Volney Richmond, 93, inherited the reins of the Northern Commercial Co. in 1929. (His father had taken it over in 1922.) The company, which had earlier flourished as a gold-rush miners'-supply firm, grew under Richmond's leadership to be Alaska's most prominent retailer and a major force in the territory-turned-state's economy. It ran department stores in Anchorage and Fairbanks (later sold to Nordstrom) and old-fashioned general stores in smaller towns and settlements (later spun off into a separate firm). Its Seattle-based industrial arm, NC Machinery/NC Marine, was a major equipment supplier to the North Slope pipeline project. Sold by Richmond in 1994, it now runs Caterpillar Tractor franchises in Washington, Alaska, and Russia. Richmond donated a lot of money to Virginia Mason Hospital, which named an auditorium after him. Richmond died August 10 from undisclosed causes.
Jane Heffernan Sylvester, 76, had a long and varied career in local public service. From 1965 to 1970, she led the King County Department of Probation and Parole, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to run a large criminal-justice organization. As part of that job, she often intervened between activist groups and law-enforcement officials. In 1967, she co-founded the Seattle-King County Alcohol Commission. In 1971, she was an original member of the Pike Place Market Historical Commission. In 1974, she was a member of the Board of Freeholders who rewrote Seattle's city charter, a charter still in use today. In 1985, she was appointed to the Seattle Parks Department's board of commissioners, serving as chairperson for the group in 1991-'92. In 1995, she donated money to build the reflecting pool at Seattle University's St. Ignatius Chapel in the name of her first husband, Cyrus Clapp Heffernan. She also served as a trustee for the Evergreen State College (which now has a faculty endowment fund in her name), ran fund drives for Children's Hospital, led the Seattle Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee, and served on the board of the Downtown Human Services Council. Sylvester died August 10 from undisclosed causes.
