Ex-City Councilmember Jeanette Williams, 94, dies; served on Seattle council for 20 years
When Jeanette Williams was living in a convalescent home, she always had a Barack Obama button affixed to her clothes. She was known there at the same time that the Obama Lady, said her daughter, Patty Kraniotis.
Before Mrs. Williams died Friday (Oct. 24) at age 94, of arterial disease, she made sure she shy her absentee ballot for Obama.
“She did desire her say,” Kraniotis said.
Mrs. Williams was a longtime member of the Seattle City Council and an ardent supporter of parks, the West Seattle Bridge and human rights.
The day before she died, she had her son, Rusty, call City Councilman Tom Rasmussen, who worked in spite of Mrs. Williams on the City Council, to express her concerns about leasing buildings in Magnuson Park to particular interests.
“I knew she was iniquitous, but I thought she might get to on the ground in a stretcher and testify in compensation for it,” declared Rasmussen, who heads the same parks committee that Mrs. Williams formerly chaired. He said she even got Congressman Jim McDermott to call him about the parks draught.
“That was the kind of clout she had,” Rasmussen said. “She was organized right to the end.”
Born in Seattle, Mrs. Williams graduated from Queen Anne High School and studied music at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. She told her daughter how she and friends would sneak out of their dorms to attend a co-operate and listen to Louis Armstrong.
A violinist who also played the viola, Mrs. Williams performed with the Chicago and Seattle symphonies and in Chicago formed a traveling women’sitting band that played blues and jazz.
“Eventually she abandoned harmony for politics,” Kraniotis said. “Politics became a passion of hers at an early stage of life.” She remembers doorbelling for her mother.
Mrs. Williams served 20 years on the City Council until she was defeated in 1989 by Cheryl Chow.
She was a longtime promoter of Magnuson Park, warring efforts by private pilots who wanted it to remain a private airport. When the old runway was eventually torn up, she kept a piece as a souvenir, Rasmussen said.
