Topic: Biographies
Tim Weaver didn't set out to become a lawyer, let alone a lawyer specializing in Indian fishing rights. He just knew he wanted a profession that would allow him to control his work hours and leave tim...
James Wehn, a Seattle-based sculptor noted for his statue of Chief Seattle, sculpted figures and medallions depicting historically significant persons. His work is displayed across the state and as fa...
Wesley Wehr, a gifted musician at age 19, was invited in 1949 to tutor the painter Mark Tobey (1890-1976) on the piano. Thus began Wehr's close relationship with Tobey and ultimately with all the arti...
Newspaper columnist C. Douglass "Doug" Welch (1907-1968) wrote for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 33 years. His column was titled "The Squirrel Cage" and he He covered stories as varied as the kid...
Born and raised in Norway, August Werner moved to Brooklyn, New York, as a young man and made a name for himself as a singer in both the Norwegian American and wider musical communities. By 1931, havi...
Adam West (1928-2017) was born William West Anderson, raised in Walla Walla and Seattle, and found fame in the mid-1960s playing Batman in the camp television series of that name. After graduating fro...
Jim West was a Washington State Senate majority leader, a Washington State Senate minority leader, and served as mayor of Spokane from 2003 to 2005. At age 28 he became the youngest person ever electe...
Long before "environmentalism" became a common term, Aubrey Lee White of Spokane worked to ensure the enduring quality of the environment of his adopted city and its surroundings. The Maine native arr...
Glenn White -- like his father before him -- possessed a knack for deducing the mysteries of electricity and the material sciences. And advanced schooling allowed the polymath son to pursue an incredi...
In February 1884, missing the cold snap that closed the Snohomish River to steam navigation, carpenter John S. White and his family arrived in Snohomish, a small settlement on the river a dozen miles ...
Native American leader Bernie Whitebear guided the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, which provided social services to Native Americans. He ran the foundation for 30 years. He was famous for le...
Marcus Whitman, a man with unwavering cultural and religious convictions, was one of the first missionaries in the Northwest. He and his wife, Narcissa, established a mission on Cayuse land near Walla...
Narcissa Whitman might have lived out her life in historical obscurity but for two developments. The first was her decision, in 1836, to marry a missionary named Marcus Whitman (1802-1847) and travel ...
Seattle native Jim Whittaker turned a love of nature and a thirst for adventure into a string of precedent-setting achievements. He was the first American to climb to the top of Mount Everest, the wor...
George Frederick Whitworth and his family were among the early pioneers to settle in the southern Puget Sound area. A native of England, he immigrated as a child with his family to the United States, ...
A year and a half after killing two teenage boys on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and then disappearing into the deeply forested Wynoochee Valley (in southern Grays Harbor County), John Tornow -- a ...
Lenny Wilkens left an indelible mark on professional basketball as a player and coach during his five decades in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, but n...
Lt. Charles Wilkes led the first U.S. Navy expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1838. He surveyed Puget Sound and named dozens of bays, coves, rivers, islands, and land formations, including Ell...
William Three Mountains the Elder (ca. 1823-1883) and his son, William Three Mountains the Younger (1864-1937), served as important leaders of the Spokane tribe from the fur trade and missionary perio...
Christina McDonald McKenzie Williams (1847-1925), the daughter of Hudson's Bay Company chief trader Angus McDonald (1816-1889), spent her childhood and young adulthood at Fort Colvile on the Columbia ...
Alice Jeanette Williams had a long and productive career as a political force in Seattle. She was the first woman chair of the King County Democrats and a 20-year member of the Seattle City Council (1...
John Williams (b. 1937) and Scott Williams (b. 1958) are the father-son team behind Kiona Vineyards, the pioneer winery on Red Mountain, near Benton City. John was a Hanford engineer in 1972 when he a...
Roberta Lynn Williams was one of the most influential personal-computer-game designers of the 1980s and 1990s, becoming known as the "Mother" and "Queen" of video adventure games. Williams began her c...
W. Walter Williams led the Seattle-based Continental Mortgage for nearly half a century, guiding the business from modest beginnings in the University District to its ranking as one of the top mortgag...