This Week Then: A Look Back on the Life of Seattle’s Phyllis Lamphere
Plus: Puget Sound’s first wide-audience television broadcast
By Alan Stein November 23, 2018
This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter.
Phyllis Lamphere (1922-2018)
This week HistoryLink marks the passage of Phyllis Lamphere, a longtime Seattle civic leader and, from 1967 to 1978, a member of the Seattle City Council. Born and raised in Seattle, Lamphere attended Barnard College, where she studied modern dance under the tutelage of Martha Graham and graduated with a mathematics degree in 1943. Upon returning to Seattle, she immediately got a job with The Boeing Company in the newly created position of Director of Women’s Activities, helping women wartime factory workers adjust to their new lives in a strange city.
After the war she was hired by IBM, but soon became interested in politics. In 1952, at an election-night party, she met Art Lamphere, and they married a few months later. While raising three children — two daughters with Lamphere and her daughter from a previous marriage — she became very active with the League of Women Voters and chaired several campaigns to amend the city charter. After successfully lobbying in Olympia for moving Seattle’s budget authority from the council to the mayor’s office, Lamphere was appointed by Seattle Mayor Dorm Braman to the organizing committee of Forward Thrust. To her, the next logical step was running for public office.
In 1967 Lamphere was elected to the city council as part of a slate of reform candidates backed by CHECC . She and the other “new blood” council members pushed through several reforms, including an open-housing ordinance. She also advocated for locating the Seattle Aquarium on the central waterfront and for replacing the West Seattle Bridge after it was damaged by an errant freighter.
After running unsuccessfully for mayor in 1977, Lamphere took a federal job as regional director for the Economic Development Administration, but later resigned when the Reagan administration slashed the agency’s budget. She then became instrumental in the creation of the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, and spent the next 20 years on its board. After that, she served on the Seattle Parks Foundation board and was deeply involved in the development of Lake Union Park and the subsequent move of MOHAI to that location. When she died last week at the age of 96 she had been active up until the end, and leaves behind a legacy of strong public service.
On the Air
More than a century ago, many people spent their Thanksgiving holiday taking in a stage show or a movie. This might explain why some theaters chose this time of year for their grand openings, including Squire’s Opera House in Seattle on November 24, 1879, the Seeley Theatre in Pomeroy on November 24, 1913, and the Mack Theatre in Port Angeles on November 24, 1922.
But 70 years ago this week, on November 25, 1948, hundreds of people around Puget Sound stayed home to watch the region’s first wide-audience television broadcast — a high-school football match between West Seattle and Wenatchee on KRSC-TV. It comes as no surprise that one of the other programs shown in the 1948 broadcast was a film of a Broadway play — a new medium was supplanting an old. One person to recognize this was Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, who had purchased a radio station in 1947. Two years later she purchased KRSC-TV for $300,000 (the first sale of a television station in the United States) and renamed it. We know it today as KING-TV.
NEWS THEN, HISTORY NOW
News of the Nation
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860, news of the event didn’t reach the Northwest until November 22. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, local newsrooms found out almost instantly.
County Creation
One hundred and thirty-five years ago this week, the Washington Territorial Legislature was very busy. On November 24, 1883, it established Kittitas County, and after a weekend break created Douglas County, Adams County, and Skagit County all on the same day — November 28.
Gambling Frustration
On November 25, 1899, The Seattle Star reported that Wyatt Earp, an “ex-sheriff from Arizona,” would be opening a gambling house in what is now Pioneer Square. That he did, but after a few months of dealing with sporadic enforcement of the city’s anti-gambling ordinance, Earp moved on to other ventures elsewhere.
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