Topic: Biographies
Charles Larrabee wasn't the founder of Fairhaven (which later became part of Bellingham), but in many ways he might as well have been. He was one of a handful of people who made the community's e...
Frances Payne Larrabee was a prominent and influential Bellingham clubwoman. She was instrumental in the founding of the Bellingham Bay Home for Children, a safe haven for homeless children. She becam...
Leo Lassen was a sportswriter and publicist who became a living legend as a baseball radio broadcaster in his hometown of Seattle. He covered the city's Pacific Coast League teams from 1931 to 1960. H...
Mary A. Latham was Spokane's first woman physician -- a heroic and ultimately tragic figure in the city's history. She came to Spokane in 1887 and specialized in the diseases of women and children. Sh...
Dr. Blanche Sellers Lavizzo was the first African American woman pediatrician in the state of Washington. She arrived in Seattle in July 1956 and began her pediatric practice on East Madison Street an...
Ross N. Lavroff served as the "voice" of the historic 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking among other assignments as an interpreter. The Ukraine-born Russian served numerous U.S. government and international ag...
Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, two of the country's preeminent visual artists, moved to Seattle in 1971 when he accepted a teaching position in University of Washington's art department. The two...
Walter Vernon Lawson was the first African American police officer in the Seattle Department to be promoted to Sergeant (July 1964). He went on to become Seattle's first African American police Lieute...
Bruce Lee popularized Kung Fu and other Asian martial arts disciplines during a brief but influential career as an instructor and as an actor on television and in feature films. Born in San Francisco ...
Seattle-born Rose Louise Hovick had her first brush with fame at age one, winning a healthy baby contest. As Gypsy Rose Lee, she became famous in burlesque as a classy and witty strip tease artist. Sh...
The Very Reverend John C. Leffler was the dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral on Seattle's Capitol Hill from 1951 to 1971. He took over a "dirty, grimy, dismal church" (The Seattle Times) that had ...
Chris Legeros was a longtime reporter and anchor at KIRO 7 in Seattle, spending 31 years at the CBS affiliate. He started his 39-year journalism career at WTCN TV and WWTC radio in Minneapolis and in ...
J. Hans Lehmann, M.D. was the only son of middle class Jewish parents in the northern German town of Barsinghausen. He escaped Europe with most of his family on the eve of World War II and established...
Reverend A. A. Lemieux, a Jesuit priest, served as president of Seattle University for 17 years, from 1948 to 1965. He is credited with transforming the university from a small Jesuit college into a m...
Estella Leopold, daughter of famed conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), earned her own renown through her pioneering work as a conservationist and scientist. As a conservationist, she ...
Mary Kay Letourneau, at one time a respected elementary school teacher in Burien, became a convicted sex offender whose illicit relationship with a student has repelled and fascinated people around th...
Sculptor Phillip Levine's work can be viewed all over the Northwest. In Western Washington alone, he has 30 sculptures that stand in public places, including Dancer with Flat Hat at the University of ...
Rabbi Raphael Levine served as chief rabbi and rabbi emeritus at the Temple de Hirsch in Seattle for 42 years. He was a prominent community leader who built communication and understanding between nat...
From the 1890s to 1910, when he retired, Maxwell Levy was the "king of the crimpers" in the booming port of Port Townsend. A crimp or crimper is one who forces or entraps sailors into service against ...
The sculptor and painter Alonzo Victor Lewis began his career in the early twentieth century modeling portraits and monumental statues in bronze, first in Tacoma, and later in Seattle after relocating...
Dave Lewis was the most significant figure on the Pacific Northwest's rhythm & blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1955 he'd helped found Seattle's first notable teenage doo-wop vocal group (th...
Ernest Lister served as Washington's eighth governor from 1913 to 1919. Born in England, he is one of two governors in the state's history who was not born in the United States. His candidacy in 1912 ...
Gary Locke rose through the political ranks from humble, minority beginnings to become King County's first Asian American executive in 1994, the first Asian American governor in the United States in 1...
Hubert Gaylord Locke was a longtime professor and administrator at the University of Washington, where he served for five years as dean of the School of Public Affairs. Locke was a moral leader, an au...