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Hazel Wolf, fighter for ecology and the little guy, dead at 101

Friday, January 21, 2000

By JUDD SLIVKA Mail Author
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Seattle has lost a piece of its social conscience.

Hazel Wolf, for virtually all of her 101 years a fighter for the environment and the little guy, died in a Port Angeles nursing home Wednesday night, just 19 days after achieving her goal of living into the third millennium.

The news made its way slowly through Seattle's environmental community yesterday, leaving painful silences in its wake.

  Photo
  Hazel Wolf, whose death Wednesday at 101 left a void in Seattle environmental and social activism, would have joined the WTO protests here, but a broken hip put her out of action.
P-I file/1985
"I'm looking for a bright spot in all of this," said Emory Bundy, director of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental advocacy group.

"I guess the only bright spot that I can see is that she was a lousy candidate to linger. She was so full of life, that it would have been awful to see her just . . . hang on."

Ms. Wolf was born in Victoria, B.C., in March 1898. Her father died eight years later, leaving her mother to fend for the family.

As a result, Ms. Wolf grew up a fighter.

She fought her school's principal to play soccer, fought for women's suffrage, fought for money to teach kids about the environment.

She even fought for the right to smoke, taking up the habit at 18 -- in 1917 -- just to prove she could.

She married early, divorced soon after, and moved with her daughter to America. All alone.

There were a lot of those moments in Ms. Wolf's life.

"What is Hazel's legacy?" asked Chris Peterson, director of the Seattle Audubon Society and Ms. Wolf's friend for upward of 20 years. "We will take action. If you see something wrong in the world, fix it."

During the Depression, Ms. Wolf joined the American Communist Party while trying to get civil rights for blacks and better jobs for everyone. When World War II came, her interest in the party waned. But in 1947, the American government tried to deport her to Britain for her sympathies, nonetheless.

Ms. Wolf's fight to stay was picked up by the British newspapers, who dubbed her "The Red Grandma," and in 1949, the government quietly dropped deportation proceedings.

But it was not the end of her activism.

From 1949, when she became an American citizen, until she retired at age 67, Ms. Wolf worked for Seattle civil-rights attorney John Caughlan.

A bird-watching trip to Seattle's Lincoln Park inspired her to get involved with the Audubon Society, and she was the local chapter's secretary for 37 years.

In 1979, she brought the state's Indian tribes together with the environmental lobby.

And in the 1980s she traveled to Nicaragua to check out the Sandinista's environmental record -- staring down a U.S. consular officer who wanted to know why she was there.

For her 100th birthday, King County honored her environmental activism by renaming the Eastside's Saddle Swamp the Hazel Wolf Wetlands.

"For someone with the controversial background that she had, she truly was an ambassador," said the Bullitt Foundation's Bundy. "She just brought people together."

She did it through humor and good grace.

"You say the most offensive things in an inoffensive way," a timber industry official wrote to her after she spoke at an industry conference.

She took her activities seriously, but never herself, telling people that she was just happy to wake up in the morning and find herself still "on the right side of the grass."

"It was hinted that my speech should be inspirational," she told Seattle University students in 1997 while picking up an honorary doctorate. "However I was not told what I was to inspire you to do, so I am on my own. . . .

"Maybe the best I can do for you is to give you a lot of unsolicited advice. If your goal in life is to be happy, as mine once was, my advice to you is to stay right where you are. Just keep on going to school as long as you can get away with it. Then if that becomes impractical, just move in with your in-laws. This may not work out, but you can try it."

It was that sense of humor that kept things in perspective when she was negotiating. But there was more. She was stubborn.

She would have liked to have participated in the World Trade Organization protests, she told friends in this year's version of her annual Christmas letter.

But a broken hip kept her out of the action.

A broken arm didn't stop her last year when she was scheduled to give a speech. Despite her doctor's advice to keep her arm and herself stable, she headed off to a conference in Cle Elum.

"Well, I was feeling fine," she told people who gaped at her, arm in sling. "I didn't feel like I needed to listen to my doctor or my daughter."

And that was Hazel Wolf, whose death has left a hole in Seattle's activism scene.

She is survived by her daughter, Nydia Levick, 80, of Port Angeles.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave.

Memorials may be made to the Seattle Audubon Society "Kids for the Environment" fund -- which Ms. Wolf helped set up -- at SAS, 8050 35th Ave., N.E., Seattle, 98115.

One last Hazel Wolf story, courtesy of Peterson:

"I introduced her to my daughter one day, when my daughter was very young."

"Hazel leaned over and said 'What's your name?' My daughter said 'Sierra.' And Hazel said, 'What a pretty name. Did you know my parents named me for a nut?"

P-I reporter Judd Slivka can be reached at 206-448-8127 or juddslivka@seattle-pi.com

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