"I think I'm an interesting person," says Elizabeth Campbell, with intriguing certainty. Who would say such a thing about herself?
Elizabeth was born in Seattle on July 25, 1952, the first of Marilyn and Verne Redman's six children. Though busy at home, Marilyn found time to volunteer for the school district, and to participate in local historic preservation.
Verne has worked in the warehouse at Abbey Party Rents for 45 years. In his 70s now, he still does. When he started, the company also rented out medical equipment for home use - hospital beds, oxygen tanks and such. Elizabeth remembers careening around the warehouse in wheelchairs with her siblings.
Elizabeth grew up on Queen Anne. She attended John Hay Elementary School, was in the first entering class at McClure Junior High School and graduated from Queen Anne High School in 1970.
Queen Anne has changed since she was growing up. "There's a lot more traffic now," she says, "a lot of transplants." Stores weren't upscale and she knew all the owners. Nancy's Sewing Basket used to be Elsie's, also a fabric store. Tully's Coffee was Salladay's Pharmacy. Ravenna Gardens was the S&M Market, with produce displayed in rough-hewn troughs on the sidewalk.
"Kids could buy hotdogs there for pennies," she says. "Same with A&J Meats. It was nice the way it was." She sounds like a senior citizen, but she's only an aging Baby Boomer.
Her heritage is mostly English and Norwegian. "But I'm not into it," she says. "I don't like Norwegian food and costumes." Nevertheless, she has traced her genealogy, with the help of a few ancestors, back to the 1600s.
She is proud that her great-great-grandfather, John R. Rogers, was the third governor of Washington (1897-1901). He ran on the Fusion ticket, a compromise of Democratic and Republican positions. He is remembered best for bringing about the Barefoot Schoolboy Act, which granted the right to a free public education to every child.
After high school, Elizabeth held a variety of jobs. She was a nurse's aide at Queen Anne Healthcare, on Dexter. She ran a 10-key in the Visa Department of the National Bank of Commerce. Charge slips came to her in tubs wrapped in bundles in rubber bands, which she processed by hand. She was a union carpenter for Howard S. Wright Construction Company - the first woman in Seattle to be a union carpenter. That job marked the nascence of her concern for equal rights for women and, despite her heritage, minorities.
In 1976, the day after her 24th birthday, Elizabeth married Foster Campbell, owner and builder of Queen Anne Healthcare. Born in 1917, he was 35 years older than she, had been married twice before and had a son who is also older than she.
Three months before they were married, Elizabeth and Foster's only child Candy was born. Foster's strict Adventist family did not like this risqué chronology, but they weren't surprised. His reputation with them was already checkered.
Ten days after Candy's arrival, Elizabeth's youngest sister was born. In other words, Candy has an aunt who is younger than she. Got that? In the Campbell/Redman clan, generational lines are blurred.
Following their marriage, Fos-ter and Elizabeth built more nursing homes in several western states. After Foster retired, Elizabeth continued on her own. She facilitated the passage of a $3-million bond to fund her last nursing home project in Reno, Nev.
In 1987 Foster and Elizabeth divorced, and the next year, almost inadvertently, Elizabeth got into the baking business. On a lark she attended a going-out-of-business auction at Van de Kamp's Bakery, and came away its new owner. She knew nothing about baking or the baking business, but learned to operate the 20-foot-by-20-foot ovens and carried on from there.
Meanwhile, Foster went to Mexico and had a short-lived marriage to a Mexican woman. Then he and Elizabeth reconciled, and remarried in 1990. A few months later he died of complications from diabetes.
Over the next several years Elizabeth bought a total of five bakeries, which made sweet goods only, including her trademark "Seattle Bar," a concoction of caramel, coconut, chocolate chips and walnuts. She sold all five in 1999.
Elizabeth moved into her daugh-ter's home on Magnolia and took care of her young grandson full-time while Candy was at work. As her grandson grew, Elizabeth discerned some unusual aspects to his development, leading eventually to his being diagnosed with a form of autism. "It's been quite a journey learning about autism and other developmental disabilities, the laws pertaining to persons with disabilities and the services available to them," she says. "That is something good I have contributed to my grandson's life."
That grandson is now a second-grader in special education, and his mother Candy is married. "My son-in-law is French," says Elizabeth. "I've taken up studying the French language and culture."
When Candy married, Elizabeth ceased to be Candy's dependent. Among other things, that meant she qualified for a free community-college education under the Displaced Homemaker Act. She attended Shoreline Community College and earned her associate arts degree in criminal justice last year.
She is now a junior at the University of Washington with two majors, one in the Law, Societies & Justice Program, the other in sociology. She also has two minors, in American Indian Studies and Disability Studies. "Social justice is a high priority for me," Elizabeth says.
"Being in school now," she continues, "I know more about what they're teaching young people, and because of my age I'm a more challenging student for the professors." She believes she needs a degree to further her goals.
"I'm interested in how institutions act," she says. "Take the interaction between tribal governments and various levels of U.S. government. Tribal rights are not in the Constitution, but they still need to be considered."
She continues to work in the community as an advocate for under-represented people. She is on the board of the Magnolia Community Club and heads its Land Use Task Force, taking on such projects as providing affordable housing on Magnolia, cleaning up the Thorndyke medians and Burlington Northern right-of-way and improving Smith Cove Park.
Elizabeth admires strong women, and cites Pamela Harrington as an example. U.S. Ambassador to France during the Clinton administration, "Pamela Harrington was polished, accomplished and directed in her life," she says. What she doesn't add is that Ms. Harrington was married three times and had many affairs, not unlike someone Elizabeth knew intimately.
"I think I'm an interesting person," says Elizabeth, "because I've done a lot of nontraditional things." In addition to everything else, for a while she even raised pigs in Walla Walla.
But one traditional thing she does now is bake at home. Her caramel toffee apple pie with pecans recently won first place in a pie-making contest at the Puyallup Fair.[[In-content Ad]]
