The divisiveness that seems to be the legacy these days of any discussion of issues, local or national, was something that longtime Vancouver community leader John McKibbin had a way of averting as he steered discussions toward productive dialogue, even in the face of some significant opposition.

Thus when McKibbin, 69, a Clark County elected official turned civic leader, died last week in the crash of his World War II-era single-engine plane near the mouth of the Columbia River, the loss was not just a personal tragedy for his family and friends. It was also a loss for the city and region he constantly strived to enhance.

The complexity of the issues on which McKibbin was working to create positive outcomes indicates the depth of the hole he left for Vancouver, Clark County and the state to find a way to fill.

Two issues stood out, and were to have been the focus of a breakfast meeting I had scheduled this past Monday with McKibbin and Don Brunell, the retired president of Association of Washington Business, who was McKibbin's longtime friend and associate.

Instead the breakfast became Brunell's sad opportunity to reflect for me on the man who had been elected to the Washington State Legislature in 1974, when he was not yet 30 years old, was elected a Clark County commissioner four years later and served three terms before he turned his focus to business.

"He brought people from opposite poles together, not always achieving agreement but to at least having an understanding of the other side's position," said Brunell, who had been McKibbin's friend since he joined Crown Zellerbach in 1979 as McKibbin was preparing to leave the legislature and run for county commissioner.

"He has been a good friend since then," Brunell said. "He was a problem solver who was gracious to his opponents as well as supporters. He had great political instincts. He worked issue by issue and had the ability to scope out an issue and try to reach resolution."

"When it came down to a divisive issue, he never personalized differences," added Brunell, who since retiring from AWB has been a Vancouver resident and writes a regular column on business and government, with the likelihood he will devote a column to McKibbin once he works through the loss of his friend and associate.

McKibbin was president of Identity Clark County at the time of his death, ironically while returning on a flight out past the mouth of the Columbia with the wife of a deceased friend who wished to scatter her husband's ashes at sea. He had headed that business advocacy and economic-development organization for the past two years after having been the founding chair 20 years ago.

One of the major issues that had McKibbin's focus was the struggle to resurrect the Columbia River Crossing Project, an effort to build a new bridge to connect Portland and Vancouver, replacing the 99-year-old span and extending Portland light rail to Vancouver.

The project died two years ago after more than a decade of negotiations between the two states broke down over the issue of light rail for the new span. McKibbin was quietly working leaders in both states to get discussions going again.

But the issue perhaps closest to McKibbin's heart was the initiative to create a Pearson Field Aviation Education Complex at the oldest continuously active airport in the United States, where his hanger in which he kept the classic plane he and a friend had refurbished was a regular gathering place.

That education project was the topic for an earlier Vancouver breakfast meeting with McKibbin and Brunell.

The issue, which many see as a bizarre example of government overreach, is National Park Service pushback on the effort to use part of a 22-acre parcel once owned by the city of Vancouver but sold in 1971 to the NPS as the permanent location for the Pearson Air Museum.

The Air Museum had been housed on the property, which the agency had leased back to the city, and it had become a community events center and was intended to house the development of a STEM learning center as the focal point of an aviation education complex.

After an acceleration of disagreement with the NPS over the agency's sudden concern about non-park use of parks property, the federal agency took possession four years ago of the facility, and most of the exhibits and other assets and forced the move of a half dozen vintage airplanes, one of which was McKibbin's, to other locations.

The effort to develop a STEM-focused education center led to research that determined that some 40 aerospace-related firms were located in Clark County and that has led to an effort to create an aviation high school, following the model of Raisbeck Aviation High School in the Highline School District. That aviation- and aerospace-themed STEM school is one of the South Seattle district's small high schools.

The flap over what was basically the takeover of the facility by the local Park Service official turned political when GOP Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Butler took up the cause and introduced legislation to resolve the dispute, but nothing has so far come of that effort.

Creation of the Aviation Education Complex, a STEM education center and likely including an aviation high school to help serve the current and future needs of a growing aerospace cluster in Clark County, seems destined to eventually come about, either at Pearson Field or elsewhere, and will be a testament to McKibbin's leadership.

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The community thank you last week to former Sen. Slade Gorton for his instrumental role in saving major league baseball in Seattle was an appropriate reminder of his signal accomplishment for the community. But without detracting from Gorton's role, it may also be appropriate at some point to recognize the Seattle attorney whose legal victory set the stage for the search for a local owner.

That would seem particularly appropriate since the Seattle attorney, Arthur Harrigan Jr., had key legal roles in saving two of the Seattle professional sports franchises

Art Harrigan not only succeeded in forcing Mariners owner Jeff Smulyan to give business and community leaders four months to find a local buyer, but five years later he paved the way for a local sale of the Seattle Seahawks by preventing owner Ken Behring from moving the team to Los Angeles.

The legal confrontations with the owners of two of Seattle's professional sports teams came about because Harrigan's law firm, Calfo Harrigan Leyh & Eakes, long represented King County on an array of issues. And both owners came into conflict with the county because they sought to abandon the county-owned Kingdome and their leases there.

The venue for resolving the future of the Seattle Mariners franchise was what amounted to an arbitration hearing before Arthur Andersen, the national accounting firm agreed to by both sides to decide some key issues relating to the lease.

Since it wasn't a court process, which would have gotten large visibility for the battle between attorneys, Harrigan's maneuvering over the meaning of wording in Smulyan's contract regarding an attendance clause that was key to the final outcome was little noted, thus little remembered.

Harrigan's argued interpretation of the lease-requirement wording was accepted by the Andersen firm, so Smulyan was required to give an opportunity for a local buyer to be sought.

Of perhaps equal importance, Harrigan successfully argued that there should be a local value lower than the open-market value. The accounting firm agreed and set a "stay-in-Seattle" valuation at $100 million, rather than the national open-market value of $135 million that it had determined.

That created the opportunity for Gorton and others leading the effort to keep the team in Seattle to find a local buyer for $100 million, rather than $135 million, within four months.

No one knows if, at $135 million, Ninetendo's owner would have opted to pick up the cost of saving the Mariners for Seattle.

With respect to the effort to block the Seahawks' move, King County hired Harrigan's firm to keep Behring from fulfilling his widely publicized intent in the winter of 1996 to leave Seattle and move the team to Los Angeles.

Behring made the argument, after some tiles had fallen from the Kingdome roof, that he had concerns about seismic security of the facility as he announced that he was moving the team to Los Angeles.

Harrigan recalled the February meeting at the Woodmark Hotel at Carillon point at which he, King County Executive Gary Locke, Gary Locke, his assistant, and chief civil deputy Dick Holmquist with Behring's attorney, Ron Olson (who he noted was also Warren Buffet's attorney).

"Olson read from a yellow pad, explaining that the team, fearing earthquakes might impact the Kingdome, had to be moved to the comparative safety of Southern California and the Rose Bowl," Harrigan said. "Holmqust and I were trying not to laugh."

"We were poised to file a temporary restraining order the moment the trucks began rolling up to the team's offices in Kirkland," Harrigan said.

"So when Behring and Olson left the room, I made the call and the restraining order was filed," he added. "Had that not happened, we would have had to go to California and ask a California judge to send them back."

Behring had quickly, after the restraining order, filed suit in Kittitas County, so as part of the legal process, Harrigan also had to get the state Supreme Court to toss out that suit.

A few weeks later he and Behring attorneys met with NFL owners who were considering whether to allow the team to move, in the event Behring could escape the Kingdome lease, and made their presentations.

"I had brought Jon Magnusson and two other renowned structural engineers with West Coast seismic design expertise who explained that the idea that Southern California was safer than the Kingdome in case of earthquake was ludicrous," Harrigan said.

The legal maneuvering all came to an end when it was announced that Paul Allen had purchased the Seahawks.

While Harrigan, 72, is ranked as Seattle's top commercial trial lawyer by Chambers & Partners, which ranks the world's best lawyers and law firms, his legal activities have ranged well beyond the courtroom.

He worked with Craig McCaw in his early Eagle River Investments days, helped create the wireless company Nextel, which became a $7 billion public company, is a member of the boards of several public companies. His is chair, and was a principal fund raiser, for an interesting new company that will generate energy by storing electricity on trains.

Harrigan, a Harvard graduate with his law degree from Columbia, served as Senior Counsel to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, worked on an investigation of CIA intelligence activities related to Vietnam.

Most intriguingly, and perhaps as important as his later pro sports involvements in Seattle, he headed the committee's investigation of IRS intelligence operations, discovering that the agency was giving individuals' tax returns, under the claim of national security, to other intelligence agencies who were then misusing the information in sting operations.

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The first "Innovations in Education" award will be presented this month to the little Yakima Valley school district of Granger where "Every Child, Every Seat, Every Day" became a mantra for students, teachers and parents that allowed the largely Hispanic district to achieve the best attendance in the state last year.

The Innovations in Education Award is being created by the Discovery Institute and will be presented to three women for their key roles in the attendance-success story of the Granger district, where almost a third of the students are from poverty-level homes.

The award will be presented May 19 at a dinner at the Rainier Club as part of the Discovery Institute's 25^th anniversary. Presentation of the award will precede a panel discussion with three noted education-change advocates on the topic of "Creating a 21^st Century Public Education System."

The women being honored with the award are:

--Alma Sanchez, mother of four, turned student at Heritage University, turned entrepreneur, who wrote and managed the grant for the attendance-incentive awards program at Granger Middle School.

--Janet Wheaton, recently retired Granger School District administrator, who worked with Sanchez and helped her with the application for the $20,000 grant that funded the incentive program, The "Every Child, Every Seat, Every Day" was the title of Sanchez' grant application to the Yakima Valley Community Foundation.

--Joan Wallace, Bellevue business woman who for more than a decade has helped focus attention on the needs of the families of Granger and created the district's relationship with Heritage.

Discovery Institute is presenting the award in partnership with the Seattle law firm of Patterson Buchanan, a leader in school-personnel legal issues, particularly the annual School law Conference. Bellevue developer and retailer Kemper Freeman, one of whose key focuses has been education since his years in the legislature in the 1970s, is the major sponsor.

To ensure wide visibility for the award this year, and to help guide nominations in future years, Sound Publishing and Q13 television will be media sponsors.

It was in a recent column detailing the dramatic turnaround in "chronic" absenteeism for the schools in Granger to 3.6 percent, more than four times better than the statewide average of 16 percent, that I suggested the achievement merited the attention of those seeking to bring change and educational enhancement to schools. In addition, perfect attendance to 21 percent from 3 percent the previous year.

Steve Buri, president of Discovery Institute, seized the opportunity of the May 19 dinner event and its focus on creating a school system for the current century to agree that the Granger accomplishment merited the first Innovations in Education Award and that the dinner was the appropriate venue.

Discovery Institute's American Center for Transforming Education works with state legislators, policymakers and those involved directly in education to promote systemic change to the nation's education system.

The motivation in Granger to create the attendance-incentive program was the nagging awareness for educators and parents there, as in every economically challenged area, that absenteeism is a key factor in kids failing to succeed in school as well as their becoming prime targets for gang recruitment.

Sanchez worked to create a belief among faculty and staff that full attendance was possible and put encouragement, support and incentives in place for students. She did that by putting together a year-end drawing for five iPads for students with perfect attendance and promoted the program with posters around school.

The year-end awards promotion was accompanied by signage proclaiming "every quarter you are in school every day you will receive fabulous prizes."

The motivation to recognize the achievement with the new Innovations in Education award was the realization on the part of Discovery Institute and the rest of the team of companies involved with the award that significant education change will only come if attention is focused on new ideas that are producing noteworthy change.

Wheaton said she was sure that going forward there will be an effort to measure academic results from the attendance improvement, but added last year already paid a dividend in that it"was the first in many years that the entire district met standard in all areas of the state bilingual test - the Washington English Language Proficiency Exam."

It's worth focusing on the fact that while the public education system is under challenge from forces seeking to bring about necessary changes to curriculum and structure, the Granger story is evidence that essential change can come about through new vision within the current system as well as from external forces.

The panel conversation I will be moderating following the award presentation May 19 event will feature:

--Don Nielsen, who served eight years on the Seattle School Board and has written a book called Every School that has gotten national attention:;

--Bob Hughes, a member of the state Board of Education and former Corporate Director of Education Relations for Boeing.

-- Paul T. Hill, founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education and Research Professor at UW-Bothell, whose focus is on re-missioning states and school districts to promote school performance, school choice and innovation, finance and productivity; and improving rural schools.

Anna Liotta, who has become a national guru at unlocking generational codes, is taking her knowledge on the road, at the behest of the Professional Golfers Association, seeking to reinvigorate older generations as well as help provide clues on how to interest more millennials in the game.

As she heads for San Diego next month to meet with 100 golf-management professionals, she is aware that there's a sense among PGA executives who have watched the total rounds of golf played decline by 2 percent a year for the last decade, that what could be at stake is the very future of golf.

Asked how she became an expert on what makes different generations tick, the founder of Seattle-based Resultance Inc., smiles and responds that as the 18^th of 19 children, she just paid attention at home, adding "I was immersed in a multi-generational world."

"Whenever there's a wedding, graduation or family gathering, my family has six generations that are represented," she added. "There are 300 first cousins, 56 nieces and nephews and 47 great nieces and great nephews."

Liotta, daughter of a PGA professional and recipient of a golf scholarship while a student, has had golf as a life-long focus and says she is thus pleased to have been tapped to try to restore some of the sport's lost luster by focusing on different strategies to employ with different generations.

She was the only keynoter at a Sports Diversity and Inclusion Symposium in September of 2014 and the PGA, whose turn it had been to host the annual event attended by executives of all professional sports, invited her to keynote their annual conference in Indianapolis two months later.

Following her presentation as the first-ever female keynoter on the national conference stage in the PGA's 98 years, the organization contracted with her to consult on how to attract more millennials, Gen Xers and women of all ages to the game of golf.

"I have been working with the PGA on developing programs and messaging to attract and retain new players as well as re-engage lapsed golfers across the generations." She said.

Liotta elaborates on the generational issues facing golf by ticking off the challenges by generation.

"For boomers, it's their life stage with retirement and health issues, Gen Xers are focused on young families and Millennials are not interested in investing as much time or money into the game as their parents." She explained.

Liotta's role includes strategy for attracting more women to golf and noted, in an interview, that drawing more women golfers poses the same challenges as addressing the array of generations.

"Attracting women across the generations to the game of golf is a mission-critical initiative for the golf industry," Liotta said. "More women than ever are interested in playing golf, but it's up to the golf professionals and facilities to win the right to have them return after their first experience."

"Boomer and Gen Xer women are at the peak of their career and have high expectations of their customer experience on the course but unfortunately, often they are disappointed," she continued. "Millennial women have grown up playing competitive sports and are ready to bring their athleticism to business golf, but millennials demand a whole new level of inclusion and service from golf, or they take their disposable income to the yoga studio, cross-fit gym, or soccer field."

Part of her commitment to bring more women to the game was her launch 12 years ago of Women Taking a Swing at Cancer, a fund-raising event she presided over for several before turning it over to Gilda's Club, which has changed its name to Cancer Pathways and whose support for the golf event faded.

Liotta recalls that as a university student, she encountered what for her was a life-shaping video titled "What you are now is where you were when."

"That 1989 experience shaped my research in my organizational development studies and I wrote my honors thesis on generations," she recalls.

"What continues to delight me is that the more you learn about the formative things of an individual, the more you know about them," she added.

Running down the generations Liotta said: "Baby boomers want to tell a lot about themselves while a Gen Xer wants to cut to the chase and get to the bottomline. They self disclose after demonstrated value."

Millennials, she said, "want to tell you about themselves first, and how unique they are, what they are up to and each thinks he or she is uniquely fascinating."

Because many view millennials (born between 1980 and 1999) as the most challenging generation in the workplace I asked Liotta to expand on their characteristics.

"They are changing workplace expectations forever, and driving their managers crazy in the process," she said. "They are the first generation to have no expectation of retiring from the company they are working for today."

"Millennials typically decide in their first 30 days whether they will remain with a company for six, 12, or 18 months," she added.

Liotta four years ago wrote what has become a key source of information about the generations. It's called "Unlocking generational codes: Understanding What Makes the Generations Tick and What Ticks Them Off."

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Those who have watched or experienced Liz Marchi's commitment to provide funding for Montana entrepreneurs and startups for a decade might suggest that the term "angel investor" was coined specifically to describe her.

It was 2003 that Marchi, who had arrived in Montana with three daughters and her then husband and settled in the Flathead Valley, decided to create the state's first angel fund, Frontier Angel Fund I. The fund closed in 2006 at $1.7 million, $300,000 more than she had hoped.

She eventually guided the Kalispell-based fund, which had attracted investors from around the country who were either fans of or summer residents in the Big Sky Country, to lead three deals and gather a total of 12 active investments and was soon also overseeing angel groups that had sprung up in Missoula and Bozeman.

Because she successfully syndicated her deals with a number of other angel groups outside the state, she jokes that she has become "the grandmother of crowd funding." She's not referring to the formal definition of crowd funding but rather the syndication efforts she initiated that attracted a crowd of angels from numerous groups making small investments.

Now Marchi, who grew up near Jackson Hole, WY, but who had never been to Montana when she arrived here in 2000, says she is looking forward to making the investor-leader handoff to Will Price, whose roots in the state brought him back from Silicon Valley to create Next Frontier Capital, at $20 million the largest venture fund ever raised in the state.

Price, on the board of or a key executive with a number of Bay Area tech companies, did his due diligence on the attitudes of national venture and mergers & acquisitions firms toward Montana before making the move to Bozeman.

Price's fund, which closed last April a year following his decision to bring his family to the state where his father, Kent Price, is well known as Montana's first Rhodes Scholar and University of Montana board member, has already made two investments.

I've kidded Liz and her husband, Jon, who in 1978 founded Glacier Venture fund as the first venture fund in Montana and presided over it for 29 years, about being "Mr. and Mrs. Montana Money." To which she once responded: "We are more like Mr. and Mrs. Montana risk capital since we share a very high risk tolerance...and often share the consequences."

Although Marchi talks about making a handoff to Price, as well as "the next generation of angels, including some members of Fund II in their '30s, who slay me in terms of their abilities," she was completing the formation in August of $2.7 million Frontier Fund II, which has already invested $900,000 with syndication adding $300,000 for a total of $1.2 million already invested.

"We have 48 investors in 10 states and meet physically in Bozeman and the Flathead, alternating with a WebEx option," Marchi said, noting that investors met in Bozeman today, with investors from two continents and four states, including Montana investors from Bozeman and Kalispell to review three Bozeman companies.

That sounds less like "handing off" for the 62-year-old Marchi than welcoming the potential follow-on investment opportunity that venture capital can represent for angel. And she hopes Price's fund will provide.

She says she does have an agreement with Fund II to be the key administrator only for the next two years, but could opt to remain longer. And she is down to business cards representing her current five involvements.

But Marchi is genuinely pleased at the implications of the arrival in Montana of Price, who did his homework before deciding a venture fund could work in Montana.

Price shared with me the research he did with and his thoughts about how "changing values" will benefit Montana's ability to attract capital.

Montana was often dismissed as a "fly-over" state, meaning that the most viable potential investors on the east and west coasts usually just fly over on their way to the other coast.

But Price's SurveyMonkey sampling of both venture and merger & acquisitions firms and found that the appeal of the big sky to many increasingly disenchanted with urban challenges was strong but that direct air access is a challenge Montana must come to grips with.

Fully 70 percent of responding M&A firms said they would consider buying a company in Montana, even though 80 percent said they had never been to the state. And a third of the venture firms said they would consider doing a deal in Montana, although 47 percent said they had never been there.

The import of improved air access to a state that has no direct flights currently to the major markets was dramatically indicated with the response of M&A firms, 90 percent of whom said it was "important" or "Moderately important" to have direct air access to the market of their investment.

"That's something the state is going to have to address," Price said. "But I think it will be addressed."

Among venture firms, almost two thirds sad the quality of the local syndicate partner would determine their involvement.

Although Marchi herself has attracted investors from around the country, she observes that "Being away from the noise of the coasts keeps us grounded in an important way.

"The entire conversation and perception needs to move about rural America, what is going on here and its role in making our economy and our country work better," she said, expressing the principle that has guided her commitment to Montana entrepreneurs.

The need to be remembered is an urge that beats strongly in the breasts of those who have experienced fame. And the need tends to grow with the forward march of years beyond the time of fame.

That reality helps explain Stuart Anderson's quest to sell copies of his second book, Corporate Cowboy, and his distress at the fact that the Black Angus Steakhouse chain that is descended from his Stuart Anderson's Black Angus/Cattle Company won't carry or promote his book.

Anderson is quick to admit sales have not gone well for the book, his second. And he is convinced the reason is that it's not coming to the attention of those who dine at the restaurants, which now number 46 in six western states, but mostly California. The company has several times rebuffed his and Helen's efforts to put up posters and sell the book.

In fact, for reasons unknown but that sadden Anderson and Helen, his wife of more than 40 years, he wasn't invited to any of the events surrounding the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the chain in April of 2014, the month in which Corporate Cowboy was published.

So Anderson, 93, is going where he is most likely to find those who will remember him and where some will recall that he was the man who built a chain of 122 restaurants that was, for a string of years in the 1980s, ranked Number One in the nation among full-service restaurants.

The strategy is one of outreach to the seniors who represent a major share of the population of most communities in the Coachella Valley. It's a plan conceived by Brenda Lynn Martin, a longtime friend of the Andersons, who has a high profile in the desert for her promotion of various non-profit and community activities and events.

Explaining her decision to come to the aid of the Andersons in the effort to sell copies of his book, Martin, who has been friends with Stuart and Helen for a dozen years, told me: "My main goal is to fulfill his dream to get those books sold as a part of his leaving a legacy."

So Thursday evening a book signing and jazz fest at the Backstreet Bistro in upscale El Paseo will serve as the debut of a campaign, with Martin partnering with the restaurant's owner, Lavane Hause, to bring the book to the attention of gatherings of seniors at the restaurant each week, with jazz and a book signing.

"If this goes well, we can plan on a series of such gatherings, inviting seniors from a variety of locations, even snowbirds wintering here, to join the jazz and book signngs" Martin added.

"I hope this is the first of many," says Hause, who says of Anderson: "he reminds me so much of my dad. He and Helen lunch here frequently and I can't not try to help him."

I visited in recent days with the Andersons at their Rancho Mirage condo, looking west toward the San Jacinto Mountains, as I try to do each winter when Betsy and I get to spend time with friends in the Palm Desert area.

Anderson, who speaks softly and slowly from the effects of age as well as of a stroke he suffered seven years ago but retains a firm gaze, usually from beneath his cowboy hat, wanted to talk about the book and the challenge selling copies is presenting.

It is the story of how he built the restaurant empire that became a best-recognized national company with 10,000 employees and annual revenue of $260 million. The book actually has a longer official title: "Corporate Cowboy. Stuart Anderson: how a maverick entrepreneur built Black Angus, America's #1 restaurant chain of the 1980s."

He first tried his hand as an author when in 1997 he produced "Here's the Beef! My Story of Beef," a book he described to me as "fun and informative," but most importantly to him, thousands of copies were sold in the Black Angus restaurants. The book was meant to be an answer to the highly popular McDonald's commercial of the time in which an elderly lady asks: "Where's the Beef?"

At that point it had been a decade since he had retired after five consecutive years of his Stuart Anderson's Black Angus restaurants being named the top steakhouse chain in the nation by USA Today in a poll by industry publication Restaurants & Institutions. He admitted candidly, in an interview we did a few years ago, that new owners took the fun out of his job.

But the time of his first book, he was still well-remembered, in Washington state in particular, including for a series of television commercials he did in the Seattle area for a senior housing organization.

After retiring, he and Helen retired to their 2,400 ranch sprawled along Interstate 90 west of Ellensburg. He had bought the ranch in 1966 with the intent of raising the black angus cattle that would be served at his restaurants. But it turned out to be too great a challenge, for various reasons, so he continued to raise the cattle until he sold the ranch to Taiwanese interests, though to most travelers going past, it remains the Stuart Anderson ranch.

It's clear that Stuart and Helen nurture the hope that a focus on retirees and the strategy that Martin has put together may eventually create for Corporate Cowboy success like his first book experienced.

The challenge of travel for Anderson now means they seldom get to visit Seattle or the Ellensburg area any more.

But many of those on their way across Washington State on Interstate-90 will still note "that's where Stuart Anderson's cattle ranch was" as they pass the acreage stretched out along the highway.

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For political junkies, old political writers being foremost among those, one of the recurring exercises is finding similarities between years-apart election campaigns. Thus this year's race for the Democratic nomination for president is offering such a comparison, particularly for those fond of fostering, or for some it's fearful of, the thought that history repeats itself.

With Donald Trump suddenly the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, there will be reach backs to campaigns and candidates of the past to which Trump's campaign this year will draw comparisons.

But the similarity I'm referring to in this case is between Sen. Bernie Sanders' intriguing quest of his party's nomination against an established party figure, Hillary Clinton, and Eugene McCarthy's quixotic campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1968.

McCarthy's campaign slogan of "Get clean for Gene" has become Sanders' "feel the Bern."

That '68 campaign in which McCarthy, a virtually unknown senator from Minnesota, forced Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from any re-election effort then sought to be his successor, will always be a vivid memory for me because it was the first presidential campaign I covered, as a young reporter for UPI.

A quick background for those to whom that 1968 campaign is merely a foggy recollection from a history class. The growing anger, particularly among the young, over the failing effort of the Vietnam War allowed a fed-up McCarthy to decide to run, almost match Johnson's total in the nation's first primary in New Hampshire, and thus caused Johnson to announce in a national television address that he would not seek another term.

Those angry against the war, largely young people who thought it was not only time to end what they viewed as an immoral campaign by their nation's leaders but also seeking broad change in the "Great Society" Johnson had created for their parents' generation, flocked to support McCarthy.

Sen. Robert Kennedy, brother of the slain president and viewed by many as heir apparent to John Kennedy's "Camelot," entered the campaign. For a handful of memorable months until Kennedy's assassination as he left the stage at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel following his victory in the California Primary, his campaign brought forth the unrest among minority groups and added those demanding social change to those seeking to end the war.

Kennedy' campaign actually was attracting some Democratic leaders and cementing delegates in each state, including in Washington State where Everest conqueror and Kennedy confidant Jim Whittaker was pinning down Kennedy delegates.

One of my favorite memories of covering parts of that campaign of nearly 50 years ago as a young political writer was a chance encounter at the 1968 Democratic state convention in Tacoma with a to-become-famous high school friend from Spokane.

Kitty Kelley was a spunky young woman for whom that presidential campaign would be the launch pad for a highly successful but controversy-punctuated career as a biographer of the rich and famous.

I glanced across the crowded hall and, seeing her for the first time in 10 years, I made my way through the crowd, said hello and asked her what she was doing there.

"I'm Gene McCarthy's press secretary," she said with a laugh.

"What the heck do you know about being a press secretary?" I asked.

"I decided I wanted to be one and did some research and found that two of the senators didn't have one," she responded. "So I picked McCarthy, made an appointment with him and told him I wanted to be his press secretary. He asked me 'what does a press secretary do?' and I told him we'd figure that out together. So I got the job."

So when McCarthy decided to emerge from relative anonymity and run for president, the campaign brought Kitty contact with political leaders and the prominent in society. Those contacts she made that spring and summer of '68 helped provide the exposure and experience that would allow her to launch her literary career.

I've watched with interest and amusement in the years since then as her ability to uncover long-hidden secrets and get the "ungettable" story on those about whom she produced a string of unauthorized biographies stirred the ire and criticism of the rich and famous and their friends.

Because she was an attractive blond woman with the name "Kitty," those stung by her tell-all biographies of Jackie Onassis Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family and perhaps most famously, the Bush family, found it easy to dismiss the quality of her work.

Over the years, when controversy swirled around her work, I've smiled to myself to think back on that encounter in Tacoma with a young woman I'd known as a Spokane teenager who had used brains and guts as substitutes for experience and privilege to carve out a high-visibility career for herself.

She thus exemplified an army of young women who did likewise in that decade of the '60s and early '70s, creating important roles for themselves in what had been, prior to that, a "man's world," and opening the way for others of their gender to do the same.

But back to the '68 campaign.

Kennedy's death ensured that Democratic party leaders would gather in force behind Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who didn't run in the primaries but merely gathered the necessary state-by-state support from delegates and local party leaders. Thereafter the outcome of who would get the nomination was really never in doubt, except in the ranks of those young and minorities who had come to believe McCarthy's election was vital to the changes they had come to demand.

The battles in the streets of Chicago between McCarthy supporters and Mayor Richard Daley's police force as the Democratic Convention gave the nomination to Humphrey ensured that McCarthy's supporters would largely abandon the system and stay away from the November election.

In the end Nixon's razor-thin margin of victory made it clear to political analysts that those who decided not to vote ensured that the Democratic nominee would lose.

Fast forward 48 years to the Sanders campaign, which has attracted large numbers of those, particularly the young and new voters, who want out with the current social and political structure and flock to him as the instrument of change.

It's obvious to the Democratic party insiders and most elected leaders in the states that Sanders isn't going to win the party's nomination at this summer's convention. Thus Clinton, as much a part of Democratic establishment and tradition as was Humphrey, will head into the general election season hoping that history does not repeat itself, as in disaffected prospective voters giving the election to the Republican nominee by staying away from the polls on election day.

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USA Today's front-page feature last week on the 150^th anniversary of the arrival in Brazil of the "Confederados" who fled the post-Civil War South to begin new lives there was a reminder of my column on the same topic last July.

But while that Flynn's Harp dealt with the fact there was one place the Confederate Stars and Bars would always be honored, despite the burgeoning outcry against the flag in this country, the column was really about my friend Gary Neeleman's chronicling of the only emigration in U.S. history.

I got some pushback from some readers of that column for the comment that the 40 years of research by Neeleman, and his wife,Rose, through aged documents, old letters and newspaper clippings, had led him to conclude that history, not racial hatred, and pride, not prejudice, were the driving force for those who moved to Brazil.

I suspect USA Today likely has gotten similar pushback for its gentle treatment of the descendants, including kids wearing baseball caps with the Confederate battle flag emblazoned on them, of those 7,000families in the 1866-67 migration,

Neeleman's book, is in the process of being published in Portuguese in Brazil with negotiations under way for a publishing in this country in English.

As Neeleman explains, many of the southerners were from the most prominent families in the South who established in Brazil the cities of Americana and Santa Barbara d'Oeste and whose descendants gather annually at the old cemetery near the cities to celebrate their heritage.

Neeleman's book on the Confederates is actually one of three he has written to bring to light little-known details of Brazil's history. One that deserves broader awareness is the story, unfortunately little-known in this country, that after the Japanese captured the Indonesian rubber fields that represented about 97 percent of the world's rubber production at that time, the U.S. and its allies would have had little chance to win World War II without Brazil.

Rubber Soldiers-the Forgotten Army that a Saved WWII, details how Franklin Roosevelt and Brazilian President Getulio Vargas agreed to send 55,000 tappers into the Amazon Jungle to tap rubber for the war effort and how 26,000 of themdied of jungle illnesses, wild animals, accidents, etc. during the four years of the war. The rubber they harvested was the bridge that won the war.

It would be appropriate, as relations between what Neeleman routinely refers to as "the two giants of the western hemisphere," ebb and flow, if the fact that the U.S. owes a debt to Brazil were part of our historical recollection.

Neeleman laments the lack of awareness of our two nations' ties but points to what he refers to as "a linguistic tomb" because Portuguese is a barrier to entry for those seeking to explore history, with most historians who are seeking Latin American material search the array of Spanish-language nations.

Neeleman, 82, among my closest of friends since we worked together as executives for United Press International in the 1970s, got his Brazilian exposure with UPI as manager there in the mid-1960s. He has been a believer since then of the ties that have existed between what he routinely evangelizes as "the two giants of the western hemisphere."

After he returned with UPI to Salt Lake City, he set up annual trips for college all-star basketball teams, including 1979 national champion Michigan State and its star, Magic Johnson, to play games around Brazil and offer coaching help to local players.

Brazil recognizes his contribution and he has received a series of awards, including most recently being summoned by the Brazilian ambassador to Los Angeles a few days ago to receive the highest award that nation bestows, approved without his knowledge last summer by the National Congress of Brazil.

That award followed his receipt last summer for best non-fiction published in Latin America the prior year. That book, "Tracks in the Amazon," details the construction of a railroad through the jungle, at a cost of thousands of lives, to bring goods from Bolivia, down the Amazon to the coast. The golden spike marking completion, after 45 years, of what was known by various names, such as Devil's Railroad. Ghost Train and Mad Maria, was driven in 1912.

Last September he received an unusual honor as the fourth recipient of an award whose English translation is Citizen of Sao Paulo. Others who preceded him as recipients of the honor named for the State of Sao Paulo were the Pope, the Dalai Lama and the founder of the Mormon Church in Brazil.

Gary and Rose travel to Brazil about three times a year and when they're not traveling on personal or client business, or traveling to the Brazilian back country as part of their research for his books, he's doing Brazil's business as honorary counsel in Salt Lake City.

I kid Neeleman that his most important contribution to Brazil is the fact that he and Rose are the parents of David Neeleman, Jet Blue Airlines founder and now founder and CEO of Azul, the Brazilian carrier that is among the fastest-growing airlines in the world with its expansion and acquisitions.

Referring to Gary and Rose's ability to avoid slowing down (and because of his diminished eyesight it's essential for Rose to keep pace, or maybe sometimes set the pace) son Stephen, an MD and founder of publicly traded HealthEquity, recently told them: "You and mom are sucking the very marrow out of the bones of life." Told of that comment, another son in Brazil added: "And now you're chewing on the bones."

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As the battle rages over the future visibility role, if any, for the flag of the confederacy, one place the stars and bars will remain honored and celebrated is in Brazil, where Confederates created colonies after the Civil War at the invitation of the Brazilian emperor and proceeded to make a lasting mark on that nation's culture. 

That little-known Civil War chapter is the subject of a book by one of my closest friends, Gary Neeleman, that is to be published in Brazil in Portuguese before year end and negotiations are proceeding to have it published soon thereafter in English in the United States. 

When published in English, the book could be a timely addition to the current discussion, including both the legitimate effort to minimize future display of the Confederate battle flag and the less logical disparagement of Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee and anything relating to the citizens of the Confederacy. 

Neeleman's Gary and Rose Neeleman research over the past 40 years through aged documents, old letters and newspaper clips brings him to conclude that history not racial hatred, pride not prejudice, were the driving force for those who migrated to Brazil rather than again become part of the United States.

My friendship with Neeleman, 81, extends back more than 40 years, beginning with our more than a decade as executives at United Press International. And I've been struck by his perpetual zeal to evangelize "the spiritual link between the United States and Brazil." While a focus of this column is on Neeleman's book on the Confederate migration, because of its timeliness, the column is really more about the journalist who built a lifelong love affair with Brazil and its people and has left his imprint on the nation, where his contributions will be honored in a few weeks in San Paulo. 

But to first finish the story of the Confederates, obviously, no slaves accompanied the some 7,000 "Confederado" families in the 1866 migration, in which they were personally greeted by Emperor Dom Pedro II upon their arrival in their new home. But interestingly, the southerners avoided acquiring slaves in Brazil, a country where slaves were more common at that time than in virtually any country in the world. 

Neeleman notes that when leaders of the more than 20,000 southerners who founded two communities in Brazil were asked about the fact they didn't have slaves, they replied that they no longer wanted to own people but preferred to employ them "so we can fire them if they don't do their job." 

The southerners, many of them from the most important and prominent families in the southern part of the United States, established the cities of Americana and Santa Barbara do Este. And, as Neeleman notes, for 150 years the descendants of those Confederate communities have gathered annually to celebrate their heritage at the Cemetario de Campo, the old cemetery where about 2,000 Confederate soldiers and their families have been buried. And the Stars and Bars that were the Confederate Battle Flag were and have remained highly visible there, some Confederates actually being buried wrapped in the flag. 

He recalls the year he was asked to help arrange for former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, as well as aide Jody Powell to attend the Confederate picnic at the cemetery and how "they sat at the cemetery, sang Dixie and all three had tears streaming down their faces." 

"That portion of American history and the stories of the 'Confederadoes' are lost in a linguistic tomb because Portuguese is a barrier to entry for those seeking to explore history," explains Neeleman. who hopes those stories in English will bring a closer look in this country at that history. 

Neeleman routinely refers to "the two giants of the Western Hemisphere" and his research on Brazil and its people has actually resulted in not just a book on the Confederate but also two other books that emphasize the ties between the two nations. One already published, "Tracks in the Amazon," details the construction of a railroad through the jungle, at a cost of thousands of lives, to bring goods from Bolivia, down the Amazon to the coast. The other book tells the also little-known story of how Brazilian rubber saved the allied war effort in World War II after Japanese victories in the South Pacific captured the Indonesian rubber fields that represented about 98 percent of the world's rubber production at that time. Restoring brazilian rubber production was vital to the Allied success. 

It was in the early '60s that UPI plucked Neeleman, as a young reporter from Salt Lake City, and sent him to Brazil, where he had learned Portuguese as a young Mormon missionary. His regard for Brazil and Brazilians developed quickly and three of his seven children were born there, including David, whose launch of Azul as his third airline, following Morris Air and Jet Blue, has resulted in the fastest-growing carrier in Brazil. During the 1963 Pan American Games in San Paulo, Neeleman recalled being struck by the conduct of U.S. athletes who played what he described as "the Ugly Americans," overwhelmingly defeating their South American opponents and treating them with disdain following the competition.

"I made up my mind right there that I would someday do something about that attitude," Neeleman told me. And so he did when, after returning to Salt lake City, he called upon the close-knit Utah coaches to help him put together a college basketball post-season tour of South America. 

That tour, with Neeleman acting as scheduler, accommodations arranger and bag-boy, became an NCAA post-season fixture and Neeleman became a regular luncheon speaker each year at the NCAA tournament. 

Gary and Rose travel to Brazil about three times a year and when they're not traveling on personal or client business, or traveling to the Brazilian back country as part of their research for his books, he's doing Brazil's business as honorary counsel in Salt Lake City. 

One of those trips was last September when he received an unusual honor as the fourth recipient of an award whose English translation is Citizen of San Paulo. Others who preceded him as recipients of the honor named for the State of San Paulo were the Pope, the Dalai Lama and the founder of the Mormon Church in Brazil. Add Neeleman to the list.

Although this state is home to a world class life sciences and biotech non-profit sector, Washington's Legislature seems to only toy with understanding that being competitive with other states in the quest for pre-eminence in that industry requires demonstrating a willingness to spend state dollars.

That's likely at least part of the reason for the strong bi-partisan support among the lawmakers for a bill that would have put in place the essential final piece of a cancer research fund: an administrative body to begin planning grants, accepting donations and basically letting the fund become operational.

But one of the issues left undone when the Legislature adjourned at the end of March was final action on the bill, HB2679, that would have consolidated the cancer-research fund that was born of a bold idea in the 2015 Legislature into the Life Science Discovery Fund (LSDF). Intriguingly the same legislature left LSDF without a future by defunding it.

The bill was approved overwhelmingly by the Democrat-controlled House and passed out of the Senate committee and sent to the Ways and Means Committee, which has to approve bills that carry an appropriation. The bill languished there in the final days and died with the end of the session.

The LSDF-related bill, sponsored primarily by Democratic Rep. Jeff Morris, was to create a new Center of Excellence for Life Science and Cancer Research, to be overseen by LSDF.

The cancer-research-fund bill itself is designed to provide $20 million a year for the next 10 years with $10 million to come from state funds that can be released only after commitment of a "non-state match" of $10 million. The lawmakers appropriated $5 million to launch the fund, called CARE, which needs a board to oversee it and a contract with a non-profit designated to administer it before it can actually go into effect and begin considering grants.

So the provisions of the legislation creating the cancer fund are still in place, waiting to be implemented, and in fact Gov. Jay Inslee is in the process of selecting the 13-member board required to be named by July 1, according to the legislation.

The LSDF bill died at the end of last session and would have to be introduced again in 2017, in the event Morris should decide to take another run at employing LSDF as administrative entity

A life sciences ecosystem is important for the state and an ecosystem is supported by numerous pillars. In Washington, the approach of the lawmakers has been to take down the pillars, specifically removing the state's R&D tax credit for life science firms and ending the funding for LSDF, which was created a decade ago to provide funding for life-science startups, both in research and in commercialization.

As former Gov. Christine Gregoire put it: "We are in fierce competition with other areas but, unfortunately, as a state, we have gone in the wrong direction by eliminating the research and development tax credit that supports early stage companies and defunding LSDF."

The cancer-research fund is viewed by the life sciences industry as restoring a pillar and all have indicated their support for the fund. But those life science leaders also share the view that the $10 million a year of state funds that it provides is merely a start, particularly given the support other states have stepped up to provide. What could be considered the other end of the state-support spectrum from Washington is Massachusetts, where a 10-year $1 billion dollar plan to support life sciences is now in place.

Gregoire, who as Washington's Attorney General led the fight that brought millions in tobacco money to the states then as governor led the effort to create LSDF as a vehicle to fund life science innovations, called the new cancer-research fund "an essential building block for a vibrant life sciences sector."

Gregoire, newly named to the board of The Hutch and thus soon to make her mark from inside the industry, addedwith respect to the cancer fund: "It can do a lot of good for our researchers and advance the work being done in areas where we have a unique advantage, including immunotherapy. The cancer research fund is just one part of it and the state needs to continue its targeted role or we risk losing our talent and the ability to bring cures to people faster."

Part of the pressure on the states has come about because of what had become, in recent years, a trend of NIH grants that have stayed fairly constant while purchasing power for those grants has declined yearly.

In fact, this state has always had a healthy share of NIH grants, totaling about $230 million the past fiscal year with $94.8 million to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, $71.8 million to the University of Washington and $29.3 million for the Benaroya Research Institute.

As to LSDF itself, because it is currently managing nearly three dozen grants toward their completion, it will still be in operation, if greatly reduced in staff and perhaps board, by the time of the nest legislative session, so it remains as a possible experienced administrative body for the board now being appointed to contract with to guide the cancer fund.

"We're viewing this as a combination that will make Alaska stronger and better positioned to remain a successful, independent, Seattle-based company for decades to come."

by Joe Sprague, Senior Vice PresidentCommunications & External Relations

There's no way of knowing the extent to which the shadow of Delta Airlines hung over Alaska Air Group's decision last fall to connect with Virgin America about a possible takeover.

But regardless, a local business community troubled for months that it needed to figure out how to help Alaska Airlines ward off what was perceived as a takeover effort by Delta Airlines can stop worrying. Alaska saved itself.

That's the underlying fact about the announcement last week that Alaska has agreed to buy Virgin America for $2.6 billion cash, with assumed debt, leases and other costs bringing the total to about $4 billion. That's a figure viewed by some experts as too much -- a huge premium that Alaska had to pay on Virgin's market valuation to beat out JetBlue to land the deal.

But it depends on what a company like Alaska is buying. And in Alaska's case, it's a twofer, or maybe a threefer, as it dramatically expands its California presence and keeps Jet Blue from acquiring Virgin's lucrative California routes. But maybe most importantly, it pretty much ends the concern about a Delta takeover strategy.

Concern over any Delta designs on Alaska should pass, if for no other reason than that the Justice Department wouldn't be likely to allow one of the Big Four carriers to buy number five, which is where the Virgin deal, once approved, would place Alaska.

That Justice Department point was offered by Joseph Shocken, president of Seattle's Broadmark Capital, when I asked him his thoughts after the Virgin announcement, since Shocken was perhaps the most outspoken business advocate of a "support Alaska" strategy over the past 18 months.

It was Shocken, whose business activity at his successful boutique merchant bank has made him somewhat of an expert on how mergers and acquisitions play out, who first reached out to me about "the business community needs to take sides and do so visibly against Delta."

I was receptive to Shocken's argument, and did several columns commencing with one that said Delta had turned from partner, which had been its relationship with Alaska, to predator.

The reaction of others I met with in the business community, not just in Seattle but across the state, after the first column indicated to me that Shocken wasn't merely crying wolf, particularly after a member of Alaska's board had confided "we're really worried."

So was the Delta issue a consideration for Alaska in its decision to approach Virgin America last fall about a sale?

Asked about that, Joe Sprague, Senior Vice PresidentCommunications & External Relations, said "We're viewing this as a combination that will make Alaska stronger and better positioned to remain a successful, independent, Seattle-based company for decades to come."

The deal still needs to pass through regulatory approval and as part of its information pack Alaska Airlines issued a timeline with the deal set to close January 1, 2017, and full integration by the first quarter of 2018.

The merge is likely to attract the scrutiny of Justice Department officials already pursuing allegations that America's biggest airlines have colluded to keep airfares high.

And since the takeover will mean California no longer will have an airline based in the state, which served as home to a variety of carriers over the decades, there may well be an effort to convince regulators it's not good for consumers.

For those who like a chuckle with their politics, it would amusing if Alaska-Virgin provided California's dynamic female Democratic duo in the U.S, Senate reason to clash for the first time with their Washington Senate Democrat counterparts.

But antitrust experts suggest the takeover of Virgin by Alaska probably will be seen by those federal regulators as a union that will better equip Alaska to compete against larger rivals.

And if the concern of Shocken and others who have watched the shrinkage of the airline industry by takeovers play out were legitimate, Alaska was destined to lose a battle with Delta so the prospect of an erosion of discount fares was bound to be an outcome, whether because if Alaska's growth or its decline.

The final piece of the Delta puzzle that needs to play out is the possible restoration of a Delta-Alaska partnership arrangement. The effort to achieve that is certainly a possibility with the retirement of Richard Anderson from the CEO role, since he was the key protagonist in the obvious beat-down-Alaska strategy. But since Anderson remains as executive chairman of the Delta board, he may still influence a Delta move to restore relations with Alaska, returning to partner instead of predator.

But the fact is any thoughts about that are not even on Alaska's agenda right now.