Topic: Biographies
Over the course of his lifetime, much of it spent on the water, Joe D. Williamson (1909-1994) documented a wide swath of Northwest history with his camera, yet he did not consider photography his prim...
A Willits canoe, considered one of the finest canoes ever made, was the life's work of the Willits brothers: Earl Carmi (1889-1967) and Floyd Calvin (1892-1962). Born in the Midwest, they arrived in t...
August Wilson was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who lived the final 15 years of his life in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. His 10-play cycle of dramas covered each decade of ...
George Wilson played football at the University of Washington from 1923 to 1925. He ran, passed, caught passes, punted, and played linebacker on defense, a 60-minute player. In 1925 his teammates sele...
T. A. Wilson, known to many simply as "T," was a small-town boy from the Midwest who eventually became president and CEO of The Boeing Company in Seattle. Although his tenure at the company's helm beg...
Jesse Wineberry served five terms in the Washington State House of Representatives from 1985 to 1995. He was first elected at age 29 while still attending law school. He later became the state's first...
Describing herself as a moderate Democrat, a social liberal, and a practical feminist, R. Lorraine Wojahn of Tacoma was a powerful Washington state legislator for 32 years. She served in the House of ...
No one better deserves the title "leading citizen" than newspaperman Fred L. Wolf (1877-1957) of Newport, county seat of Pend Oreille County. From the time of his purchase of the Newport Miner in 190...
Hazel Wolf was an environmental and social activist whose causes ranged from the rights of workers, women, and minorities to the protection of wilderness, wetlands, and wildlife. She was still a young...
Tobias Wolff is a writer and novelist best known for his memoir This Boy's Life, which tells the story of Wolff's adolescence in 1950s Washington State. Thirty years after its 1989 publication, The&nb...
William D. Wood, an attorney, land speculator, electric trolley line president, and Seattle mayor, was a conspicuous figure in the business and political life of Seattle for more than a quarter centur...
Longtime owner, editor, and publisher of the Wenatchee Daily World and a major instigator of the Grand Coulee Dam, Rufus Woods was a titan of twentieth-century Pacific Northwest development. He was th...
William P. Woods was a civil engineer who worked his way up from pipefitter's helper to corporate leader in the natural gas industry. A native of Selma, Alabama, he was named president of the Washingt...
In this People's History Gerald Elfendahl of Bainbridge Island remembers the Bainbridge Island journalist and defender of human rights Walter C. Woodward Jr. (1910-2001). Woodward was an exemplary jou...
Philip A. Woolley was a railroad developer from Elgin, Illinois, who moved to Washington just as the territory became a state in 1889. With the help of Territorial Attorney General James Bard Metcalfe...
Bagley Wright was a Seattle philanthropist, businessman, and civic leader. Wright's deft business skills, strongly held artistic preferences, deep financial means, and equally deep commitment to his c...
Pastor Patrinell "Pat" Staten Wright is a Seattle treasure -- as a sublime vocal soloist, as the founding director of the Total Experience Gospel Choir, and as a long-time youth mentor and active comm...
Vim Wright, as she preferred to be called, saw a lot in her 76 years. From an impoverished childhood in Istanbul, to society life in Baltimore with adoptive parents, to eventually becoming a primary p...
Minoru Yamasaki was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Seattle in 1912 and studied architecture at the University of Washington in 1932. He then moved to New York to complete his professional educa...
Amy Yee was a Seattle tennis star, a graceful and inspirational teacher who for 50 years brought the love of the sport to thousands of young people and adults in schools, parks, and private clubs. The...
Yelkanum Seclamatan was a Nooksack chief who lived in the Lynden area for much of the nineteenth century and a small part of the twentieth. Though he was not the most dominant chief among the tribe, h...
Henry Yesler was a middle-aged man when he arrived at Elliott Bay in October 1852 and quickly established himself as the most important resident of the rain-swept little spot that would soon become Se...
Despite nineteenth century patriarchal attitudes and societal constraints, Emma Yule – the first teacher and first school principal in the emerging city of Everett – pushed the social boun...
Phil and Laura Zalesky began lives in 1924 that included early poverty, but became enriched through their marriage in 1945 and intertwined with some of the most important Pacific Northwest environment...