Longtime UW advocate and regent Mary Gates dies
The University of Washington lost one of its closest friends and biggest supporters when Mary Maxwell Gates, ’50, a civic leader and longtime UW regent, died June 10 of cancer.
“A light has gone out in our community, and a portion of the heart and soul of this University has vanished,” said UW President William P. Gerberding. “We’ll find it but it will take a long time.”
Gates, who served on the boards of many companies, was renowned for her grace, dignity and civility, as well as her devotion to community service and to the UW, where she served as a regent for 18 years before her battle with cancer forced her to retire last year. “The remarkable thing about Mary was that she fully immersed herself in community affairs, University affairs, business boards in an extraordinary way, yet she had a very closely knit family that not only loved each other but thoroughly enjoyed each other,” said Dan Evans, ’48, ’49, a UW regent who, as governor, appointed Gates to the Board of Regents in 1975. Ironically, it was Evans who succeeded Gates as a regent when Gates’ health began to fail.
Gates was president of the Board of Regents in 1979 when it selected Gerberding to serve as president of the UW. The two worked together for 15 years. “Mary was a source of balance, wisdom and stability on the regents—its center of gravity,” Gerberding said. “Whenever there’s been a controversy, her rational presence was felt.”
Gates was a role model for women, especially in the 1970s, when she was appointed to the boards of numerous companies. Gates, who died on the day she was to receive the Municipal League of King County’s Citizen of the Year award, became the first female president of King County’s United Way, and in 1983 she was the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee. She was also the first woman to be a director of the First Interstate Bank of Washington. She served on the board of numerous companies, including US West, and KIRO-TV. In June, she was awarded the UW’s Recognition Award for her service to the University and the community.
A “Seattleite through and through,” Gates attended Bryant elementary and Roosevelt high schools. The daughter of a bank vice president, she planned to be a schoolteacher, enrolling the UW in 1946. She later served as ASUW secretary her senior year to then student-body president Brock Adams, ’49, who went on to become a U.S. senator, and as president of Kappa Kappa Gamma. It was Adams who introduced young Mary Maxwell to a classmate, law student William Gates, ’50. They were married in 1951, a year after Mary graduated with a B.A. in English.
Gates taught junior high school in Bremerton after getting married (Bill was a Bremerton assistant city attorney), and she later taught at Jane Addams Junior High in north Seattle when her husband joined the Seattle law firm of Skeel, McKelvy, Henke, Evenson & Uhlmann. She started a family in 1954, with the birth of daughter Kristianne in 1954, William Gates III in 1955, and daughter Libby in 1964. Kristianne went on to graduate from the UW, while son Bill went on to lead Microsoft and become one of the richest men in the America.