Mary Ellen McCaffree and Anne McNamee Corbett

Mary Ellen McCaffree

Mary Ellen McCaffree inadvertently entered political life when she took up the cause of her children’s overcrowded and under funded schools. This led the 1950’s housewife into work on two statewide redistricting initiatives, four terms as a state legislator, accolades as architect and author of her state’s most comprehensive package of tax reform, co-author of legislation that established the state's community college system, author of the constitutional amendment for youth voting rights and as a sponsor for groundbreaking environmental protections. She served on her state's founding hearings boards for Pollution Control and Shoreline Management which wrote the initial regulations for each. The first woman Director of the Washington State Department of Revenue, she also served as King County (Seattle) budget director and as administrative assistant to a U.S. Senator in Washington D.C. Upon retiring from public life she continued to encourage women's active roles in local and national politics, and served on many local, state and national commissions, committees and boards. She has a degree in Home Economics from Kansas State University and has been married 69 years to Dr. Kenneth McCaffree, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Washington and her high school sweetheart. The couple has 5 children, 14 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and counting, and together wrote Piecing Together Our Separate Lives as a gift to their family on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary. She resides with her husband in Snohomish, Washington. As a lifelong gardener and relentless taker-on-of-tasks, Mary Ellen’s words back her actions: “You never retire – you just repot and keep growing.”