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The Hazel Wolf model was nerve, tenacity, wit
Wednesday, January 26, 2000
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
The remarkable thing about Hazel Wolf isn't that she lived in three centuries.
It's that she did it with such wit, verve, wisdom and unwavering dedication to righting wrongs.
The grande dame of the region's environmental community, she cheerfully kept trying to improve the world for humans and other creatures until the end. She died last Wednesday at age 101 -- as she had predicted to author Studs Terkel -- in a Port Angeles nursing home.
Hazel Wolf has been a household name in Seattle for much of the past century. Canadian by birth, the diminutive, soft-spoken legal secretary came to public attention by making all manner of trouble over matters of conscience as wide-ranging as feminism, human rights, labor and environmental protection.
Unlike too many of today's earnest, self-righteous activists, Wolf was an activist with a naughty twinkle in her eye. She took her causes seriously, but not herself.
She became a member of the Communist Party during the Depression because she liked the idea of its food subsidies and unemployment programs. As a result, the U.S. government attempted to deport her during the McCarthy era and briefly jailed her for sedition even though she had long since abandoned the Communists. This long-running episode triggered her advocacy for immigrants.
It's said that Wolf fell into advocacy for nature by accident in the early 1960s when on a bird-watching outing she observed a brown creeper forage for food. Whatever the case, she served as secretary for the Seattle chapter of the Audubon Society for 37 years and helped establish 21 of the 26 Audubon chapters in this state. She edited the newsletter of the Federation of Outdoor Clubs, of which she had been president, until she died.
The 21st century will miss her.
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