Month: July 2020

A Warm, Powerful Human

Since I live in New Mexico and run a regional nonprofit where I’m a step removed from the trials and tribulations of Pacific Northwest advocacy, I didn’t get to know Kay nearly as well as I would have liked. But all of my meetings with her were memorable, and I always looked forward to my visits with her in Tacoma when I’d make my semi-annual pilgrimage to Washington state.

She was warm, funny, whip smart, and powerful. She held a clear-eyed view of the world that could be perceived as hard-edged cynicism but was, in my estimation, a profound conviction and determination to make the world a better place. In our conversations, she’d ask good, hard questions–questions that always navigated the conversation toward uncovering a sense of possibility and finding the pathway to make that possibility a reality.

I don’t know what her beliefs were, but there’s a part of me–who grew up in the industrial, blue-collar reaches of the Hudson Valley that doesn’t seem (metaphorically) too distant from Tacoma and Puget Sound–that she’s now joyfully traversing her home landscape which inspired her in all of its beauty and possibility, but free of the toxic pollution that sparked her too-soon passage from this world. Much love to her family and all who knew her well. She will be missed.

-Erik

Author:
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich
Connected:
Conservation Advocacy

for the oceans –

i had the privilege of working with Kay since 2006 when she joined the funding world at the Harder Foundation. we were both new to philanthropy. granted she was an Executive Director and i was a lowly program associate, she interlaced her arm with mine and encouraged us to walk along the steep learning curve together. through the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (later Biodiversity Funders Group), and through the Environmental Grantmakers Association, so many of us always looked forward to those reunions of a big beautiful community, and Kay was an integral part of them, and, will continue to be. in these settings, she would ask tough questions of anyone – political leaders, advocates, campaigners, frontline leaders, and scientists – and save the hardest questions for us as funders, always pushing us to think bigger yet be focused, be more strategic yet seize opportunities, be patient yet impatient, work for nature conservation yet never ignore racial equity, and gather many perspectives yet listen to and be accountable to those communities whose lives were being impacted day in and out (she embodied how there is wisdom in the listening). oh, and always always always have humor, sarcasm and wit.

i would turn to Kay for advice to understand the landscape of Washington State and the Pacific NW. our respective foundations co-invested in the advocacy, community organizing and policy-level work needed to get Washington’s first marine spatial plan out the gate. and her kayak-tivist support – among so many other creative tactics she helped enable – in Washington was a strategic lever for my work and inspired activism in countless ways in fighting dumb infrastructure projects and their related shipping impacts north of the border in British Columbia.

when i was in my own struggle with cancer, Kay was consistently there for a firm hug, a check-in, and a flash of encouragement. and also a big ol’ “fuck cancer.” i admired how she did not mince words. during her own journey with the disease, she taught me so many lessons, namely how to live. savor a garden and a grandson. go to hawaii. reflect on the struggle. and continue to fight in whatever way we need to do to make the world better. i was grateful to feel even closer to her in these recent years.

i’ll always light a candle for Kay because she has lit a candle for so many.

Author:
Meaghan Calcari Campbell
Connected:
Through the funding community and during her tenure at the Harder Foundation

Earth Mother Mentor

Kay coordinated the first Greenpeace International campaign I was a part of, when we tried to sail a hot air balloon into the Nevada Test Site to stop an underground nuclear weapons detonation. It was an inspired and, we would come to learn, deeply flawed idea, but we were young and committed and passionate and, it’s easy to forget, desperate. For those who didn’t grow up with the day to day reality of “duck and cover” in fallout shelters, of news stories of geese being mistaken for missiles and triggering red alerts, of hair-trigger radar systems capable of launching the obliteration of whole cities in seconds, it’s hard to imagine just how fragile the world seemed, and how important the mission to throw everything we had at stopping a nuclear apocalypse. Kay was the first of many Greenpeace women that I worked for, and she brought a level-headed outrage and deeply compassionate leadership style that was utterly at odds with so much of the organization’s testosterone-fueled chest thumping of those days.

The campaign was a time both magical and cursed. It was training flights over the sagebrush of the Santa Monica hills, flying over hawks and rabbit in the dawn sunlight. It was long hours working in the shadow of sensing we were being watched, fearing we might be infiltrated, and knowing we were up against the mightiest military force on the planet. It was staring into the abyss of the nuclear threat, it was the camaraderie of hope. It was logistical nightmares and tactical arguments and all the day to day conflicts of a group of people, who, in Bob Hunter’s words,  were “men and women, young and old, not all of them brave or wise, who found themselves face-to-face with the fullest ecological horrors of the century …”

Through it all Kay was exactly the kind of quick-witted empathetic leader you need when chaos is swirling. She brought out the best in a motley team and kept us moving forward even after a spectacular setback – a balloon crash that garnered all the wrong kinds of press and which a lesser leader would have turned into a blame game. She picked up the pieces, dusted off our egos, waited for bones to mend, and put us all back on track.

She was rock. She was laughter. She was quiet wisdom, humble optimist, sparkling inspiration. Wonderful storyteller. Champion hugger. Deeply missed.

 

Author:
Brian Fitzgerald
Connected:
We worked together at Greenpeace.

formation of GP International

This picture was taken from a documentary screened on my TV, and shows the 1979 meeting in England when Greenpeace International was formed.  David McTaggart, shown on the right, had brokered the end of the lawsuit between Canada and the US, after which representatives from all the countries came together, and agreed to join a unified organization located in Amsterdam.  Kay, shown on the left, had been chosen to represent the US offices.

Her enduring comment on the meeting was “I couldn’t believe all the women who were getting coffee for the men”.

BVUU8614.jpeg

Author:

Bruce Hoeft

Connected:

partners

Connections

This necklace, see? A Kwakiutl-styled orca. Kay wore it for many years. One day she gave it to me, and I was a little floored, because I associated it so strongly with her and thought it so lovely—how could she give it away? “I’m out of my hippie phase,” she said. Years later, wearing this necklace, I reminded her of that and we had a good laugh. I’ve had the necklace for so many years now, it feels completely mine. But today I remember it was yours, Kay.

Kay and I met in San Francisco—young, fired-up, eager to Save the Earth. But each of us happened to have recently injured a leg, and so we were forced to lag behind as McTaggart and the others took big manly strides ahead on the way to the pizza place, leaving us in the dust. And leaving me a chance to talk with and start to get to know this smart, compassionate, funny, wise woman from the Seattle office. You know how there are some people who you just like and click with right away? (I can guess I am not alone in this—I suppose we all felt that way about Kay.) So if I had to have a bum knee, best to have it at the same time Kay had hers. Our friendship began as we limped along together. Lucky me.

Over the next forty years, Kay—and Bruce—and I crossed paths in many places—various nascent (and later, crumbling) Greenpeace offices, campaign sites, the Black Hills of South Dakota for the Survival Gathering, our homes in various states—for a time, we even actually lived in the same town of Olympia, WA. So I think now of snippets of Kay from various places and times: when she was pregnant and adorably wearing overalls that made her look like she was smuggling a beach ball; singing (Rebecca! I remember too!); setting in front of me a plate or bowlful of yet another wonderful meal; in Tacoma Park, as a proud mama showing me a bright picture of a desert Nathan had drawn; as a happy grandma sending me a video of toddler Collin careening across a kitchen floor; and way back when, I remember her with a stuffed (felt?) creature someone had made for her, with the words “We’ve Got To Stop Them!” coming out of its mouth. And oh, and if everyone had worked half as hard for half as long as you did, dear Kay, what a better world we would be leaving our children.

Kay and a mutual friend were in New Zealand when word came that a man I love had died suddenly. She and Liz were perhaps the only two people in Greenpeace who knew both that I had to be told and where to find me, far away from phones, living for the summer near Mount St Helens. From NZ, they contacted the Forest Service in Washington state, and sent someone—convinced this poor soul he had to make a many-long-miles trip—to tell me the worst news I could receive. Kay made sure I learned in time to get on a plane, and to hold his ashes and say goodbye before he joined the ocean at last. It took me weeks to work out how word had come to me—incredibly—in the middle of nowhere.

So, after all these years and all these meetings in various places, will we also get to meet again on the other side? I’m not the type to have much hope—or faith—in that. But I can imagine that I will meet you again someday, somewhere, unaware, the molecules of you reconstituted into caterpillar or orca or chickadee or (yes!) calla lily.

Thank you for all the years, for all the laughs, for all the love.

Pattyorca.jpg

Author:

Pat Lichen

Connected:

Greenpeace