Russ Zabel from the mid-1990s.
Russ Zabel from the mid-1990s.
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Remembering Russ
I am truly saddened by his death, and my heart goes out to everyone who worked with him on a daily basis. His unique view of the world of Seattle affairs, politics and especially policebeat items can't be duplicated, and is as much a part of Seattle as the Aurora Bridge or the Counterbalance.

- John Livingston,

freelance writer and editor

Members of our committee who knew Russ and his work over the years expressed sadness and regret at his passing. He covered a lot of areas and issues and served his readers well. He will truly be missed.

- Frank Gaul,

Emergency Planning Committee, Magnolia-Queen Anne District Council

Several times during my tenure I'd be talking in my office with a young writer - in one case a very promising contributor, and in several others a News Lab student from the UW. I heard the same story more than once: that as a kid she would listen to her parents reading Police Beat to each other - it was a weekly kitchen-table ritual. This listening was mostly surreptitious, from another room or halfway up the stairs, which only served to enhance the moment when I'd say, "You know, Russ's desk is just around the corner, on the other side of that wall. Would you like to meet him?" The visitor's eyes would grow large with amazement and she'd say, "Russ Zabel!" It was as though he were some famous actor, a legend from another era. And just on the other side of the wall."

- Richard Jameson

former editor, Queen Anne & Magnolia News

In an era of transition of print media, Russ epitomized the notion that all news (and politics) is local. The Magnolia and Queen Anne community are poorer for the loss of Russ.

- Janis Traven

past vice chair, 36th District Democrats

During our shared time at the News, cats ran the place, and when they showed up in the morning they ran to their favorite human, Russ Zabel. A gray female cat named Lumpy would receive a morning greeting from Russ that would wake the rest of us: "Lumpy, LOMPY!" Russ would call, windows rattling. He would then embrace the cat in what was called a "Lumpy drape," slowing petting her as she lay across his left chest and shoulder, and he whispered to her quietly....There was a time when, if you described a crime story as "Zabelian," no one would ask you what that meant. The Zabelian realm was a strange place where Jack Webb met David Lynch...As we sink deeper into the abyss of 24-7 toil, into this blog-all-the-time-about-everything whirlwind that journalism and life have become, we should be grateful for the time that made Russ possible and mourn that time's passage as much as we mourn the passage of Russ.

-Jack Arends

former editor, Queen Anne & Magnolia News

Russ was accessible, a good listener, asked great questions, got the information right, and was an all around cool dude. His time was cut way too short, and I will miss him.

- Bruce Wynn

exec. dir., Interbay Neighborhood Assoc.

It's common to the point of cliché to hear of this or that person that they broke the mold when they made him, but Russ really was this wonderful, fascinating sort of anachronisms, a throwback, a reporter's reporter from the hard-boiled era of H.L. Mencken and Damon Runyon - right down to his fedora and police-blotter jargon and his after-work gin-and-tonic at his chosen watering hole. A born storyteller with a story to tell, Russ was rough-hewn and grizzled, with a husk of grit and gallows humor that protected, and sometimes hid, yes - a deep and abiding humanity.

- Rick Levin

former Pacific Publishing Co. editor

As I've been grieving about Russ the past week, I've thought a lot about our formal, professional connections, as well as our personal relationship. At times, the two intertwined. He covered my campaign kickoffs and annual November post-election analysis panels for most of the past 15 years. He wrote about the trekking adventures in Nepal and Tibet of my husband, Alex Welles, and of my mother, Elizabeth Kohl, having being stranded in the non-functioning wheelchair lift at the opening of the Galer pedestrian bridge over Aurora. My husband and I enjoyed chatting with him when we'd see him on lower Queen Anne/Uptown. Even though he seemed gruff and cynical on the outside, he often displayed a warm, humorous affect and keen intellect.

- State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles

I was so saddened to hear this morning about Russ. I wanted to send along my deepest sympathy to you and your team in losing such a fun and engaged peer. I am so sorry to lose him from our neighborhood community as he really added a wonderful spice.

- Reuven Carlyle, state Rep. 36th Dist.

He's certainly a pillar of our community and has helped the QACC over the years in getting forth our issues. Russ will be sorely missed by the members of our community. I'm very saddened by it.

- Ellen Monrad, QACC

I was so shocked to see about Russ. I had no idea he was ill. He was always the nicest guy to work with, and I'm really, really sorry about his death. I hope you guys muster on. I'm sure it's going to be tough.

- Nancy Gilbert

Over the years, Russ and I crossed paths at many community events and meetings in the greater Queen Anne area. Russ was integral in the reporting of all the news that was fit to print in our neighborhood. He was always getting the story, while I was snapping photos for the archives of our community groups and exporting them to the QA News. One of those photos was of Russ receiving an award in Counterbalance Park - happily published by his editor, much to his chagrin! Russ, Mike Dillon, Myke Folger and the rest of the QA News staff exemplify community reporting at its best, and it has been my privilege to work with all of them over the years. Russ will be missed.

- Ann Pearce

Russ was my cousin. I shall miss him terribly. I always thought his voice sounded just like Johnny Carson's. His wit was most unique.

- Joy McCracken

He was the stereotypical, what you pictured in 1940s movies of a newspaper reporter was, the Fedora with the press pass tucked in the rim. It's surprising in that he's younger than I am, and that's always a shock.

- Gary McDaniel
On April 1 Russ Zabel wrote the lead for his life's final chapter in his trademark laconic style.

Following a visit to his doctor for stomach pains, the long-time Queen Anne and Magnolia News reporter sent an e-mail to two colleagues: "The good news is I'll be back to work today; the pain I had was caused by gas. The bad news: checking out the digestive problem revealed I have lung cancer."

The cancer proved aggressive. Mr. Zabel, 59, died at his Magnolia home Sunday, April 12.

"He stood apart from all," said his sister Robin Zabel of Santa Fe, N.M. "He was hard to know but very sweet and honest by nature, oddly innocent and kind and generous to a fault."

A student of the theater, Mr. Zabel admired the works of Samuel Beckett. His weekly, wry Police Blotter in the Queen Anne and Magnolia News garnered a wide following.

When the going got weird, Mr. Zabel got going. Besides writing boilerplate stories on neighborhood meetings and zoning codes, Mr. Zabel's reportage included an account of a transvestite riot at Denny's; a Department of Homeland Security raid on the Mecca Café after a man was overheard talking on his cell phone about "getting bombed at the Mecca"; and a homeless man who constructed a two-story tree house featuring a pulley system that hoisted furniture and party-goers to his aerial perch. When the autumn leaves fell a Highland Drive dowager, her view marred, called police. The man, homeless again, liked the story so much he called Mr. Zabel and asked that a copy be sent to his mother in Texas.

Though he had mastered a gruff, old-school persona, friends and colleagues were aware of his sensitive, compassionate nature. In the mid-1990s, after two cats were found hung in Discovery Park - a story Mr. Zabel covered - he was subdued for days.

A charmed, nomadic existence

Mr. Zabel's picaresque life was one for the books.

Born on Jan. 11, 1950, in Carlsbad, N.M., he was the oldest of three children. His geologist father and his mother, a professor of law, divorced when he was 11. That event triggered a life of travels in the United States and overseas in the 1960s - Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Europe - as his mother followed various teaching positions. It was a rolling, bohemian existence, their houses always filled with students as part of their extended family, Robin Zabel said.

Fluent in French and Italian, Mr. Zabel hosted his own radio program in Italian-speaking Switzerland. He also composed music for an Italian filmmaker. He finished up his university education at Indiana University, where he focused on Chinese-Tibetan studies and journalism.

Calling Seattle home, Mr. Zabel went to work for Murray Publishing in the production department in 1987. Pacific Media Group purchased Murray Publishing and several other local community newspapers in 1990, becoming Pacific Publishing Co. several years later.

Retired Pacific Publishing president Tom Haley recalled in an e-mail: "Russ asked me if he might be considered for the news staff at the Queen Anne and Magnolia News. I said, 'Sure.' Russ and his talent found their niche, and the News gained a reliable, savvy, colorful career journalist who became a dear friend to his colleagues, this writer included."

Along the way, Mr. Zabel won numerous journalism awards. His coverage charted two decades worth of Queen Anne and Magnolia history: The People's Lodge, the Mercer mess, the viaduct, the Interbay P-Patch, airplane noise, the neighborhood Comprehensive Plan.

Mr. Zabel and Christa Dumpys, Queen Anne/Magnolia Neighborhood District coordinator, often crossed paths in the line of duty. "He had such a presence at neighborhood functions and community meetings, covering stories about all the neighborhood happenings," Dumpys said by e-mail. "Since both of our jobs involve going to lots of community meetings, we often saw each other and joked about who went to more meetings. It is truly a loss for the community, and he will be missed."

Mr. Zabel was known for doing the hard, detail work of understanding the issues and the people involved. That grounding gave him the wherewithal to write memorable story leads. A July 5, 1995, piece on the fractious battle between Interbay P-Patchers and golf interests began, "If there were a patron saint of golf courses, it would seem his or her help could be used in putting together a golf course in Interbay."

Gazing at Tibet

Upon his mother's death in 1997, Mr. Zabel wrote a column about his upbringing. Its playful, globetrotting spirit revealed a background that took many of his readers and not a few of his colleagues by surprise. The column (go to www.queenannenews.com for the complete text) touched on, among other things, his mother's interest in transcendental meditation. Her name was Shirley - the Zabel kids called their parents by their first names.

"My mother died meditating the day after she and my sister arrived in Fairfield," he wrote. "She even had a little grin on her face when my sister found her that Monday morning. We had her cremated, and a family friend in Texas - a man from India - has offered to take her ashes to his country in the spring. There, he will arrange to have a traditional Hindu religious ceremony performed and then will dump her ashes into the Ganges River. It's not a traditional send-off by any means, but Shirley would have liked it."

Robin Zabel said, at one point in his 20s, her brother embarked on an around-the-world jaunt with the goal of entering Tibet. Politics prevented her brother from crossing the Tibetan border. "He wistfully viewed it from India," she said.

Mr. Zabel is survived by his sister Robin, his half-brother Court and his stepmother Jeanne. Congo Fred, Mr. Zabel's gruff, African Gray parrot, has found a new home.

A gathering in Mr. Zabel's honor will take place at 7 p.m., April 30, at the Mecca Café, 526 Queen Anne Ave N.
BY RUSS ZABEL

(From the Queen Anne & Magnolia News, Jan. 22, 1997)

I was on vacation during the holidays this year and planned to just hang around town. Instead, I ended up catching a red-eye flight to the Midwest on Christmas Eve because my mother died the day before.

It was, as they say, unexpected. She would have been 69 this week. Yet, as countless other aging baby boomers like me are finding out, it really is becoming a common event to lose a parent these days. Unlike countless other baby boomers, though, I work for a newspaper and it's my turn to write a column this week.

So I thought I'd tell you about my mother, Shirley, because she was a most extraordinary woman. My brother, Doug, and my sister, Robin, and I have always called our parents by their first names, incidentally.

Anyway, Shirley and Robin had driven up to Fairfield, Iowa, for the holidays from the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where my mother was a law professor and where my sister is a third-year law student in the same school.

They own a condo in Fairfield, which is home to the Maharishi International University of transcendental-meditation fame. There's a 20-year-long connection there, but more about that later.

My mother received her law degree at the top of her class from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City when I was in second or third grade and already had a younger brother and sister. Shirley was still married at the time to my father, Vic, a geologist who retired a few years ago from the federal government in Washington, D.C.

She ultimately got a job as the first woman to be an Assistant Attorney General in New Mexico and later worked as a lawyer in the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. We all lived in Falls Church, Va., at the time, and it was around then that my parents got divorced - another common boomer experience.

My brother, sister and I stayed with her, and Shirley moved us all to Philadelphia, where she went to graduate school and became a law professor. She got a job right away, too, teaching at the University of Idaho in Moscow.

She was fired after only a year, which we all figured had more to do with our family's anti-Vietnam War activities than her performance as a professor. It was the mid-1960s, a time of national paranoia, and our phone was tapped and people who had been at the house were questioned by the FBI.

In any event, it was then that our family's adventures really began because Shirley got a job right away through a Ford Foundation grant teaching law at the University of Khartoum in the Sudan.

That's not quite as far-fetched as it sounds. The Sudan is a former English colony, and much of their law is based on English common law - the same way ours is in this country.

So off we flew at the beginning of the summer, ending up briefly in Ethiopia by mistake, thanks to an incompetent travel agent back in Idaho. We finally did get to Khartoum, though, and it was a blast.

I left school at the end of summer to go to my boarding school in Pennsylvania, while my brother and sister stayed with Shirley and did correspondence courses - sort of.

I couldn't wait to get back at the end of the school year, but it was 1967 and the Arab/Israeli War had broken out while the rest of my family was in Europe on holiday. The war meant we couldn't get visas for the Sudan, so I joined my family in London that summer.

Then Shirley got another job teaching law in another former English colony in Africa. It was Nigeria, which was having a civil war at the time, although the town we were based in was around 700 miles from the nearest fighting.

My brother, sister and I ended up going to schools in Switzerland, but we did spend a fair amount of time in Nigeria, as well. The family also traveled all over Europe, usually toting a couple dozen pieces of hand luggage through countless airport terminals.

We also spent of a lot of each summer in London for several years and at one point maintained an apartment in Paris. Shirley finally returned to the state, where she also taught law in Connecticut, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Iowa, at Gonzaga University in Spokane and lately in Texas. She also was an external examiner (she graded other professor's exams) in Nairobi, Kenya.

Thanks to my having been taught first and telling her about it, Shirley also became interested in transcendental meditation. Ultimately, she, my brother and sister all became teachers of the technique.

They also spent literally years if you add up the time at resident courses all over the world and learned some fairly esoteric techniques. Shirley also became a faculty member at the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, which is how she and my sister ended up owning a condo there.

My mother died meditating the day after she and my sister arrived in Fairfield. She even had a little grin on her face when my sister found her that Monday morning.

We had her cremated, and a family friend in Texas - a man from India - has offered to take her ashes to his country in the spring. There, he will arrange to have a traditional Hindu religious ceremony performed and then will dump her ashes into the Ganges River.

It's not a traditional send-off by any means, but Shirley would have liked it.