I had my first encounter with AIA in 1975, when I visited the 4th-floor offices in Pioneer Square – just around the corner from where I worked, as Acting Executive Director of Allied Arts of Seattle during a leave of absence of the legendary Alice Rooney – whom some of you may remember also worked for AIA, in an early segment of her ascendancy into legend on the Seattle civic arts scene. I remember a busy place, and meeting Elaine Bosworth and Shirley Collins, on staff around that time.

Ten years later, in February 1985, I saw a want ad in Seattle Weekly for the job of Executive Director, with a salary of $30,000 – a bit higher than what I then commanded as Executive Director of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute. I called my good friend David Fukui – one of the first people I had met after I first moved to Seattle in 1970 and happened to take a job down the hall from Hobbs/Fukui Architects, and then again in my first 'real' job on the staff of the UW Department of Urban Planning – to ask about the job. He advised me that his partner Richard Hobbs had a major role in the search for a new Executive, as the current AIA Seattle President.

I sent in my resumé, and in due time got called in for an interview with the Board of Directors. The morning I came in to the AIA Seattle offices on First Avenue for the interview, a group of a dozen or so ranged around the blue oval table, designed by Wendell Lovett: past Presidents Arne Bystrom and Bob Joyce, who had served on the Search Committee, Dick Hobbs, President-elect Jerry Ernst, Treasurer Jennie Sue Brown, Secretary Rebecca Barnes, and Directors including Tony Callison, Thom Emrich, Mark Hinshaw, David Reid, Ed Weinstein – and Roger Wagoner, Rich Wagner, and Roger Williams. Some of you will know this last trio as three dark-haired guys of medium height, with remarkably similar names – a true test for the interviewee!

Other than this, I remember the interview session only vaguely, exchange about the four-point plan of 1984 – except for my unrehearsed remarks as I left after a spirited interchange, something to the effect of "Let me know if you'd like to try something different!" Within a day or two, Dick Hobbs invited me to lunch in the Market (on April Fools Day, I think) to negotiate salary and starting date. (At this point I should tell you that by now that original salary has nearly doubled!)

Not long after that, I started in at the office, with a few days' overlap with my predecessor Dorothy Johnston, the sister-in-law of the esteemed Norman Johnston FAIA and Jane Hastings FAIA. At the time the office had 2 Morrow computers, and a staff of 2.5 – a receptionist, a membership person, and a part-time bookkeeper. The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce had an article about my coming on board (picture at right), as did ARCADE - whose no-byline article said something to this effect: "She says she understands from the Board of Directors that the time has come for AIA to move beyond its traditional identity as an old boys' club. Well, good luck!" (ARCADE's archives go back only to 1987, so I couldn't verify the exact quote – but I certainly took it as a challenge.)

In the second month of my work, June 1985, I attended AIA Convention in San Francisco. My report of my experience there, which included Tom Wolfe's keynote address, became my first contribution to The AIA Seattle Architect – which I reviewed as part of preparing my remarks today. Note this commentary on the elections: "It was not without dismay that I heard campaign speeches from 11 male candidates [for national AIA office]. This made me particularly admiring of the achievement and leadership of women and minorities in the Seattle Chapter, and earnest in determination to assist in further development in this area of resource much needed in all professions and in our society."

I'd cite that observation as a formative one. Within a few months, the group that later formalized as the Minority Membership Committee had come into being as an effective working nucleus – thanks to the energies and commitment of its founding members: David Fukui, Denice Hunt, Johnpaul Jones, Tom Kubota, and Mel Streeter. From the beginning, this group met for breakfast on the 3rd floor of Lowell's in the Market, where now as then it regularly occupies a round table with a view of Puget Sound. The table itself, the democratic chaos of the Pike Place Market, the Pacific view to the Sound and the Olympic Mountains, and the special and spirited people, avowedly "in the struggle for the long term" who have sat in its circumference – all have contributed to the egalitarian and inclusive outlook and composition of this activist circle committed to making a difference – and of course to the name by which the group now identifies itself, the AIA Seattle Diversity Roundtable. For the past 10 years or more, the AIA Seattle ExCom and other committees also hold their meetings at Lowell's – and thus the transformative, progressive agenda extends, with that key environmental influence.

As others have taken their places at the Roundtable, it has become a remarkable resource for personal and professional change and growth, mutual support, and leadership development. Roundtable folk have gone on to become AIA Seattle leaders, among others the late Denice Hunt as AIA Seattle President 1995-96 – the first women of African-American heritage to serve as an AIA component President, and also Jim Suehiro, Steve Arai, and Rena Klein. Many others have brought energy into and taken inspiration from the roundtable – including Nancy Callery, Keli Hagen, Donald King, Clarence Kwan, Mario Campos, Teresa Rodriguez, Sharon Sutton, among others. The Roundtable has served me personally as a source of strength and inspiration – the encouragement to find a way of making a difference by doing things differently.

In 1992, the importance of that direction, and the success of the AIA Seattle effort to advocate for professional diversity, resulted in my appointment to the first AIA national Diversity Committee. From then until now, AIA Seattle has had a voice and a compelling influence on the AIA's ongoing diversity program. Some of you may remember the AIA national Diversity Conference which took place here in August 1997 ("Beyond the Rainbow, Changing Views" chaired by Sharon Sutton, then on the faculty at Michigan before accepting appointment at UW) – highlighting the rich professional heritage of architects of color and women in design in Seattle and Washington. The "Tributes" program brought alive NW professional progenitors Kichio Arai, Elizabeth Ayer, Benjamin McAdoo, among others.

Other occurrences of my early days gave a hint of things to come:
Dick Hobbs, subsequent to his work as AIA Seattle President, also chaired the 1986 Regional Conference, "A Celebration of Diversity," held in Vancouver BC during that city's EXPO. Planning for that event – in an internationalist tradition that had originated in 1976 when AIA Seattle hosted the event in Finland – took a major and concerted effort to bring together several hundred architects across an international border, but the Conference came off virtually without a hitch. The success helped inspire AIA Seattle to mount an even more ambitious event in 1994, when under the direction of Chair Roger Williams, AIA Seattle hosted reciprocal conferences – "Design for Pacific Cultures" – in Seattle and Japan (and now in 2005, with the momentous Knowledge by Design Conference ahead of us in August, once again breaking new ground). Some of you know that Dick went on to serve on the AIA national Board of Directors and to election as AIA VP – before joining the AIA national staff and taking a lead role in conceiving and implementing the AIA lifelong learning initiative. As he went forward in these endeavors, Jerry Ernst and Jennie Sue Brown took the presidential helm, carrying forward the four-point plan for membership, professional development, outreach, and liaison.

Also among discoveries of my first weeks on the job: the arrival on my desk of a large box with attached invoice. The box contained several reams of handsome embossed stationery for something called at that time "AIA Seattle Chapter Architectural Foundation" – and a bill for several hundred dollars. It took a few phone calls to figure out that such an organization as the Foundation actually existed, and a search to locate the Foundation checkbook and account books showing a current balance insufficient to pay the printing bill. (A strategic loan from AIA Seattle covered the immediate deficit.) Pretty soon the Foundation Board began a series of meetings that quickly focused on a program of grants to support various kinds of individual design endeavor, and on a program (originated by Dr. Ann Taylor Hon. AIA, among others) known as Architecture and Children, intended as enrichment to K-12 studies. Over the course of the next few years, the Foundation flourished, through the contributed energies and dollars of this community, and by the early 1990s had taken form as an independent organization able to collaborate as a partner in the 1994 observation of the 100th anniversary of AIA in Seattle and Washington (about which more in a bit) – and today, as a thriving organization dedicated to advancing public appreciation of the role of architecture in our lives.

Early wonderments also included the mystery of the lack of jokes about architects, reflecting the general public's disinformtation about the personal and professional characteristics of Our People. At an AIA Convention, we of the AIA Seattle delegation half-jokingly posted a $1,000 prize for any joke that made specific and accurate humor from the plight of architects. The contest remained open for a year, and yielded a handful of entries. Ultimately two of the entries got honorable mention, including the shorter one here:
Q: Why don't architects go to Heaven?
A: Because Jesus was a carpenter.
You'll have to remember the late Denice Hunt telling the longer one, the tale of an architect facing the guillotine; or else buy me a drink sometime and I'll try to imitate her witty telling of it.

"Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"
By 1990, I had five years under my belt here, and the work on AIA Seattle's four-part plan had progressed. AIA Seattle's membership had grown from 850 to 1350 (and today, to more than 2,000, in the nation's sixth largest AIA component). Programs including the Seattle Times/AIA Home of the Month/Year and the Honor Awards had achieved much-increased professional involvement and public visibility – double or triple the size of the 1985 crowds. Work to support the future of the profession had taken on greater importance through the establishment of IDP – again, thanks to Roger Williams. And by 1990, we had started looking ahead to two major Big Deals – the remodeling of the AIA Seattle, to establish the Resource Center for Architecture and otherwise take advantage of the until-then-underutilized storefront presence; and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of AIA in Seattle and Washington.

Background story: one day while visiting my friend Johnpaul Jones at Jones & Jones, we noted the charter, signed by AIA's then-President Daniel Burnham – hanging on the wall, most likely the heritage of a previous Chapter Secretary from the firm. Norm Johnston arranged a proper ceremonial moment for the transfer of the document into the possession of the organization. Historic achievement!

The 1990-91 remodel reflected and produced a major change in the AIA Seattle culture - opening up to the intensity of public interest. Some of you will remember the first generation of the space, with the doorway to Peter Miller Books in the adjacent space, and the raised platforms which elevated the staff some 5 feet above the entry level - significantly, looking down on anyone whose curiosity pushed them past the front door! ("Yes, mortal?") Under the successive presidencies of Roger Williams, Thom Emrich, Dorm Anderson, and John Nesholm, AIA Seattle became brave and wealthy enough (thanks to the generosity of Mithun whom the Board of Directors selected for the job, and Edifice Construction among others) to achieve the remodel that produced the nation's first and foremost Center for Architecture. Virtually from the moment we reopened the doors to the new space, the operation turned around: casual passers-by and curious citizens visited all day long, and the phone started ringing off the hook with public inquiries – so we established the Saturday Seminar program to connect architects with the public. For several years after the completion, John & Roger & I gave presentations about the Resource Center and the Saturday Seminar program at AIA Grassroots, and came away with the admiration and emulation of AIA components across the country. To this day, the AIA Seattle Center remains a model for making the public connection, with (among other similar ventures) AIA NY's new $6 million Center for Architecture bustling with events and dialog – even AIA national HQ has unveiled plans to achieve a Center for Architecture as part of the revamping for the 150th anniversary, in 2007. John Nesholm helped orchestrate an extended celebration of the 1991 remodel, inviting then-AIA President Jim Lawler to bless the occasion, and establishing the Honors Gala which has grown in glory over the years since.

John and the next round of Presidents – Alan Sclater, Mark Hinshaw, Jim Sanders, and Cynthia Richardson – began and executed the major undertaking of the 100th anniversary observance. It took many hours and many hands to shape, but it paid off in a year of celebration that included some very special programs:
� Jeffrey Ochsner's book, Shaping Seattle Architecture, a Historical Guide to the Architects, published by UW Press.
� Blueprints: 100 Years of Seattle Architecture – an exhibition at the Museum of History and Industry March-November 1994, that became the basis for the exhibit we now enjoy at Seattle Architecture Foundation.
� 100 Years: Shaping the Profession, a decade-by-decade history of the AIA organization, curated by Clair Enlow and Thomas Veith and published serially in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce and as a booklet
� Seattle Times/AIA Home of the Month Turns 40: the popular history of residential architecture over four decades, as seen through features from the history of the program – with a related gallery exhibit and videotape.
� "Design for Pacific Cultures" August 3-7, 1994: once again, AIA Seattle hosted the Region Conference, this time in collaboration with the Japan Institute of Architects. A delegation of Japanese architects joined us in Seattle in August, and a reciprocal group led by Roger Williams toured Japan and attended the JIA Conference at Kitakyushu in October.
� Gift to the Community: Tom Kubota directed a community-building project in Seattle's Rainier Corridor, cited by then-Mayor of Seattle Norman B. Rice.

All the endeavor of the 100th anniversary observance and the Conference taxed everyone to the max – but it also brought people and ideas together in a powerful way, and established a particular presence for AIA Seattle both here at home and in the AIA national picture – as not only a uniquely progressive and productive professional community, but as one of the AIA's largest urban components – a BIG SIB! By 1998, AIA Seattle had become the AIA's seventh largest component, joining AIA New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, Houston, and San Francisco. The synergy and combined power of these organizations has helped advance a notion that, in its latest version, we call "one AIA."

Crafting and executing AIA Seattle's Plan 2010, Presidents Denice Hunt, Rick Meyer, Bert Gregory, Jim Suehiro, Don Carlson, Norman Strong, Steve Arai, Rena Klein, Kristen Scott, and now Peter David Greaves and next Randy Everett and the freshly-elected Walter Schacht have borne the portfolio aimed to connect the energies of AIA components at the local, state, region, and national level. It may not surprise you to observe that the four pillars of AIA programming today – Advocacy, Community, Knowledge, and Value – relate precisely to the four directions identified in the AIA Seattle 1984 plan: Outreach, Membership, Professional Development, and Liaison. Same tune, different words .

For me, the drive to achieve an effective organization has resulted in my regular service on the Executive Committee of the AIA Council of Architectural Component Executives – CACE. I've striven to use that platform to affect organizational change – to bring to national endeavor the kind of dynamism we've found together here. Some of you know that I've run a record four times to become President of CACE, and in this role to have a seat on the AIA national Board of Directors and as past President, on the AIA Management Council – where I continue to hope and believe I could make the same kind of difference that we've achieved here at home. I hasten to add that I've never succeeded in election to the top spot, though I also hold the record for most terms on the CACE ExCom. In fact, if I choose to run once more for President, I must have my statement of qualifications in by tomorrow. Advice, anyone? [Update 9/05: I ran again, and once again came in second.]

A word about AIA Seattle Presidents: I have thoroughly relished working with some remarkable people, each of whom – in a way unique to him or her – has given a mighty contribution to advancing the profession. You've probably heard my line about how much I've appreciated the "serial monogamy" of the intimate working relationship with these fine folks – without seriously endangering any marriage along the way (currently anticipating the 30th anniversary of my own marriage, to UW Professor of Urban Planning Emeritus John Hancock)! We've made our way together through Board meetings, Conventions, Grassroots, Mossroots, Region Conferences, and Big Sibs conclaves: Rena & Steve & I can never forget visiting Ground Zero with the Big Sibs October 11, 2001, nor hosting Big Sibs Seattle 02) – wonderful companionship, especially over excellent dinners at the Henley Park Hotel (where I plan to spend the afterlife, in company as delightful as we've savored there together over the years. With the Presidents and others active and supportive in various ways – including some outstanding coworkers on the Board, on committees, and on the AIA Seattle staff – we've weathered not only various AIA storms but also birth and death, marriage and divorce, love and strife, victories and defeats, babies and teenagers, risks and rewards . and the infinite creativity of architects. And along the way, we've materialized a vision of a strong and vital design community, engaging architects and their allies in a united way.

AIA Seattle staff team colleagues have also labored creatively and intensely in the endeavor, including among the staff alumi/ae association Emiko Atherton, Beth Baum, Cathleen Collins, Tiffany Irvine Crosby, Addy Froehlich, Cathy Gilmer, Nathan Gwirtz, Stephanie Hargrave, Frank Hekel, Valerie Aspell Hoit, Victoria Kaplan, Debbie Lematta, Wendy Lusen-Rea, Lisa Papp, Mike Peterson, Abi Root, Alison Haro Spring, L. Ann Kendall Thompson; and the current team Kristin Boyer, Lisa Duncan, Carolyn Forbes, Douglas March, Peter Sackett, Era Schrepfer. Lately we've had a wonderful resources in short-term Interns from area schools, who've enriched our experience with positive energy and substantial assistance.

And now (at last!): in an ongoing way, we can relish the big payoff for all the organizational hubbub, to architects and architecture. Over the last two decades, the architects of Seattle have risen in public and professional esteem and visibility – to a force of national and international significance. We can't credit it all to adherence to the four-point plan, but I like to believe that the broadly inclusive community we have manifested here has operated as a leadership development machine, providing mutual support to one another to do our best. Twenty years ago, Seattle architects regularly and grumblingly bemoaned the lack of attention given to local work both by clients who sought services from firms outside the area, and in the national architecture media. Today, NW architecture has a real place in the picture, and a seat or two at the table. AIA Honor Awards and other recognition of design excellence regularly includes "2 of 10" or "3 of 11" to Seattle-based firms:
* 2 of 9 AIA Green Project Awards to Seattle-based firms 4/25/05
* 2 of 8 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards honor area libraries 4/1/05
* 2 of 8 AIA Housing Awards land here 3/18/05
* Time Magazine 'best of 2004 architecture' ranks Seattle Public Library #1 12/04
* Business Week/Architectural Record 2004 Awards include Fisher Pavilion, McCaw Hall
* 4 of 16 AIA 2004 Honor Awards land in the Northwest

Power and glory to the people: Each year, AIA Seattle celebrates a crop of Fellows recognized by the AIA for the national significance of their work to advance the profession – as we'll do this Saturday night at the Honors Gala. And lots of other awards and recognition: Peter Steinbrueck receiving the AIA Young Architects Award, Grace Kim winning the AIA Emerging Professionals Award, my dear friend and mentor Lee Copeland the Topaz Medallion, Miller|Hull honored with the Architectural Firm Award in 2003, and just weeks ago, Carolyn Geise Appreciation Month in Seattle, not to mention Paul Schell as Dean of UW CAUP and Mayor of Seattle – among many many other ribbons and medals we've celebrated together. To me, this distinguished record bespeaks not the realization of a long-term strategy to achieve those particular goals, but rather gives evidence of a true DESIGN COMMUNITY – a mutually supportive and collaborative organization that makes design excellence possible. AIA Seattle keeps people in touch with each other, facilitates the exchange of knowledge among them, opens doors to the public, and empowers architects to achieve their best and thus to advance the profession: Community, Knowledge, Advocacy, Value.

Now, what next? I believe we have opportunities and obligations to invest the accumulated human and public capital represented by the achievements I've highlighted here, and I hope I can help shape programs that will take us all yet higher. In this I do not want to underestimate the innate conservatism and resistance to change of the AIA organization, where AIA Seattle-style diversity and dynamism, and my purposeful purple-ness, seem to inspire wariness and suspicion rather than a spirit of adventure. Nevertheless, I find my own optimism stirring for current endeavor: the transformative potential of the Knowledge by Design Conference at the time of the 111th Birthday observance here in August; planning now under way here and throughout the AIA nation toward the 2007 observance of AIA-150 and achievement of the vision of "one AIA" – and all this to undertake with the leadership crop before us: Randy and Walter, Steve Arai set to take on the AIA Washington Council Presidency, Jim Suehiro as the sole candidate (as of this moment) for election to the AIA Board of Directors to represent the NW+Pacific Region, and Norman Strong as AIA national VP. Tomorrow evening, AIA's freshly-elected 2007 President RK Stewart will join past and future Presidents of AIA Seattle to help imagine a local observance as part of AIA-150 – a national celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of AIA, with highlight events in April 2007. RK will also join the Diversity Roundtable in the Summer Solstice Procession in South Park Saturday morning – reviewing the work there of this year's Denice Hunt K-12 Intern and the potential for a long-term connection with this community, spearheaded by future generations. This celebration can draw together the past and the future of the profession – as has the recently-completed remodel of AIA Seattle's First Avenue HQ, by the Young Architects Forum with Peter David Greaves as Mentor-in-Chief. More legacy-building .

Finally, a word about my position as AIA Poet Laureate, appointed by AIA President Thom Penney – who jokes with me about the task remaining before us to write up the job description. I believe it has to do with the care and pleasure I've taken with you all to make attentive note of the moments and opportunities our work together gives us. I truly enjoy the act of writing for and about the remarkable architects and others whom we work with – particularly the biographical aspects, such as the announcements for the series in which I have the honor to speak today. Let me advise you, in case you don't know it from your own experience, that writing about people (perhaps like drawing, photographing or painting them, for you visual folks) permits the expression of admiration and even, if I may dare say, LOVE, in a socially acceptable and even necessary way – and over the world wide web, even. For that joy, perhaps in my next lifetime I will become a biographer!

As I look around this room today, and as you introduced yourselves with stories of special moments we've had together, I note with pride and joy the wonderful poem we've written and continue to write as a community. I hope we can ALL keep on making a difference, and help transform the profession and our organization to strengthen our community, elevate our knowledge, and advance our highest ideals.

THANK YOU!