Hazel Wolf; Suffragist, Audubon Organizer

SEATTLE —  Born in the 19th century, longtime environmental activist Hazel Wolf realized her dream of living to see the 21st.

Wolf, who helped found 21 of the 26 Audubon Society chapters in the Pacific Northwest, died Wednesday night a few hours after being admitted to a nursing home in Port Angeles, said Chris Peterson, executive director of the Seattle Audubon Society. She was 101.

Wolf, a former Communist Party member who fought for women’s suffrage in her youth, had been living with her daughter on the Olympic Peninsula.

In her annual Christmas letter to friends, she said that only a broken hip kept her from joining in street demonstrations in which more than 500 people were arrested during the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle last fall.

Author Studs Terkel included Wolf in his 1995 book “Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century By Those Who’ve Lived It.” In it, Terkel called her one of the two things that made living in modern Seattle special.

“You have the Mariners, and you have Hazel Wolf,” the author said.

Wolf was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on March 10, 1898. She fought a school principal to gain the right to play soccer, and as a young woman became active in the voting rights movement for women.

She came to the United States in 1923 as a single mother looking for work to support her daughter. After a stint putting “Made in Japan” stickers on plastic toys, she became a legal secretary, a job she held for most of her working life.

During the Depression, Wolf joined the American Communist Party, chiefly to support civil rights and labor issues, but lost interest in the party during World War II.

In 1947, the government attempted to deport her to Britain, where newspapers called her “the Red Grandma.” The attempt failed and she gained U.S. citizenship in 1949.

In her later years, she became a staunch advocate for environmental causes. In addition to her Audubon Society work, she had served since 1978 as editor of the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs newsletter.