Kay was the most incredible person I have ever known. I have built business and wealth, amassed solid achievements, and have cultivated many wonderful relationships with fantastic people all over the world, but Kay stood apart. One image says it all: Kay perched on the bow of a zodiac playing “chicken” with a Shell super tanker in high seas. What strength, determination and grit were on display. And she won! That image continues to motivate me, as well as the standards and principles that Kat lived by. But mostly, just the thought of Kay has me striving still to the highest levels of accomplishment. She was my friend, and it was friendship based on a common goal: save those special places still left that could actually advance biodiversity on a planet quickly becoming, environmentally, impoverished. Otherwise, we had subtle differences as to how we looked at the news driven issues of the day. Nevertheless, a mutual sense of decency and sensibility and genuine friendship were always our common denominator and always resulted in us sharing a bottle of wine. Nevertheless, Kay always chose the bottle.
I met Kay about 15 years before she was taken from the world tragically by the effects of big industry. Fortunately for us, the Harder Foundation, where I had just become President, we had our main office in
Tacoma, WA. And at that time, Kay was wanting to return home to Tacoma and we had just about completed a frustrating, exhausting and largely unsuccessful search for a new Executive Director for the Foundation – a position to be based in Tacoma. The Foundation, in our minds, was very special. My father, about 40 years previously had essentially created a vehicle, Harder Foundation, with the ambition to advance smart, savvy conservation advocacy work in the Northwestern part of the USA; but finding someone equally special that could actually embody the principals that my dad had envisioned was not coming easy … almost impossibly so, and then Kay entered the realm of possibility.
Wow! Just like lightening hitting … but in our case delivering a beautiful gift … and not a burnt barn or lost roof top, Kay began her final stage of a long career of conservation and environmental advocacy with Harder, and sadly the final major engagement of her life because she still had so much more to develop and advance. Throughout the whole duration of her engagement with the Foundation, Kay delivered year after year solid strategy and guidance to our grantee base that, with time, delivered extraordinary outcomes … and outcomes that continue to produce even more endurable outcomes. Those final years were those during which she suffered miserably from the effects of her Asarco given cancer, yet she “soldiered” on and strove to be the best asset, the best benefactor, the best leader to the Foundation she could be so we could continue to operate at levels into the future that both she and my dad would find satisfying.
Whether or not Harder continues to operate at a level both Kay and my father would be pleased is not something we can know as both passed away prematurely and were not able to continue their guidance, reflection and feedback. Hopefully, Kay and I will connect again in the afterlife and Kay will provide me her final assessment and suggest what I could have done better and I know she will have found a lot! But I do know, in the present, with Kay always in my thoughts, I do our work in her construct of principles, integrity, hard work, lofty goal setting and respect for those actually doing the heavy lift.
I truly treasure the friendship I had with Kay and I think of her all the time … her brilliance, frankness, sincereness, and greatness. What a loss to the world, but what inspiration for us all!
John Driggers