Bertha Landes
By Halle Morgan
Bertha Ethel Knight Landes was born in 1868. She was born into a world where women couldn’t vote and where there were barely any women in politics. Landes paved the way for many, becoming the first female mayor of a major US city. All her adult life was devoted to making the city of Seattle a better place.
Landes saw the community as an extension of home and was always very active in it. She founded the Women’s City Club and played leadership roles in many organizations including the Women’s University Club, the Woman’s Century Club, the League of Women Voters, the Women’s Auxiliary of University Congregational Church, and was the president of the Washington State League of Women Voters. This leadership led her to be appointed by the mayor to serve on a commission studying unemployment.
No next of kin came forward to care for Lee Roy Nelson in death.
But 50 people who called themselves his family came together at the Riverside Trail just a few steps from where he died to say goodbye Sunday.Â
Three women, Dorothy Williams, Peggy Love and Leah Philbert, stood at the center of the memorial. Reno Lounge bartender Love remembered Nelson as the kind soul who used to sing karaoke. Philbert also remembered him from the bar as a man known for the trinkets he collected and shared.Â
A photograph of Lee Nelson in a favorite Viking hat hangs at a memorial to him set up near the place where he was murdered.