Violet "Vim" Crane Wright was a Turkish-American entrepreneur, academic, political activist, and environmentalist.
Wright was born June 4, 1926, as Lisetta Iakovidou in Istanbul Turkey. She was adopted by the American couple General John Alden Crane and Mary McKim Crane. They moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1936. She attended the Garrison Forest School but did not graduate. She married Edward “Skip” Wright Jr. in 1949. She later attended Eaton-Burnett Business College. [1]
Vim and Skip had two sons. [2]
While her husband served in the military Wright volunteered with the American Cancer Society, a local hospital, and the Republican Party. [1]
She moved to Colorado after divorcing her husband. [2] In Colorado she discovered a love for nature eventually becoming the President of the Colorado Open Space Council [3] and even placed herself in the path of bulldozers to prevent the destruction of the Florissant Fossil Beds. [2]
In 1977 Wright moved to Seattle to work at the University of Washington's Institute for Environmental Studies as assistant director. She left the Institute when it was closed in 1992. In Washington she worked with the Farming and Environment Project [2] and founded Washington Conservation Voters. [4]
She served on the Audubon Society's national board. [4]
Wright died on June 1, 2003, in Seattle, Washington of lung cancer. [2]
Her papers are held by the University of Washington Libraries. [5]
Elizabeth Anne Ford was the first lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977, as the wife of former president Gerald Ford. As first lady, she was active in social policy and set a precedent as a politically active presidential spouse. Ford also was the second lady of the United States from 1973 to 1974 when her husband was vice president.
Betty MacDonald was an American author who specialized in humorous autobiographical tales, and is best known for her book The Egg and I. She also wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series of children's books. She is associated with the Pacific Northwest, especially Washington.
Bertha Ethel Knight Landes was the first female mayor of a major American city, serving as mayor of Seattle, Washington from 1926 to 1928. After years of civic activism, primarily with women's organizations, she was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1922 and became council president in 1924.
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general.
Sheryl Lee is a German-born American film, stage, and television actress. After studying acting in college, Lee relocated to Seattle, Washington to work in theater, where she was cast by David Lynch as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. After completing Twin Peaks, she returned to theater, appearing in the title role of Salome on Broadway opposite Al Pacino.
Linda Brown Buck is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors. She is currently on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Princess Tomohito of Mikasa is a member of the Japanese Imperial Family as the widow of Prince Tomohito of Mikasa.
Ethel Lois Payne was an American journalist, editor, and foreign correspondent. Known as the "First Lady of the Black Press," she fulfilled many roles over her career, including columnist, commentator, lecturer, and freelance writer. She combined advocacy with journalism as she reported on the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Her perspective as an African American woman informed her work, and she became known for asking questions others dared not ask.
Susan Ellen (Tanenbaum) Stern was an American political activist. She was a member of the prominent anti-Vietnam War groups Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Weatherman and the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF).
Alice Dunbar Nelson was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation of African Americans born free in the Southern United States after the end of the American Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. After his death, she married physician Henry A. Callis; and, lastly, was married to Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist. She achieved prominence as a poet, author of short stories and dramas, newspaper columnist, women's rights activist, and editor of two anthologies.
Erna Gunther (1896–1982) was an American anthropologist who taught for many years at the University of Washington in Seattle. Gunther's work on ethnobotany is still extensively consulted today.
Katharine Wright Haskell was an American teacher, suffragist, and the younger sister of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. She worked closely with her brothers, managing their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio when they were away; acting as their right-hand woman and general factotum in Europe; assisting with their correspondence and business affairs; and providing a sounding board for their ideas. She pursued a professional career as a high school teacher in Dayton and became an international celebrity. A significant figure in the early-twentieth-century women's movement, she worked on behalf of woman suffrage in Ohio and served as the third female trustee of Oberlin College.
Elizabeth Wright Ingraham was an American architect and educator. A granddaughter of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, she studied under his tutelage at his Taliesin studio at age 15. She later established an architect's practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband, Gordon Ingraham, which adhered to Wright's architectural styles. In 1970 she formed her own architectural firm, Elizabeth Wright Ingraham and Associates, which she led until her retirement in 2007. She is credited with the design of approximately 150 buildings in Colorado Springs and other western locales. She also founded and directed the Wright-Ingraham Institute, which invites students and visiting faculty to conferences and workshops on environmental issues. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.
Dorothy Louise Vennard Lamm is an American feminist, women's rights activist, educator, author, and speaker. She was First Lady of Colorado during her husband Richard Lamm's three terms as Governor of Colorado (1975–1987), and unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate as the Colorado Democratic candidate in 1998. She wrote a weekly column for The Denver Post from 1979 to 1996 and later published three books. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985.
Susie Revels Cayton was an American writer, editor, activist, and leader in the African-American community in Seattle at the start of the 20th century.
Ruth Penington (1905–1998) was an American artist, jeweler and arts activist.
Beverly Wright is an American environmental justice scholar and the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University. Her research considers the environmental and health inequalities along the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor. Her awards and honours include the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Achievement Award.
Bernice Friedman Stern was an American politician who served as a member of the King County Council from 1969 to 1980. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented the 4th district and was the first woman elected to the council.
Hildreth (Heidi) Durham was an American socialist feminist and labor activist with the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. Durham was one of the first female electricians to work at Seattle City Light, where she faced significant barriers due to pervasive sexism and suffered a nearly fatal accident that left her paralyzed for the rest of her life. In 1991, Durham was a candidate in the Seattle City Council elections on the Freedom Socialist Party ticket with Yolanda Alaniz.
Dorli Rainey was an Austrian-American political activist. After being pepper-sprayed at an Occupy Seattle protest by police, she became one of the faces of the Occupy Wall Street movement.