Anyone who cares about Seattle knows Walt Crowley died Sept. 21.
Crowley, 60, was a Seattle personage who went from anti-Vietnam War radical with a hefty FBI dossier to establishment lefty, author, activist, historic preservationist and, finally, historian.
Crowley's author pendulum swung wide. His books on local history ran the gamut from The Blue Moon tavern to the Rainier Club.
In the process, the former counterculture icon not only broadened our outlook on our life and times but obviously his own, as well. That legacy of historical respect is still carried on by Crowley's old friend and counterculture compatriot Paul Dorpat.
Seattle would be a poorer place without those two.
HIS LIVING LEGACY
Crowley's Oct. 2 memorial service at the Museum of History & Industry overflowed with the likes of Dan Evans, Norm Rice, Ron Sims, Crowley's old pals and a lot of interesting-looking types somewhere in between. Very Seattle.
As Crowley's wife, Marie McCaffrey, noted in her address to the crowd, "A man is known by the company he keeps."
Yeats, in a different context, echoed the point: "And say my glory was I had such friends."
The obituaries took note of Crowley's smarts, wit, kindness, his passion for social justice, his civic accomplishments, his trademark bow tie.
But go to www.historylink.org, where you'll find some 3 million words on Seattle, King County and Washington state history - that's where Crowley's living legacy is.
HISTORYLINK.ORG
In these days, when historical amnesia seems to be closing on the upside, the importance of HistoryLink.org - launched by Crowley, McCaffrey and Dorpat in 1998 - becomes increasingly pointed.
Ask anyone from Boston how they think Seattle treats its old, historic and sometimes beautiful structures. When, in a young city like Seattle, we regard history like a drunken dinner guest who lingers too long, we lose a sense of our lives as part of a larger story. History helps us to distinguish the fire-lit shadows dancing on the cave wall from the makers of the shadows. The media are shadow-hypnotized.
Crowley had this to say about history: "So what use does history serve? Ultimately, just one: It helps us to be more human. Subtract all analytic or pragmatic applications, and you are left with the story - the essential narrative defining our place in time and in the stream of our culture."
HISTORY'S RECORDS
HistoryLink's succinct essays are wonderfully written from a number of sources.
Type "Wallingford" in the search engine and you get 39 files on topics ranging from "House of Good Shepherd Opens in Seattle During Summer of 1890," to "Train Hits Cow and Two Die."
Fremont brings up 42 files. One, with a nod to the official record, is headlined: "B.F. Day Opens Sept. 1892."
All well and good.
But another file drills down to the nitty-gritty, where people live: "Hugh Tracy Participates in Two Gun Battles that Leave Three Men Dead." That event happened July 3, 1902. The dramatic story, written by Allen Stein, gives Zane Gray a run for his money.
The University District brings up 134 files. In the 1960s the U-District and especially the Ave was the nexus for Seattle's "fringies," as the early hippies were called. It was also the primary distribution point for the counterculture house organ, the Helix.
HistoryLink.org headlines the Helix this way: "Seattle's first underground newspaper debuts March 23, 1967." We are told, "Readers snapped up the first 1,500 copies of the 12-page, multicolored 'counterculture' tabloid."
Both Crowley and Dorpat were Helix mainstays. Calling the publication "underground" or "alternative" gave it a certain cache in those days, but really, the radical tabloid lived squarely in the radical tradition running back through Dorothy Day to Thomas Paine.
What could be more American?
LIVING A DREAM
The narrative arc of Walt Crowley's life describes someone who lived out his dream. What better can be said about a life?
And what a gift HistoryLink.org is to the rest of us.
Mike Dillon is publisher of the Herald-Outlook. He can be reached at mdillon@nwlink.com or 461-1283.
