[Vision2020] A Real Hero

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Seattle Times at:

http://tinyurl.com/56c786

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All Edith Macefield wanted to do was live out her days in her small 
Ballard home, refusing to sell to developers, who simply built around her. 
She died Sunday at age 86.

http://tinyurl.com/4ennby

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Edith Macefield and her house were symbols of Old Ballard
By Danny Westneat

Last time I saw Edith Macefield, she threatened to sue me. Then she smiled 
and invited me in.

It was in 2006. I had written a column about how old Edith had refused to 
leave her tiny home in a filthy, industrial Ballard neighborhood, 
saying "no" to a nearly million-dollar buyout offer from a developer.

Her house was valued as a worthless tear-down by the government. But to 
her it was priceless.

When I stopped by later to check on her, she said she was angry that I had 
written about her. More than anything, she said, she wanted to be left 
alone.

But Edith, I said. You're a folk hero.

I showed her some of the 200 e-mail messages I'd gotten from readers, some 
from as far away as Seoul, South Korea. They hailed her for valuing 
something other than money. For being a lone holdout against relentless 
Seattle yuppification.

"She's about the last thing left with any soul around here," said a 
typical one.

That's when she invited me in. Turns out she had gotten 60 similar 
letters, some hand-delivered with flowers. As she showed them, she 
dismissed all the fuss as hooey.

"I'm no hero," she said. "I meant it. I just want to be left alone."

Edith died Sunday, at 86. She died in the tiny cottage she had refused to 
leave, not for a million bucks.

"She got what she wanted," said Charlie Peck, a longtime friend. "She 
wanted to die at home, in the same house, on the same couch, where her 
mother had died. That's what she was so stubborn about."

He said she was never trying to stick it to The Man. Or to make any larger 
statement against development or money or anything else.

Yet to look at her house today, it's hard not to be impressed by her iron 
will, no matter her motivation.

The tiny house in the industrial flats once was part of a row of picket-
fence-lined cottages along a working-class street. That was old Ballard.

Today it sits walled in on three sides by what will be a five-story health 
club and a Trader Joe's. New Ballard.

The only reason the new hasn't completely obliterated the old — yet, 
anyway — is because of the principled lady who lived there. She stuck it 
out through years of garbage trucks rumbling by, a homeless car-camping 
colony out her front door, and now, for the past two years, the racket of 
construction mere feet from her windows.

"I don't care about money," Edith said. "What would I do with that kind of 
money anyway?

"This is my home. I wouldn't like it anywhere else."

Who says things like this anymore? Who so confidently ignores the tides of 
money and power?

Forget that frivolous Ballard Denny's. It didn't tell Ballard's story, old 
or new. Edith's house is the real Ballard landmark.

Not that it is likely to remain. The five-story structure going up around 
her home is being built so that Edith's lot can be easily absorbed into 
the development, said Kent Voter, a superintendent for Ledcor Construction 
at the site.

Voter described how spots have been left so steel beams could be inserted 
into the concrete to complete the upper floor, assuming Edith's home is 
sold and torn down.

She has no known relatives, but Voter said he believed she had left her 
property to Ledcor's senior construction superintendent, who had been 
taking care of her. I couldn't reach him for this story.

Peck said he doesn't know what Edith wanted done with her house. He'd love 
to see the spot preserved, as a reminder of Edith and old Ballard. She 
adored jazz, and years ago gave Peck her record collection, thousands of 
78-rpm records featuring the big bands. Benny Goodman. Glenn Miller. Tommy 
Dorsey.

"I used to talk with her about opening a music club, so people could come 
to hear those old records and while away the time," Peck said. "I don't 
really know what she wanted. But she loved listening to music. I bet that 
would make her happy."

They could call it Edith's Place. It'd be an old hole in the wall of new 
Ballard, literally.

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Seeya at Farmers' Market, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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