The Seattle area's brain science leadership, specifically the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Seattle biotech company that has become a focal point of the battle against neurodegenerative disease, is on display this week in Jackson Hole, WY, where the annual Wyoming Global Technology Summit is taking place.

Leen KawasLeen Kawas, CEO of Seattle-based M3 Biotechnology, and Amy Bernard, product architect for the Allen Institute, will be members of a panel moderated by former Seattleite Amber Caska, CEO of NEXT Family Office, that will explore "The New Frontier: Innovations in Neuroscience." Rachael Dunlop, Senior Research Fellow at the Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson, WY, is the third panelist.

It's an opportune time for Kawas to be appearing before an audience that includes potential investors since her company and its novel regenerative therapies for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases has completed Phase 1a and 1b with its lead compound.  

M3, which has been described as being at the leading edge in the new field of regenerative medicine, is now actively recruiting Alzheimer's patients in Phase 1c and plans to begin Phase 2 trials next year.

Amber Caska 
The clinical trials that have been completed with M3's lead compound NDX-1017 have been designed to assess safety, toxicity and tolerability while evaluating a biomarker strategy for the therapy for Alzheimer's that are intended to slow or even stop the progression of the disease.

Caska pointed out to me that "The Allen Institute of Brain Science independently highlighted a lead target through separate gene studies that M3 Biotechnology was pursuing research on, showing the important role of these independent research institutes." 

In a column a year ago, as M3 began human trials, I wrote that "The manner in which Kawas, in just under four years as president and CEO of M3 Biotechnology Inc., took the young company from the lab toward commercialization and has ascended to virtually the top of the visibility pyramid in her industry is storybook material."

In fact, as I said in that Harp, Kawas, as a 33-year-old woman from Jordan, has become the new face of biotech in Washington State, and beyond, since she is in demand to be on hand for seminars, conferences and investor gatherings relating to life sciences, biotech or Alzheimer's across the country.

As Carol Criner, who has served as CEO and turnaround executive at various companies in an array of industries and is an M3 investor and advisor, told me for that year-ago column, "Now that she is a celebrity CEO, it's hard to imagine this all began a few short years ago."

"I witnessed her face the headwinds of giant egos and sexism with resilience," Criner noted. "She never gave up. Her success largely silenced a lot of vocal-doubters. I love it.  She's amazing and strong."

Amber CaskaThe panel on which Kawas is featured was Caska's idea. As a transplant to Jackson Hole, she approached the organizers of the event that was created five years ago by the non-profit Jackson Hole Technology Partnership about putting together an all-female panel and they seized on the idea.

Caska is an angel investor with an impressive background, having come to Jackson Hole from the Bay Area where she had managed the family office fund for former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, before taking the role as president and COO of the women angel organization Portfolia. Prior to that she ran Microsoft founder and pro sports owner Paul Allen's family office fund and helped guide a number of his investments, including the NBA Portland Trailblazers.

In addition to Caska's panel, the 2018 summit will feature an array of leaders of various industries and innovators on the topics of Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Fintech, Venture Capital, Quantum Computing and Digital Healthcare Technology.

Caska isn't the only female executive with impressive credentials to have been recent newcomers to Jackson Hole.

Debbie Hopkins, who was CEO of Citi Ventures and led Citigroup Innovation, moved to Jackson Hole this year, and she also is moderating a panel, titled "High Altitude Entrepreneurship, from Founders to Funders."

"Debby and I have been brainstorming on how we could convene more diversity in leadership to discuss innovation and investment in Wyoming," Caska said.

The event itself, being held in one of the wealthiest per-capita cities in America, is a model for what could be done in other less populated states.

The Jackson Hole Technology Partnership founded the event to identify new technologies relevant to rural populations and accelerate access to those technologies on a global scale. In addition to the summit, the organization holds follow up workshops.  

The JHTP touts its focus as solving rural challenges by accelerating technologies that improve biotech and healthcare delivery, energy, information security, mobile banking, agriculture, transportation, communication, and clean water and clean air.

As Caska noted to me for this column: "Wyoming wants to attract more science, innovation, tech, and jobs here.  The Governor hosts this annual summit to convene global speakers to share innovation projects they are working on and see if there is a way to tie into partnership opportunities for the State of Wyoming."

"I think there is a great opportunity for rural areas to collaborate with innovation and education centers from around the globe," Caska said. "Many experienced professionals are moving to rural states looking for a different quality of life to that of the overcrowded cities. There is a ton of talent to be tapped and so building innovation centers in places such as Jackson Hole totally makes sense."

On the 10th and 15th anniversaries of 9/11, I shared an article written a few days after that tragic 2011 September day by a former, now late, United Press International colleague, Al Webb.  From his post in UPI's London bureau, Webb did a wrap-up of the grief that citizens of every country shared on our behalf. As another anniversary of 9/11 arrives, I share again Webb's article that captured that display of shared pain in a way that deserves, or rather requires, remembering. And its rereading stirs a compelling question to ponder: whether the global regard for us that outpouring of affection evidenced remains our national treasure or whether it is now merely a squandered legacy.    

By Al Webb
LONDON (UPI) -- A small girl with a Cockney accent shyly waved a tiny American flag, and a queen brushed away a tear. In a Scottish town that has known its own tragedy, a lone church bell tolled. On a German river, foghorns sounded a low moan.

Across countries and continents, waves of sympathy for a nation in anguish rolled on. A young woman in a Kenyan park wept over the sad headlines in newspapers spread on the ground. A one-time terrorist donated blood for the victims. Hundreds stood in line in cities from Dublin to Moscow to sign books of condolences.  

And over the outpouring of grief and mourning for the lives lost in the boiling flames and rubble of the World Trade Center towers and a wing of the Pentagon, time and again came the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," sometimes in places where it had never been sung before.

In a gesture reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner," symbolizing his solidarity with another troubled people a half-century ago, the Paris newspaper Le Monde perhaps summed it up best: "We are all Americans."

In London, where the little girl with the funny accent and her American flag pressed her damp face against the gates, the band performing the traditional Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace suddenly did something it had never done before -- it struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner."

For 45 minutes, the Mall in front of the palace became a little piece of America for hundreds of its citizens who were there because there were no planes to take them home. And the band of the Coldstream Guards played on.

As tear-stained faces lifted and sang along, as Americans and British and other nationals waved Old Glory, the marches rolled -- "The Liberty Bell" after the national anthem, followed by "The Washington Post March" and "Semper Fidelis" and finally, heart-rendingly, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

What the Coldstream Guards had triggered was the greatest mass demonstration of grief in Britain since Princess Diana was killed in a car crash four years ago. And as with Diana's death, a carpet of flowers, children's toys, poems, letters, all illuminated by tiny candles, built up this time at the fortress-like U.S. Embassy in London.

Amid the hundreds of bouquets, a single American flag was wrapped around a tree. One woman pressed her tear-dampened lips to its fringe in a soft kiss.  

The sweeping tide of mourning reached its crescendo at 11 o'clock Friday morning when Britain, France, Germany and scores of other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia went silent for three minutes, in honor of the innocent dead in America.

In Paris, the elevator at the Eiffel Tower stopped halfway to the top. Buses, trams and cars halted in their tracks across the continent.

In Spain, more than 650 city and town halls became gathering centers for tens of thousands who bent their heads in silent prayer -- and then, at the end of the three minutes, they lifted their eyes and applauded in that people's traditional tribute to the victims of terrorism.

On the River Elbe leading into Hamburg, ships flew their flags at half-mast. The minutes of silence crept by -- and at the end were broken by the sound of a thousand foghorns rolling across the water into the city's very heart.

In Lockerbie, Scotland, there was no applause, no singing, no bands, only the ringing of a single church bell and the flutter of flags at half-mast. This is a town with singular links to America, forged in a terrorist attack in the skies 13 years ago.

In all, according to an estimate by The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London, some 800 million people across Europe joined in the three minutes of silence.

At Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, once part of a dividing line between freedom and tyranny, a crowd of some 200,000 -- among them Germans whose relatives had died in terrorist attacks -- gathered beneath a black banner bearing the words, "We Mourn With You."

In Paris, crowds jammed the Place de la Concorde, itself a symbol of reconciliation, while church bells rang for five minutes before the silence.

In the government's Elysee Palace, "The Star-Spangled Banner" rang out, while over the French airwaves, radio stations played John Lennon's "Imagine."

The bankers of Switzerland are not noted for their sentimentality, so they dealt in their own currency. At the end of the three minutes of silence, they announced they were donating more than $500,000 to the families of the victims of the atrocities in America.  

Lloyd's of London, the insurance market-based in the British capital and one of several insurers of the World Trade Center, rang its Lutine bell and observed a minute of silence in memory of the dead in America -- some of them in the several broker offices Lloyd's has -- had -- in the WTC.  

In Belfast, the bullets and bombs of Northern Ireland's own form of terrorism, known as sectarian violence, went silent as tens of thousands from both sides of the divide -- Roman Catholic and Protestant - gathered in front of a makeshift stage at City Hall, to stand in silent tribute.

It is a city that knows the heartache of terrorism. "We have suffered for 33 years," said Betty McLearon. "People here have to be admired for the way they can cope with it. It will take the people in New York a long time to get over this."

In Moscow, the Russians observed a minute's silence as they laid wreaths and floral tributes outside the U.S. Embassy, once a symbol of the Cold War. Thousands of Muscovites lined up patiently to sign books of condolences.

In turbulent Israel, a nurse gently inserted a needle into the right arm of Yasser Arafat, himself a one-time terrorist who is now head of the Palestinian Authority. In a demonstration of support, he was donating blood to help the American injured.

Back in London, the minutes of silence were followed by a service of remembrance in the capital's majestic St. Paul's Cathedral, led by Queen Elizabeth II herself. In the audience of 2,400 inside, Americans hoisted the Stars and Stripes for the rest of the world to see via television.

Outside the cathedral, the tens of thousands who could not get in waved their own tiny flags and listened over the loudspeakers that carried the words and music for blocks around.  The cathedral's huge organ rumbled into life, to open the service, appropriately, with the American national anthem.

Then something happened that has never happened before, certainly not in public and doubtless not even in private. Softly, the queen began to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Now, the British monarch does not "sing" national anthems. When they are played, she never even opens her mouth. Until now.

 But Queen Elizabeth sang it all, this song whose words were written 187 years ago during Britain's last war with her lost American colonies, through the final words, "O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave." With the last note, the queen gently brushed away a tear.  

That said it all. 
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Reeham Sedky admits she was speechless, although stunned would be a more accurate description of the fans' reaction when the college senior from Bellevue upset one of the five best women squash players in the world at the PMI Dave Cutler Bellevue Invitational squash tournament last week.

Reeham SedkyThis isn't another Harp about squash but rather a column meant to convey, to those who might doubt, that the characteristics of commitment and perseverance treasured by older generations are no less evident in the generation just now coming of age.

Sedky's upset of New Zealander Joelle King might not as been as big a surprise, however, to those who've watched her progress as she became the best high school women's squash player in the nation, then on to the women's national collegiate squash title last spring as a junior at University of Pennsylvania.
 
Particularly not shocking to those aware that as a college sophomore she was honored at the U.S. Open Squash Championships with the 2016 United States Olympic Committee Athlete of the Year Award, the year she made her debut on the adult national team at 2016 Women's World Team Championships in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
 
Reeham: Winning the first round 

Sedky, 21, whose father is from Egypt where he played squash and now works at Amazon, was born and raised in Bellevue and attended high school at Forest Ridge, says she started playing squash when she was eight and spent two to three hours a day practicing, though there were no other girls who knew how to play squash.  
 
So, like many youngsters devoted to squash who have the support of their parents, she traveled around the country to squash tournaments where she eventually earned the title or national high school champion.
 
Sedky said of the New Zealander, "I actually had watched her play as I was growing up."
"I think she was pleased to see me win since she is supportive of the fact there are up and coming women professionals," Sedky added. "There are a lot of women my age, their early 20's, playing on the squash pro circuit."
 
She said she has known Shabana Khan, the one-time national women's squash champion who put on the Bellevue classic last week since she was 7 years old.
 
Sedky headed back to college last weekend for her senior year studying computer science. She'll be defending her national women collegiate title next spring, then plans to turn pro after she graduates. As an aside, Sedeky often practices by competing with the male squash players at UPenn.
 
Thus, since Khan plans next year to put on the round-robin classic for which last week was a first-time event, Sedky may be on display for local squash fans next year, and perhaps attract more visibility for herself, and for the event, than was apparent from the local community this time.
 
Meanwhile, Khan is envisioning a repeat of the round robin, again involving the top men and women squash professionals in the world, as a lead in to her launch in the fall of 2019 of West Coast Squash, essentially a tour of 10 western cities to showcase youth squash. She has gathered support from coaches and parents in cities across the West to launch West Coast Squash.
 
The round robin event put on at the Boys & Girls Club in Bellevue's Hidden Valley was de ja vu for those who watched Frenchman Greg Gaultier win the Men's World Squash Championship, a first time in the U.S. event that Khan put on in 2015. Winning all his matches in that tournament and all his matches last week means he's never been beaten in Bellevue.

As Mariner, Seahawk and Sounder fans pour into Seattle's major sports stadiums cheering their teams on to achieve national pre-eminence this year, a sports event of world prominence is taking place this week, attracting only minor attention, at the Boys & Girls Club facility in Bellevue's Hidden Valley.

Shabana KhanIt's the PMI Dave Cutler Bellevue Invitational squash tournament, a round-robin event in which five men and five women, all among the world's best squash pros, are competing over the five days in an event that is world class in several ways, making the lack of visibility in its hometown disheartening.

The event has not only attracted the world's top talent but is the latest effort by Shabana Khan, one-time national women's squash champion and a member of one the best-known squash families on the planet, to develop the corporate and sponsor support needed for her squash initiatives.  

An example of the competitive value of her event and the lost fan opportunity that lack of visibility brings has been the performance of Reeham Sedky, a college student from Bellevue heading back this weekend to the University of Pennsylvania, for whom she won the national women's squash championship last spring.

Shabana decided to include her in this event with the world's best because of the fact she is a Bellevue product and to everyone's surprise, Sedky won her Monday match, upsetting one of the world's best women.

Through her non-profit YSK Events, Shabana has become perhaps the squash world's most successful female promoter of the sport and has brought significant attention for Bellevue with a sport that has been growing more rapidly in the U.S. in recent years than in any other country.  

This week's event is appropriately named for the two men, both with worldwide reputations in their industries, who have stepped up financially since the Men's World Championships to help Khan fulfill her dream.

One is Dave Cutler of Microsoft, universally acclaimed as the key technical brain behind the Microsoft Windows NT and all the subsequent windows versions. A decade ago he was recognized as a National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate, perhaps the most prestigious honor in the country for developers of new technology.

The other is Robert Harris, founder, and CEO of PMI-Worldwide, a Seattle-based brand and product-marketing company with offices in seven cities around the world whose corporate philanthropy has only recently begun to be recognized.

But this is also an anniversary event in that Yusuf Khan 10-time all-India champion, emigrated to the U.S. in 1968 to teach tennis at the Seattle Tennis Club, bringing with him his family that then included children Asam and Shabana. Soon after arrival in Seattle, the elder Khan created the Seattle Athletic Club and made it a focal point for squash in Seattle.

Then two of his daughters became among the best in the nation with Shabana's younger sister, Latasha, several s being national women's champion before losing the title to Shabana, providing me the opportunity to joke in an earlier column, "best in the family is best in the county."

The Khan girls' older brother, Azam, also competed on the national squash circuit.
I talked with both of Shabana's key supporters to get a sense of why they have remained so faithful to her cause.

I asked Harris why he has been such a staunch supporter of Khan's, putting up $75,000 for this week's event, and he replied: "It's pretty simple. In a world beginning to look inward rather than building international alliances and global partnerships, I believe it's increasingly important to support sports that are global in nature and connect people from around the world. This is the only way humanity and our planet is going to survive and prosper."

Cutler, a devoted fan of squash and the Khans, arrived in this area in the '80s, convinced by Steve Balmer himself to leave Digital Equipment Co., whose operating system he created, to join Microsoft where he guided development of Windows NT and every major version of Windows since 1993, and more recently developed Microsoft Azure.

He regularly competed in squash tournaments before hanging up his racket in 2002 to focus his athletic activity on long-distance biking and is putting up $50,000 for this event as he has pretty routinely done for Shabana's events.

"She has some great ideas and a lot of those have been adopted by the national organization and players love to compete in her tournaments," Cutler said. "Not many people actually know what squash is, although it's a great sport for kids. And in recent years a lot of clubs have been converting racketball courts to squash courts."

"I'd like to see other people step up to help her efforts, a lot of them for young people, become more successful," added Cutler. "I tried to convince Balmer to step up but he's not a racket person."

It occurred to me after my conversation with Cutler that this search for support for Shabana's squash events isn't just about finding people who understand squash, it's about those who understand this s about supporting the internationalization of not just the Eastside but the entire region.

The numerous events she has put on in Bellevue, beginning with the Men's World Squash Championships in 2015 at Meydenbauer Center for the first time ever in the United States, have been aimed at bringing attention to squash, but with a focus on making squash attractive to young people.

When she put on the Men's World Squash Championship in late 2015, first time ever for the event on U.S. soil, Shabana charted new territory for prize money, which totaled $325,000 for the event that was held at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center. That amount became the threshold going forward with the U.S. Open in Philadelphia the next fall boasting a $350,000 purse.

Completion of this week's event clears the way for Shabana Khan's preparation for her launch in the fall of 2019 of West Coast Squash, by which she hopes to bring stronger and more convenient focus on youth squash in an array of cities around the West where parents and coaches have endorsed her initiative.

When Tracy Wood heard that John McCain had died, the woman who was the only reporter on hand when McCain and 102 other POWs were released from the Hanoi Hilton in March of 1973, she was "really sad. That guy went through so damned much and the remarkable thing is he seemed to learn from each setback and become better for it."

Tracy Wood on arriving for first POW release
(From the private collection of Tracy Wood)Wood was a 25-year-old reporter for United Press International who had been in Viet Nam for only a year when word came that McCain, who had been imprisoned under constant torture for five years, and the others would be released two months after the agreement between the U.S. and North Vietnamese to end the war.
  
Wood made up her mind that she would be in Hanoi for the release of the POWs at a time when every reporter was trying to find a way to get to Hanoi. She first tried to set up a press pool (meaning a group of reporters sharing resources) flying into Hanoi from the Philippines.  

But, she recalled in a phone interviewSunday, "Nixon himself vetoed any press pool plan, apparently because he didn't want any of the   prisoners photographed and have the photos sent back to this country."

"So that meant that I had to try a different way," she said.

Thus with a mix of pluck and luck, Wood decided to just ask the North Vietnamese directly for permission to be in Hanoi for the release. And they gave her permission.

Then how to get there, since there was no way for her to merely hop a flight from Saigon? She decided to take commercial flights from Saigon to Bangkok, Thailand, then to Vientiane, Laos, where she caught the Aeroflot flight that was the only commercial connection to Hanoi.
 
There she learned that AP photographer Horst Faas and an NBC cameraman named Chris Callery were on the same flight, but she proudly notes she was not only the lone reporter but also the only American journalist since Faas was German and Callery from England.
 
She explained with a laugh that the photo she sent me of her arrival in Hanoi dressed in a miniskirt was because she had dressed for commercial travel rather than for the usual military lift into battle zones in jungle fatigues.
 
She said the three journalists "got to stand very close" as the POWs were walked through the iron gates at Ly Nam Prison to the plane for their flight to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, but they weren't able to talk to McCain or any of the others. She noticed that McCain, 36, his hair graying, limped noticeably as he and the other prisoners walked along a wall from the prison to their waiting flight.
 
Wood's arrival in Vietnam a year earlier was also a mix of pluck and luck since it was as a reporter in UPI's Sacramento Bureau, at the same time I was a reporter in UPI's Olympia bureau, that she decided she wanted to go to Vietnam. We didn't know each other then, except for bylines we'd occasionally see on UPI's wires.
 
"Of the more than 2,200 journalists who were accredited by the U.S. military to cover Vietnam between 1965 and 1975, only 70 of them were women and most of those went in only for a short time to cover specific stories, such as someone from their town," she once told me to explain how hard the challenge of getting there would be.
 
Wood didn't get to Vietnam until 1972 when she was 24 and it took careful planning to get to the New York bureau where her lobbying would be closer to the decisionmakers.

Tracy Wood arriving for final POW release (Cronkite in the background) Her immediate boss on the UPI cables desk didn't think a woman should cover wars. But Wood had the good fortune to work for UPI, whose top editors Roger Tatarian and  H. L. Stevenson believed in the ability of women to report just as well as men, and dispatched several high-visibility female correspondents to the war zone. Then it was Wood's turn.
 
Wood made two other trips to Hanoi after the one in which McCain was freed, as the POW's were released in stages in 1973.
 
"On the final trip, we had to rent a plane," she recalled. "CBS was so sure the North Vietnamese would give Walter Cronkite a visa that they tied up every available plane from Hong Kong south, but in the end, Cronkite and the CBS crew had to go on my visa, along with the others in the pool and we all used Cronkite's plane.
 
"I was afraid he would be furious, but he was incredibly nice and told me I was just doing my job," she added. "Remember, he was a war correspondent for United Press in World War II. Really classy guy."
 
Wood, who spent years as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles times after leaving UPI in 1975, is now the editor for the Voice of OC, which bills itself as "Orange County's non-profit, non-partisan newsroom."

The insider-trading quagmire in which New York Congressman Chris Collins finds himself may be occurring at the perfect time, in the midst of an election season, to inject an issue of substance rather than merely another political issue into congressional races around the country. The question is the need for closer scrutiny of personal financial involvements of members of Congress.

Brian BairdCollins' troubles stem from charges by Federal prosecutors that he used his seat on the board of a small Australian drug company to tip off his son and others that the company had failed a critical human trial and that the thousands of dollars of stock they all held would be taking a disastrous hit.

That was the first time I knew, the naïve soul that I must be, that members of Congress could sit on boards of publicly traded companies, thinking it beyond question that someone assumedly serving the best interest of constituents who elected them couldn't also fulfill the fiduciary duties to shareholders that a board member has.

Brian Baird, the former Democratic Congressman from Washington's third district whose major impact was his leadership in achieving legislation that now requires members or Congress to abide by the same investor rules that govern the rest of us, thinks it doesn't even deserve to be elevated to the legitimacy of a question.

"Being a member of Congress is a full-time job," said Baird. "I put in 70 hours a week during my time in Congress and the idea that I could also fulfill a fiduciary obligation to shareholders is preposterous."

Thus the issue that Collins' apparent insider-trading transgressions opens up for injection into congressional races is a close scrutiny of all financial activity by incumbents, not just involvement on boards.

One problem is that while members of the Senate are prohibited from serving on corporate boards, members of the House are not, though they can't be compensated for serving in such roles. But while a member of Congress files a financial disclosure report each year, there's no central database where that information is available.

But Baird thinks there should be, and that it would be well if some government-watchdog organization could digest and disseminate it and thus provide the opportunity to evaluate the financial conflicts of those running for re-election. That could be a welcome factual issue to inject into those campaigns rather than merely political rhetoric. And perhaps it would impact some election outcomes, thus frightening others in Congress to shed inappropriate financial dealings.

It might be uncomfortable for some incumbent Republicans to come down too hard on questionable financial activity, given the track record of many members of the cabinet of President Trump who may have made it appear that unseemly financial activity was a requirement for selection.

But lest that come across as a political comment rather than a journalistic observation, I'll add that Democrats could also have a bit of discomfort if they are too critical of the current environment given that the "Queen of the Questionable" may be House Democratic leader and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  

No one who saw her mishandling a question in the now famous 60 Minutes segment relating to questionable investment activities by members of Congress would possibly argue with that characterization of her relating to at least past financial involvements.

Baird spent half of his 12 years in Congress in a frustrated, and futile, effort to gather support for his legislation to make it illegal for lawmakers to engage in the kind of financial transactions that those in the real world know as Insider Trading and for which ordinary people can be sent to jail. Baird and one or two supporters offered it each session but couldn't even get a committee hearing.

Then came the 60 Minutes piece by CBS reporter Steve Croft, which amounted to merely highlighting the replies of then-House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Pelosi to his unexpected questions about their stock transactions. Boehner merely like someone hiding from the truth but Pelosi looked, like someone simply incompetent, stuttering ..."I don't understand your question. Um, You aren't suggesting I'd ever do anything that wasn't in the best interest of my constituents...?"

Croft's reporting exposed how members of Congress and their staff traded stocks based on nonpublic information to which they had exclusive access, the very issue Baird's ignored legislation was designed to address.

The news program sparked a public outcry and lawmakers by the dozens scurried like frightened rats to get aboard as supporters of the bill amid the public outcry, and so in April of 2012, the measure titled the STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) was passed.

Despite the passage of the legislation he pushed, Baird said in an interview last weekend: "The whole issue of conflict of interest in Congress is something they have never addressed."

"I'd love to see a study about how often members or Congress excuse themselves from voting on something because of conflict of interest," he added.

And wouldn't it be heartening if the media focus on Collins' legal challenges over his financial activities led to the kind of public outcry, particularly during an election campaign, that could stir a congressional rush to get on board a reform effort as happened with the rush to pass the STOCK Act.

The trail of memories inexorably leads back to the days of youth, and occasionally it's worth the journey. That's how I began a Flynn's Harp a decade ago when "the journey" brought the judge, the attorney and the journalist to a reunion, then 50 years on since the three of us first met in the dressing rooms beneath old Marquette University stadium. And 47 years since we had last seen each other.

After our days together that September of 2008, I was sorry the reunion hadn't happened years earlier. But perhaps it took the wisdom of age to develop a perspective on the importance of long-ago relationships.

That thought hit home hard three years later when I learned from McDermott that Evans had died after a brief respiratory illness.

So the fact that 10 more years have passed and it's now 60 years on since that first meeting at Marquette Stadium and that three friends have become two has set me to remember, as happens when anniversaries provide additional distance along that trail of memories

From the September day in 1958, when two kids from the Milwaukee area and one from Spokane met as freshmen members of the Marquette track and field team, until early 1961, Terry Evans, Dick McDermott and I were inseparable friends.

Marquette dropped football and track after the 1960 season so I returned home to Spokane to finish college at Gonzaga University while Evans and McDermott graduated from Marquette, then moved on to law school (Evans at Marquette, McDermott at Fordham).

The idea for a reunion in 2008 of three one-time friends who hadn't seen each other for almost 50 years required a certain leap of faith that the trail of memories hadn't been overgrown by the passing of nearly five decades.

Dick, who went on to a law career with a prominent New York firm, and I had spoken once when he called me in Seattle in late 1965 to tell me of the birth of his first son.

And Terry and I spoke once when I called him in 1988 to ask if my son, Michael, could stay with him on a college-look-see visit to Marquette. By then he was a U.S. District judge, named to the position in 1979 at the age of 39 as one of the youngest appointees ever to the US. District Court. "We'll be on a trip at that time but he can certainly stay at our house...I'll leave a key," Evans said, an offer that Michael quickly rejected.

I always thought that someday we'd get back together for a visit. Then it hit me that summer day in 2008 as I began to think about that 50-years-ago first meeting, that "someday" is okay when you're young, but "now" is a better course when you're no longer young.

It was no real problem locating McDermott on the New York bar association roster. Evans as a judge was even easier. An initial e-mail in McDermott's case, a telephone call in Evans' made it clear we were all on the same page about a reunion.

McDermott had retired from his law firm, after helping negotiate a merger with a London firm that resulted in the creation of the world's largest law firm at the time.

Evans had become a judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court, appointed in 1995 by President Clinton at the recommendation of Wisconsin's Republican governor and its two Democratic U.S. Senators.

The three of us agreed that it was essential we bring our spouses along to Milwaukee to make conversation about children and grandchildren and families flow easier, and for them to get to know each other as part of our reunion.

The close relationship that developed long ago between Evans and me sprang from things like the fact that, in track, I passed the baton to him in the mile relay and the relay team's performance depended on both of us, and we on each other.

But it was also characterized by such memorable times as when Evans, having learned that I was taking Ancient Greek and thus knew the Greek alphabet, insisted that I teach it to him so he might impress his date the coming weekend.

We must have made an interesting pair to any who overheard as we walked across the campus that day with he reciting, and my correcting where necessary, "alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta (etc.)."
  
Evans, who grew up with his single mom in an upper flat in a modest Milwaukee neighborhood and once told an interviewer "I didn't even know there were houses where the bedrooms and the kitchen were on different floors," conducted himself on the bench in a manner that said he always recalled his roots.

He once loaned his own clothes to a defendant so the man wasn't wearing a prison uniform in court. And when a traveling carnival worker was found to have a rigged game, the penalty included the donation of 144 teddy bears to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
  
And when asked if he was a good judge, Evans replied: "That's a lot like asking if I'm a good kisser. Without having been on the receiving end, I don't really know for sure."

McDermott and I have stayed as close over the last 10 years as email and cell phones permit for a cross-country friendship, though the conversations now turn on important current issues like the rebirth of the Big East conference as a largely Jesuit-school alignment and whether Gonzaga basketball ought to be a part of it. As a Marquette benefactor, McDermott kept me up on discussions at various Big East presidents' dinners he hosted and even provided fodder for a couple of Flynn's Harp columns.

And inevitably what may have been our best memory flashes to the fore for shared laughter. That was when we cooked up a con job to convince dozens of students across an array of campus and party settings that Dick could read minds by telling them what card they had drawn from his deck.

My role was to hang around disinterestedly, or go outside and peak through a window to get a look at the card being held, then flash the ear or nose or chin-touching signals to identify the card.

Our guilty consciences finally ended the game after a few months when two fellow students, both National Merit Scholars, insisted after numerous occasions with the cards that they wanted to take Dick to Duke University's then-existing Extrasensory Perception Center.

As we celebrate the nation's birthday, honoring the date in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, it seems like the appropriate time to celebrate the American dream framed by that declaration, as well as give thought to who gets to dream it.

Two things made me think of that. The first was a feature today on Geekwire, the Seattle-based technology news site, focusing on the American Dream that guided immigrant entrepreneurs and tech leaders to this country and success. The second was a poem written by an immigrant fifth grader in San Diego about a conversation between "The Wall and Lady Liberty."

The Geekwire interviews had the tech execs explaining why they chose the U.S. as a place to build their lives, families, and dreams and thus were able to fulfill their American dream and became highly successful. It's worth going to the Geekwire site to take a look.

Guadalupe ChavezI had a chance to read the poem by Guadalupe Chavez after a prominent immigration-attorney friend of mine in San Diego who is a judge in an essay event for immigrant fifth graders from around the nation told me about the contest and the San Diego youngster who took second in the nation.

Kimberley Robidoux, a San Diego partner in the Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Maggio-Kattar, is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's San Diego Chapter and a judge in the Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest. The contest challenges fifth graders across the country to reflect on and write about the theme "Why I Am Glad America Is a Nation of Immigrants."

"We use an honor system that the parents did not write the essays or participate," Robidoux told me. "But also most of the 5th-grade teachers have the students write the entries at school so we are very confident that a parent did not write the entry."

So here is Guadalupe's Essay:

"Lady Liberty: Come in! Come in! Welcome to the United States of America! Pleasure to meet you! The Wall: Wait... No! No! Stop! Leave! You're trespassing! Lady Liberty: What's wrong with you? Why are you so close-minded? We've always welcomed people here. People have traveled from all sorts of places like China, Mexico, Philippines, Japan, Canada, Australia, and so many more. The Wall: No. No. No! I'll block their path. They're different, maybe dangerous. They shouldn't come in, they are not welcome. Lady Liberty: What's wrong with you? Many of the people that live here in America are immigrants. So if we push them away, that will mean fewer workers, less money earned, no variety of food, and no more diversity. Basically, there would barely be anything for the citizens. The Wall: No, no, we don't need them. We have our American citizens. We get nothing from them. Lady Liberty: Unless you are a Native American... Wait, no, not even them! Even they migrated here from Asia through the land bridge that existed in the Bering Strait. Every person that lives here nowadays has ancestors who brought something to America. The Wall: Yeah, right! They only bring problems. Lady Liberty: That's not true! They bring so many different things we enjoy day-to-day. Just think. Look around you. What do you eat? The Wall: Well, my favorite food is tacos with spicy sauce and soft tortillas.Lady Liberty: Guess what? That's not from America! What do you do in your free time? The Wall: I text, and use Twitter most of the time.Lady Liberty: Well, guess what? The iPhone you are texting with was invented by Steve Jobs whose father was a Syrian immigrant. What's your favorite song? The Wall: Oh I love Bob Marley songs! (begins singing) "One love, let's get together and feel alright." Lady Liberty: Yeah, definitely Bob Marley, who came from Jamaica, getting us all together and making us feel alright. Well, singer-songwriter Bob Marley grew up in Jamaica. I'm surprised that even when you're just sitting there without moving you don't notice the beauty that immigrants bring to the country. Just look around! The Wall: I only see fields and factories from here. Lady Liberty: Well, most of these fields that grow beautiful crops of oranges and avocados are worked by people from Mexico.The Wall: I guess you have a point. I'll try to be more open to new ideas. I guess you are right, we've always been a country of immigrants and whether I like it or not, they've had a huge impact on the country we are today. Lady Liberty: Thank goodness, you were making me so angry I was turning green."

I asked Kimberley to keep an eye on the young fifth grader to watch what comes of Guadalupe Chavez.

The 15 high school students who make up the inaugural Washington World Fellows class, an unusual program conceived by Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib as what he characterizes as "an equity-focused study abroad and college readiness program," leave Saturday for Leon, Spain, where the program will be based.  

The program is the result of a partnership between the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and the statewide non-profit organization called the Association of Washington Generals, with Central Washington University as the academic partner and support from the Seahawks and the Mariners.

While the Fellows program, approved by the Legislature this year, is not limited to disadvantaged students, Habib said the students selected for the first year of the program, "bring to life the dream behind the program: connecting deserving students with opportunities they might not otherwise have."

Nearly all of the fellows, all in the 10th grade, plan to be the first in their families to attend college, and for all of them, this trip will be their first experience in overseas travel.

As Ralph Ibarra, treasurer of the Washington Generals who has worked closely with Habib on the details to get the program launched, put it: "the students selected from this program are from all over the state from high schools where they wouldn't otherwise have study abroad opportunities."

In some respects, the program is a small step toward addressing an unusual and troubling high-education dichotomy in Washington, which is one of the top five states in the nation in the percent of the adult population with college degrees but one of the worst states in the percent of students not going to college.

Dr. James Gaudino, president of Central Washington University, which as academic partner will be providing college credits to the students for their involvement, says the issue of students not going to college has troubled the state's college and university presidents.

'We don't know the reason bur we have to think that one of the things that could be going on is a lack of self-confidence, a sense of 'I don't know if I can do this,'" Gaudino said.  

Thus he sees the creation of the Washington World Fellows initiative as a "self-efficacy" effort. "We need to help the students come to believe they can do it," meaning they need to think they have the capability to go to college and get a degree.

The last legislative session passed a bill that Habib pressed for and that the Seahawks and Mariners testified on behalf of that creates sustainable future funding for the Washington World Fellows program. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Patty Kuderer,D-Bellevue, dedicates a percentage of the revenue from the future sale of specialty license plates of the two professional sports teams to support of the program.

"I'm excited that students from all over the state have shown interest in this program - from Prescott to La Push," Lt. Governor Habib said. "Study abroad changes lives. I am thrilled that this fellowship will expand opportunities for these inspirational and hardworking students."

As Habib's office explained, the study abroad experience includes a full academic schedule with an emphasis on Spanish language and Spanish politics. Courses will be taught at a college level, and students will be able to earn dual college and high school credits.  

Following the study abroad experience, the World Fellows program will provide students with college-readiness support and leadership opportunities, including help with college applications.

The Association of Washington Generals, as implementer of the Fellows effort, is a Washington state service organization founded in 1970 by a group of Seattle-area business people in alliance with then-Lt. Governor John A. Cherberg. The founding purpose of the Generals was to provide a platform to recognize the outstanding service of individuals in this state and to bring them together into an organization that enables them to "continue to serve our state."

In 2005, the Association was codified under state law by the Legislature, statutorily linking the organization to the Office of Lieutenant Governor and formally established the Generals as official ambassadors of trade, tourism, and goodwill for the state.  

The financial support of two other organizations focused on helping needy students become college ready is significant in the view of supporters of the Fellows.

One is AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, which has been one of the Wenatchee School District's tools to helping kids go on to college for 10 years.

The other is the College Success Foundation, which works with school districts across the state and the District of Columbia, to provide support and scholarships to inspire low-income students to graduate from high school and pursue a college degree.

AVID was founded by a San Diego English teacher in 1980 to help average kids from low-income families develop academic study and career-readiness skills. The program has since been adopted by schools in nearly every state and many countries. Tutors help students better manage their lives and time.

The College Success Foundation was founded by the late Costco executive Bob Craves and Ann Ramsay-Jenkins in 2000 to serve what they viewed as "a very vulnerable population, the underserved  - those who might not otherwise get to college."  

They founded the College Success Foundation to provide students with the inspiration, mentoring and financial supports necessary to pursue and complete a college education.

(Editor's Note: The column I should have written about my grandson, Connor, and his competitive courage I didn't write for fear of it being too personal. But his hometown Mill Creek Beacon wrote the story after Connor had participated for Jackson High School in the state 4A track & field championships and reporter Ian Davis-Leonard wrote it with as much fact and feeling as Connor's grandfather could have. So Ian's story is repeated here with permission.)
                     --------------- 
Like many kids, Connor Flynn has always enjoyed sports.
The Jackson High School senior has played soccer his entire life, basketball for years, tennis in high school and recently picked up Track.

Unlike the usual athlete, Flynn would often have to exit sporting events, because of a rare disease that would cause his muscles to completely shut down.

Connor Flynn
Mill Creek Beacon PhotoFlynn was diagnosed with periodic paralysis when he was just 11 months old. The rare genetic disease causes his muscles to quit functioning for a short period of time.
"He is a very resilient kid," Connor's father Michael Flynn said.

Over his three decades working first with young athletes, then with disabled "Special Olympics" athletes and finally with wounded warriors whom he is helping restore to a focus on living, Bryan Hoddle has come to understand and teach that the words spoken or heard make a difference.  

And that has guided him to put together a presentation called "Words Matter," which he delivers to groups around the country, including earlier this month to a gathering of King County sheriff's department employees.

Bryan HoddleThe "words matter" talk by Hoddle, who has come to be known as "the Soldiers' Coach," is based on his experience with athletes and veterans. and thus wasn't designed with this time of social-media tirades and political outbursts in mind.

But it struck me that Hoddle's thoughts on the topic of words, and the importance of how they are said, while he emphasizes they were not put together with any possible political application in mind, would be appropriate in any number of settings involving any age group.

"People just start throwing words out in every situation from politics to sports to even table talk between husbands and wives without stopping to think of the impact those words can have," Hoddle told me.

His sheriff's office presentation was arranged by Carol Gillespie, who manages the King County Fingerprint Identification System, for an audience at the Criminal Justice Training Center in Burien that included police officers, sheriff's deputies, command staff, corrections officers and civilian police personnel.

Hoddle's comments that might be appropriately shared, particularly in this political time, included referring to the several-second delay that allows those monitoring media broadcasts to cut inappropriate words or comments before being heard by the audience.

"I wonder how different the world would be if we used the several-seconds rule when we are about to speak to make sure we only use words that encourage, guide and uplift those we are talking with," Hoddle mused for his audience.

At another point, Hoddle said: "Careless words are like a stab with a sword while wise words lead to healing. Words can be uplifting or heartbreaking."  

Gillespie shared with me her reaction that "I came away inspired to think of the how you should say things to people and about the missed opportunities to say the right thing."

Hoddle, a native of Olympia whereas a high school track and field coach he became the state's coach of the year, has won national praise and recognition for his accomplishments as a coach and an advisor to coaches, his work with "special" disabled athletes and aiding seriously injured veterans, particularly those who have lost limbs.

Among his many honors, Hoddle was chosen head coach of the 2004 U.S. track and field team in the Athens Paralympics, was a 2013 Runner's World Magazine Hero of the Year in Running and a U.S.A. Track and Field Presidents Award winner.  

It was after his return from the 2004 Paralympics that Hoddle got a call from an organization called Disabled Sports USA, asking him to come back to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to do a running clinic for injured soldiers.

He made three more trips to Walter Reed then began doing running clinics at Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, AL, which serves and advocates for people with disabilities and whose facility is also a training site for the US Olympic & Paralympic teams.

Lakeshore asked Hoddle in 2005 to come to one of their sporting camps, to which they invite veterans from all over the country, teaching a lot of them how to walk again and some, although they may have just gotten prosthetic legs, how to run. Lakeshore became a continuing commitment for Hoddle who made his 17th trip there last April.

I first met Hoddle a year ago while he was in Bellevue working with area athletes who queue up to spend 30 minutes or so with him each summer to get tips on running, training and life disciplines. After we met and got to know each other, he was kind enough to offer an aging sprinter some tips on avoiding injury and maximizing performance.

And I first wrote about him last fall for his focus on wounded veterans at what he considers one of his most important veterans contributions, the annual week-long involvement with a select "team" guiding programs at Eagle Summit Ranch in Colorado for those "suffering from the visible and the invisible wounds of war." He's headed there next week.

As I wrote in the earlier Harp, Hoddle is part of a unique team working with the veterans in sessions at Eagle Summit, one of two such ranches founded by Dave Roever, himself a dramatically wounded Vietnam veteran, and his wife, Brenda, through their Roever Foundation, to work with wounded veterans.

With three key decisions she has faced since becoming Seattle mayor, Jenny Durkan has left some of those affected wondering "What was she thinking?" But in none of those decisions has she raised that chorus from so many groups, some in anger and some from among her own supporters who are dramatically disappointed about the decision not to include interim police chief Carmen Best in the group of finalists for the permanent chief 's job.

Mayor DurkanAs a fan and friend of Jenny Durkan's late father, a liberal Democrat who was a political power in the legislature whom I got to know while I was a young political writer, I was pleased to see her elected mayor and had high expectations that she would show leadership and guide Seattle back toward normalcy.

It was a belief shared by many business leaders in Seattle and beyond who felt that if Durkan wasn't the best mayoral candidate they could hope for, she was for sure far ahead of the other candidates who aspired to succeed disgraced former mayor Ed Murray. And many felt she might actually come to be a throwback to when Seattle's mayors had a more broadly appealing definition of "liberal" than that on display with most of the current City Council members.

Then came the three key decisions she has had to make as the city's chief executive.

First was her decision to appeal the King County superior court ruling that the City Council had broken state law by enacting a city income tax. She had debunked the then-planned tax at the time she filed last spring as "probably not constitutional," and added it's "not the solution we need now." Then admitting, in dramatic understatement, that it was a "longshot," she filed an appeal to the State Supreme Court in December, leaving many legal minds aware of how the state's highest court follows its own rules to muse "what was she thinking?"

Second was the City Council plan to impose a head tax on the city's largest employers. She pushed back on the council's original plan to levy a $500 tax on each employee at those large companies to raise $75 million a year to address the city's homeless crisis and in the end negotiated a compromise that seemed to appease Amazon and others.

Now the head tax, which Durkan signed into law, faces the prospect of a November vote on an issue that has caused businesses and elected officials in other cities to jeer at Seattle's willingness to tax jobs. And the fact Amazon is among prominent firms raising money for the ballot test indicates the city's largest employer actually wasn't okay with the head tax idea.

But most compelling for Durkan's future is the decision not to include acting chief Carmen Best, an African-American woman, and a native of the Seattle area who came up through the ranks in a 26-year career whose involvements have brought her vocal support from community groups and within the police-force community she guides.

Members of the Police Guild, the police union, were "extremely disappointed and angered" by what's happening with Best, according to Guild President Kevin Stuckey.

The Seattle Police Foundation, the non-profit entity that helps the police department enhance relationships with the community, improve employee development, and assist in providing the latest in equipment and technology, avoids taking political positions because of its 501c3 status. But it's known that its leadership was surprised there was even a search for a permanent chief launched since there was a broad sense that Best was the chief they wanted.

The question "what was she thinking" implies a lack of transparency, not a good image for Durkan to allow to develop. And her decision to intentionally bypass Best totally lacks transparency.

Best, a native of Tacoma who grew up locally, whose husband works for Boeing and whose college-graduating daughter is getting married this fall, was one of five finalists forwarded by a review committee but the mayor's own staff trimmed two, including Best, from the list.

Durkan will be choosing a new chief from a trio of male hopefuls, including one African-American. And in fairness to the mayor, the selection committee and its chairs, including former King County Executive Ron Sims and a respected interim mayor and former City Council member Tim Burgess said there was a sense among them that the next chief should come from elsewhere.

That was a reference to the reforms in the Seattle police department that have taken place the past half dozen years after a federal civil rights investigation led Durkan, then U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, and the Justice Department to guide Seattle to an overhaul of all aspects of the department. The reforms were in the wake of findings of excessive use of force by the department.

Durkan launched the search for a new chief earlier this year after Kathleen O'Toole stepped down as chief at the end of last year. Best, an assistant chief, was named interim chief, although she announced she would seek the job of permanent chief.

Listening to Durkan seek to explain Best's exclusion keeps the "what was she thinking" sense in the forefront and is likely to echo down the coming months.

Carmen Best"I completely understand that people are disappointed, for various reasons; that perhaps their candidate didn't make it through," Durkan said at a news conference. "And I love Carmen Best. But I also love the fact that she is a team player and has said to me that her focus is moving forward. I am going to respect that."

Best obviously can't respond to whether or not she said that to Durkan. Nor could she explain to those who were on an interview committee that the reason police are sometimes bring criticized for not being responsive enough to calls from citizens is that the city council has removed the tools that allow police to respond.

Can you imagine Best giving an honest answer like: "well, the City Council has tied our hands with decisions like eliminating the ordinance against loitering?"

So "what was she thinking" in removing from the list of candidates for permanent Seattle police chief the acting chief whose choice would have been supported by community groups, women's groups, minority groups and, maybe most importantly, the police officers who will work under her?

That question will haunt Durkan, particularly whenever a police and community issue comes up in the future.

The greatest clue to leadership is the ability to respond positively to constituent push back. In this case that could mean figuring a way to reverse course and get Best back on track to being permanent police chief.

When Washington Trust Chairman and CEO Peter (Pete) F. Stanton was honored last week in Spokane as a laureate of that community's Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame, it was appropriate recognition for the fourth generation leader of the state oldest and largest privately held commercial bank.

It was appropriate in part because, with the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame event not held this year, for the first time since it was created in 1987, the Spokane event is the only recognition of lifetime business achievement being held in the state this year.

Stanton was honored, along with Jack Heath, Washington Trust's president and chief operating officer, and local business executives Penn Fix and Debra Shultz of Dodson's Jewelers were also honored as laureates at the Spokane JA organization's 18th annual Hall of Fame.

Natalie Vega O'Neil, President & CEO of Junior Achievement of Washington, attended the Spokane event and got her first taste of Hall of Fame events.

"It was wonderful to witness the Spokane community coming together to celebrate those who have given back so much to the region," she said. 

Stanton has guided the fortunes of Washington Trust since Pere's great-grandfather bought the bank, founded in 1902, in 1919.

Stanton was 34 when in 1990 he assumed the role of president, second youngest bank president ever in Spokane, second only to his father, Philip Stanton, who had become president of the bank in 1962 at age 31.

Pete Stanton has been chairman and CEO since 2000, the year he named Heath president.

In an interview we did a few years ago, Stanton explained the success of his bank during the 2008 to 2011 period when many other banks, including three local competitors, fell into disaster.

"When something has been in your family for four generations, stewardship becomes very important," he said.

"That doesn't mean we spend our time looking in the rearview mirror," Stanton added.
"We're focused on the future, but securing that future has always led us to have concentration limits on our lending."

It was that "limit on concentration" that allowed Washington Trust to avoid the disastrous rush into real estate and construction lending that felled a large number of banks, including three of its locally based competitors, although Stanton's bank found itself eating some bad loans.

Sterling Savings Bank, publicly traded and about twice Washington Trust's size, and American West, about half its size, ran afoul of bad loans and wound up eventually being acquired, though Sterling re-emerged under new leadership and returned to successful operation before being acquired by Umpqua Bank.

During that time of financial trauma for many banks, Stanton's bank went on an acquisition and growth path that brought it to a network of branches spread across three Northwest states. including a large and growing presence in the Puget Sound area.

Stanton suggests that Washington Trust's success is built on what he refers to as "our three pillars of real strength: commercial banking, private banking, and wealth management."

Meanwhile, while there has not been any formal announcement of the fact, the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame is not being held this year. JA's leadership transition that brought O'Neil aboard and budgetary challenges resulted in the halt to the event created in 1987 by JA and Puget Sound Business Journal.

Because the JA organization has become Junior Achievement of Washington, its statewide role has meant that business leaders from across the state need to be considered for inclusion on the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame. Thus far only Leroy Nosbaum, the CEO of Itron, was a Spokane business leader inducted as laureate.

And that statewide role now has prompted discussion, particularly among members of the laureate selection committee, that the Hall of Fame event, if and when it re-emerges, should be rebranded as the Washington State Business Hall of Fame.

O'Neil has indicated the array of events that JA puts on each year will be evaluated over the next few months, presumably to determine which will continue.

But she did announce that a new Puget Sound Business Hall of fame display will be unveiled soon at the World Trade Center in Seattle.

As co-founder of the event, with JA, 31 years ago and part of the selection committee since then, I've been on hand each year as the business community leadership has looked on while a new class of their most admired and successful predecessors was welcomed to the laureate ranks. Thus it's difficult for me to imagine that there won't be a 2019 JA Hall of Fame banquet.

As Bastyr University celebrates its 40thanniversary and gives special recognition to the man who founded the naturopathic school and served as its president for 22 years, there will undoubtedly by some reflection on the decades-long struggle by naturopaths for recognition and acceptance by conventional medicine.

But the growing awareness of the importance of holistic healthcare, and the expectations a more health-savvy populous has come to have, and will more so in the future, accelerate the demand for integrative medicine, a phrase that means the convergence of conventional and alternative medicines.

In addition to celebrating its founding and its founder at the May 10 luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle, Bastyr will be introducing its new president, Harlan Patterson, who was chosen by the Bastyr Board of Trustees last month to guide the school after the six-year board member stepped in as interim president last July.

Dr.Joseph PizzornoPatterson brings a mainstream higher-ed background to his new role, having been Vice-Chancellor for Finance and Administration at UW Tacoma, and former Executive Director of the Washington Vaccine Alliance.

Back in 1978, with Portland-based National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM) deciding to close its Seattle branch and the legislature considering the elimination of the naturopathic license, Dr. Joseph Pizzorno Jr. and two other naturopathic physicians viewed the challenges to their profession as an opportunity.

Thus the three, Drs. Lee Griffith and William Mitchell Jr. and Pizzorno, all graduates of NCNM, moved to create a new naturopathic school in Seattle, a step that not only protected the licensure in Washington State but opened doors in the naturopathic field by building the school's curriculum on a science-based foundation.

Much has happened with Bastyr as it has grown in impact on the 51-acre wooded campus on the Eastside to which Pizzorno moved the school in the mid-90s, including the launch by now-retired president Dan Church in 2012 of Bastyr's San Diego campus, making it the only naturopathic college in the State of California.

Pizzorno, during his tenure, guided Bastyr to become the first accredited university of natural medicine and the first center for alternative medicine research funded by the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine.

The challenge of acceptance by conventional medicine that naturopaths still often face is pointed up by the absurd encyclopedic entries by Wikipedia, entries on naturopathy. Bastyr and Pizzorno that contain not information but tasteless and ridiculous putdown. Phrases like "pseudoscience and quackery" for Bastyr and, describing Pizzorno, one of the nation's most recognized and respected naturopaths, as "promoting dangerous and ineffective treatments."

Such intentional inaccuracies apparently aren't surprising to that who note that Wikipedia not only accepts but solicits large donations from organizations or individuals who may wish to have specific entries written to their liking and approval.

"Looks like the 'Quack Busters' got to write up the Bastyr Wiki," Pizzorno told me with a chuckle. "Those of us who are advancing this medicine use the number of times they go after us as a measure of success."

"There is a small posse (some NDs suggest "army" rather than "posse") of traditionalist doctors fighting the relentless march of alternative medicine into the mainstream," he added.

Pizzorno, honored numerous times over the years, travels worldwide, consulting, lecturing and promoting science-based natural medicine and collaborative health care and is obviously quick to do pushback of those who denigrate or fail to understand his approach to healthcare.

Thus he is unabashed in his summary of the struggles of naturopathic medicine, summing it up as: "The big challenge is that natural medicine and our foundational concepts have been actively suppressed by the vested conventional medicine interests for over a century. This has meant that the social and fiscal standing of NDs has always been under attack and patient access impaired through discriminatory licensing laws and blocking insurance reimbursement."

With respect to insurance coverage, former Washington State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn told me that while the number of states requiring insurance coverage for alternative medicine is growing, implementation and policing remains in the hands of the State Insurance Commissioner. 

After Washington lawmakers passed a law requiring insurance coverage, insurance companies went to court to challenge the requirement and Senn, an attorney and supporter of naturopathy, went to the 9thCircuit Court to uphold the law.

An increasing awareness of the importance of diet, exercise, and lifestyle on health has drawn a growing number of people, and not just millennials, to alternatives to conventional medicine and its practitioners. And for many, the search for alternatives leads to naturopathic medicine.

It was as I pursued all my options in deciding how to deal with my prostate cancer in 2011 that I visited a naturopathic physician, Dr. Eric Yarnell, on the Bastyr faculty, and learned of artemisinin, an extract derived from an ancient Chinese herb.

I had known a little about alternative medicine, but learning of artemisinin and the fact that it was being viewed as a cancer-fighting agent caused me to want to learn more both about the herb and about Bastyr, even though I finally decided, with advise from Yarnell, interestingly, that I should have a prostatectomy.

I wrote about artemisinin (search Flynn'sHarp: artemisinin) two years ago when the 85-year-old Chinese herbalist who discovered its ability to fight malaria won the Nobel prize for medicine. It's now also being viewed as a possible agent to fight, or possibly prevent, certain cancers, attracting National Institutes of Health and state funding to explore the possibility.

I've grown more focused, in recent years, on seeking the best practices and practitioners from conventional and alternative medicines for my personal healthcare, coming to understand that I make the final decisions on my healthcare and who provides it. But I have maintained a high respect and regard for my MDs, including my long-time internal medicine doc, who knows I tell people she once saved my life, and my prostate surgeon, for whom my respect has become friendship.

In addition, I look forward to regular breakfast or luncheon meetings with a couple of the most respected medical-practice leaders in the region.

But on the alternative-care side, I have an array of healthcare providers, each highly regarded in their specialties, ranging from acupuncture to high-intensity training (search Flynn's Harp: high intensity), to Reike to Feldenkrais, all attracting increasing attention from those growing ever more attuned to health issues ranging from performance enhancement to personal awareness.

I've been intrigued by the number of friends and associates who have come to take a similar approach to their own healthcare.

And in conversations about that fact, there's inevitably been a shared frustration that our conventional docs frequently put down the value of our alternative docs and we wish that they would come to understand the value each brings to healthcare, in other words, integrative medicine.

Perhaps promisingly, conventional medicine has come up with an alternative to alternative medicine. It's called Functional Medicine and some medical doctors are rushing to get certified for the new practice model that actually borrows much from the philosophy and practice of naturopathic practitioners.

Prominent physician and New York Times best-selling author Mark Hyman calls Functional Medicine "the future of conventional medicine, available now." He notes that "it seeks to identify and address the root causes of disease, and views the body as one integrated system, not a collection of independent organs divided up by medical specialties."

But back to old-reliable Wikipedia, which sums up Functional Medicine as a "collection of totally nonsensical gobbledygook."

Intriguingly, Pizzorno has been a leader of the Institute for Functional Medicine since its beginning, serving on the board since the organization was formed, including several years as chair and now as treasurer.

Pizzorno, who also is editor in chief of Integrative Medicine, a Clinician's Journal, has for decades been advancing the healing side of medicine and advancing naturopathic medicine in an array of venues.

• Heather Greenlee, Director of Integrative Medicine at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
• Patricia Herman, Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
• Wendy Weber, acting director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
• Laurie Mischley, whose research into Parkinson's Disease, including her exploration of the novel mechanism of introducing glutathione, the brain's primary antioxidant, to the central nervous system for Parkinson's patients, has brought her attention and respect on a global level (Flynn's Harp: Laurie Mischley).

As former governor and U.S. Senator Dan Evans moves toward completion of his memoirs, it's appropriate that he pauses at the chapter on the 1968 campaign to take special satisfaction in mentally revisiting the details of a failure that became one of his most important contributions. That was his leadership role in advancing the career of the man who would become the Father of Affirmative Action.

It's the story of a strategy hatched a half-century ago by the three top Republicans in Washington State to accelerate the political career of Arthur Fletcher, a little-known black politician from Eastern Washington, by setting him on what they hoped would be the road to the governorship. They hoped that with their help he could eventually succeed Evans and become the first elected black governor in the nation since reconstruction.

Daniel J EvansFletcher was a self-help advocate who had been elected to the Pasco City Council in 1967, representing the largely black community of East Pasco. The effort by Evans, Secretary of State Ludlow Kramer and the GOP attorney general candidate Slade Gorton to help Fletcher win the lieutenant governor's race in 1968 failed.

But because of visibility Fletcher gained in that campaign, in which he ran against popular Democratic incumbent John Cherberg, and national attention that occurred because of a role at the Republican National Convention, newly elected President Richard Nixon would tap him in 1969 to be assistant secretary of labor.

Fletcher had founded the East Pasco Self-Help Cooperative to keep local anti-poverty efforts alive, and Evans, a liberal Republican, saw him as the type of political leader who could bridge racial differences at a time of high local and national racial tensions.

Fletcher had already built a reputation in other parts of the country for his activities that set him on the road to becoming a political anomaly as a Republican civil rights activist.

In his home state of Kansas, he had been involved in the mid-50s in the black community's case against the Topeka School Board that became known as Brown vs. Board of Education. And he campaigned among black voters for the 1954 election of liberal Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Hall, with whom he became closely associated during Hall's single term and later when both moved to California.

Arthur FletcherAnd after playing college football at Washburn University in Topeka, KS, Fletcher played professionally for a brief time, including a year as the first black player on the old original Baltimore Colts team in 1950.

When the '68 election year dawned, Fletcher was already gaining media attention in this state. As UPI's state political editor, I recall doing a story on Fletcher, and other Puget Sound area reporters soon also had written about him, which helped propel him into an attention-getting role with Washington voters.

Early in the '68 campaign year, Sam Reed, a young Republican who would become the Secretary of State, created Action for Washington, an organization designed to attract young people into active political campaigning. Reed attracted the involvement of other young Republicans who would themselves become elected officials in this state.

Evans noted that it was an era of enthusiastic and sometimes disruptive youth activism, fueled by civil rights and the war in Vietnam. 

"Sam turned that activism into vibrant political activity, encouraging volunteers to join and then decide which candidates they wished to support," Evans recalled in an interview for this column. "No mention was made of political parties until the organization grew to be a potentially important force in the 1968 election."

The Action for Washington young people chose to support him and Kramer for re-election and to support the election of Gorton as attorney general and Fletcher as lieutenant governor.

"These young political activists were enthralled by Fletcher, a big man and former pro football player who carried a commanding presence and spoke with conviction in his resonating baritone voice," Evans said. 

The young people attracted to Action for Washington distributed flyers and yard signs featuring, as did newspaper ads and television commercials, what Evans remembers as the foursome of Kramer, Gorton, Fletcher and him "striding side by side with clean-cut confidence." All were in their early 40's.

At the 1968 Republican National Convention, for which Evans was the keynoter, Fletcher had a role promoting his self-help philosophy to an audience eager to attract black voters. Among those drawn to Fletcher's convention message was Nixon himself.

Fletcher returned to Washington after the convention and in September defeated prominent hydroplane driver Bill Muncey to win the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor. But he was defeated in the November general election by Cherberg, despite the support of the other three Republicans who all won their statewide races.

After Nixon's election, he appointed Fletcher Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. With responsibility for the wage and hour regulations for the nation's workforce and supervision of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, Fletcher now had the power to revoke federal contracts and debar contractors from bidding on future work.

On June 27, 1969, Fletcher implemented the nation's first federal affirmative action program, which required federal contractors to meet specified goals in minority hiring for skilled jobs in the notoriously segregated construction industry.

But after two years, Fletcher's affirmative action programs had earned him so much enmity among the leaders of the skilled construction unions that he was forced to resign.

President Nixon gave him a brief assignment on the United Nations delegation under Ambassador George H.W. Bush, which began the friendship that would take Fletcher's political career to even greater heights.

"Art played an important role nationally after losing the election for Lieutenant Governor," Evans noted. "That role may have been more important than if he had won the lieutenant governor race. However, he would have been a highly successful  incumbent and could have risen to higher elective office."

"At that time it could have had a huge impact on race relations and who knows how history could have changed," Evans summed up in an email to me. "He was a remarkable man and one I admired immensely. He lost the race interestingly in King County. If he had half the margin I had in King County he would have won."

Evans was kind enough to share a couple of passages from his book, from the chapter on 1968, including this:
"I'm confident that if Art Fletcher had been elected lieutenant governor he would have succeeded me, perhaps in 1977. In any case, sooner rather than later."

"Happily, Fletcher's political career was far from over. After he served two years as President Nixon's Assistant Secretary of Labor. He went on to serve in the administrations of Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush and became known as the 'father of affirmative action.' Fletcher headed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as president of the United Negro College Fund coined the wonderful phrase 'A mind is a terrible thing to waste.'"

"Those were remarkable achievements, but how I wish Washington could have been the first state in the union since Reconstruction to elect an African-American governor. That would have been a proud boast."

Evans' reflections on Fletcher, with whom he remained friends until his death in 2005, deserve a broad visibility and make clear he has been forever torn between satisfaction of the role Fletcher came to play nationally and disappointment about what might have been for both Washington and the nation.

The unfortunate accident in Tempe, AZ, March 18 when an Uber autonomous Volvo SUV struck and killed a woman who was walking a bicycle across a darkened street has stirred a strong reaction, in this state and elsewhere, from both sides in the discussion about the national push toward a likely autonomous-vehicle future.

One the one hand, supporters who have fed the vision of that possible autonomous future point to what some see as Uber's effort to produce an autonomous fleet "on the cheap," employing too few lasers and radar sensors. They argue that the careful use of sensor-device clusters to detect objects in front of and around the autonomous vehicle is a key to the safety of the driverless cars.

On the other side are those who, for a variety of reasons, would love to slow the pace of progress of the autonomous-vehicle movement. Some are obviously concerned about safety, a group more likely to be from the older generation. But others don't want the disruption of existing transportation plans, i.e. progress on rail commute.

More than a few in the Puget Sound area, for example, are fearful that the move to autonomous vehicles could have a negative effect on their "train," the network of commuter rail lines that are part of the $54 billion ST3 transit package approved by the voters in November of 2016 as an environment-protecting alternative to increasing traffic congestion. To many of its apostles, the ST3 project is like the "Holy Rail," not merely a device to slow traffic congestion.

And thus one of the concerns among autonomous vehicle (AV) advocates is that ST3 and the Sound Transit board that oversees it will come to view autonomous vehicles as a threat to completion of the rail-based plan for the region and use its power and influence to delay or stall progress. After all, most predictions about AV's are that they could come to dominate commute-hours traffic even before ST3's projected 2041 completion date.

And in fact, national transportation officials have made it clear that if autonomous vehicles move as rapidly as anticipated toward a ubiquitous presence on streets and highways, there will be an impact on planned and existing rail-transit programs.

But at this point, Gov. Jay Inslee has put the full weight of his office behind an AV future. Inslee not only moved forcefully last summer to seek to put Washington State at the forefront of states welcoming an autonomous future and issued an executive order to allow and support testing of autonomous vehicles but reiterated that commitment last week.

Inslee told leaders of technology and business at the 20th anniversary of the Alliance of Angels investment group that "The future of transportation will be in Seattle," and he elaborated by saying the region is going to be "the autonomous vehicle center of the U.S."

Inslee seemed to be pushing back not only on those seeing the challenge for the future of autonomous travel in the Tempe fatal accident but also on an op-ed piece in that morning's Seattle Times by a think-tank "fellow" named Daniel Malarkey for an organization called Sightline Institute.

There is an increasing sense that this country's population has come to be divided between those who think the term "fake news" describes the offerings of conventional media and those who are convinced the phrase best describes certain well-publicized tweets and texts.

So it's perhaps appropriate that a gradually increasing attention is being focused on a movie about four professional journalists who were certain, in the face of all the forces arrayed against them, that the then-president and his administration had concocted a "fake news" tale to justify a war in Iraq.

Joe GallowayThe movie is Shock and Awe, the title drawn from the campaign of that name created by the leaders of the administration of George W. Bush in preparation for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a preparation built on the premise that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the term "fake news" wasn't part our culture then, especially being applied to a president.

The movie, conceived and directed by Rob Reiner, has been described as "the politically charged story" about the four reporters from the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain who first looked into the Bush Administration's attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 terror attack. Thereafter their stories followed a theme that the allegations of WMD's were intentionally inaccurate.

One of the four was iconic Vietnam correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, then more than 35 years into his career covering wars and those who fight them and thus the voice of experience that the two youngest reporters turned to for help in finding their way through the fabrications formed to keep the nation focused on the need for war with Iraq.

It is because of my friendship with Galloway, both of us alums of the news service UPI, and because many in the Seattle area came to know him during his two visits to do Vietnam veterans interviews and several interviews he and I did, including the Seattle Rotary, that I decided to do a Harp about the movie. 

Regular readers of the Harp will recall that Joe Galloway has been the subject of a half-dozen Harps in recent years (Google Flynn's Harp: Joe Galloway).

Eventually, the four including Knight-Ridder bureau chief John Walcott, played by Reiner himself, came to be described as "the only ones who got it right," but before that, they had to weather immense pressure and scorn, not only from the White House but also from some editors of their own newspapers.

For example, there is the story of the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer saying bluntly that the tone of their stories doesn't "fit in." And Galloway recalled "There is a scene in the movie where Walcott confronts the Philadelphia editor for choosing to run New York Times b.s. over our story. He tells the editor 'will you be running the Times correction and apology when that comes out?'"

There is a perhaps ironic juxtaposition of the timing of the release of the critically acclaimed The Post, whose storyline about the Washington Post's publisher, Kathrine Graham deciding to confront the Nixon White House by publishing the Pentagon Papers, and Shock and Awe detailing a confrontation with a different president and more recent time.

In fact, Reiner, who says he wanted to make this film for a long time, suggests that the struggle he had to secure U.S. distribution for the movie might relate to his belief that "American audiences might not be ready to confront the subject."

I didn't think anybody in America could stomach it," Reiner said. "I don't think they can stomach it now, to be honest with you."

Shabana Khan weathered opposition from the U.S. squash establishment when she put on the Men's World Squash Championship for the first time in this country in 2015 in Bellevue. So she knows she will face a perhaps even stronger pushback when she launches West Coast Squash, designed to bring a stronger and more convenient focus on youth squash in the West.

Khan, one-time national women's squash champion and a distant cousin of the most respected squash family in the world, plans to launch her new series of western youth squash tournaments next month.

Shabana Khan and YasmineKhan's YSK Events, her company that put on the Men's World Squash event and followed that with creation of a Bellevue stop on the national professional squash tour that is similar to the pro golf tour and an event to showcase the nation's top high school squash players, is becoming a 501c3 to oversee West Coast Squash.

In fact, YSK Events is hosting a US Squash Gold tournament May 18-21 and will have the West Coast College Squash showcase for top student talent that will run concurrently with the pro event.

And she has also made her events an opportunity to showcase the Boys and Girls Club in Bellevue's Hidden Valley. 

But the reality that community and sponsor support has been lacking for Khan, despite the participant enthusiasm and parental involvement, may mean she can't afford to continue either the proof high school showcase events.

That will leave her to focus on the development of West Coast Squash for which she has had interest from teams in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah and Vancouver, B.C. in hosting tournaments.

 "We see a great opportunity to vastly increase participation numbers across all of these states by creating a program focused on providing a platform that allows them to thrive in Squash and school while not spending a ton of money on travel," Khan said.

Khan says West Coast Squash (WCS) is a competitive Junior Squash series that stresses education, sportsmanship, and competitiveness while offering a tournament structure that provides a limited amount of time away from school and multiple paths towards gaining a WCS ranking. 

"WCS will provide a platform for youth to achieve success in competitive Squash with a path to playing for Squash teams at top colleges around the country," she said.

"Because it is much easier to accrue points and enter large tournaments being located on the East Coast, where most of the tournaments are held, it puts kids who live in the East at a huge advantage to gain points, spend less on travel, and not miss as many school days," she added. 

"On the other hand, a family located on the West Coast is at a large disadvantage due cost of travel and school missed. We believe it is counterproductive for children to tell them that they must do well in school and a sport that requires them to miss multiple school days to play in a high-level tournament," said Khan. 

Squash, which is a racket sport similar to racketball, played by two or four players in a four-walled court (glass walls for most international events that are broadcast globally) using a small, hollow rubber ball. 

Squash for decades was a sport played mostly in New England, New York City and a handful of cities in the West with Seattle in the forefront of those. Squash players and fans represented a highly targeted and sought after demographic of men and women with median incomes of more than $300,000 and an average net worth of nearly $1,500,000.  

But in recent years the U.S. has been one of the three countries in the world where squash has been growing fastest in popularity. And that growth in interest has coincided with a decline in racketball, thus leaving the courts available for squash more numerous at YMCAs and sports clubs.

Khan has bitten off a challenge with West Coast Squash and will need some substantial help in meeting her financial goal.

"The target would be $100,000 to get us going but $500,000 is our ultimate goal to achieve our staffing and to have more clinics and offer scholarships to kids who will need assistance for travel and entry fees for a couple of years," she said.

But she has some innovative ideas, like "naming rights," naming tournaments after families for sponsorship fees, and using technology that would, for example, allow students to use an app to locate tournaments they might like to enter,

Her track record includes not just the men's world event in 2015 and the Bellevue pro and student events but the first-ever-in-the-US Women's World Championship that she and her father, Yusuf, put on in Seattle in 1999. 
   
Her father was nine-time squash champion in India before coming to this country to be head pro at the Seattle Tennis Club, soon thereafter establishing the Seattle Athletic Club and building it into one of the key squash locations in the West.

In fact, YSK Events, which she founded in 2015 to focus on squash events, is a family affair in several ways. She serves as chairman while sister Latasha, who was women's national champion when Shabana defeated her to take the crown, sits on the board.

It's also a family affair in that the "Y" in YSK stands for both her 11-year-old daughter, Yasmine, who was 14th in the country in her age group last year and her father, Yusuf. The "S" and the "K" are her initials.  

A search of the internet for squash and Khan turns up the fact that the list of champions over the decades is replete with those named Khan.

One entry notes: "The great Khans are the kings of squash with all of its greatest champions not only from one nation but from one single family in the nation--the Khans of Pakistan.

"That is where all this crazy stuff comes from for me," Shabana chuckled. "I am not scared of this effort I'm undertaking--well, maybe a little bit--but the family that I come from can't back down very easily."

(Editor's Note: This is the last of four articles on Washington residents for whom roles in the 1968 presidential campaign brought national prominence. The original articles, written on the 40th anniversary of that memorable campaign, were also the launch for this column and are reprised here on the 10thanniversary of Flynn's Harp and 50thanniversary of the '68 campaign.)
                     --------------  

Kitty Kelley was a spunky young woman from Spokane for whom the 1968 presidential campaign was the launch pad for a highly successful but controversy-punctuated career as a biographer of the rich and famous.
 
In a very real sense, the then-26-year-old who had, by accident, become a highly visible figure in Sen. Eugene McCarthy's quixotic quest for the presidency, may have been one of the biggest winners of that campaign.
 
Kitty KelleyOne of my favorite memories of covering parts of that campaign of 50 years ago as a young political writer for United Press International was a chance encounter with her at the 1968 Democratic state convention in Tacoma, a decade on since we had become friends as high school students in Spokane.
 
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. McCarthy, of course, was the out-of-nowhere senator whose run for the presidency had energized the anti-war forces, particularly the young, who became a change-the-world political force that year.
 
"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."
 
That was more than a year before McCarthy's growing outrage at the Vietnam war caused him to emerge from anonymity as the political leader of the anti-war movement
 
Thus that campaign brought Kitty contact with political leaders as the campaign moved across the country and the 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 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.
 
She described her reporting style as "moving an icon out of the moonlight and into the sunlight." But those she wrote about often didn't care for the sunlight on their privacy.
 
And because she was an attractive blond woman with the nickname "Kitty," those stung by her tell-all biographies of Jackie Onassis Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family and Oprah Winfrey, as well as other journalists, found it easy to dismiss the quality of her work.
 
What may have been the high point of her controversial career came just prior to the 2004 presidential election when her look at the personal and business lives of a sitting president and his family was published.
 
"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," was the target of a full-court press from the Republican Party, including a GOP memorandum to radio talk show hosts that denounced the book as "New Kelley Book, Same Old Slime." The fact that she was a Liberal made the denunciation from the talk-show hosts even easier. The book was ranked Number 1 on Amazon.com as it was released.
 
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 a fast-growing group of young women who did likewise in the late '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.

(Editor's note: In this third of four Flynn'sHarp articles reprising stories written a decade ago on the four Washington residents who gained national prominence during the 1968 presidential campaign, Watergate figure Egil (Bud) Krogh discussed the fall of a president and the lessons learned that he sought to convey for subsequent administrations. The validity of his message has echoed down the years, even into today's political scene. The original articles from a decade ago are offered now because it's the 10th anniversary of this weekly column, but also the 50th anniversary of that fateful '68 campaign.)
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The disgraced presidency of Richard Nixon is the stuff of history books. But for Egil (Bud) Krogh, the memories that remain vivid are of condemnation and redemption for the role he played and the belief that the events that led to the fall of the president need be kept ever in mind by both presidents and those who work for them.

Krogh, who had just passed the bar in 1968 after graduating from law school at the University of Washington, actually didn't have a part in Nixon's campaign, instead of being left to run the Seattle law practice of John Ehrlichman, the prominent Seattle attorney who helped engineer Nixon's eventual general-election victory in 1968.

Egil (Bud) KroghBut after the election, Krogh was asked to join the White House team as personal attorney to the president and staff assistant to Ehrlichman, one of the handful of men who basically ran the White House and thus the country until Watergate brought them all down.

The many books on Nixon and Watergate detail how Krogh was caught up in the scandal, named by Ehrlichman to guide the "Special Investigations Unit" that came to be known as "the plumbers," whose charge was to stop the leaks to the media after the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers.

What followed was the break-in at the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times had helped create a siege mentality in the Nixon White House. Krogh's role eventually led to a prison sentence after he pled guilty to criminal conspiracy for engineering the break-in.

Krogh had been an unlikely choice to head such a unit. He had a reputation as someone who scrupulously obeyed the law, with Theodore White writing later that "to put Egil Krogh in charge of a secret police operation was equivalent to making Frank Merriwellchief executive of a KGB squad."

But what the history books don't detail is "the why", which Krogh subsequently sought to explain in articles, interviews, and in his 2007 book, "Integrity. Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House." The book detailed the lessons of Krogh's lifelong effort to make amends for what he describes as a "meltdown of personal integrity" in the face of issues of loyalty to the president and to the power of the office.

The dedication is a telling reflection of that lifelong campaign: "To those who deserved better, this book is offered as an apology, an explanation, and a way to keep integrity in the forefront of decision-making."

In fact, the quality of the man is evidenced by his belief that, ultimately, it was the break-in at Fielding's office that set the stage for the eventual Watergate break-in because it created the sense that people could break the law in the name of the president, and that thus he was personally responsible for all that followed.

After he served his prison sentence, Krogh returned to Seattle and, with the help of a prominent attorney and eventual federal judge William Dwyer, regained his right to practice law.

It was in 2007 that we got to know each other and I did several interviews with him before various audiences and wrote the 2008 column.

Krogh recalled in our conversations and interviews how after Nixon's resignation, his personal path of reconciliation involved a visit with Fielding to apologize to him for Krogh's unacceptable violation of the rights of "a genuinely decent human being."

And Krogh and Ellsberg became friends, with Ellsburg writing the forward comments for Krogh's book.

Then followed a visit with Nixon in California in which Krogh recalls basically saying: "Mr. President. I apologize to you because everything that's happened was really my fault."

I asked Krogh over lunch in 2008 if he and Ehrlichman, who also went to prison for his part in the events, had ever had the opportunity to talk through what had gone wrong. "John and I had several opportunities to visit after we were in prison, about what happened and why" he said. "We concluded that so many of the mistakes were due to our not really grasping how off-base Nixon was in his demand for results that used illegal means.

Loyalty to 'the man' was the over-arching requirement for service on that staff." And it is the flaw of misguided loyalty that Krogh has remained ever convinced that presidents and their staff members must be vigilant to avoid, including his caution about "reliance on hazy, loose notions about 'national security' and 'commander in chief' and what such notions can be tortured into meaning."

Krogh left Seattle and his law practice in 2011 to join the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress as a Senior Fellow on Leadership, Ethics, and Integrity.

We last talked In 2012 as I caught up with him by phone as he was en route to a Pennsylvania speaking engagement. The time was near the anniversary of Watergate and I asked him if the book was still successful. "It's selling better now than at the beginning," he replied. "The issue of government integrity seems more relevant to people today."

By then his personal focus had become zeroing in on the School for Ethics and Global Leadership, which attracts high school students, and it was in that environment of sharing his philosophy with young people that he honed his Integrity Zone concept.

The concept of the Integrity Zone was based on a couple of fundamental considerations. The first challenges the process of thinking that precedes decisions, basically: "have I thought through all the implications?" while the second part is ethical considerations: "Is it right? Is this decision in alignment with basic values like fairness and respect?"

"We never asked any of those questions in the Nixon White House," Krogh told me. "And most of what we see in Congress today fails those tests. Instead, we see a focus on loyalty and fealty to party. You simply can't check your personal integrity at the door."