Kmart Corp., the onetime discount-retail colossus that became the largest U.S. company ever to declare bankruptcy, announced it would turn off the blue lights and throw in the Martha Stewart towel at 284 stores (more than 10 percent of its total branches) over the next three to six months. Among the doomed are the chain's outlets in Renton, Bellevue, and Edmonds. All those stores were built in 1967 or soon thereafter, during the first big national explosion of the Detroit-founded chain (an outgrowth of the old S. S. Kresge variety chain). The soon-to-be-closed stores were in suburban areas where Kmart was swamped by the newer, bigger, and slicker outlets of Fred Meyer, Target, and/or Wal-Mart. Both of Kmart's Seattle stores, on Aurora Avenue and S.W. Delridge Way, will remain open for now, so you can keep getting your cheap underwear, good-for-four-wearings pastel dresses, off-brand VCRs, Carpenters greatest-hits CDs, and strawberry Icees.
Mildred Cook, 86, was one of the Seattle classical-music scene's most venerable behind-the-scenes organizers. The organizations and programs she co-founded include the Seattle Opera (and its predecessor, Proscenium Opera), Bumbershoot, Fort Worden Chamber Music Workshops, and Meany Hall Associates. At various times, she was also president of the Seattle Opera Guild and the Women's Symphony League, ran the University of Washington's community arts program, and served on the King County Arts Commission and the Seattle Parks Arts Advisory Board. She received a Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 1973 for her organizing and fundraising work. Her husband Peter, who died in 1991, was the longtime head of Garfield High School's music program (alma mater of Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson, and bandleader Bumps Blackwell). Mildred Cook died February 26 of complications from Alzheimer's disease.