LLyn, former dean, and Don, Gay Center representative, share perspectives on their early days at Evergreen and the how they came to sit across the table from each other mediating a gay rights debacle.
This list of historic highlights and walking tour map was conceived and produced by LLyn De Danaan and Carol McKinley. Many others contributed. It is offered in fond memory of and with thanks to some iconic folks who walked to the edge for us: Pat Shively, Kay Engel, Jocelyn Dohm, Ed Stanley, Cal Anderson, Mike Cook, Tom Howdeshell, and Marge Brown.
We had no offices at first. The buildings weren’t ready. So, a solution that became a model for programs for years after was born. We retreated to Sun Lakes State Park in Eastern Washington near Coulee City. We loaded vans with food and sleeping bags and projectors, films, books . . . five faculty and nearly a hundred students.
Here’s what my life was like in the late 1960s while a student: Trips to the Pacific Ocean, driftwood, logging trucks, colorful flower-bedecked hitchhikers on freeway turn offs (on their way to San Francisco), light shows and strobes at Eagle’s Auditorium in Seattle, The Whole Earth Catalog, Helix (a brilliant “underground” newspaper), marching against the Vietnam War on the freeway and through downtown, buildings blowing up on campus, rallies at the federal courthouse, Radical Women meetings, Claire Fraser holding forth. I had the time of my life.
Hank was my teacher. He was patient. He asked me to read a thick, typed manuscript he was working on. It was, in large part, an explication of Grant’s Peace Policy, a policy that promoted assimilation and placed Indian agencies in the hands of religious groups. The policy led to boarding schools and the breaking up of reservations into allotments. The manuscript led me to years of research and immersion in indigenous issues.
Olympia has a history not just of supporting roots music but also of being a Mecca for jazz artists, a petri dish for punk and garage, and a rich soil for the growth of Latin influenced bands.
In 1983, Lynn Patterson (aka LLyn De Danaan, photographer and cultural anthropologist), Marilyn Frasca (visual artist and Evergreen faculty), Shannon Osborne (owner of Smithfield Café), Mary Fitzgerald (photographer), Candy Street, Cappy Thompson (glass artist) and Carolyn McIntyre (the founder of Radiance) created an arts feast to demonstrate that artists were at the core of a new Olympia. They organized a month-long “Celebration of Olympia Artists” and, in the spirit of inclusivity and collaboration, invited the community to submit information about their own events and to participate in a variety of shows.