Don W. Wright, 68, co-owned and ran the Edgewater Inn on the Seattle waterfront from 1962 (shortly after it opened, to house World's Fair tourists) to 1978. In a clever publicity gambit, he established the Edgewater as the local rock-star hotel, starting by hosting the Beatles on their 1964 tour. No other local hostelry would take the moptops or their potentially unruly fans. Wright's staff successfully secreted the band members into and out of their suites, and kept rowdy teen hordes safely away. That feat led to further rock-band stayovers at the hotel on Pier 67, where guests could, as ads of the time announced, "Fish From Your Window." This led to the Edgewater being immortalized in the Frank Zappa song "Mudshark," based on an alleged 1969 sexual incident involving a caught dogfish and a Led Zeppelin groupie. (The tune is on Zappa's live album Fillmore East June 1971; an account of the legend can be read online at www.arf.ru/Notes/Fillmore/app.html.) After he sold his interest in the Edgewater, Wright went into insurance-marketing and sales-training careers. Wright died June 22 from colon cancer.
Bill Hewitt, 85, started Hewitt's Cafe in downtown Seattle in 1951, then turned it into a catering business. In 1962, he opened the Tillicum Village restaurant at Blake Island State Park. (Like the Edgewater, it first opened to exploit World's Fair tourism.) Then as now, it offered baked-salmon dinners and a Native American-inspired dance performance, in a building resembling an old native longhouse, to customers who arrived on Hewitt's charter boats or their own private boats. He wasn't a Native American himself, but hired a majority- native staff and maintained an advisory board of local tribal members. He officially retired in 1990 but continued to look over the operation almost daily. Hewitt died June 24 from unspecified causes.
Stanley Henrickson, 80, was a prominent local labor leader in the 1940s and '50s. During World War II he organized sailors and longshoremen; after the war he helped unionize Everett's lumber mills. In 1954, at the height of the Red Scare years, speaking out for workers' rights was enough to get one accused of Communist sympathies. Henrickson was one of 300 subpoenaed to testify at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in Seattle. He set a precedent by forcing the committee to appoint an attorney to represent him. On the witness stand he invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to respond to the committee's questions, and was dismissed. He went back to work in the mills, raising a family and living out of the spotlight. Henrickson died June 19 following a sudden illness.
