to two million in 20 years," historian William H. Mullins wrote in a study of the Forward Thrust campaign. "The most optimistic economists thought the state could gain 60,000 jobs every year, most of them along the newly completed segment of Interstate 5 running between Tacoma and Everett through Seattle. Ellis fretted that the region was doing little to prepare for growth."

Ellis picked Seattle's Downtown Rotary Club, which met at the landmark Olympic Hotel, as the venue for his Forward Thrust speech on November 3, 1965, because it featured 350 of the city's movers and shakers--"people who had been in the trenches on Metro and the World's Fair."

Al Pratt's opinion page cartoon for The Seattle Times features a neat visual pun: The voters are thrusting "old-fashioned Seattle" over a cliff.

The story spotlighting his speech was splashed above the fold on the front page of that night's _Seattle Times._ **" ELLIS SEES 'GOLDEN AGE' "** the headline read. If Seattle and King County united "in a total effort" they could usher in a "golden age" of livability within a decade, Ellis told the club. Rapid transit, the cornerstone of his plan, would reduce air pollution, preserve the city's vital core and obviate the need for intrusive freeways. "If sole reliance is placed on existing freeway lanes, congestion will throttle growth," he warned. The only way to permit open space in the heart of the city and meet peak-hour transportation demands, Ellis said, would be to construct high-rise structures and non-polluting "electric" rapid-transit lines. A major league sports stadium could attract professional baseball and football franchises, while a "world trade center" would anchor Seattle's position as the hub of Pacific Rim trade. New parks, plazas, greenbelts and community centers would make for a more livable city. Likewise, more low-income housing, lest rising property values make city living too expensive for "average" folks, including newlyweds and retirees. It was also crucial to keep "urban sprawl from swallowing the countryside."

A bumper sticker issued by the opponents. _Seattle Municipal Archives_

Achieving all that would require a "Forward Thrust Committee" of 100 volunteers with "World's Fair zip," Ellis declared, arms outstretched for emphasis. "Cooperation without rivalry will have to be unstintingly given by public officials."

The next day, _Times_ columnist Walt Woodward observed that "one who does not know Ellis might be tempted to ask what brand of hashish this 43-year-old attorney smokes. After all... $200 million in bonding authority!? How can this be done?" Anyone who did know Ellis understood, however, that this "bold new challenge to the metropolitan area he loves so well and serves so faithfully is not an idle pipe dream," Woodward added.

The speech was also big news in the _Post-Intelligencer._ Thousands of free copies were distributed. Ellis appeared on TV and hosted call-in radio shows. "That's all everyone talked about," said John Spellman, a Forward Thrust volunteer who went on to become county executive and governor. Eddie Carlson, the live-wire hotel executive who had headed the World's Fair Commission, enlisted on the spot, as did Mayor Dorm Braman, an exponent of rapid transit. Mullins wrote that Forward Thrust:

[H]eralded a new cycle of urban reform that blossomed in the 1970s. Ellis's eagerness to temper the ill effects of untrammeled growth reflected the values of "quality-of-life liberals" who were just emerging throughout the United States, especially in the West. According to the urban historian Carl Abbott, "These middle-class city people worried that breakneck development was fouling the air, eating up open space, [and] sacrificing neighborhoods to the automobile." President Lyndon Johnson, commenting on beautification and open space in 1965, was speaking the language of Forward Thrust when he asserted, "We must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities."

Ellis worked 80-hour weeks for 18 months and inspired 40,000 man-hours of donated labor from the region's brightest people. "It was invigorating to be part of such an amazing brain trust," Spellman said. "With his track record, personality and speaking ability, only Jim Ellis could have galvanized support for a plan that ambitious."

Governor Evans and Gorton, who was then the House majority leader, shepherded the Forward Thrust enabling legislation through the Legislature and onto the ballot.

A typical home in greater Seattle was valued at $20,000 in 1968 ($146,000 in 2018 dollars). The total local cost for the whole Forward Thrust package, $820 million, amounted to $49 a year for a home owner in Seattle, $36 for someone in the suburbs and $17.50 outside the Metro boundaries. Factoring in state and federal matching funds, King County stood to achieve improvements worth nearly $2 billion. Opponents branded Forward Thrust the "greatest conceivable monument to socialism ever offered in our community" and "a death chant for democracy."

On election eve, Emmett Watson warned: "The Seattle of today, the one we mean when we say 'keep it as it is,' is not long for this century. The Seattle we know will change--more people, clogged freeways, overcrowded parks and beaches; less room, more problems. ...Puget Sound no longer is a remote, cozy corner, comfortably isolated against the growth that afflicts us all. This place is, literally, going to burst its seams within our lifetime. Nothing is more certain." It was Seattle's "Day of Decision," Watson said.

A Forward Thrust button. _John Hughes Collection_

On February 13, 1968, voters authorized $40 million for a multipurpose stadium, $118 million for parks and recreation, $81 million for arterials, $70 million for sewer projects, $12 million for neighborhood improvements and $6 million for a youth service center. The major casualty was rapid transit. With the matching funds, the measure would have parlayed $385 million in local bonds into a total of $1.15 billion. Like the other proposals, it needed a 60 percent mandate and received barely a simple majority. Gorton calls it "the stupidest 'no' vote the people of Seattle ever cast." Mayor Braman, who in 1969 joined the Nixon administration as Assistant Secretary of Transportation, was glummer yet, predicting there would be "tragic results."

A Forward Thrust urban arterial project gets under way. _Washington State Archives_

FORWARD THRUST'S second chance lurched into reverse in 1970. The "Boeing Bust" spelled big trouble in a countywide special election on May 19. The region's prime employer had jettisoned more than 50,000 jobs since 1968. Ellis, Evans and Spellman urged voters to consider both the immediate and long-term benefits: sorely needed jobs; nearly $900 million in federal funding to relieve gridlock; storm-water control projects, new community centers and libraries and public-safety projects.

All four Forward Thrust proposals were rejected, with only 46 percent supporting the public transit proposal. Wrangling over a site for the multipurpose stadium approved in 1968 added to the angst. Though the stadium funds were safe, the loss of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee, coupled with the Boeing layoffs, cast doubt on Forward Thrust's promises. Nearly 61 percent of the voters rejected the Seattle Center as a domed stadium site. (Ellis was disappointed that the siting issue appeared on the same ballot. It was John Spellman's persistence that saw the "Kingdome" through to completion in 1976.)

Ellis in the 1980s. _Seattle P-I/MOHAI photo_

Ellis was crestfallen, especially over the failure of rapid transit. "Despite herculean efforts he and his group were not able to convince homeowners that an easier commute in 10 or 15 years was worth the added taxes," William H. Mullins writes.

"No campaign could have done better," Ellis told several hundred disappointed Forward Thrust volunteers.

"People were just scared," Ellis said in 2010. "Fifty-thousand people had left Seattle. It was just night and day between 1968 and 1970." Gallingly, the federal mass-transit funds Ellis had prodded Senator Warren Magnuson to earmark for King County were snapped up by Atlanta, "and they built a beautiful light rail system!" Ellis said, all but slapping himself on the forehead.

Undaunted, as usual, Ellis went on to launch a successful campaign for farmlands preservation; championed the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, and in 1991 helped spearhead the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust that created a pristine corridor across the Cascades along Interstate 90. John W. Ellis, who became one of the state's most influential business and civic leaders--he played a key role in building the Seattle Mariners franchise--says his brother taught him the importance of stepping up to the plate.

"Jim believes people live on by the things they do for others," Mary Lou Ellis once said, recalling that her husband had persevered with Forward Thrust in 1970 despite an ulcer attack that hospitalized him for nearly a month. "He has to do something public-spirited or he'd burn up inside."

Jim was listening intently to his high school sweetheart. "When you accept responsibility," he said, jaw set, "you've got to come through. You can't back out. Or if you're worth a damn, you don't back out."

"He never backed out," Slade Gorton observes. "Who accomplished more in King County in the 20th century to improve the quality of our lives?"

**John C. Hughes**

**Legacy Washington**

**Office of the Secretary of State**

**Bibliography**

* * *

**Arntz** , **Dee,** _Extraordinary Women Conservationists of Washington_ , The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2015

**Beckley, Fred W.,** _Cascade Alpine Guide: Rainy Pass to Fraser River_ , The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 1973

**Boswell, Sharon** , _Ray Moore: An Oral History_ , Office of the Secretary of State. Olympia, 1999

**Brewster, David** and **Buerge, David. M**., _Washingtonians: A Biographical Portrait of the State_ , Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 1991

**Buchanan, Patrick J.,** _Nixon 's White House Wars_, Crown Forum, New York, 2017

**Chasan, Daniel Jack,** _Mountains to Sound_ , Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 1993

**Clark, Norman H.,** and **McKeehan, Susan** , _James. M. Dolliver, An Oral History_ , Washington State Oral History Program, Olympia 1999

**Cross, Charles R.,** _Room Full of Mirrors, A Biography of Jimi Hendrix_ , Hachette Books, New York, 2005

**Crowley, Walt,** _Rites of Passage, A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1995

_Routes: a brief history of public transportation in metropolitan Seattle_ , Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, 1993

**Danner, Lauren** , _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2017

**Dixon, Aaron,** _My People Are Rising_ , Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2012

**Du Bois, W.E.B.** , _The Souls of Black Folk_ , Gramercy Books, New York, 1994

**Edmondson, W.T.,** _The Uses of Ecology, Lake Washington and Beyond_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991

**Farrington, Joshua D.,** _Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP_ , University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2016

**Fink, Carole, Gassert, Philipp, and Junker, Detlef** (editors), _1968, The World Transformed_ , Publications of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., 1998

**Fletcher, Arthur,** _The Silent Sell-Out, Government Betrayal of Blacks to the Craft Unions_ , The Third Press, New York, N.Y., 1974

**Goldberg, David, and Griffey, Trevor** (editors), _Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action and the Construction Industry_ , ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2010

**Golland, David Hamilton** , _A Terrible Thing to Waste_ , _Arthur Fletcher and the Conundrum of the Black Republican_ , University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2019

_Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity_ , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2011

**Hardy, Jason M.,** _MACV SOG, Team History of a Clandestine Army_ , Hardy Publications, Spencer, N.C., 2012

**Harvey, Mark W.T.,** _Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2007

**Hughes, John C.,** _John Spellman, Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , Thomson-Shore for the Washington State Legacy Project, Olympia, 2013

_Slade Gorton, A Half Century in Politics,_ Thomson-Shore for the Washington State Legacy Project, Olympia, 2011

_Nancy Evans, First-rate First Lady,_ Washington State Legacy Project, Olympia, 2010

**Kaufman, Polly Welts** , _National Parks and the Woman 's Voice: A History_, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, N.M., 1996

**Klingle, Mathew,** _Emerald City_ , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007

**Kurlansky, Mark,** _1968, The Year that Rocked the World_ , Ballantine Books, New York, 2004

**Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe** , _The Life of a City Girl_ , self-published, 2010

**Lien, Carsten,** _Olympic battleground: the power politics of timber preservation_ , The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 2000

**Louter, David,** _Contested Terrain: North Cascades National Park Service Complex, Washington, An Administrative History_ , National Park Service, Seattle, 1998

**Moreno, Paul D.,** _Black Americans and Organized Labor, A New History_ , Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2006

**Morgan, Murray,** _The Mill on the Boot_ , Washington State Historical Society and University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1982

**Oberst, Walter A.,** _Railroads, Reclamation and the River, A History of Pasco_ , Franklin County Historical Society, Pasco, Wash., 1978

**O 'Day, Pat,** with **Ojala, Jim** , _It Was All Just Rock 'n' Roll,_ R-'n'-R Press, Seattle, 2002

**O 'Donnell, Lawrence**, _Playing With Fire, The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics_ , Random House, New York, 2017

**Plaster, John L.,** _SOG, The Secret Wars of America 's Commandos in Vietnam_, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997

**Pugnetti, Frances Taylor** , _Tiger by the Tail, 25 years with the Stormy Tri-City Herald_ , Tri-City Herald, Pasco, 1975

**Robbins, Tom,** _Tibetan Peach Pie_ , HarperCollins, New York, 2014

**Santos, Bob, and Iwamoto, Gary,** _The Gang of Four_ , Chin Music Press, Seattle 2015

**Santos, Bob** , _Hum Bows, Not Hog Dogs! Memoirs of a savvy Asian American Activist_ , International Examiner Press, Seattle, 1973

**Schwartzenberg, Susan,** _Becoming Citizens_ , _Family Life and the Politics of Disability_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2005

**Singler, Joan, Durning, Jean, Valentine, Bettylou, Adams, Maid,** Seattle in Black and White, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2011

**Sowards, Adam M.,** _The Environmental Justice, William O. Douglas and American Conservation_ , Oregon State University Press, 2009

**Taylor, Quintard,** _The Forging of a Black Community,_ University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1994

**Wells, Tom,** _The War Within: America 's Battle Over Vietnam_, University of California Press, Berekely, 1994

**Whitesell, Edward A.,** editor, _Defending Wild Washington, A Citizen 's Action Guide_, The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 2004

**Wicker, Tom,** _One of Us, Richard Nixon and the American Dream_ , Random House, New York, 1991

**Wright Rigueur, Leah** , _The Loneliness of the Black Republican_ , Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2015

**Source Notes**

* * *

**B RYON LOUCKS**

**Bryon Loucks oral history interview with John C. Hughes for Legacy Washington, 5-9-2018**

**" There may be a limit beyond,"** quoted in _The War Within: America 's Battle Over Vietnam_, Tom Wells, University of California Press, 1994, p. 150

**The draft call for 1968,** quoted in _1968, The Year That Rocked The World_ , Mark Kurlansky, Random House, New York, 2005, p. 47

**" same mud, same blood,"** "Black and White in Vietnam," Gerald F. Goodwin, _The New York Times_ , 7-18-2017, <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/racism-vietnam-war.html>

**" detestable" anti-war mail,** "War Victims' Kin Still Harassed," Jean Heller, AP, _Seattle Times_ , 2-13-1968, p. 2

**Panel listing for Washington State 's Vietnam War dead,** <http://www.dva.wa.gov/sites/default/files/MASTERVietnam%20KIA%20Names%20including%20those%20accounted%20for%20website%20version.pdf>

The Washington State flag Loucks received from Secretary of State Lud Kramer. _Loucks Collection_

Also at: U.S. Military Washington State Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War: <https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-lists/wa-alpha.pdf>

**20 million gallons of herbicides** , "Agent Orange," "This Day in History," www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange

**" Ballad of The Green Berets,"** by Barry Sadler, <http://greenberetcd.com/ballad.html>

**" disgustingly handsome,"** B.A. Schoen, Baldwin, N.Y., to author, 5-30-2018

**" the largest clandestine military unit,"** _SOG, The Secret Wars of America 's Commandos in Vietnam_, John L. Plaster, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997, p. 23

**only about 1,200 chosen for SOG,** _MACV SOG, Team History of a Clandestine Army_ , Jason M. Hardy, Hardy Publications, Spencer, N.C., 2012, dustjacket overview

**L ARRY GOSSETT & LEM HOWELL**

**" wait" has almost always meant "never,"** Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 4-16-1963, accessed via <https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218230016/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/kingweb/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf>

**" That's what people are lacking,"** Twyla Carter to author, 5-30-2018

**when a distraught Franklin High student, Trolice Flavors** , Aaron Dixon, _My People Are Rising_ , Haymarket Books, 2012, p. 71

**" zoomed down" to Franklin,** Alan J. Stein, "College and high school students hold sit-in at Seattle's Franklin High on March 29, 1968," _History Link_ , 6-14-1999

**" Beep, beep. Bang, bang. Ungawa. Black Power,"** Larry Gossett to Dan Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_, 3-6- 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVcd-gCMGVA>

**They crammed into the small office,** Don Hannula, "Non-Franklin Students Led Negro Sit-In, Says Principal," _The Seattle Times_ , 3-30-1968

**Police were alerted and a "sizable contingent" mustered,** Hannula, "Non-Franklin Students Led Negro Sit-In"

**" A fight which led to the suspension,"** Bob Santos and Gary Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , Chin Music Press, 2015, p. 37

**the school suspended nine students,** "Charges Filed in Franklin Sit-In," _The Seattle Times_ (no byline), 4-4-1968

**" NO, man, no man, this can't be real,"** Dixon, _My People Are Rising_ , p. 73

**" These cats are disadvantaged too,"** Larry Gossett to John C. Hughes and author, 2-22-2018

**Superior Court Judge Frank D. James began the hearing,** "400 Cheer Bail Rejection in Franklin High Sit-In Case," _The Seattle Times_ (no byline), 4-6-1968

**Larry 's parents pleaded with him to stop,** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , pgs. 37 and 38

**Johnnie and Nelmon Gossett came north,** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , p. 26

**He then wanted to buy a house in West Seattle,** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**Larry joined a street gang in 8th grade,** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , p. 28

**Gossett made news in his second starting assignment,** Jack McLavey, "Quakers Surprise Again," _The Seattle Times_ , 1-26-1963

**Gossett knocked down a long jump shot,** Walt Parietti, "Quakers Scare Pups," _The Seattle Times_ , 2-13-1963

**He aimed to shine in junior college games,** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , p. 29

**" I didn't want to have to go to jail or Canada,"** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**It would prove to be the "signature experience,"** Gossett on VISTA, transcribed from 2005 oral history interview, _University of Washington Civil Rights & Labor History Project_, <http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/gossett.htm>

**" older brothers pointing out what to read,"** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**" It was a horrific concentration,"** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**" The poverty--it was easy for me to see,"** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22-2018

**When Gossett left for Harlem,** Gossett on VISTA, transcribed from 2005 oral history interview

**" It made sense to me when I read,"** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22-2018

**His appearance changed so much his mother,** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**And when he got home his Momma and Daddy,** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22-2018

**Their research showed that among UW 's estimated 30,000 students,** Black Student Union letter to President Charles Odegaard, 5-6-1968, pg. 3, accessed via <http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/images/BSU/BSU_Letter_to_Odegaard_May6_1968.pdf>

**until the first black counselor came on board** , Emile Pitre email to author, 7-9-2018

**Gossett became a local spokesman for "black power,"** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , p. 35

**" I don't think any of us had ever experienced anything,"** Dixon, _My People Are Rising_ , p. 78

**The conviction was later overturned on appeal,** Alan J. Stein, "College and high school students hold sit-in at Seattle's Franklin High on March 29, 1968," _History Link_ , 6-14-1999

**" I thought I was in Jackson, Mississippi,"** Gossett to Satterberg, _Prosecutor 's Partners_

**Scott brought demonstrators to shut down,** John C. Hughes, _John Spellman, Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , Washington State Legacy Project, 2013, p. 103

**Gossett and Black Panthers scaled fences,** Santos and Iwamoto, _Gang of Four_ , p. 49

**" To us the law of life is struggle,"** Lee Moriwaki, "Gossett to add marital dimension," _The Seattle Times_ , 3-24-1975

**" If I see him at one more demonstration,"** Moriwaki, "Gossett to add marital dimension"

**" Anybody got a high school diploma?"** Doug Merlino, "Gossett, Larry (b. 1945)," _History Link_ , 7-23-2005

**MOVE 's door-to-door campaigning,** Merlino, "Gossett, Larry (b. 1945)"

**Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), which helped,** Merlino, "Gossett, Larry (b. 1945)"

**" CAMP was always a place you could go for support,"** Alexes Harris to author, 6-12-2018

**Gossett, who once dismissed elections as traps,** Gossett on VISTA, transcribed from 2005 oral history interview

**But the main reason was his joining Jesse Jackson 's,** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22-2018

**His surprise that Jackson 's 1984 presidential campaign,** Dick Clever, "The caucuses: Newcomers inject excitement and hope into Democratic Party, _The Seattle Times_ , 3-18-1984

**Four years later, Jackson finished second,** David Schaefer, "Indeed There's Life After Caucus," _The Seattle Times_ , 3-10-1988

**In his last two elections,** King County past election results, Nov. 2011 and Nov. 2015, <https://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/elections/past-elections.aspx>

**Enrollment has gone from 96 percent white,** Katherine Long, "A 1968 sit-in by black students led to big changes at the UW," _The Seattle Times_ , 5-20-2018

**On the economic side, Gossett notes similar improvements,** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22,-2018

**" Hey, you the n***** that works downtown,"** Gossett to Hughes and author, 2-22,-2018

**Alexes Harris has a different view,** Alexes Harris to author

**" But you don't get to just deplete,"** Twyla Carter to author

**" I'm in the justice business,"** Lem Howell to author 6-7-2018

**At the age of 9,** Howell to author

**which by the next census in 1950 was 98 percent black,** Andy A. Beveridge, "Harlem's Shifting Population," _Gotham Gazette_ , 9-2-2008 <http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/city/4077-harlems-shifting-population>

**including young Army Private Elvis Presley,** "George M. Randall," Historical Society of Montgomery County, <https://hsmcpa.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/george-m-randall/>

**He amassed a record of 29 victories,** Jennifer Davis, "Justice Thurgood Marshall: 50th Anniversary of His Swearing-in to the Supreme Court," _Library of Congress_ , 10-2-2017, <https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/10/justice-thurgood-marshall-50th-anniversary-of-his-swearing-in-to-the-supreme-court/>

**" He affected the statutory law in 17 states,"** Howell to author

**" the general that led" and "an architect of progress,"** Geov Parrish, "Rebel With an Assortment of Causes," _2010 Washington Super Lawyers_ , June 2010

**This was a time when drinks were swept off tables,** Peter LeSourd, "Blue Laws-Washington State," _History Link_ , 6-20-2009

**A Mount Vernon car dealer,** LeSourd, "Blue Laws-Washington State"

**_Seattle Magazine_ said the effort looked "dubious,"** LeSourd, "Blue Laws-Washington State"

**But eight months later,** LeSourd, "Blue Laws-Washington State"

**Racism was alive and well,** Frank D. Raines and Bruce Chapman, "Race and Violence in Washington State," _Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Civil Disorder_ , February 1969

**A shotgun blast hit Pratt,** Rick Anderson, "He Killed Edwin Pratt," _Seattle Weekly_ , 5-24-2011

**In tense negotiations with King County Executive John Spellman,** Hughes, _John Spellman_ , _Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , p. 104

**" Bright and early on the Monday,"** Hughes, _Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , p. 104

**Howell 's first federal case remains the most far-reaching,** Hughes, _Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , p. 108

**It marked the first time,** Parrish, "Rebel With an Assortment of Causes"

**" My wife, who doesn't believe in public displays,"** Howell to author

**At a time when Seattle led the nation in bombings,** Mayor Wes Uhlman, "Statement to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations," 7-29-1970, accessed via Seattle Municipal Archives

**Ward had survived a combat wound in Vietnam,** David Wilma, "Police shoot and kill Larry Eugene Ward while he sets a bomb in Seattle's Central Area on May 15, 1970," _History Link_ , 5-19-2000

**Many blacks in Seattle viewed Ward 's death,** Christopher T. Bayley, "How the Killings of Four Black Men by Police Changed Seattle. And Didn't," _Seattle Weekly_ , 10-20-2015

**After the fistfight,** _Reese v. Seattle_ , The Supreme Court of Washington, 11-2-1972

**A jury then decides,** Alex Tizon, "Judge with a common touch calls inquests flawed, fixable," _The Seattle Times,_ 12-13-2002

**" Prosecutor Carroll may have felt he was being fair,"** Bayley, "How the Killings of Four Black Men by Police Changed Seattle. And Didn't"

**" What a one-sided set of facts,"** Howell to author

**Daily crowds up to 600 people** , Don Hannula, "Next Move in Shooting Up to Carroll, _The Seattle Times_ , 5-28-1970

**" who, it was rumored,"** Ross Cunningham, "The Inquest System: Why Has It Fallen Into Disrepute?" _The Seattle Times_ , 6-7-1970

**Jurors heard four days of testimony** , "Inquest-Jury Findings Explained," _The Seattle Times_ (no byline), 5-28-1970

**John Caughlan, a Seattle civil rights lawyer,** "Seattle Divided by Controversy Over Slaying of Black by Police," _The New York Times_ (no byline), 5-31-1970

**A rash of 30 bombings,** "Seattle Divided by Controversy Over Slaying of Black by Police," _The New York Times_

**After four hours of jury deliberation,** Hannula, "Next Move in Shooting Up to Carroll"

**Angry letters and telegrams flooded,** Wes Uhlman collection, Seattle Municipal Archives

**Some 5,000 people gathered,** "Seattle Divided by Controversy Over Slaying of Black by Police," _The New York Times_

**" Why is it," Cunningham asked**, Cunningham, "The Inquest System: Why Has It Fallen Into Disrepute?"

**During a sworn statement,** Ardie Ivie, "The Eagle Rises: Act II," _Seattle Magazine,_ July 1970

**Howell believes Ward went along,** Howell to author

**" Somebody set this whole thing up,"** Ivie, "The Eagle Rises: Act II"

**In 1978, he won a $720,000 judgment,** Kelley v. Howard S. Wright Construction, 90 Wn. 2d 323, The Supreme Court of Washington, 7-27-1978

**Police had gone to Seattle 's Yesler Terrace,** Julie Emery, "Baldwin '92.5% Negligent,' Jury Rules, _The Seattle Times_ , 2-9-1988

**Maxwell was cornered in a backyard,** Tizon, "Judge with a common touch calls inquests flawed, fixable"

**" Fleeing from a traffic stop isn't justification,"** Tracy Johnson, "Jury finds shooting of man with sword was justified," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 9-11-2002

**While the jury deliberated,** Tizon, "Judge with a common touch calls inquests flawed, fixable"

**A federal jury found police unlawfully arrested Bradford** , Eric Nalder, "Seattle to pay for unlawful arrest, excessive force," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 5-19-2008

**As for his best courtroom performance,** Parrish, "Rebel With an Assortment of Causes"

**" I don't want you to think it's a lawyer's trick,"** Howell to author

**Dr. Elizabeth Howell graduated from Harvard,** "Meet the Director," The Blavatnik Family Women's Health Research Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, <http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/womens-health/about/director-message>

**Helen Howell got a diploma,** Staff, Building Changes, Executive Director Helen Howell, https://buildingchanges.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=925&Itemid=380

**" I'm so proud of the values,"** Howell to author

**" His fire and passion,"** Carter to author

**A RT FLETCHER**

**" ex-shoe shine boy" and "ice man,"** "Fletcher makes history," AP, 9-18-1968

**" And we're very musical,"** Fletcher to author, 9-15-1968

**" the problem of the color-line,"** _The Souls of Black Folk_ , W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 12

**" believe they can call me 'nigger', "** quoted in _Charles Z. Smith: Trailblazer_ , John C. Hughes, Legacy Washington, 2009, www.sos.wa.gov/legacy/stories/charles-z-smith/

**" a practical militant,"** "Fletcher makes history"

**" Art could draw 400,"** quoted in _Slade Gorton, A Half Century in Politics_ , John C. Hughes, p. 85

**" Guess who's coming to lunch?"** Gorton to author, 2011

**like to take on a lion,** Reed to author, 2-28-2018

**" a big, street-smart kid,"** "The Kansas Roots of Arthur Allen Fletcher: Football All-Star to the 'Father of Affirmative Action,' " Mark A. Peterson, _Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains_ , (V.34 #3, pp. 224-241), 2011, p. 227

**first black named to Kansas all-stars,** "The Kansas Roots," p. 229

**Fletcher heard Mary McLeod Bethune,** "The Kansas Roots," p. 226

**no Negroes need apply,** "The Kansas Roots," p. 228

**senior portraits integrated alphabetically,** David H. Golland to author, 2-28-2018

**" big and mean,"** quoted in "Arthur Fletcher" profile, Donna St. George, _Philadelphia Inquirer_ , 11-12-1995

**" didn't like the fact"** he had authority, "Colts' cut unkind," John Steadman, _Baltimore Sun_ , 2-1-1998

**" hit by the enemy or hit by your own,"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**extent of injuries,** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**" non-battle injury,"** Golland to author

**pulled up shirt to show scars,** "Colts' cut unkind"

**barred blacks from their squads,** "The Kansas Roots," p. 231

**" the greatest decision I ever made,"** quoted in "The Kansas Roots," p. 232

**" In spite of the load,"** Richard M. Godlove letter to R.S. Himmelright, Kennewick, 12-30-1966, Washburn University Archives

**" proves by example that a negro,"** Godlove letter

**" harder to stop than a Santa Fe Streamliner,"** quoted in "The Kansas Roots"

**" Art was all 'everything,' "** Godlove letter

**" obviously such a fine person,"** Godlove letter

**" the party of abolition and Lincoln,"** "The Kansas Roots"

**" didn't set the world on fire,"** quoted in "Colts' cut unkind"

Fletcher as Assistant Secretary of Labor. _U.S. Department of Labor_

**Fletcher stood in a corner and wept,** "Colts' cut unkind"

**" more show than substance,"** "The Kansas Roots," p. 239

**" Daddy, where's Mama,"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile, _Philadelphia Inquirer_

**" Oh, no!"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**" walking around in a fog,"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**" always believed things would get better,"** Fletcher biography, _A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Arthur Fletcher and the Conundrum of the Black Republican,_ Golland, Chapter 3

**" out of the ashes of tragedy,"** Fletcher biography

**" only as a stopgap measure,"** Fletcher biography

**" a unique hybrid,"** Fletcher biography

**1,200 African Americans in East Pasco,** _Railroads, Reclamation and the River_ , Walter A. Oberst, p. 127

**thousands of "sundown towns,"** cited in "The Green Book: The First Travel Guide for African-Americans Dates to the 1930s," Kate Kelly, Huffpost, 3-8-2014, <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-kelly/the-green-book-the-first_b_4549962.html>

**" But sign or no sign,"** Briggs to author, 1-30-2018

**" anti-cop riot,"** Briggs to author, 3-21-2018

**" chained to a pole like a dog,"** quoted in "Black Tri-Citians reflect on struggles, progress," Kristi Pihl, _Tri-City Herald_ , 2-14-2011

**" the Birmingham of Washington,"** quoted in "Black Tri-Citians reflect"

**pushed for paved streets,** _Railroads, Reclamation and the River_ , p. 165

**" the automotive shop of choice,"** Fletcher biography, Chapter 3

**" The profits from the first year,"** Fletcher biography

**" if you want to get rid of the gun,"** Newton quotes collected at <https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/huey_newton>

**" The difference between a militant and extremist,"** quoted in "Negro Racial Diplomats Lose to Militants, Fletcher Warns," _Tri-City Herald_ , 10-19-1967

**" I'm a great guy,"** quoted in "Negroes Feel Insecure On New Job, Says Fletcher," _Seattle P-I,_ 7-2-1968

**" A color-blind lightning rod,"** Fletcher to author, September 1968

**" impossible not to be impressed,"** quoted from Chapter 29, Evans work-in-progress autobiography

**" Before long,"** Reed to author, 2-2-2018

**" all that energy and charisma,"** Reed to author

**" it was Art,"** Reed to author

**" His first reaction was to laugh,"** Reed to author

**" Nonviolence is the way of the hero,"** "Crowd Honors Dr. King," Don Hannula, _Seattle Times_ , 4-7-1968

**to keep Dr. King 's dream alive,** "State Mourns Slain Negro," _The Daily Chronicle_ , Centralia, 5-5-1968

**" _Negro_ had become a pejorative,"** _1968: The Year That Rocked the World_ , Mark Kurlansky, p. 6

**" Afro-Americans" and "black people,"** "New Clothing Store to Accent Fashions for Afro-Americans," _Seattle Times_ , 10-11-1968, p. 26

**" colorful African designs,"** "New Clothing Store to Accent Fashions"

**" the power and prestige,"** quoted in "Pasco Negro In Race for Lieutenant Governor," Lyle Burt, _Seattle Times_ , 5-3-1968, p. 8

**" I would demonstrate,"** "Pasco Negro In Race"

**" The Negroes' Negro problem,"** "Pasco Negro In Race"

**" I'm a practical militant,"** "Pasco Negro In Race"

**" They want people to help themselves,"** quoted in "First Negro Seeks Governor's Office," AP, _The Daily Chronicle_ , Centralia, 5-18-1968, p. 7

**Rockefeller visits Seattle,** "Fletcher to Meet Rocky Tomorrow," _Tri-City Herald_ , 7-1-1968

**finishing only three out of nine races,** "Bill Muncey--The First Golden Age, Prologue," <http://thunderboats.ning.com/page/bill-muncey-the-first-golden-age-prologue>

**marriage on the rocks,** "Bill Muncey--The First Golden Age"

**" just what is his position?"** "GOP Lt. Governor's Race Pits Bill Muncey, Fletcher," AP, _The Daily Chronicle_ , Centralia, 9-11-1968

**" ordered to shoot to kill**," "1968 Democratic Convention," Haynes Johnson, _Smithsonian Magazine_ , August 2008

**" The whole world is watching!"** _1968: The Year That Rocked the World_ , p. 279-282

**smashed cameras and beat journalists,** _1968: The Year That Rocked the World_

**" Gestapo tactics" and "You Jew son-of-a-bitch!"** quoted in _1968: The Year That Rocked the World_ , p. 283, and "The Craziest Conventions in U.S. History," Josh Zeitz, _Politico Magazine_ , 3-12-2016

**" The troubled spirit of America,"** Evans 1968 keynote address, Washington State Archives

**" a foreign aid program,"** quoted in "Fletcher makes history in state primary vote," AP, _Port Angeles Evening News_ , 9-18-1968

Fletcher receives an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Washburn University, his alma mater, in 1990. _University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University_

**" relied almost verbatim,"** Fletcher biography, Chapter 3

**" I see a day,"** Nixon acceptance speech, 8-8-1968, The American Presidency Project, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25968>

**" listening to our advice,"** quoted in "Fletcher Named to Nixon Group of Minorities," Lyle Burt, _Seattle Times_ , 9-5-1968

**" a master technician,"** quoted in "Agnew Favorably Impresses Notables at Dinner," _Seattle Times_ , 8-20-1968

**duties "greatly expanded,"** "Cherberg Enters Fletcher Lair," _Tri-City Herald_ , 9-6-1968, p. 1

**" by Labor Day,"** "GOP Lt. Governor's Race Pits Bill Muncey, Fletcher"

**" the little corporal from Alabama,"** quoted in "GOP Candidates Team Up For Campaign Fly-in Series," _Seattle Times_ , Val Varney, 10-5-1968, p. 5

**" to exclude me from the human race,"** "GOP Candidates Team Up"

**" 'keep the niggers in their place.' "** quoted in "Law and Order Is Top Demo Issue," AP, Dale Nelson, _Tri-City Herald_ , 9-11-1968, p. 22

**" give other Negroes hope,"** quoted in "Fletcher makes history in state primary vote," AP, _Port Angeles Evening News_ , 9-18-1968

**Fewer than 100,000 blacks,** HistoryLink.org 1970 Census demographics, <http://www.historylink.org/File/9426; >2017 Census Quick Facts, <https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/WA>

**" The Man With a Plan,"** quoted from Action Team newspaper ad, _Seattle Times_ , 11-3-1968, Washington State Archives

**" no useful purpose,"** quoted in "Cherberg Won't Debate Fletcher," _Seattle Times_ , 10-1-1968 **" bases for Communist revolution,"** quoted in "Wallaceite Says Reds Use Fletcher," _Tri-City Herald_ , November 1968

**" far too heavyweight for Pasco,"** "Wallaceite Says Reds Use Fletcher"

**" we'll wind up with Mr. Fletcher as governor,"** "Wallaceite Says Reds Use Fletcher"

**" I'm gratified to find,"** "Wallaceite Says Reds Use Fletcher"

**" he is practically governor,"** "Is Evans pulling the sneak on his running mate?" _The Washington Teamster_ , Ed Donohoe, 10-11-1968, p. 1

**" I had no intention,"** Evans to author, 1-27-2018

**" The Fletcher Story" and Brooke visit,** "TV Programs, U.S. Senator Boost Fletcher, _Seattle Times_ , Lyle Burt, 10-23-1968

**Endorsement details,** "The P-I's Election Recommendations," _Post-Intelligencer_ , 11-3-1968; "Weighing the Candidates," _Seattle Times_ , 11-3-1968; "Re-Elect Governor Evans," _Tri-City Herald_ , 11-1-1968, p. 4

**Glenn Lee wary of black power** , Jack Briggs to author 3-20-2018

**" Sudden death overtime,"** "Fletcher Close Behind Cherberg," _Tri-City Herald_ , 11-6-1968, p. 1

**Fletcher won East Pasco,** "Fletcher Close Behind Cherberg"

**79.5 percent voter turnout,** <https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx>

**" expected to lose by 150,000 votes,"** "Fletcher Loses, To Leave Pasco," _Tri-City Herald_ , 11-7-1968, p. 1

**50,000 copies in Spokane,** "Fletcher Loses, To Leave Pasco"

**" Meet Your New Governor,"** "His loss was turned into a win," AP, Nicholas Geranios, _Yakima Herald-Republic_ , 12-26-1989

**" I ran into it wherever I went,"** quoted in "His loss was turned into a win"

**" It was appalling,"** quoted in _Slade Gorton, A Half Century in Politics_ , p. 86

**Evans ' analysis of King County,** Evans to author, 1-19-2018

**" I just couldn't vote for Mr. Fletcher,"** Evans to author

**" The room convulsed in laughter,"** Munro to author, 1-17-2018

**" Watch what we do,"** quoted in "Watch What We Do," William Safire, _The New York Times_ , 11-14-1988

**" build bridges to human dignity,"** Nixon acceptance speech, 8-8-1968, The American Presidency Project, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25968>

**" who had discriminated against no one,"** _Nixon 's White House Wars_, Patrick J. Buchanan, p. 86

**" Tasked with enforcing,"** _A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste,_ Chapter 3

**" the goddamnest integrationist there is,"** quoted in _Richard Nixon, The Life_ , John A. Farrell, p. 395

**to split the labor/civil rights coalition,** _Constructing Affirmative Action,_ David H. Golland, p. 136

**16 percent of the population,** _Constructing Affirmative Action,_ pp. 132-133

**only seven non-white apprentices,** _John Spellman, Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , pp. 101-102

**" pummeling a black motorist's car,** _Constructing Affirmative Action,_ p. 134

**assurances from White House** , _Black Power at Work_ , pp. 125-126

**helmeted policemen and federal marshals,** _Black Power at Work_ , pp. 125-126

**Friends feared for his safety,** "Beyond the Rhetoric," Harry C. Alford, <https://www.nationalbcc.org/news/beyond-the-rhetoric/253-beyond-the-rhetoric-42>

**" a voluntary plan to admit as many as 4,000,** _Constructing Affirmative Action,_ David H. Golland, p. 134

**" faced the elementary forces of life,"** quoted in _Black Power at Work_ , pp. 140-141

**jumped from 2 percent to 22.7 percent** , _Constructing Affirmative Action_ , p. 160

**In a Labor Day speech,** _Constructing Affirmative Action_ , p. 156

**wanted "to be another Dr. King,"** Golland to author, 3-5-2018

**" a hell of a thing to waste,"** Golland to author

**former Labor Department lawyer bristled,** "Arthur Fletcher" profile, Donna St. George, _The Philadelphia Inquirer_ , 11-12-1995

**The title Fletcher preferred,** Golland to author

**wrote a blistering letter,** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**" Send five and keep affirmative action alive,"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**_" The original source is alive?_"** Arthur Fletcher" profile

**to "save my legacy,"** "Arthur Fletcher" profile

**" To carry forward the quest,"** _The Silent Sellout_ , p. 81

**S TUART ELWAY**

**All quotes from Elway are from Legacy Washington interviews in 2018, unless otherwise noted.**

**" a family man, union man...,"** Elway campaign ad, _The Aberdeen Daily World,_ August, 1960

**" Watch for The Elway Family Trailer,"** Elway campaign ad, _The Daily Chronicle_ , Centralia, 9-7-1960

**" I don't know how you run a government,"** quoted in KOMO panel, America Divided," <http://komonews.com/resources/ftptransfer/komo/uploads/America_Divided.mp3>

**" Suddenly they've come back,"** quoted in _1968: The Year That Rocked the World_ , Mark Kurlansky, p. 107

**" false prophets, phony philosophers,"** quoted in _Nancy Evans, First-rate First-Lady_ , John C. Hughes, p. 213

" **a new generation, "** "A Call to Excellence in Leadership," The Ripon Society History, <http://www.riponsociety.org/history/>

**" We feel strongly,**" "A Call to Excellence"

**" the idea was,"** Reed to author, 2-2-2018

**" Stu was student body president,"** Durney to author, 2-2-2018

**" smoking a little weed,"** Excell to author, 2-10-2018

**" An apparently unending war,"** "Warmly welcomed by collegians," _Aberdeen Daily World_ , 4-10-1968, p. 1

**decision to omit Fletcher 's photo,** Remund to author, 2-9-2018

**" We were making a difference,"** Waldo to author, 1-26-2018

**" We're waking up the Republican Party,"** quoted in "College Youth Pick Up Political Pieces," _tyee Magazine_ , Autumn 1968, p. 15

**" kids made a huge difference,"** Gorton to author, 1-26-2018

**" to accept a union they don't want,"** quoted in "High Court Hypocrite," _The Stranger_ , 10-7-2010

**" a true Renaissance man,"** "Dr. Alex Edelstein dies," Jack Broom, _Seattle Times_ , 5-16-2001

**" Public opinion in many cases,"** "Dr. Alex Edelstein dies"

**" he picked the pockets,"** quoted in "His poll is an art," Doug Barker, _The Daily World_ , Aberdeen, 5-12-1996

**" Split by voters' views,"** "Poll suggests bruising race for Congress," Jim Camden and Kip Hill, _Spokesman-Review_ , 4-11-2018

**" now mirror images,"** quoted from "A conversation with Slade Gorton," 2017 Re-Wire Policy Conference, 12-14-2017, <https://washingtonstatewire.com/2017-re-wire-policy-conference-lunch-keynote/>

**" a relatively small number,"** Remund to author, 2-9-2018

**" that fade-out point,"** Remund to author

**" you could actually do something,"** Giese to author, 2-20-2018

**P AT O'DAY**

**" sexiest male in the world,"** quoted in Tom Robbins review, _Helix_ , Vol. III #1, 2-15-1968

**" about 2,000 years" and "when I hear that bell,"** also quoted in Room Full of Mirrors, Charles R. Cross, p. 218

**" empty-headed crowd-pleasers,"** "What Makes Pat O'Day Go Round and Round...?" Ed Leimbacher, _Seattle_ magazine, April 1968, p. 28

**Charged admission to a LOVE-IN,** "Superstars, Shucks and City Hall," Erik Lacitis, _tyee_ magazine, Spring 1969, p. 8

**" sucked into the Pat O'Day syndrome,"** "The Fug Thing," Tom Robbins, _Helix_ , Vol. III, #1, 2-15-1968

**" the original Northwest rock legend,"** Charles R. Cross to author, 2-8-2018

**brain-imaging study,** "The Neurobiological Mechanism of Chemical Aversion (Emetic) Therapy for Alcohol Use Disorder: An fMRI Study," frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9-28-2017, <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00182/full>

**" Not only was he Seattle's No. 1,"** Stan Foreman to author, 1-11-2018

**" reading lost dog reports,"** "Pat O'Day, Godfather of Northwest Rock?" Peter Blecha, HistoryLink.org Essay 3130, 4-3-2001

**" faintly ironic" patter,** "What Makes Pat O'Day Go Round ...?" p. 26

**" something struck me,"** quoted in "What Makes Pat O'Day Go Round ...?" p. 28

**" Little did I know,"** also quoted in _It Was All Just Rock 'n' Roll_, Pat O'Day, p. 69

**" It's benign!"** "How a brain tumor changed Pat O'Day," Rachel Belle, KIRO Radio interview, 10-9-2012, <http://mynorthwest.com/82246/how-a-brain-tumor-changed-pat-oday-and-a-juilliard-bound-pianist/?>

**T OM ROBBINS**

**until he famously quit,** Timothy Egan, "In the Creative Process with: Tom Robbins; Perfect Sentences, Imperfect Universe," _The New York Times_ , 12-30-1993

**" the only station with macrobiotic kilowatts**," Tom Robbins, host, _Notes From the Underground_ , KRAB-FM, Seattle, 7-7-1967, archived show accessed via   
www.krabarchive.com/playlist/1967-07-07-nftu.html

**" Eagles Auditorium was raped and pillaged,**" Tom Robbins, "This is The End," _Helix_ , 7-27-1967, accessed via <https://pauldorpat.com/category/helix/page/2/>

**" Oscar Wilde in Egyptian drag,"** Charles R. Cross, _Roomful of Mirrors, a Biography of Jimi Hendrix_ , Sceptre Books, London, England, 2005, p. 233

**decamped to tiny South Bend** , Tom Robbins, _Tibetan Peach Pie_ , HarperCollins, New York, NY, 2014, p. 249

**" I finally figured...,"** Michael Hood, _Tom Robbins_ , _History Link_ , 5-15-2003

**Fewer than half of the initial 5,000** , Mitchell Ross, "Prince of the Paperback Literati," _The New York Times_ , 2-12-1978

**" howling with joy..."** Leonore Fleischer _,_ "Tom Robbins Never Gets the Blues," _The Washington Post_ , 2-10-1980

**dog-eared copies passed from reader to reader** , Egan, "In the Creative Process..."

**the Harvard Coop,** The Coop, "Our Story," _thecoop.com_ , ****( "not the Co-Op as other cooperatives are commonly called." <https://store.thecoop.com/comprehensivehistory/>

**" We're home,"** Fleischer, **** "Tom Robbins Never Gets the Blues"

**" Doubleday had guessed wrong,"** Ross, "Prince of the Paperback Literati"

**It wasn 't until 1980's _Still Life with Woodpecker_** , Hood, _Tom Robbins_

**" He's one of those writers who clicks..."** Keith Pille, "Strange Beast," _Slate.com_ , 6-5-2014

**Robbins said his writing philosophy was modeled** , Ross, "Prince of the Paperback Literati"

**A theme in his first two books was "joy in spite of everything,"** Ross, "Prince of the Paperback Literati"

**the trickster, "a figure in other cultures...,"** Egan, "In the Creative Process..."

**What distinguished Robbins ' work**, Fleischer _,_ "Tom Robbins Never Gets the Blues"

**He 's been accused of "goofily overheated prose,"** Pille, "Strange Beast"

**shameless punning ..."all sorts of heavy, bogus wisdom,"** Ross, "Prince of the Paperback Literati"

**He 's been accused...of wearing an "illegal smile,"** Dwight Garner, "Inside a Conjurer of Characters," _The New York Times_ , 5-20-2014

**" narrowness of their experience,"** Hood, "Tom Robbins"

**M AXINE MIMMS**

**All quotes from the subject of this profile are from Legacy Washington interviews in 2018, unless otherwise noted.**

**" Mimms is a feisty..."** "School for life, Maxine Mimms: Champion of higher education for Black women," Murphy-Milano, S., _Essence_ magazine, Feb. 1997

**" Every bone in me would resist,"** "The Legacy of Two African American Women in College Administration," Interviewed by Kim Elaine Washington for dissertation, 10-30-2008

**" They were two black women."** "Evergreen makes Tacoma connection," Virginia Painter, _The Olympian,_ 9-6-1983

**" a separatist philosophy of social,"** Marcus Garvey biography, www.biography.com/people/marcus-garvey-9307319

**" There was an incident when Ted..."** "Woman Saves Boys Locked in Chest," _The Seattle Times_ , 1-8-1962

**" My mother sees the genius,"** "NABCJ's MLK Day of Service," remarks by Ted Mimms, 3-6-2008 www.maxinemimmsacademy.org/tools/qp.dwp?task=show_post&post_id=2048

**" 4 Negroes Named As Administrators In Seattle Schools,"** Constantine Angelos, _The Seattle Times_ , 8-29-1968

**" In Seattle, de facto housing segregation"** "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966," Brooke Clark, University of Washington, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, <http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/school_boycott.htm>

**" Stereotypes, racial epithets, unconscious prejudices,"** Dr. Ronald J. Rousseve, quoted in **** "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966"

**" no major public agency in the state,"** "Boycott Threat Ill-Advised," _The Seattle Times_ , 2-24-1966

**" I'd much rather see the talents,"** "Evans Sees Boycott As 'No Solution,' " _The Seattle Times,_ 3-22-1966

**" has a responsibility to promote,"** "Swain Defends City Schools On Issue of Racial Equality," Constantine Angelos, _The Seattle Times_ , 5-6-1965

**" Compensatory education does not,"** "Schools Attack Racial Problem On 4 Fronts, Says Bottomly," Lane Smith, _The Seattle Times_ , 3-10-1966

**" given up hope that any serious plan to integrate the schools"** UW. Copy of Letter to Seattle Public School Officials Concerning Civil Rights groups' School Boycott March 31 and April 1, February 23, 1966

**" The young black militants must wake up,"** "Militants Seek Black History Study," _Centralia Daily Chronicle_ , 1-11-1969

**" you have to grow up with other races,"** "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966."

**" The challenge now is to foster diversity,"** The resegregation of Seattle's schools," Linda Shaw, _The Seattle Times_ , 6-1-2008

**" advances the cultural transformation of Seattle Public Schools,"** Department of Racial Equity Advancement, www.seattleschools.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=627&pageId=1680960

**" addressing and eliminating discrimination against women,"** United States Department of Labor, <https://www.dol.gov/wb/info_about_wb/interwb.htm>

**" Millions of women are holding a job and running a household,"** "Women's Liberation Hailed," John Phaup, _Asheville Citizens Times_ , 7-21-1970

**" We were born women;"** "Black women don their mother's roles, says educator," Glenda Helbert, _The Olympian_ , 6-23-1986

**" Black students form the majority of the program,"** "Evergreen makes Tacoma connection," Virginia Painter, _The Olympian_ , 9-6-1983

**" If we could just understand we are all different,"** Interviewed by Kim Elaine Washington for dissertation, "The Legacy of Two African American Women in College Administration," 10-30-2008

**" Bridging the Gap Between Art and Living,"** "Odetta Keeps On Singing Out for Social Causes," Jean Godden, _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 3-4-1989

**" The subject matter here ..."** "This College For Adult Learners Is A Refuge, Not Just A Career Boost," Anya Kamenetz, _NPR_ , 7-4-2018 www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/07/04/616778773/this-college-for-adult-learners-is-a-refuge-not-just-a-career-boost

**" My Evergreen Tacoma experience was exceptional,"** "Breaking Glass Ceilings: Monica Alexander '13," _The Evergreen Mind_ , 9-1-2013

**" 91 percent were employed or in graduate school,"** "This College For Adult Learners Is A Refuge, Not Just A Career Boost," Anya Kamenetz, _NPR_ , 7-4-2018

**" I don't like part time,"** "Tacoma 'satellite' teaches liberal arts Evergreen-style," David Schaefer, _Seattle Daily Times_ , 6-29-1982

**" It wasn't a trip. It was an experience. It changed my life,"** "Cultural Reconnection," _3rd Act Magazine_ , Sally Fox, Winter 2018 <https://www.3rdactmagazine.com/lifestyle/living-learning/cultural-reconnection-coming-home/>

**" Oh, you are the Stolen Ones,"** "Cultural Reconnection"

**" She's a mentor, not a mother,"** Dawn Mason to author, March 2018

**" You young ones, you think this is natural,"** "Joy, awe and disbelief as Obama takes the nomination--and stage," Claudia Rowe, _The Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 8-28-2008

**" of the music from the Pan African Culture that sustains,"** Let the Strings Speak, Dance & Shout, <https://letthestringsspeak.com/index.html>

**" A building could go and close up forever,"** "The Wisdom of Dr. Maxine Mimms," www.youtube.com/watch?v=nra9MwoskOA

**" Dr. Mimms is a sister friend of mine,"** Dr. Maya Angelou at Evergreen, "Rainbow in the Clouds," 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXeCtaWXMH8

**R ALPH MUNRO**

**Ralph Munro is writing letters,** Ralph Munro letter, 9-25-1967, accessed through Washington State Archives

**" everybody was his friend,"** Dean Foster to author, 3-17-2018

**a mischievous streak** , Ralph Munro oral history, authorized transcript, Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections, 9-15-2003

**a frantic call from his landlord** , Munro to author, 1-25-2018

**Terry doesn 't talk, is afraid of men**, Munro to author

**" and frankly, I cried,"** _What 's A Kid Worth?_ Film by G.C. Harper, with Ralph Munro interview recorded at KCTS-TV, produced in cooperation with Washington State Department of Social & Health Services, 1971

**On Christmas morning** , Munro to author

**Eager to enlist** , Munro to author

**" led me through some remarkable years,"** Ralph Munro retirement tribute, 12-4-2000, accessed via TVW video archives. <https://www.tvw.org/watch/?eventID=2000121064>

**" He cared before me,"** Munro to author

**he and Munro clasped hands** , Munro retirement tribute, TVW

**After a day of grueling exams** , Munro oral history, Western Washington University

**" We probably drank too much beer,"** Foster to author

**Foster 's most keen memory of Munro**, Foster to author

**Munro 's postscript**, Munro oral history Western Washington University

**The pranks didn 't come to a complete halt**, Munro oral history

**Munro did his student teaching** , Munro oral history

**Munro could make $5,000 a year teaching** , Munro to author

**" I'd say to my buddies,"** Munro to author

**Terry looked up and said "bus ride,"** Munro to author

**Munro didn 't have a personal connection**, Munro to author

**It started on the afternoon of March 21, 1968** , Daniel J. Evans Papers, Daily Schedules, Red Book, 1968, Washington State Archives (Box 8)

**" So he kind of knew who I was,"** DJE Papers, Book Notes, Research and Interviews 1963-2007, Ralph Munro interview 8/1996 (Box 21)

**Munro took him to one barracks** , Munro to author, 1-25-2018

**" Well, we'll never see him again,"** DJE Papers, Ralph Munro interview 8/1996

**didn 't even know Evans was speaking**, Munro to author (Evans' 1968 daily schedule book in the State Archives shows he was scheduled to be at Job Therapy's banquet at Seattle Center at 6:30 p.m. on 3-21-1968

**" You call my office,"** Munro to author

**" I want you to write a report,"** Munro to author

**" It's known fact,"** O.K. Boyington, "Governor Proposing State Agency for Promoting People-to-People Activity," _Bellingham Herald_ /UPI, 4-28-1968

**Munro became a recurring figure** , DJE Papers, Speeches 1968 (Box 2)

**In June, Evans appointed a committee** , Associated Press, "Evans Names Committee to Study Volunteers," _Seattle Times_ , 6-2-1968

**" like sitting on a high voltage power line,"** Ralph Munro, _Volunteer Program Development in Washington State Government_ , undated letter

**" My job was to go out and convince**," Munro to author

**Munro produced a brochure** , DJE Papers, Speeches 1969, Washington State University, 10-15-1969 (Box 2)

**" I realized - and it's so hard to believe,"** Munro to author

**Katie Dolan ...was told she was to blame**, Susan Schwartzenberg, _Becoming Citizens_ , _Family Life and the Politics of Disability_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, p. 10

**Janet Taggert ...should be dressed in drab clothing**, _Becoming Citizens_ , p. 36

**" It was a very dark time,"** Sue Elliott to author, 2-18-2018

**A group of Seattle moms** , Paul Nyhan, _" 4 women helped open schools to disabled kids," Seattle Post-Intelligencer_, 4-24-2006

**" Ten days later they called me,"** _Becoming Citizens_ , p. 13

**Dolan came to realize her deep-seated grief** , _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 13

**Four ...were casually chatting**, Northwest Center, _It took citizens who cared: How Northwest Center Changed the World_ , Oct. 20, 2016, accessed via <https://www.nwcenter.org/our-blog/it-took-citizens-who-cared-how-northwest-center-changed-the-world>

**influenced by the Eugenics movement** , _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 75

**33,000 children with disabilities in Washington were not enrolled** , Bill Dussault interview, 3-27-2018

**" They always said our children are uneducable,"** _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 75

**Dussault focused on the idea that education and civil rights** , _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 75

**It was more than the usual academic programs** , _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 75

**They created dossiers on every lawmaker** , _Becoming Citizens,_ p. 71

**" I bet there were 15 to 20 experts who came into the governor's office,"** Munro to author

**The advocates were told it would take several years** , _It took citizens who cared_ , Northwest Center

**The team was later invited to Washington, D.C**., _It took citizens_

**" How come nobody ever told me this?"** _It took citizens_

**" It was a group of four middle-aged women and one young attorney,"** Elliott to author

**" You're going to have to sit in a wheelchair,"** _James. M. Dolliver, An Oral History_ , Washington State Oral History Program, p. 40

**Evans edged his wheelchair out,** "Evans finds wheelchair 'sobering experience,' " David Ammons, AP, 10-5-1972

**" Before every legislative session the governor would take us,"** Ralph Munro email to author, 3-15-2018

**" Why don't you talk to Ralph?"** Paul Dziedzic to author, 3-8-2018

**" Literally to every building and floor with me pushing,"** Dziedzic to author

**" 'No Way,' Munro wrote in a memo**, Munro memo 4-13-1973

**" We desperately need help,"** Munro memo 4-13-73

**Munro took the unprecedented step,** Munro to author 4-4-2018

**" Munro has wheelchairs in the rules room,"** Munro to author, 4-4-2018

**" John had been a football coach..."** Munro to author 1-25-2018

**The federally-funded group "really weren't doing much,"** Munro to author 1-25-2018

**Evans named Meyer to lead** , Associated Press, " _Handicapped-panel chairman appointed_ ," _The Seattle Times_ , 9-13-1981

**The group swelled to 100 people** , Dziedzic interview, 3-8-2018

**" The disability community got inside state government,"** Dziedzic to author

**" People I got to know with disabilities...had their lives together,"** Dziedzic to author

**" He saw this as a civil rights issue,"** Norm Davis to author, 3-23-2018.

**" He was wide open for those stories,"** Davis to author

**Munro fought to end the practice** , Orca Network, Ralph says goodbye to "Ralph" (J-6), 8-20-1999, accessed at <http://www.orcanetwork.org/Main/index.php?categories_file=Free%20Lolita%20Update%2016>

**" He really likes to support people,"** Davis to author

**" What in the hell, you, dammit,"** Munro to author 1-25-2018

**" we have cuts in the sidewalk,"** _James M. Dolliver, An Oral History_ , p. 40

**The transition was not friendly** , Ralph Munro email to author, 3-9-2018

**Munro had two proposals,** Munro email, 3-9-2018

**Courts wouldn 't consider,** Dussault to author

**" Guardianships made a big difference,"** Davis to author

**" I had a lot of ideas,"** Joel Connelly, "Munro is retiring with a bipartisan vote of thanks," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ ****5-1-1999

**" We had evenings,"** Connelly, **** "Munro is retiring"

**" I had a lot of ideas,"** Connelly, "Munro is retiring"

**a relatively small group,** Dussault to author

**" a new voting system,"** Munro to author

**" That's right Kellie,"** meeting with Terry Sullivan, Ralph Munro and Kellie Derum, 4-4-2018

**" He feels empowered and enriched..."** meeting with Sullivan et al

**" Much better Ralph, much better,"** meeting with Sullivan et al

**He remained one in retirement,** George Le Masurier, "Something you didn't know about Ralph Munro," _The Olympian_ , 11-10-2013

**" I see people trying to find fulfillment,"** Ralph Thomas, "Ralph Munro leaving a career carved in stone," _The Seattle Times_ , 12-29-2000

**P OLLY DYER**

**spent five days backpacking** , Pacific Northwest Conservationists, Polly Dyer oral history, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 33

**helicopter buzzed over their campsite** , Lauren Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , Washington State University Press, Pullman, WA, 2017, p. 41

**... some called the American Alps**, Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 14

**Their ice axes caught the eye** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 44

**She came barreling toward their table** , Dyer oral history

**" Oh, you've got to meet my husband**," Dyer oral history

**" would become increasingly clear,"** Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 44

**Polly Dyer, a cheerfully tenacious** , "Polly Dyer, driving force for Northwest Conservation," Claudia Rowe, _The Seattle Times_ , 11-20-2016

**Scoop Jackson may have been** , Danner to author, 1-31-2018

**" Sitting at the Dyer table,** Dyer oral history, p. i

**" Most of the rest of us,"** Eric Pryne, "Polly Dyer: A Fighter By Nature," _The Seattle Times_ , 8-7-1994

**" didn't shout because,"** Evans to John C. Hughes, _Legacy Washington_ , 1-19-2018

**" She was the best prepared,"** Evans to Hughes

**" These were real tedious discussions,"** Laura Dassow Walls to author, 1-21-2018

**Johnny Dyer is a young chemical engineer,** Walls to author

**His doctor told him to "get outside,"** Walls to author

**among a quartet of the first** , _Madera Daily Tribune_ , Madera County, California, 10-17-1939, p. 1

**Meanwhile, Pauline "Polly" Tomkiel**, Dyer oral history, p. 43

**And she wanted to go to Alaska** , Walls email to author, 3-25-2018

**(Polly would graduate ...)** Dyer oral history, p. 84

**He 's very disappointed**, Walls to author, 1-21-2018

**Polly 's boyfriend is fascinated**, Walls to author

**Polly buries her orange peels** , Dyer oral history, p. 2

**As Polly would later tell** , Walls to author

**Polly liked to say she married into,** Pryne, "Polly Dyer: A Fighter By Nature"

**The Dyers visited the McConnells** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 45, 49

**" In that case, you are welcome,"** Polly Dyer, "In Memoriam: Jane McConnell," _The Wild Cascades_ , North Cascades Conservation Council, Spring 1998, p. 13

**Polly took shorthand notes** , Dee Arntz, _Extraordinary Women Conservationists of Washington_ , The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2015, p. 50, and Dyer oral history, pp. 21-22

**Dyer 's great passion**, Pryne, "Polly Dyer: A Fighter By Nature"

**Dyer led a three-day 22-mile hike** , Dyer oral history, p. 16, also p. 146

**a "walking national town meeting**," Adam M. Sowards, _The Environmental Justice, William O. Douglas and American Conservation_ , Oregon State University Press, 2009, p. 50.

**McConnell, who was friendly with Brower** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 60

**previously described herself as a "footloose...,"** Dyer oral history, p. 4

**Danner in her comprehensive book** ," Joel Connelly, "How 'carpetbaggers' beat big timber to save the North Cascades," _Seattlepi.com_ , 11-27-2017

**" I can't give you a national park,"** Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 179

**" Wilderness cannot and should not,"** Paula Becker, "Dyer, Pauline 'Polly' (1920-2016)," _History Link_ , 12-22-2010

**N3C printed an 11-page brochure** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 66

**The seven-mile Picket Range alone** , Fred W. Beckley, _Cascade Alpine Guide: Rainy Pass to Fraser River_ , The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 1973 p. 94

**showed the film over 100 times** , Arntz, _Extraordinary Women Conservationists_ , p. 41

**She left her mark** , Mark W.T. Harvey, _Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2007, p. 119

**" It was kind of typical for her,"** Walls to author, 1-21-2018

**" I do think Polly saw herself,"** Walls to author

**(Her mother edited ...)**, Dyer oral history, p. 32

**" I'll never forget the thousands,"** Laura Dassow Walls, "Polly's Eleventh Essential," _Newsletter of Olympic Park Associates_ , Fall 2017, p. 9

**Washingtonians had advocated,** Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 14

**Washington 's population increase during World War II**, Danner to author, 1-31-2018

**Thirty years later,** Danner, ****_Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 187

**" They were his people,"** Peter Jackson to author, 2-5-2018

**Jackson 's ambition was to chair**, Jackson to author

**More than 22,000 petition signatures** , Dyer oral history, p. 46

**" I think from the outset he wanted a park,"** Jackson to author

**The reaction was quick and hostile** , Danner to author

**Historian Hal Rothman saw a tipping point** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 159

**" I think we owe one to Scoop,"** Danner to author

**Peter Jackson thinks LBJ 's sentiment**, Jackson to author

**... before LBJ dropped out of the race**, Cay Risen, "The Unmaking of the President," _Smithsonian Magazine_ , April 2008

**In March, Johnson introduced a bill** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 173

**" At first we were amazed,"** Elise Fogel, "President Johnson signs bill...," _History Link_ , 3-29-2011

**" We resent the fact,"** Fogel, "President Johnson signs bill..."

**Jackson would politely point out** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 187

**A federal study had claimed** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 183, 188.

**Jackson didn 't even have a chance**, Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 194

**Jackson 's counterpart in the lower chamber**, Danner to author, 1-31-2018

**A key moment came during hearings** , Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 198

**" I'm struck because it's 50 years,"** Danner to author

**All of which is concerning** , Danner to author

... **declining per capita attendance** , Thomas H. Stevens, Thomas A. More, Marla Markowski-Lindsay "Declining National Park Visitation, An Economic Analysis," _Journal of Leisure Research_ , Vol. 46, No. 2, 2014 <https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2014/nrs_2014_stevens_001.pdf>

**North Cascades ' park's more than 300 glaciers**, Danner, _Crown Jewel Wilderness_ , p. 235

**The park has another problem** , Andrew Flowers, "The National Parks Have Never Been More Popular," _fivethirtyeight.com_ , 2016

**Ross Lake National Recreation Area** , U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Park Recreation Visitation (1990 - Last Calendar Year), National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics, <https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/Park/ROLA>

**Some may like it that way** , Danner to author

**Her credits include ...** Dyer oral history, pp. 145-148

**She won awards** , "Polly Dyer: A Fighter By Nature"

**At the age of 89,** Lynda Mapes, "Parents of North Cascades park want it to grow," _The Seattle Times_ ," 5-20-2009

**As she approached her 90th birthday** , Paula Becker, "Dyer, Pauline (Polly) (1920-2016)," _History Link_ , 12-22-2010

**Although she was one of the few** , Dyer oral history, p. 9

**Talking about one of her mentors** , Dyer oral history

**Dyer invited herself to industry meetings** , Dyer oral history, p. 41

**Still, gender norms were sometimes** , Dyer oral history, p. 9

**" Humility..."** Jackson to author, 2-5-2018

**" It goes back to that cheerful tenacity,"** Danner to author

**Her straightforward civility** , Pryne, "Polly Dyer: A Fighter By Nature"

**" I'm not the kind who will put sawdust,"** Dyer oral history, p. 83

**" I've heard politicians,"** Rowe, "Polly Dyer, driving force for Northwest Conservation"

**Her goddaughter Laura Walls recalled** , Walls, "Polly's Eleventh Essential"

**N ORM DICKS**

**All quotes from the subject of this profile are from Legacy Washington interviews in 2018, unless otherwise noted.**

**" above all else,"** JFK Centennial Convocation Speech, 11-16-1961, Edmundson Pavilion, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8448>

**Students staged sit-in,** "Constitutional Facelift or No," Alice Watts, _Daily Olympian_ , 1-5-1968, p. 6

**" work hard, play hard,"** "Rep. Dicks' father dies," Ed Friedrich, _Kitsap Sun_ , 7-24-2001

**Fewer than a hundred minority students,** "Student Enrollment: 1950s," UW Timeline, <http://www.washington.edu/150/timeline/>

**" Witnesses estimate the dimensions,"** "Sturdy Helmet Provides Gridiron Safety Factor," Bob Schwarzmann, _Seattle Times_ , 10-3-1962, p. 32

**I 'm now on my third helmet,"** "Sturdy Helmet Provides"

**" It was about time,"** quoted in "Lots of Luck," Georg N. Myers, _Seattle Times_ , 11-25-1962, p. 37

**" like less of a person,"** quoted in "A rivalry with history," John Blanchette, _Spokesman-Review_ , 11-22-2012

**" it's ludicrous to declare,"** quoted in "America's Mass Titillation," _tyee_ magazine, Spring 1968, p. 10

**" the term is 'black,' "** "The Black Revolution," Cathleen Curtis, _tyee_ , Winter 1968, p. 2

**only around 200 black students,** "The Black Student Union at UW," Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, <http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BSU_intro.htm;> _The Forging of a Black Community,_ Quintard Taylor, p. 223

**racism had to be "purged,"** quoted in _The Forging of a Black Community_

**" already up to 10 from one,"** _The Forging of a Black Community_

**" an imperial power and the ghetto as a colony,"** quoted in "A Lady Bountiful to Seattle blacks," Cathleen Curtis, _tyee_ , Autumn 1968

**" Everyone knew who he was,"** quoted in "Life in D.C.," Les Blumenthal, _Seattle Times_ , 8-25-2007

**" shepherded through a deeply divided Congress,"** "Magnuson, Warren G.," HistoryLink.org Essay 5569, Kit Oldham, 10-14-2003

**" When I wanted something done,"** quoted in " 'Mr. Boeing' retiring after 36 years,' " Kyung M. Song, _Seattle Times_ , 3-6-2012

**" never take anything lightly,"** quoted in "Kitsap County's heavy hitter," Kayla Webley, Scripps Howard Foundation Wire, 4-16-2007

**K AREN FRASER**

**" lives worthy of emulation,"** "Women Should Be Beaten Regularly--Like Gongs," Wayne Kosbau, _tyee_ magazine, Winter 1968, p. 17

**Divorce rate comparison,** <https://www.wevorce.com/blog/6-surprising-divorce-statistics-divorce-2017/>

**" as if to say, 'So what?,' "** quoted in "JFK and Khrushchev meet in Vienna," Andrew Glass, Politico, 6-3-2009

**" Lacey Takes a Ms. Mayor,"** "Lacey Takes A Ms. Mayor," _Daily Olympian_ , 1-23-1976

**" established a State Women's Council,"** "Washington State Conference for Women, 1977," Cassandra Tate, HistoryLink.org Essay 10279, 12-28-2012

**" a mixture of conservative and liberal,"** quoted in Fraser oral history interview with Mildred Andrews for Washington Women's History Consortium, 4-27-2007

**" established a challenged ballot process,"** Andrews interview

" **Fortunately I married an attorney, "** Andrews interview

**" a lot of young women don't realize,"** Andrews interview

**" Nobody thinks ahead,"** _Ray Moore: An Oral History_ , Office of the Secretary of State, 1999, p. 12

**" Fraser is one of the heavies,"** _Moore_ , p. 79

**" she left a legacy,"** _Moore_ , p. 146

**" arguably the most successful,"** quoted in "After internship that lasted 50 years," Walker Orenstein, _The Olympian_ , 12-29-2016

**" efficiency over flash,"** "Fraser chooses efficiency over flash," Patrick Condon, _The Olympian_ , 2-15-2003

**" No one has been more dedicated**," Darneille remarks, Washington State Historical Society Trustees' meeting, 6-14-2018

**W ES UHLMAN**

**Police shot Fred Hampton** , U.S. National Archives, accessed via <https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/fred-hampton>

**" In bed."** Wes Uhlman to author, 2-8-2018

**In a city already as edgy** , Walt Crowley, _Rites of Passage_ , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1995, pgs. 79, 149

**youngest since Robert Moran, 31** , Cassandra Tate, "Moran, Robert (1857-1943), _History Link_

**He proved to be a "politician of his times,"** Emily Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)," _History Link_

**" musty and crusty,"** Peter LeSourd, "CHECC: Its role in the transformation of Seattle 1967-1978, Part 1," _History Link_

**" Uhlman was arguably the most powerful,"** Ross Anderson, "Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited As Paul Schell Begins Job As City's Mayor," _The Seattle Times_ , 1-2-1998

**" No Mayor will ever be able,"** Anderson, "Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited..."

**Teamster editorialist Ed Donohoe said** , Eric Pryne and Alex Tizon, "Ed Donohoe, Veteran Editor Known for His Sharp Pen and Wit," _The Seattle Times_ , 11-26-1992

**" So we're downstairs,"** Norm Dicks to John C. Hughes, _Legacy Washington_ , 3-7-2018

**he seemed "stuffy,"** David Suffia, "New Mayor Faces Myriad Problems," _The Seattle Times_ , 11-9-1969

**" passionate but middle-of-the-road,"** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**Lamphere became a self-described "fanatic,"** Jim Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b. 1922), _History Link_ , 4-30- 2013

**In a city with more than 300,000** , Lyle Burt, "Seattle Budget System May Get Early Look," _The Seattle Times_ , 1-9-1967

**" Money is the oxygen,"** Don Stark to author, 4-23-2018

**Uhlman "concluded that Seattle was handicapped,"** Anderson, "Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited..."

**The city 's chief problem,** "The Race for Mayor: Two State Senators Announce Candidacy," _The Seattle Times_ , 7-23- 1969 (no byline)

**" Two Liberals Vie,"** Daryl Lembke, "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job," _Los Angeles Times_ , 11-2-1969

**" Seattle Mayoral Rivals Differ in Age,"** Wallace Turner, "Seattle Mayoral Rivals Differ in Age Not Views," _The New York Times_ , 11-2-1969

**" Kennedy-like style,"** Lembke, "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job"

**" matinee idol look,"** Stan Federman, "Mayor Stuns Establishment," _The Oregonian,_ 11-9-1969

**Mr. Fuddy Duddy,** Federman, "Mayor Stuns Establishment"

**Compared to Casey Stengel,** Lembke, "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job"

**" Ivy league appearance**," Federman, "Mayor Stuns Establishment"

**" struggle with syntax,"** Lembke, "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job"

**pledged to be an "activist" mayor,** Lembke, "Two Liberals Vie for Seattle Mayor's Job"

**" There were all ages,"** Richard W. Larsen, "Handshakes - And Headshakes," _The Seattle Times_ , 11-9-1969

**" always questioning,"** Federman, "Mayor Stuns Establishment"

**" Youth's the story,"** Federman, "Mayor Stuns Establishment"

**Back in Seattle, journalists were looking past** , David Brewster, "You've Come a Long Way, Wes," _Seattle Magazine,_ July 1970.

**Seattle ended 1969,** Mayor Wes Uhlman, "Statement to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations," 7-29-1970, accessed via Seattle Municipal Archives

**Nixon administration scrapped plans,** David Wilma, "Bombings in Seattle move President Nixon to cancel nerve-gas shipments through Puget Sound on May 23, 1970," _History Link,_ 5-16-2000

**In the early morning hours** , Crowley, _Rites of Passage_ , pgs. 79, 149

**He quickly retreated,** Mayor's Office, Press Release, 7-29-1970, accessed via Seattle Municipal Archives

**An inquest of the shooting,** Crowley, _Rites of Passage_ , pgs. 79, 149

**Uhlman 's "reaction to the murder of Larry Ward,"** Elmer Dixon e-mail to author, 4-18-2018

**In his first State of the City speech** , Mayor Wes Uhlman, "State of the City" speech, 6-8-1970, accessed via Seattle Municipal Archives

**The aerospace industry, it turns out,** Walt Crowley, "Sea-Tac International Airport: Part 3 - Boeing Bust to Deregulation (1970s)," _History Link,_ 8-17-2003

**In a little over a year,** Boeing Company, "A Brief History, New Markets: 1971-1982," <https://web.archive.org/web/20021212145351/http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/history/boeing/markets.html>

**In a time of high unemployment,** William H. Mullins, "The Persistence of Progressivism," _Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest_ , University of Washington, pg. 9

**Seattle 's unemployment rate was the highest**, Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**" I want to make it clear I am not proposing a tax,"** Statement of Mayor Wes Uhlman, 4-13-1970, accessed via Seattle Municipal Archives

**Don Stark was stationed** , Stark to author, 4-23-2018

**Barbara Dingfield was another Baby Boom idealist** , Barbara Dingfield to author, 4-26-2018

**who grew disenchanted with the dysfunctional left,** Crowley, _Rites of Passage_ , pgs 166-167, 179-180

**He also founded a youth hostel,** Marie McCaffrey to author 4-19-2018

**the linchpin of President Johnson 's war on poverty,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**He proposed a tax on parking,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**" Uhlman's policy planning director, Don Munro,"** Walt Crowley, _" Routes: a brief history of public transportation in metropolitan Seattle,"_ Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, 1993

**" Ridership downtown basically doubled,"** Chuck Collins to author, 5-11-2018

**But after 39 years, the free rides ended** , Mike Lindblom, "Warning: Seattle's free-ride zone coming to an end," _The Seattle Times_ , 9-14-2002

**It was a negotiated death,** Bob Young, "King County Council to spare Metro with $20 car-tab fee, _The Seattle Times_ , 8-12-2011

**It was a short-sighted decision** , Katie Wilson to author 5-15-2018

**The city announced a "people-oriented" 1971 festival,** Paul Dorpat, "Bumbershoot," _History Link_ , 9-1-1999

**The mayor went on a mass ride,** Knute Berger, "Move over McGinn: Seattle's original bike mayor," _Crosscut_ , 10-15-2013

**He lobbied state lawmakers,** Berger, "Move over McGinn: Seattle's original bike mayor"

**property owners along the route balked,** Berger, "Move over McGinn: Seattle's original bike mayor"

**By 1975, activists were looking to revise,** Jonathan King, "The gay rights movement and the city of Seattle during the 1970s," _Seattle Municipal Archives_ , accessed via <https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/gay-rights-in-the-1970s>

**These legal victories paralleled** , King, "The gay rights movement and the city of Seattle during the 1970s"

**" I think all of this focus on 'queers,'"** Joyce Lunstroth letter to Mayor Wes Uhlman, undated, Seattle Municipal Archives, Folder 3, Box 62, Subject files 5287-02

**Uhlman replied** , Mayoral response to Joyce Lunstroth letter, July 20, 1977, Seattle Municipal Archives, Folder 3, Box 62, Subject files 5287-02

**" I must share with you,"** Mayoral response to Glenys Wilson letter, July 15, 1977, Seattle Municipal Archives, Folder 3, Box 62, Subject files 5287-02

**But only 7.6 percent of the city 's full-time jobs,** Seattle Municipal Archives, Mayor's Office press release, 3-23-1970

**It would grow to 15 percent,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**Uhlman created new departments,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**At one debate,** Jim Brunner, "Can McGinn recover from weak primary showing? The Uhlman comparison," _The Seattle Times_ , 8-19-2013

**In just a year, Vickery had got rid of,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**Vickery 's employees went on an 11-day,** Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)"

**" It was really about who's running City Hall,"** Stark to author, 4-23-18

**to unfold like High Noon,** John C. Hughes, _John Spellman: Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , Washington State Legacy Project, pg. 162

**But Spellman thought Uhlman,** Hughes, _John Spellman: Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , p. 154

**It was a rivalry mainly for the public 's attention**, Chuck Collins to author, 5-14-2018

**Lou Guzzo 's spur-of-the-moment divining,** Hughes, _John Spellman: Politics Never Broke His Heart_

**" If Durning (or Wes Uhlman) had won,"** Joel Connelly, "Durning and Durkan: The face is familiar," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 10-22-2013

**" Our position was that my not authorizing the raid,"** Elmer Dixon email to author, 4-18-2018

**was fortified with sandbags, steel window covers,** Aaron Dixon, _My People Are Rising_ , p. 181

**Newcomers could buy attractive homes,** Anderson, "Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited..."

**That one word, perhaps above all,** Richard Florida, "The Geography of Tolerance," _CityLab_ , 7-16-2012, accessed via <https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/07/geography-tolerance/2241/>

**" When a decision needed to be made,"** Anderson, "Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited..."

**He balanced the competing impulses** , Lieb, "Uhlman, Wesley Carl (b. 1935)," _History Link_

**P HYLLIS LAMPHERE**

**Minnie became the breadwinner,** Phyllis Hagmoe Lamphere _, The Life of a City Girl,_ self-published, 2010, p. 41

**Like some of her relatives,** "Phyllis Lamphere Oral History, Part 1," _History Link_ , 10-18-13

**grow "corn that summer as high as an elephant's eye,"** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 89

**Her friend Emmett Watson joked,** Emmet Watson, "About A Young Friend," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 9-27-74

**In her first retirement,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , pp. 14-15

**She swam across Lake Washington,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl,_ p. 46

**symphony conductor 's put-down,** Peter Blecha, "Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham debuts with Seattle Symphony Orchestra," _History Link_ , 7-4-2002

**" You didn't think of anything else,"** Phyllis Lamphere to author, 6-22-18

**They met when Ernie became good friends,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 23

**where he fell in with a "bad" crowd,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 36

**One called Hooverville,** Dustin Neighly, "'Nobody Paid any Attention:' The Economic Marginalization of Seattle's Hooverville," University of Washington, Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects, Winter 2010

**For Minnie and the girls,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 43

**" Mother didn't believe in corporal punishment,"** _The Life of a City Girl,_ p. 8

**In the yearbook,** _The Life of a City Girl,_ p. 52

**Lamphere was given the duty,** _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 74

**Barnard proved the turning point,** _The Life of a City Girl,_ p. 378

**" We didn't have to make way,"** _The Life of a City Girl,_ p. 378

**But he died of pneumonia,** _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 43

**moved in with her mother,** _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 84

**" We set up every conceivable activity,"** _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 86

**" I was told he was right where it hit,"** Lamphere to author, 6-22-18

**for a job at a "magnificent wage,"** _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 94

**On election night she watched returns,** Jim Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)," _History Link_ , 4-30-13

**Television was in its infancy,** Steve Henn, "The Night A Computer Predicted The Next President," _National Public Radio_ , 10-31-12

**As the babies grew,** Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)"

**" The problem is that's decentralized government,"** Lamphere to author

**Her dedication led,** Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)"

**" It's a growth issue and a power issue,"** Lamphere to author

**She was advised, however, to wait,** Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)"

**The Municipal League rated her "outstanding,"** Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)"

**None of the incumbents were rated,** "Good Council Field Gets Faint Praise," _The Seattle Times_ , 8-29-1967

**" New Blood Will Shake Up City Council,"** _Argus_ (no byline), 11-10-67

**In 1960, more than three-quarters,** ," Anne Frantilla, "The Seattle Open Housing Campaign 1959-1968 - Detailed Narrative," Seattle Municipal Archives (undated).

**Attitudes began to change,** Frantilla, "The Seattle Open Housing Campaign 1959-1968 - Detailed Narrative"

**" That was out biggest move,"** Lamphere to author

**" Until we came along,"** Kershner, "Lamphere, Phyllis Hagmoe (b.1922)"

**hoisting a sign that said,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 147

**He wrote an endorsement,** Robert E. Thompson, "One Whose Name Must Lead All the Rest for Mayor," _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ , 9-14-77

**lunching with _The Washington Post_ publisher,** Lamphere, _The Life of a City Girl_ , p. 170

**What 's more, the "outsider" trend,** Richard W. Larsen, "Outsider vs. Outsider for Mayor," _The Seattle Times_ , 9-21-77

**In an interview with reporter Ross,** Ross Anderson, "Lamphere: Impressive credentials," _The Seattle Times_ , 8-21-77

**" Chalk me up as a little old lady whose bubble burst,"** Phyllis Lamphere, "Why hasn't Seattle had a woman mayor?" _Crosscut.com_. 2-23-13

**From the beginning she insisted,** "Phyllis Lamphere: A Legacy of Art" (video), Washington State Convention Center, accessed via <https://www.wscc.com/file/phyllis-lamphere-legacy-art>

**" Oh my gosh that's an art gallery,"** "Phyllis Lamphere: A Legacy of Art" (video)

**In 1997 Lamphere recommended creating,** "The Galleries, Art at the Convention Center," Washington State Convention Center, p. 2

**" You can't miss the art,"** "Phyllis Lamphere: A Legacy of Art" (video)

**" I am of mixed minds,"** Lamphere to author

**" I think she's going to do well,"** Lamphere to author

**J IM ELLIS**

**" It's going to get worse,"** Ellis to author, 5-25-2010

**" we weren't ready,"** Ellis to author

**" lemming-like ...masses,"** quoted in _Emerald City_ , Matthew Klingle, ****p. 234

**" a blend of Big Brother,' "** quoted in _John Spellman, Politics Never Broke His Heart_ , John C. Hughes, p. 44

**" so consumed by grief,"** Ellis to author, 5-25-2010

**Robert L. Ellis killed,** "War Casualties," _Seattle Times_ , 4-4-1945

**Log cabin story and Mary Lou Ellis 's advice**, Ellis to author

**" when I plunged into civic life,"** Evans to author, 8-19-2016

**" One of the charms of democracy,"** quoted in _Slade Gorton, A Half Century in Politics_ , John C. Hughes, p. 29

**" Jim preached that regional problems,"** Gorton to author, 3-27-2018

**" Metro Monster,"** _The Uses of Ecology, Lake Washington and Beyond_ , W.T. Edmondson, ****p. 25

**" to have had a knack,"** _The Uses of Ecology_ , p. 288

**_" Friends Along the Way,"_** __quoted in __ "Ellis, James Reed," HistoryLink.org Essay 7833, 7-5-2006

**" By 1965 forecasters were predicting,"** "The Persistence of Progressivism," _Pacific Northwest Quarterly_ , Spring 2014, p. 55

**" ELLIS SEES 'GOLDEN AGE' "** Walt Woodward, _Seattle Times_ , 11-3-1965, p. 1

**" one who does not know,"** " 'Golden Age' for Seattle," ****Walt Woodward, _Seattle Times_ , 11-4-1965, p. 11

**" That's all everyone talked about,"** quoted in _John Spellman,_ p. 67

**[H]eralded a new cycle, "** "The Persistence of Progressivism," p. 56

**" With his track record,"** quoted in _Spellman_ , p. 67

**" greatest conceivable monument,"** quoted in _Spellman_ , p. 68

**" a death chant for democracy,"** quoted in _Spellman_

**" The Seattle of today," and "Day of Decision,"** "This, Our City," Emmett Watson, _Seattle Post-Intelligencer,_ 2-13-1968, p. B-1

**" tragic results,"** quoted in _Spellman_

**" Despite herculean efforts,"** "The Persistence of Progressivism," p. 69

**" People were just scared,"** quoted in _Spellman_ , p. 121

**" Jim believes people live on,"** quoted in "Forward Thrust's Jim Ellis," Larry Coffman, _Seattle Times_ , 2-11-1968, p.7

**" When you accept responsibility,"** quoted in **** "Forward Thrust's Jim Ellis"

**" He never backed out,"** Gorton to author, 3-24-2018

**Endnotes**

* * *

 Denison was a "Covey Rider," a coveted job that required someone who had proven calm and cool under fire. Covey Riders rode in the passenger seat, assisting the pilot--the "Covey"--with team communications. The pilot was also the forward air controller. He had to handle five or more radio frequencies at the same time. The Covey Rider concentrated on the team on the ground. That was often challenging, especially if the fellows on the ground were scared. Sometimes two or three teams would be in trouble as the same time.

 In his 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King wrote, "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"

 Richard "Ricki" Gossett didn't participate in the Franklin sit-in. His bail was reduced to $750 and he was released from jail the night of April 4 **th**. Charges against him were later dropped.

 The news of their release made the front page of _The Seattle Times_ on April 5, 1968, along with four stories about King's assassination and one about the Vietnam War.

 A former director of the group was Cyril deGrasse Tyson, father of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 Superior Court Judge Solie Ringold had declared the unlawful assembly law unconstitutional; the state Supreme Court reinstated the charges against Gossett, Dixon and Miller. However, prosecutors declined to press charges again.

 Howell didn't belong to Young Democrats until the day they elected him president.

 Issued in September 1965 by President Johnson, the order said: "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/about/50thAnniversaryHistory.html

 Bayley was only 31 in 1970 when he unseated Charles O. Carroll, viewed as the most powerful man in King County for decades.

 The late Charles Z. Smith, the great-grandson of slaves, was elected three times to the Washington Supreme Court after his appointment in 1988. But Smith bristled at the racism he perceived, even among some judicial colleagues. In 1990, he told a forum on race relations in Washington, "Even though I am at the top of the judicial system, there are still people ... who believe they can call me 'nigger' and get away with it."

 The Army's official report characterized Fletcher's wounds as "non-battle injury" due to "artillery shell fragments."

 Fletcher's Baltimore teammates included future Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle and a big Oklahoman named Jim Owens, who coached the University of Washington Huskies to consecutive Rose Bowl victories in 1959 and '60, but later in the decade was accused of showing favoritism to white players.

 Reed would become a three-term secretary of state, Bayley a boat-rocking King County prosecutor.

 Fletcher was not the first African American--or transplanted Kansan for that matter--to run for lieutenant governor. Charles M. Stokes, King County's first black legislator and a tireless civil rights advocate, was soundly defeated by a former Supreme Court judge in the 1960 Republican primary. Stokes was a 1931 graduate of the University of Kansas Law School. In 1988, another black star football player-turned politician, George Fleming, won the primary election for lieutenant governor. That November he lost to popular Republican Joel Pritchard.

 Jack Tanner received only 2.43 percent of the vote in the 1968 gubernatorial primary. The 1970 Census found only 71,300 blacks in Washington State. The most recent estimate is 304,000.

 One of Sam Reed's best friends during his undergrad days at Washington State University was his fraternity brother, Mike Lowry, an ebullient liberal from St. John, pop. 550, in conservative Whitman County. The future Democratic governor and future Republican secretary of state engaged in lively debates that were nevertheless always civil--an attitude Reed finds sadly lacking in today's politics.

 Sanders went on to serve on the State Supreme Court, where his pro-life and libertarian views generated controversy.

 A chilling footnote from that era revolves around another bright young Dan Evans Republican, a UW prelaw major named Ted Bundy. Elway and Bundy, who had been Art Fletcher's driver on several outings during the 1968 campaign, once spent a fruitless week hunting for an apartment and went separate ways. It was around that time that Bundy, one of the most monstrous serial killers in U.S. history, attempted his first kidnapping. Elway remembers Ted as "a charming guy with a good sense of humor. We all liked him. He spoke in a clipped style that sounded like it may have been some kind of British accent, which added to a slight sense of mystery. But nothing ever registered as sinister."

 Muncey was swamped in the GOP primary by a charismatic African American, Arthur Fletcher, who went on to lose narrowly in November but became a key player nationally in Affirmative Action.

 It is not the "Co-op" as other cooperatives are commonly called, but the "Coop." store.thecoop.com/about-us/

 Cowrie shells were used as currency in the African slave trade.

 The University of Washington's Tacoma campus did not open until 1990.

 Garvey grew so popular that FBI Director Herbert Hoover, ever fearful of "subversives," targeted Garvey's Black Star Line shipping company to stop the spread of Garvey's philosophy. Hoover eventually succeeded, and Garvey was sent to prison on mail fraud charges in 1923 and deported to Jamaica in 1927. In a move that lost him support among African Americans, Garvey supported The Greater Liberia Act of 1939, which would have sent 12 million African Americans to Liberia. It was defeated in Congress.

 Polly would graduate from the University of Washington in 1970, a self-described "middle-aged co-ed."

 Hampton was also sedated by a sleeping drug an FBI informant had slipped into his drink before the raid. An investigation by U.S. Department of Justice found that police fired up to 99 shots during the raid, while the Panthers shot only twice.

 Dicks says he couldn't help but leak details of Ehrlichman's outburst to Bill Prochnau, a Washington, D.C., reporter for _The Seattle Times_. Prochnau's story said Uhlman "ran into heavy White House flak" from Ehrlichman. "We want to get along," Uhlman said. "We want to make love, not war, with Mr. Ehrlichman."

 Chester Biesen was elected to the Washington House of Representatives in 1927 at the age of 22.

 At 34, Uhlman was Seattle's youngest mayor since Robert Moran, who took office at 31 in 1888.

 In a negotiated death, Republicans on the King County Council agreed to raise car tabs $20 to prevent sweeping cuts in bus service if the subsidy for the free rides was eliminated.

 The responsibility for enforcing both the Open Housing and Fair Employment ordinances rested with the Office for Women's Rights--created by Uhlman--which would play the role of advocate for gay and lesbian rights within City Hall through the 1970s.

 Eve became a professor of dance at the University of Washington and was credited with giving dance an equal footing with other academic programs.

 As Lamphere later learned, Roosevelt refused Secret Service protection. http://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/abouteleanor/erbiography.cfm

 1952 marked the first coast-to-coast television broadcast of a presidential election. UNIVAC predicted an Eisenhower landslide after just 3 million votes were counted. But lacking confidence in the computer, CBS waited several hours to air that forecast.

 None of the incumbents were rated as high as the next lowest category, "Superior."

 The University of Washington Civil Rights and Labor History Project has maps and a database of that era's racially restrictive covenants. One on Capitol Hill, for example, bars selling or renting to "any person of Negro blood." http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm

**About the Book**

* * *

_" For each of our youth who has dropped out, there are a hundred more who have stayed in; some radical, some demanding, some searching, some hoping--but all concerned. To break that spirit would be to bankrupt our future. These are not the pleadings of a weak and useless generation; they are the strong voices of a generation, which--given a chance--can lead America to a new unity, a new purpose and a new prosperity."_

_-- Gov. Dan Evans' 1968 RNC keynote address_

Change was in the air. Everywhere. From Saigon to Seattle, Paris to Pasco. On college campuses, the campaign trail and evergreen peaks, Washingtonians were spurred to action.

It was the year when Vietnam, civil rights, women's liberation and conservation coalesced--the year when tragedy led the 6 o'clock news with numbing regularity.

Nearly 50 million Baby Boomers were coming of age. The draft call for 1968 was 302,000, up 72,000 from the prior year.

1968 changed us in ways still rippling through our society a half-century later.
