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.)
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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."

(Editor's note: This is the second of four profile article that I first published a decade ago on the 40th anniversary of the chaotic, impactful and tragic 1968 presidential campaign, relating the stories of four Washingtonians who were launched into national prominence with roles borne of that campaign. The articles are reprised now in Flynn's Harp both because it's the 10thanniversary of this column and the 50th of that fateful '68 campaign.)
                 ---------------------- 

For Jim Whittaker, memories of '68 campaign are of "might have been"

For Everest-conqueror Jim Whittaker, memories of the 1968 campaign are caught up in the might-have-been of Sen. Robert Kennedy's bright but brief campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was in an interview in 2008, as I prepared to do a series of articles 40 years on from that tumultuous 1968 campaign, that Whittaker recalled how he first met the man whose presidential aspirations would involve Whittaker dramatically in a memorable political campaign.

"After President Kennedy was assassinated, Canada named its highest unclimbed mountain Mt. Kennedy," recalled Whittaker, who in 1963 was the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest. "So inevitably, I was asked if I'd climb it and I contacted National Geographic about supporting the climb and we began planning it."

"Then I get a call asking if I'd be willing to take Senator Kennedy up," Whittaker said. "I called him and asked if he'd ever climbed, and he said he hadn't. I told him 'this is going to be tough. When I called him again a few weeks later, he said he was practicing by running up and down the stairs at his house crying 'help.'

"I thought, 'my god, what have I gotten into," he added.

"But it turned out he was in excellent condition and on the way down, he ran a couple of the climbers on our team into the ground," Whittaker remembered. "That was the beginning of a strong friendship."

"I was at his home when he decided to run for president," Whittaker recalled. "He irritated a lot of people by announcing."

In fact, what happened is that Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a quixotic lawmaker who decided to run against a sitting president from his party because of his opposition to the Vietnam war, had attracted a mass of young people energized at the prospect of a candidate of change.

McCarthy's campaign basically drove President Lyndon Johnson to announce he would not seek re-election, and that announcement opened the door for Kennedy, who never viewed McCarthy as an electable candidate.

As Washington State political editor in Olympia for United Press International, I was assigned to help cover the 1968 Oregon primary, which was the first real face-to-face battle between McCarthy and Kennedy, I had the opportunity to meet Whittaker in a way he wouldn't remember.

Whitaker and KennedyHere's that story: It turned out Kennedy lost the Oregon primary, the first ever loss by a Kennedy. I waited with Bob Clark of ABC news at the curb in front of the Benson Hotel in Portland for Kennedy's limousine to arrive. Behind us was a press of young Kennedy fans jockeying and shoving for the opportunity to see him, touch him, be near him when he arrived.

The limousine pulled up, the doors opened and Whittaker led Kennedy from the car. The young Kennedyites shoved forward. The last I saw of Bob Clark, he basically disappeared under the feet of an out-of-control mob of Kennedy fans.

I saw Whittaker and, as he passed, I grabbed hold of his belt and knew, since he was leading Kennedy into the hotel and was too big and athletic to go down, I was secure with his belt firmly in my hand.

The lead on the UPI story that night was headlined: "Kennedy bushwhacked on the Oregon Trail." It turned out to be a prophetic headline.

A week later, Kennedy won the California primary. Whittaker had a suite in the Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle, to which he had invited Washington state's delegation to a wine and hors-d'oeuvres political romancing on Kennedy's behalf to watch the results of the California primary.

Whittaker recalled that he had four speakers set up in the suite and that Kennedy's wife, Ethyl, called to say Kennedy wanted to talk to the Washington delegates.

"He thanked them for their participation and pitched for their votes, then he went down to give his acceptance speech," Whittaker recalled. "A little while later, as I was driving home and listening to the radio, I heard he had been shot. I turned around and went to the airport and when I got to the hospital, Ethyl and Teddy Kennedy asked me to go into the room with them and we said our goodbyes. Then he died.

"We flew back to Washington on Air Force One, which president Johnson extended to us," Whittaker remembered. "The funeral at St. Patrick's in New York was followed by the train ride back to Washington. The crowds along the tracks were incredible. Ethyl asked me to be one of the pallbearers, along with John Glenn, Robert McNamara and others I don't recall right now.

"I can't believe how long ago it's been," he said in that 2008 interview. "But it's as difficult to think about as if it were yesterday," Whittaker said.

I asked Whittaker in that 2008 interview if he and Kennedy had every discussed a role Whittaker might play in a Kennedy administration and he said they hadn't.

"But in thinking about it later, there were times I thought I'd have made a hell of an interior secretary," he said with a chuckle.

Whittaker's memories of that campaign, and of an incredible life of challenge and adventure, are chronicled in his book, "A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond."

It was 22 years after Kennedy's assassination that Whittaker, in what he characterizes as one of his proudest moments, guided the 1990 International Peace Climb in which he helped put a Russian, a Chinese and an American together on the summit of the Everest.

Whittaker, who turned 89 this month, lives in Port Townsend with his wife, Dianne Roberts, who is described with him in their website as "partners in marriage, life, business and adventure for more than 40 years."

I asked Whittaker for this reprise column if he had any current reflections on that campaign and he emailed me: "If the President and Bobby had lived, this Planet would be more safe and clean for all living things."

EDITORS NOTE: The presidential campaign of 1968 remains the most chaotic and tragic, but impactful, in memory with the events in Vietnam 50 years ago this month changing the perception of that war and echoing through the following months of America's election season. It was a political campaign that would catapult four citizens from Washington State into national prominence.

On January 31, 1968, thousands of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched what became known as the Tet Offensive with a surprising ferocity that blew away the smoke of self-delusion that veiled the Johnson Administration's ability to realize we could not win the Vietnam War.

Daniel EvansThe political fallout came quickly from Tet, a battle memorialized by a phrase from UPI reporter Kate Webb's description of the American embassy, after a Viet Cong attack there was repulsed, with bloodied bodies strewn across the green lawns and among the white fountains, as "like a butcher shop in Eden."

Within a month, President Johnson decided not to run again. Four months later, candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated and in November a president was elected who was destined to resign in disgrace.

The four Washington residents who had roles amid the political tumult were then-Gov. DanEvans, who was 1968 GOP convention keynoter, mountaineer Jim Whittaker, who became like a brother to Sen. Robert Kennedy, Egil (Bud) Krogh, a young Seattle attorney who became a Watergate figure, and author Kitty Kelly, a Spokane high school friend.

Articles on each were the opening offerings of this Flynn's Harp column a decade ago and, as promised, I plan to reprise those recollections from a presidential campaign now half a century removed, but still hauntingly memorable, more perhaps for the four Washingtonians in particular, all of whom remain active today.
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Selection as GOP convention keynoter thrust Dan Evans into national limelight

Dan Evans was nearing the end of his first term as governor of Washington State when he was thrust into the national political limelight with his selection as the keynote speaker for the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.

The decision six months earlier by President Lynden Johnson not to seek re-election to a full second term, which he had been expected to win despite the unrest over Vietnam, had suddenly put the importance of the Republican presidential nomination in bold relief.

I asked Evans last week, in preparing for this replay of the 1968 column, what his recollections were of the events in early 1968 that set the stage for what followed.

Evans told me "Each year, from 1965 through 1968, the governors were invited to the White House for a private briefing on the war in Vietnam. Pres. Johnson played a leading role in the briefings, each year proposing more troops until February of 1968 when the administration headlined 36 ways they were attempting to end the war in Vietnam."

"As we left the briefing," Evans recalled, "I said to one of my colleagues: 'I don't think they know what to do next.' He agreed, and 30 days later President Johnson announced that he would not run for president."

The death of former Gov. John Spellman from pneumonia early Tuesday at the age of 91while hospitalized for a broken hip stirs recollections for many of an elected official applauded for his integrity and courage. Spellman's passing reminded me of a column I did to mark the 30thanniversary of his 1981 swearing-in as what would be the state's last Republican governor, an anniversary I thought noteworthy enough to call him for an interview and do the following Flynn's Harp on him in January of 2011.
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I once asked John Spellman what kind of governor he had been and with a twinkle in his Irish eyes, he replied: "I was a darn good governor." And beyond the tumult of his times, including what he'd suggest may have been the worst economic period the state has experienced, there's much to suggest that may be an accurate assessment.

But it would have been difficult for many who were there at the time to accept that assessment, since during his 1980-84 single term as governor, Washington's last Republican governor, he managed to make decisions that irritated almost every segment on the political spectrum. But Spellman understood more than most elected officials that being good was different than being popular.

Spellman, John D. (1926-2018)One such decision came about because of his strong commitment to environmental protection. Thus, despite enormous pressure from business groups, many legislators and, most notably, his own Republican president, he used his authority to prevent permitting for what he felt was an environmentally-risky development project in a sensitive shoreline area of Whatcom County.

Another was that "we passed more taxes in my four years than they have before or since" Spellman recalled in a telephone interview this week. "One of the challenges in seeking to get re-elected was that I said I would raise taxes only as a last resort and some people took that to mean I wouldn't raise taxes.

"We had a crisis, as evidenced by the fact we had a 13.6 percent unemployment rate at one point, and in crises, you have to act," he added. "People didn't elect me to do nothing."

He spent two years fighting with a Democrat-controlled legislature and two with one controlled by Republicans.

The recession that began in 1981 "was much worse than anyone thought it would be and we had to do some things to get the economy moving and some money coming in," Spellman recalled. "So I announced an economic revitalization plan that included, among other things, an industrial development bonds program that had long been a tool of other states, but hadn't been available here."

Spellman was an early believer in the importance of establishing relations with foreign nations and is proud of initiating relationships with Schewan Province in China and furthering relations with Japan during his term.

"Both world trade and world peace were in play then, as now, and relationships are very important in international affairs," said Spellman. "The relationships we have are extremely important to the world in terms of peace and tranquility and trade, but trade is third among those in importance."

Spellman, who at 84 still puts in four days a week at Seattle law firm Carney Badley Spellman, practiced politics in a long-gone era when Republican elected officials could be moderate enough to sometimes find Democrats to the right of them.

So it was when Spellman ran for Seattle mayor in the mid-60s in his first attempt at elective office, an unsuccessful race in which he favored open-housing legislation and opposed the county's gambling tolerance policy. Both were positions with which a majority of voters in then-conservative Seattle and King County disagreed.

Spellman, handsome and personable with a winning smile, was an attorney, graduate of Seattle University then Georgetown Law School, whose ever-present pipe would be lit and relit during lengthy discussion sessions.

Because one of his legal clients was the United Steelworkers Union local, he had support from a lot of labor-union members. In fact, my first meeting with Spellman in 1967 was when my steelworker uncle introduced me to him at a cocktail party in downtown Seattle after explaining to me what a fair and fine man this was whom I was about to meet.

Spellman remembers of the mayoral race, a quest for a non-partisan office, that he was "very young and I didn't have much of a campaign. But I enjoyed the process and people noticed me because my views were the correct ones."

But he put on the Republican label when he ran for and won a seat on the King County Board of Commissioners and, after the county changed its charter to provide for a county executive, Spellman ran for and won that office.

Since Washington State now has the longest period of any state since having a GOP chief executive, I asked Spellman why he thought it was that the four governors who followed him, including Booth Gardner who unseated him, were all Democrats. His response was typically candid: "The Republicans' problem was the quality of the candidates," Spellman said. "They were all good people but unelectable."

I asked Spellman during our telephone interview how it felt to lose his re-election bid. "It wasn't devastating. Maybe to some of my kids it was, but not to me," Spellman replied. "I knew I had done a lot of things that weren't calculated to make getting re-elected easy."

Would that the integrity connoted by that comment were a legacy imparted to current elected officials.

The final push is underway to bring the 25-year quest of Eastside community leaders for their own performing arts center to groundbreaking, likely in October, representing the symbolic final pre-construction step for the $195 million Tateuchi Center in downtown Bellevue.

The Tateuchi board is expected to set the groundbreaking date at its June meeting, but there is a $52 million hill to climb to get to groundbreaking, a hill that Cathi Hatch, who has chaired the fundraising campaign and is vice chair of the board, plans to overcome with a "Topping off Major Gifts campaign."

With $127 million raised to date, achieving that pre-groundbreaking total will leave $15.8 million, which Hatch says: "We will raise that during our Community and Small Business Campaign, which begins at Groundbreaking."

Alex Smith, CEO of Kaye Smith Enterprises and Tateuchi Board chair, admits "there is a great deal of work ahead of us, but we have the tools in place and the fortitude to get it done."

Indeed the idea of the center has guided supporters to overcome a number of challenges as the plans for the facility have gathered momentum, challenges that included the economic downturn in 2008 that caused some to begin doubting that the center had a future.

Kemper Freeman, who has been a forefront and forceful supporter of the concept from the outset, noted that "We lost a lot of time to a difficult economy." That was when the Great Recession dropped its curtain on the economy and made some doubt that the vision of an Eastside performing arts facility would survive.

It takes the funeral of a prominent community figure to attract the number of friends and mourners necessary to fill the four arms of the cross-shaped St. James Cathedral in Seattle, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Western Washington.

That was the case three-plus years ago when a packed cathedral said goodbye to Robert Craves, an original Costco executive and Founder of the College Success Foundation. And it was true 20 years ago at the last farewell to PEMCO CEO Stanley O. McNaughton. Those are the two I'm aware of. 

But it was the leader of a different sort whose funeral filled the cathedral to capacity last weekend. The prominent of Seattle's minority community and the families of kids who were guided and counseled by Wayne James Melonson during his 40 years as a teacher and administrator then principal of St. Therese School in Seattle's Central Area were on hand to say goodbye to him. Melonson Was 67.

Seattle's black community, with a sprinkling of white faces like those of my son, Michael, and mine, filled the church to capacity, proving that prominence and influence are not necessarily the same but can be of equal importance in the creation of community. Wayne had influence in a way that defined the word.

As an African-American who grew up and spent his student and professional life in Seattle's then mostly minority Central Area, Melonson was particularly sensitive to the needs of the minority kids, which prompted growing numbers of their parents to seek out St. Therese as the place they wanted their children to be educated.

But on occasion, when he caught a couple of kids engaging in a fist-fight, it was not unusual to see him come quickly to wrap his arms around the necks of both boys and squeeze as the two heads stuck out of his cupped arms. The kind of discipline not available to teachers in public schools seemed to serve the growth and maturing of the St. Therese students pretty well.

Wayne and his seven siblings grew up two blocks from St. Therese School, where his grade school education there was followed by high school at O'Dea and then Seattle University. It was there, while still a college student, that he became a part-time physical education instructor at St. Therese.

After graduating from SU, he joined the St. Therese faculty. Before long he was an administrator and soon principle, the role in which our family first encountered him when we returned to Seattle from California.

Wayne believed that in addition to academic focus, athletic competition was a way for kids to learn success and it was in that capacity, as he coached the St. Therese All-Stars, that part of his impact came to be felt. He believed athletics gave kids the opportunity to reach beyond their confidence.

So as Michael and I sat listening to the memories of his contributions being shared, I was reminded of the time that Michael and three of his young black friends learned a lesson about reaching beyond their confidence level. They were seventh graders and Wayne decided their 4-by-100 meter relay team would compete against the eighth graders in the all-city meet.

Michael ran third and by the time he got the baton, St. Therese was about 80 meters ahead. Michael added about 30 meters to that lead, then he passed the baton to cleanup runner Pellar Phillips, but he stepped on Pellar's shoe as he handed off the baton.  

As Pellar started to head toward the finish, he suddenly realized he only had one shoe so ran back and knelt down to put it on, giving time for the trailing teams to get within about 50 meters. But with his shoe back on, Pellar took off and won by about 80 meters. All four kids eventually competed in track and field at the college level, largely because of Melanson's training.

His impact reached beyond St. Therese since he was on the boards of O'Dea High School, Seattle Preparatory School and Forest Ridge School.

Gary Melonson, a broker at Oppenheimer & Co. in Seattle and one of Wayne's seven siblings, recalled how Wayne and Regina Hickman, who would be his wife of 35 years, first met. If there's a marriage made it heaven, it may be one where a priest is present for the introduction.

In this case, in 1977, Wayne was the priest. Actually a Halloween costume. As Gary this week recalled the story, which Regina confirmed, she was a student at the University of Washington who had a part-time job at the Urban League of Seattle, which decided to have its Halloween Party at the St. Therese Hall.

She remembers that the League had to get permission from Wayne to rent the hall and he decided to attend the event and his Halloween garb was the outfit of a priest while Regina wore her Garfield High School cheerleader outfit. He asked her to dance and when the event was ending, he approached her and asked if he could have permission to ask her out.

She said yes and they were married five years later and they had three sons.

Wayne's Catholic faith was an essential part of who he was and he instilled the importance of faith in his students.

As one of his students said of him, "he loved each of us fiercely. And he made us love one another even when we didn't want to."

A decade of harping, actually producing a weekly email column under the title "Flynn's Harp" most every week for the past 10 years, is cause for pause and reflection.

For nearly a quarter-century guiding the fortunes of Puget Sound Business Journal, my creative outlet from the business challenges was the weekly column that permitted me to share thoughts on people and issues with PSBJ's readers.

It was the spring of 2008, two years after my retirement from PSBJ, that my friend Pat Scanlon, whom I now refer to as my digital guru because of his background in digital media with national media companies, said to me: "You should have an online column." To that, I replied: "Why?" So he said: "Let me show you what I've put together" and lo, the layout, and format of both email and web versions, missing only a column title, was there on my computer, causing me to muse: "So what would I write about?"

Because it was a general-election year, I had already written a piece reflecting on the 1968 presidential campaign in which I had been fortunate enough, as a young political writer for UPI, to be immersed. The 1968 campaign was one that had high-visibility roles for four people from Washington State and I had put all of that into a piece without knowing where I would try to place the article.

When I began thinking of the "what would I write?" I realized that I could divide that 1968-campaign article into four parts, one for each of the four people I had included as key players in that long-ago campaign. Then, presto, I'd have a month's worth of columns! Then I'd be four weeks on the way to have time to think of a fifth and a sixth column, etc.

Thus then-Gov. Dan Evans, who was 1968 GOP convention keynoter, mountaineer Jim Whittaker, who became like a brother to Sen. Robert Kennedy, Egil (Bud) Krogh, a young Seattle attorney who became a Watergate figure, and author Kitty Kelly, a high school friend, became the first four profiles of the
Harp.

Since we are coming up on what, now that 2018 has dawned, the 50th anniversary of that campaign, detailed 40 years on in a reflective piece in a national magazine in 2008 on Robert Kennedy's quest for the presidency as "the last good campaign," I decided to revisit those four columns in this 10th year of The Harp.

So over the coming weeks, I will be inserting those columns into the flow of
Harps, repeating the recollections from a presidential campaign now half a century removed but one in which all four of those personalities I wrote about remain active today. But I will also during the coming months be reprising other columns that had particular and special meaning to me.

I figured the best way to get the column going as an e-mail offering back in 2008 was to send the first one to about 600 of my closest friends and contacts (some I hadn't touched base with for several years), hoping they would either read it or ignore it but not tag me as SPAM.

Over time, as I've met new people in my "retirement" activities and consulting, I've added another 1,000 names.

So it now goes weekly to about 1,600 recipients whom I describe as business leaders, mostly Washington State but 100 or so in California, Hawaii and a few other states, as well as current and former state and local elected officials, and four college presidents.

Doing the column regularly, with the personal requirement that it be original material, in other words, facts and information not yet brought to the public's awareness has provided a satisfaction.

But even more so have been the responses from many to the emails, some moving, some laudatory, some critical. I have specifically always acknowledged the latter.

I like to tell people the column has resulted in more friendships than I had as PSBJ publisher because then, business people who read my columns and editorials were merely part of a mostly faceless audience of readers. Now the "readers" are those who are kind enough to let me into their email box weekly and most proceed to open long enough to see if that particular one is interesting.

So over the course of 500 columns, I have come to know people and their successes and challenges, and issues that impact them, in ways that would never have been the case except for the column.

I have now become an evangelist for doing email columns, urging my friends and business associates to create columns, advising "not weekly!" and admonishing "if you do it, it needs to be not about yourself or your business but about the knowledge you can impart from your experience."

A couple of friends have taken me up on it, the first being Don Brunell, retired president of the Association of Washington Business, who recalled in an email to me this week the occasion for the launch of his column that now appears in a number of weekly newspapers.

"We were at the Coeur d' Alene Hotel for AWB's Executive Committee retreat and we were having a beer in the lobby bar in 1995, bemoaning how we got our butts kicked by Mike Lowry in 1993. The D's controlled Olympia and Lowry would chastise business:  'you mean to tell me you guys can't afford a latte a day to pay for health care for your workers.'"  

 "We were talking about getting our message out and you said:  'why don't you write a weekly column?'  So I gave it a try. That's now almost 23 years ago."

The other is Al Davis, a friend and former longtime client, who is a founder of Revitalization Partners, a noted Seattle-based business management and advisory firm. Early last year he packaged the columns he and business partner Bill Lawrence have written bi-weekly over the last three years into a book.

When Al and I met for me to get a copy of the book, he told me to open the cover and read what was printed on the facing page. There was a thank you to several people, and to me for convincing him he could write a column!

As University of Washington football fans gather in the Phoenix area this week in anticipation of Saturday's Fiesta Bowl pitting their Huskies against Penn State, there will be the usual reflections on and toasts to the great UW teams and stars of the past that set the model for the 2017 team.

Inevitably, someone ticking off great bowl games of Husky past will note that it was in 1924 that UW played in its first Rose Bowl game a 14-14 tie with Navy, and returned two years later to lose to Alabama, 20-19. When that's mentioned, it's possible the name George Wilson will come up in the context of those first Rose Bowl, which came about because of his nationally recognized performance.

Dear Friends: 

Sharing this re-creation of the art once delivered via wire-service teletype machines to media newsrooms around the nation during the quiet hours of Christmas Eve has become my annual way of delivering holiday greetings to those who have been kind enough to allow Flynn's Harp into their email 'bag' each week. The celebration of Christmas is not shared by all of my friends. In fact, those friends have, to my good fortune, become a varied array of national origins and religions. But the values that Christmas embodies for those who cherish it transcend national or religious differences and should be shared and cherished by all with this season as a reminder.

-0-

Holiday teletype art: greetings from communications era pastIn the days before computers, wire service teletype machines clacked away in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms around the nation and the world, bringing the news from all points to local media outlets.

But in the quiet of the Christmas holiday in years past, in the offices of AP and United Press International, the teletype paper coming from the teletype printers would be graced with holiday art. 
  
For those of us who at an early stage in our careers had a turn with the lonely Christmas Eve or overnight vigil in the UPI offices as older writers got to spend time with their families, the holiday art created and transmitted by teletype operators is one of the special memories of working for that now-dead company. 

The x's, o's, (or more frequently dollar signs and exclamation marks)  appeared a line at a time on the teletype paper until images of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, holly wreaths, etc., took shape.  

The uniqueness of the tree below is the Christmas greeting delivered in nearly 50 languages. 

Over the years I've been sending this, the art has stirred memories for those among the recipients of this weekly missive who once worked in newspaper or broadcast newsrooms and recalled watching those creations emerge onto the rolls of teletype paper.

It also served as a reminder of earlier days for those in other industries who once used teletype machines for transmission of information, including one who recalled the occasionally flawed keystrokes that occurred when the creation of the art followed holiday parties.

Since each year brings new names to the list of those receiving Flynn's Harp, there are some who haven't previously seen the art. For that reason, and because fond memories are served by repetition, here is the annual sharing of this Christmas art.
    
Happy Holidays!

 

Steve Paul likes to say he has aged dramatically in his 17 years guiding the annual North Pole Fantasy Flight from Spokane International Airport, a magical trip for which Alaska Airlines provides a 737-900 to carry a planeload of orphans and foster children and their elves to Santa's home. Paul, who was 43 in people years when he first got involved in 2000, says his elf age as Chief Elf Bernie is 907 years, but that is really only middle age for elves so he still has a ways to go.

Paul, president, and CEO of Northwest North Pole Adventures, the nonprofit group that runs the event and raises the funds for it over the course of each year, is reflecting on last Saturday’s 10th year of partnership with Alaska and the magic that again unfolded this annual flight to the North Pole to meet with Santa and Mrs. Clause.

The children, ages 4 to 10, from shelter programs in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, ID, are brought to the airport and each meets his or her "buddy elf," volunteers selected over the course of the year.  

If you doubt that kindness and caring can change the world, then you're not familiar with the Yakima Valley town of Granger or the tiny non-profit called Families of Granger, created by Bellevue business leader Joan Wallace, that has been world changing for the children in the mostly Hispanic community. And for their families.

The story of the birth of the little 501c3 that is sustained almost entirely by an annual holiday email ask by Joan Wallace to her giving friends began 14 years ago at a Thanksgiving dinner in Granger as Wallace listened while her sister in law, Janet Wheaton, laments one aspect of the coming Christmas season.  

Wheaton, then principal of the Granger middle school, explained her worry that when school closes for the holiday season, the children do not receive the two free meals a day that they qualify for, and there is little food at home to feed them because most of the families are crop pickers who have no wintertime jobs.

Joan WallaceBecause Wallace is a woman of action, almost instantly was born the idea of the email appeal to her friends and what soon became the 501c3 has grown in impact since then, with results that couldn't have been envisioned as she conceived the ask.

Her 14th email, which now raises the $35,000 that is almost the sole of money for the non-profit's budget, goes out next Monday. "At this time each year I am very aggressive about finding friends," she jokes, while husband Bob matches her sense of humor. "He told me 'If I let you near anyone at this time of year, you'll try to pick their pocket.'"

And thus this Thanksgiving season's Harp, as has been the case for almost a decade, is offered as the annual information update on what I referred to the first time I wrote about this story of caring as a "Michelangelo Moment" for a growing number of people in the Puget Sound area and Yakima Valley.

The money raised each Thanksgiving appeal goes for Christmas gift cards and food baskets purchased locally at the grocery in Granger, and, in the spirit of the season, sent anonymously to Granger's neediest families.  

She says that last year, 125 of the poorest families in one of the poorest communities, with 86 percent of the families Hispanic, got $50 gift cards to use at Walmart and $75 food baskets purchased to use at the local Hispanic grocery.

But over the years, the money has also gone to provide emergency clothing needs through the year and a few years ago she and Wheaton and their local supporters created an annual summer camp.

Wallace will be sharing with her email recipients that a years-long effort to get a splash park for the kids is about to come to fruition, due partly to the fact the number of snow-day makeups made it impossible to have the month-long summer camp so that money was available for another use.  

"We put the funds into a match for development of a splash park since Granger doesn't have a pool, summers are hot, and pools are expensive to run," she explained.
So the community gave, the 501c3 provided some funds and the city provided the land and agreed to fund maintenance for a splash park, which she describes as "basically a tricked-up sprinkler system that will now be open in May."

In her annual email, Wallace will say the past year "had its triumphs and griefs, as on one end of the spectrum our motivational program to reduce absenteeism resulted in Granger again standing out again against all schools in the state.

"Our saddest contribution was to provide clothing for a family of eight children when their father murdered their mother," Wallace said. "Their home had become a crime scene and they were locked out.

"While doing our best to take care of the immediate needs, we also believe it is equally important to cultivate self-sufficiency and to enable these children to finish school and break the poverty barrier," Wallace explains.

And the result in terms of attitudes of the families has been manifested with the successful campaign of students, parents, and teachers at the middle school two years ago to build a program to improve attendance, using the slogan that became a mantra, "Every Child, Every desk, Every day."

Driven by the attendance-campaign slogan, the school set the state mark for best attendance record in the state, with an absentee rate of 4 percent, compared to a statewide average of 16 percent absenteeism.  

The accomplishment promoted the creation of a special award, called Innovations in Education, that was presented at a banquet in Seattle in May of 2016 with support from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle law firm Patterson Buchanan, Kemper Development Co., Q-13 Fox and Sound Publishing.

Friday's 242nd birthday of the United States Marine Corps will be a time for many of those who are or were Marines to focus on their time in "The Corps." And one of those is Maple Valley Attorney Dan Nielsen, who helped create an event called Always Brothers 100 Mile Memorial Run to raise money for families of Marines killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Nielsen, a founder, and treasurer of the board of the event recalled in an interview how he and 12 fellow Marines who had all served on Presidential Guard Duty in the mid-'90s teamed in 2011 to honor the memory of one of their own by establishing the 100-mile run.

Dan NielsenNielsen remembered that Always Brothers began its signature 100-mile honor run in August of 2011 for Capt. Tyler Swisher, a Marine Corps brother who lost his life in October 2005 and who had served on Presidential Guard duty with the Always Brothers founders and board members. Swisher was killed by a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq in 2005.

That first run, called "100 Miles for Swisher," began at Camp David with a goal of finishing at Swisher's grave at Arlington. But Nielsen remembers that "we needed to run a couple of times around the national mall to be sure we actually did 100 miles and when we did the mall, a couple Marines who were then on Presidential Guard ran along with us."

The 100-mile run over the next four years became an annual event, in different locations,
to honor fallen Marines and Navy Corpsmen who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan by raising money for the education of their children.  

Two of the runs have been in Ohio. The first was to raise money families of Lima Company, 22 of whose Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed in Iraq in 2005 when the vehicle in which they were riding was blown up.

Seattle was the location for runs in 2013 and 2014 with the second done in conjunction with Marine Week.  The beneficiaries were six children who lost a parent in In Iraq and Afghanistan from areas where our board members are from.

Circumstances interrupted the run after 2015, though Nielsen promised it will resume in 2018 "somewhere, maybe Seattle, or California." 

I met Nielsen last month when we happened to sit next to each other at the annual Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation (MCSF) dinner, an event held in various states to raise money for scholarships for children of U.S. Marines. It was being held in Seattle for the fourth time. We were both there as one-time Marines, supporting the event chaired this year by retired Marine major general Tracy Garrett.

Ret. Maj. Gen. Tracy GarrettThe Always Brothers board made the MCSF the beneficiary of their 100-mile event fundraising in 2015 when they established an endowed scholarship in Tyler Swisher's name.

Reflecting on the success of the 2017 dinner, retired general Garrett said the event raised about $477,000 for the national fund.

"We have raised more than $2 million since the start of the Seattle dinner," she said. "There are so many good causes to support. We are thankful that Northwesterners are choosing MCSF as a way to recognize the sacrifices made by Marines and their families in the 16 long years that we have been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan."
 
Nielsen chuckled during our interview, following the MCSF dinner, as he reflected on the first 100-mile run, telling me he wasn't a runner then or now, though he stays fit (he's now 44) with some weight lifting. So he had some physical challenges getting ready for the first event. He says he actually completed 85 miles, with some rest stops along the way.  
 
Offering a lesson in how an ordinary guy prepares for a 100-mile run, Nielsen, who grew up in Yakima, said "at first, you do a lot of running, like five to seven miles some days, sometimes 20 miles on a Saturday with the important focus on building back, core and leg strength."
 
"It took about 27 hours and I stopped at 50 miles to change socks," he said. "at about mile 60 I ate a hamburger and got the shakes so had I had to stop for several hours."
 
"One of the neat things is this is not a race," Nielsen emphasized. "We start together and end together. We have guys like me that are not really runners while some guys are really good, guys who find it just as hard to slow down as it is for us to try to speed up."

2014 Seattle run coinAn unusual aspect of the run is that a coin, slightly larger and thicker than a silver dollar, was created in 2013 for the Seattle run. It was intended, as Nielsen put it, "as a constant tribute to the reason why we are doing what we do with the one side showing honor to Tyler and pointing out where we served together -Marine Barracks 8th and I, WHCA (White House communications agency) and Camp David. The opposite side symbolizes the purpose and location of each run."
 
"We usually have 300 coins made each year and we give them to runners, supporters, and the people we meet along the way who inspire us or who we've inspired," Nielsen said.

As M3 Biotechnology Inc. launches clinical trials on its therapy for Alzheimer's that is expected to halt the progression of, or even reverse, the disease, it's a satisfying development for those who have been believers in the role of the company and its CEO at the leading edge of the new field of regenerative medicine.

So when Melinda Gates lamented, before a large audience of women in computing, that the technology industry was dominated by a "sea of white dudes," one group who heard the message could be forgiven if its members, mostly men but including a couple of talented women, shared a knowing smile.  

Leen KawasThey knew that, despite the general accuracy of Melinda Gates comments, the CEO who has become the face of biotech in this state and even beyond is a 32-year-old woman from Jordan named Leen Kawas.  

And although several members of the group were key women investors guided in part by the fact Kawas is a woman, the male supporters seemed far more focused on their belief in her ability to get the drug to commercialization then concerned about gender.

Thus Kawas was the beneficiary of believers who came to her aid as investors, mentors, and supporters because they were convinced that she had the ability to bring to market a drug that would alter the course of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and perhaps reverse them.

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. But it's a satisfying example to many who are convinced that no doors remain closed to those who refuse to accept rejection.

When I first met Kawas in late summer of 2013, she had yet to know anyone in Seattle and was merely the chief scientist for M3, a company still immersed in the labs at Washington State University, where its drug was undergoing animal trials to test its seeming ability to spur cellular regrowth. That fact naturally led to neurological testing since if a drug could regrow cells, its future could be assured and, before long, Kawas had her name on several of the patents for the drug.

And soon she was tapped to be CEO by the two WSU profs who then owned the majority of the company because it was still in their labs. So the second time we visited was soon after that when she was seeking help in meeting people who might invest in a promising young company and its young CEO.  

When she returned to Seattle, she shared that the other 63 were all males and her reaction in discussing that fact in an almost dismissive manner was an early indication of how committed she was to overcome the pushback and discrimination and comfortably stand up to it and seek to change it.

As we began a process over the next several months of meeting those who could either invest or introduce us to investors, I told her, partly to see how she would handle the pressure, that I would get the first meeting for her to make her presentation but it would be in her hands for people to agree to a second meeting with us.

Early on we had a meeting in Orange County, CA, with Richard Sudek, perhaps the most important angel-investment leader in Southern California at the time as chair of the largest angel investment group in the country, the five-county Tech Coast Angels. I was hopeful he would be impressed enough to offer Kawas some advice on raising money.

When she finished her presentation, he said, to my pleasant surprise: "I would be happy to be a business advisor for you."

It was in the fall of 2014 that she had her media debut with an impressive interview with Q13 anchor Marne Hughes in which those watching at the studio said she looked like she had grown up on camera.

Compassion and caring aren't the first words that would come to most peoples' minds when they think of Las Vegas with its glitz and glamour. But compassion, love, and unity are the words Len Jessup, President of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, used to describe the community's response to the horror of the nation's worst mass shooting.

Len Jessup"What amazes me is how this campus and the entire community came together, so quickly, so compassionately, and with so much love and unity," Jessup said in an email to me in response to my question of how his campus, faculty, and students had fared.

"Within minutes, our Thomas and Mack arena was fully staffed and served all night long as a shelter for hundreds of victims," said Jessup, who is finishing his third year as president of UNLV "And within minutes, in the middle of the night, community members got word and brought blankets, sleeping bags, pillows, food, water, coffee, etc, for the victims."

The Thomas and Mack Center is the home of the Runnin' Rebels basketball team that once was the key to national visibility for the university, founded 60 years ago this year as a small, branch campus of Reno-based University of Nevada.

But in the future, the university and its arena may be remembered for the role both played in helping the community deal with the victims of the tragedy and the aftermath.

"Nurses and counselors showed up on their own to comfort folks, and Uber and Lyft drivers and countless community members showed up in cars to take victims wherever they needed to go for free," Jessup added. "Countless acts of love and compassion like that happened all that night and all week here in this community, showing what locals know well, that LV is truly a wonderful community."

Jessup is still dealing with the impact of the mass killings at the open-air concert on his UNLV community of students, faculty and staff. A former student was among the 58 killed in the hail of bullets fired down from an upper floor of Mandalay Bay Hotel. He reported that four students and one staff member, an assistant coach of the hockey club, were among the wounded and one student sustained an injury trying to escape.

Jessup's regard for how members of his university and the broader community responded said something about his regard for both that have developed since he arrived in January of 2015 as UNLV's 10th president.

I got to know Jessup as a member of his national advisory board when he was dean of the Washington State University College of Business before he became president of the WSU Foundation and vice president for university development in May of 2005. Jessup filled the board with CEO-level executives from around the Northwest and beyond.

We have had the opportunity to reconnect on my occasional trips to Las Vegas. 

He left WSU to become dean of the Eller College of Management at his ala mater, the University of Arizona, and was instrumental in helping to build out that university's technology transfer and commercialization program, Tech Launch Arizona.

After honing his higher-education administrative leadership skills at WSU and University of Arizona, Jessup was ready when the right opportunity for a university presidency was offered from UNLV regents and he accepted at a time of dramatic challenge and change for the university and the city of 2.2 million.

Indeed Jessup's challenge when he arrived was to grow the impact and image of a university whose major claim to fame was that it had the second most diverse student body in the nation.

Since then he has ensured that the new UNLV medical school, funding for which was approved a few months after his arrival, was on track to welcome its first students and become the focal point of a planned 214-acre medical district in Las Vegas.

"Our medical school is launched and the first cohort began this past July, all of them on full-ride, four-year scholarships from the community," Jessup e-mailed in obvious pride.  

"We had 900 applicants for the 60 spots, and there are a few vets among them, many first-generation college grads, and even some first-generation high school grads within their families"

In fact, Jessup raised in San Francisco with both mother and father of Italian descent, was the first member of his family to graduate from college, which he told me as prompted him to "devote my life to service in higher ed because of the opportunities it has given me. And also to pay back my ancestors for the sacrifices they made in coming to America to make a better life possible."

Of the UNLV medical school's first class, Jessup said: "It's a very diverse class. We went after kids with direct Las Vegas or Nevada ties so as to increase the chance that they will stay here as doctors," which would be an important development for a state that has ranked 45thnationally in the number of doctors per 100,000 population.

I asked Jessup in one of the emails what long-term impact might the events on the night of October 1st have on the community and the university.

"I don't know that what happened will deter people from visiting this great city in the future," Jessup said. "But it does mean that we'll have to rethink security for the open-air music festivals like the one this past Sunday evening that have become so incredibly popular here in town. And we will."

Natalia Blokhina, who helps guide a Moscow-based fund management company, has learned early in her career as an international investor that business relations almost always overcome politics.

Blokhina smiles as she responds to a question: No, she's never had an entrepreneur in whose start-up business she was offering to invest tell her "we don't want investment from Russia."

Natalia Blokhina"The more absurd political discussions get, the less business people pay attention to them," observes Blokhina, executive director of one of several fund management companies in the Russian capital.  

The Moscow native found from her 12 years working with British and U.S. companies and in the emerging markets of the BRICS countries in China, India, and Africa that she was "fascinated with all the entrepreneurial opportunities."

So Blokhina, 37, as a millennial entrepreneur with a degree from the TRIUM Global Executive MBA program in her impressive resume, returned home to Moscow in 2015 at a time of financial challenge for Russia "because I wanted to make a difference for my country."

And, she added, you have to "try to listen to what you would love to do."

So, as she told me, she transitioned "from someone who always thought of themselves as a corporate person who works inside the system to one who, having met successful entrepreneurs inside the business schools, thought they wanted to be one of them."

I had not been aware of TRIUM Global Executive MBA program until our conversation.  

The program is an alliance among NYU Stern School of Business, London School of Economics and Political Science, and HEC School of Management in Paris. Those accepted into the program take classes at all three institutions getting, an executive MBA and when finished, they have a global MBA from TRIUM, ranked third in the world in the 2016 Financial Times EMBA rankings and first in the 2014 rankings.  

She got her degree, jointly awarded by the three schools, in 2015 as one of the youngest of the graduates of the program. Now she pursues investment opportunities for her boutique fund management company, one of several in Moscow formed by high-net-worth individuals, bringing with her the contacts with an alum group that is global by definition rather than by chance.

Because of her NYU-alum contacts, she has invested in New York, but she said she has developed a keen interest in investment opportunities in the Pacific Northwest, having found "it is easier to do business with a smaller, more connected community that the Seattle area represents than with Silicon Valley. I didn't expect to find such a vibrant tech community here."

That perception on her part may already be creating a benefit for Seattle among young prospective entrepreneurs and investors in Europe.

"A few companies in Europe that asked me about how they should go about getting into business in the U.S. and said they were thinking about expanding to New York or Silicon Valley, and I told them to look to Seattle," she said.

But she cautions that the search for start-up investment opportunities has potential pitfalls, saying "you need to be able to diagnose the entrepreneur. Do they have what it takes? Are they self-critical enough? Do they want the company to transcend themselves?"

"I work with those for whom the answer is 'yes' to each of those questions," she said. "Work with" includes meeting with the portfolio companies usually monthly and serving on their boards.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Blokhina is a fan of women entrepreneurs, offering "women can be good founders of companies because they are practical and realize needs better and more quickly than men."

"Women have more time to look around and dream," she added. "They want to change things in ways that make things more usable and beautiful."

"But they need to work with men," she added.

Blokhina disclosed that New York alumna of the TRIUM program, with support from the TRIUM Global EMBA, are launching a new competition program for women-guided startups.

"We will engage female leaders from our global network to mentor the startups to prepare for the competition, with our goal being to have the first competition in 2018," she said, explaining that the competition will involve judges choosing the startup that will be awarded a large investment.

The panel of judges will include TRIUM alums, faculty members, and other angels, she said.

They have already begun an effort to attract angel associations and incubators to have roles as funders or sponsors of the competition.

"They seem to appreciate the idea of global diversity of the mentors and women-to-women collaboration," Blokhina said. "And the initiative creates a platform for the angel investors."

As the award and competition to win it take hold, it's quite possible that its international aspect and focus on women entrepreneurs could lead to it acquiring growing prestige among both entrepreneurs and angel investors.

When Triple A baseball returned to Tacoma in 1960 after a 55-year absence, one of the fans in attendance that opening day to watch the team then nicknamed the Giants was 3-year-old Mikal Thomsen, there with his father, seeing his first professional baseball game. 

That ignited a life-long affection of a kid, then a man, for his hometown baseball team.

Mikal ThomsenAnd thus, although he grew up to make his name and fortune over two decades as he became a leading figure in the cellular-mobile phone industry, Thomsen's "dream come true" is played out each year as CEO and, with his wife, Lynn, the major investor in the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League baseball. The Thomsens put together a team of investors prior to the 2011 season to join them in owning the team.

The home season ends next Thursday. The Rainiers are on the road for the Labor Day weekend wrap up, far out of first place in the PCL's Pacific Northern Division and far back in attendance, playing in the smallest market in the in the far-flung 16-team league and in one of the smallest ball parks.

But he says "we've been highly successful in every way I can imagine, for the city, for the fan base, and for the investors. We have made stadium improvements each year, on our dime, and the Rainiers have been embraced by the city and the whole South Sound community."

That's a conviction likely buttressed this year by the fact that Tacoma, for the first time ever, played host last month to the Triple-A All-Star game at Cheney Stadium, a game won, 6-4, by the PCL all-stars over the stars of the International League. The satisfaction was in not just having the game for the first time but to the fact, the selection of Tacoma was made by the other AAA owners.

And Thomsen disclosed during an interview a few days ago that after the 2016 season ended "the team offered to buy out any of the owners at twice the amount they had paid for their share in 2011, but no one took us up on it." The Rainiers made the playoffs last year and came within 1,000 fans of equaling the best attendance mark of Thomsen's tenure.

Thomsen's team of 15 investors includes his longtime business partner, John Stanton, the CEO and majority owner of the American League Seattle Mariners, for whom Tacoma is the Triple-A franchise and a major piece of the Mariners' baseball operations.

Stanton and Thomsen, both in their early 60s, have what is likely the most unusual business relationship in professional baseball, and maybe in all of pro sports.

Their desks are 20 feet apart in the offices of Trilogy Partnerships, the Bellevue-based venture fund where they share responsibility, as they have for much of the 35 years since they joined the fledgling McCaw Cellular and went on to become two of the icons of the wireless industry in which they made their fortunes.

I asked Thomsen if he's ever tempted to complain to Stanton over major-league, minor-league issues, as when the Mariners call up key Rainiers players to the majors when the Tacoma team is winning, as at the start of this season when the Rainiers were in first place before several top players headed for Seattle.

He laughed as he replied: "We are in the unique position of being an organization that sells tickets, popcorn and hotdogs but doesn't have to pay for performers," reminding me that the Mariners pay all the costs, including salaries, of the players they sign and assign to Tacoma.

"They want a strong Triple-A presence and we have provided that," Thomsen adds.

Thomsen and Stanton's office interactions are likely fewer these days with Thomsen spending about what he estimates as about 20 hours a week during the season in Tacoma while Stanton has the CEO's office at Safeco Field that he visits as often as possible.

Although Thomsen is the Tacoma boss he is quick to credit others for contributing to the team's success, particularly team president Aaron Artman, who was in place as president when they bought the team.

"Inheriting Aaron was a godsend," Thomsen said.  "He is a very creative guy with a wealth of knowledge running minor league baseball operations, and we paired him up with a great CFO, Brian Coombe whom we hired the first summer we owned the team. Together they are a phenomenal leadership team for the club."

I asked Thomsen, for a column I did several years ago if the fact Tacoma is closer to Seattle than any Triple A team's proximity to a major league city has an impact on attendance. He replied: "Most of the Rainiers fans are Mariners fans who enjoy keeping up with both teams and hearing about the players they saw in Tacoma now performing with the major league club. I think the nearness of the M's cuts both ways."

Indeed Thomsen's ownership group, which includes Brad Cheney, president of the Ben B. Cheney Foundation (named for the lumber magnate and community leader for whom the ballpark is also named) has created a community's love affair with its professional baseball team, not unlike the relationship that used to exist in cities across America.

The Rainiers have added a new left field deck, whiffle ball field and playground, which Thomsen says "is now a fixture, and drawing tons of kids," noting the idea was Cheney's who he says "is on the board, is very supportive of the team and the area through his foundation."

Cheney threw out the first pitch at the All-Star game after Thomsen went on the loudspeaker to tell the fans about coming to the park for games since he and his brother were kids, then said "This is for Tacoma. And this is for the South Sound."

The Stanton-Thomsen baseball-ownership ties extend beyond the Rainiers. In fact, the announcement of the Rainiers' purchase followed their successful launch a year earlier of a college-player amateur league team in Walla Walla.

It was Stanton, a Whitman grad and past chairman of the school's board of trustees, who convinced Thomsen that he should become part of the ownership team that was buying and bringing to Walla Walla an expansion team in the West Coast League, a summer league for college players, competing just below professional ball.

So it was appropriate that Thomsen approached Stanton to be part of the Tacoma ownership team.

A focus on business beyond baseball remains for both Thomsen and Stanton, however, as they continue to manage their Bellevue-based wireless venture and investment firm formed by a collection of long-time wireless partners after the sale of their Western Wireless to Alltel Corp. in 2005.

Thomsen met his wife, Lynn, and Stanton met his wife, Terry Gillespie, at McCaw Cellular in the mid-80s, which they joined at about the same time in the early '80 and are now on the team of co-owners of the Rainiers, though the oversight of the franchise, including attending many games, falls to Thomsen.