WAWashington Famous People

A teletype in a school basement, 1968

Lakeside School in north Seattle bought computer time on a mainframe through a teletype terminal in 1968, and two boys ran up most of the bill. Bill Gates, born in Seattle in 1955, and Paul Allen, born there in 1953, went on to found Microsoft in Albuquerque in 1975 and moved it back to Bellevue in 1979, then out to Redmond. Jeff Bezos, who grew up in Texas and Florida, drove west and started Amazon in a rented Bellevue garage in 1994. Eddie Bauer, born on Orcas Island in 1899, nearly froze to death on a winter fishing trip and patented a quilted goose down jacket in 1940. John W. Nordstrom put his Klondike gold into a Seattle shoe store in 1901. An English teacher, a history teacher and a writer opened the first Starbucks at Pike Place in 1971, and sold it in 1987 to a New Yorker named Howard Schultz who had come out to see why one small shop kept ordering so many coffee makers.

Two guitar players from one rainy corner

Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942 and registered as Johnny Allen Hendrix, went to Garfield High, and is buried under a granite dome in Renton. Kurt Cobain was born in Aberdeen in 1967, a logging town at the mouth of the Chehalis about 100 miles away, and put Nirvana together there in 1987 with Krist Novoselic. Bing Crosby was born in Tacoma in 1903, raised in Spokane and sang his way through Gonzaga. Quincy Jones came from Chicago as a boy, learned trumpet in Bremerton and Seattle, and met a blind seventeen year old at a Seattle club who had chosen the city by measuring how far he could get from Florida on a map. That was Ray Charles, who formed his first band in Washington in 1948. Kenny G graduated from Franklin High, and Macklemore was born in the city in 1983.

The White House has never had a Washingtonian

Nobody born in the state has been president, and no serious candidate has come close in a general election. The high water mark is judicial: William O. Douglas, raised in Yakima by a widowed mother after polio in childhood, sat on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1975, thirty six years, longer than any other justice. Henry Jackson of Everett held a Senate seat from 1953 until his death in 1983 and ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972 and again in 1976. Tom Foley of Spokane became Speaker of the House in 1989 and in 1994 became the first sitting Speaker since 1862 to lose his own district. Dixy Lee Ray, a Tacoma born marine biologist who had chaired the Atomic Energy Commission, was governor from 1977 to 1981. Gary Locke, raised in a Seattle public housing project by parents who ran a grocery, took office in 1997 as the first Chinese American governor of any state and later served as ambassador to Beijing.

Born here, filed under somewhere else

Adam West, television's Batman, was born in Walla Walla in 1928. Bob Barker was born in Darrington in 1923 and grew up on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Frank Herbert, a Tacoma native born in 1920, went to the Oregon coast to report on a project stabilising moving sand dunes and came home with the idea for Dune. Gary Larson, also from Tacoma, drew The Far Side, and Hank Ketcham of Seattle drew Dennis the Menace. Carol Channing was born in Seattle in 1921, Rainn Wilson in 1966, and the painter Chuck Close in Monroe in 1940. Raymond Carver was born just over the Oregon line, raised in Yakima, and died in Port Angeles in 1988. Bruce Lee is the opposite case: a San Francisco baby who came to Seattle at eighteen, worked in a restaurant, studied at the University of Washington and taught his first classes in the city. He and his son are buried on Capitol Hill.

Si'ahl, Sherman Alexie, and the name on the city

Seattle is an anglicised spelling of Si'ahl, the Duwamish and Suquamish leader born around 1786 who signed the Point Elliott Treaty in 1855. By one account he was uneasy about a city carrying his name, because his people held that the dead are disturbed when their names are spoken. He died at Suquamish in 1866 and is buried there. Sherman Alexie was born on the Spokane Indian Reservation at Wellpinit in 1966, published The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in 1993, and adapted part of it into Smoke Signals five years later, one of the first widely released features written, directed and acted by Native Americans.

Spokane assists and eight Olympic medals

John Stockton was born in Spokane in 1962, stayed home to play at Gonzaga, and retired holding the all time NBA records for assists and steals, both by a wide margin. Apolo Ohno, born in Seattle in 1982 and raised by his father in Federal Way, won eight Winter Olympic medals in short track speed skating, more than any other American at a winter games. Fred Couples grew up in Seattle and won the Masters in 1992. Hope Solo was born in Richland in 1981. And Bill Nye spent his early career as a Boeing engineer, designing a hydraulic part that flew on the 747, before doing stand up in Seattle clubs and making his science show for the local public television station.

Notable people from bordering states

More on Washington