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, and to a groundbreaking appointment as director of her state ’s Department of Revenue… which ultimately created better funding for those schools. She has a degree in Home Economics from Kansas State University, and has held leadership positions across the spectrum of local government and community work, as well as in Washington, D.C. Mary Ellen has been married 68 years to Dr. Kenneth McCaffree, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Washington and her high school sweetheart. The couple has 5 children, 14 grandchildren, 16 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 farm girl, lifelong gardener and relentless taker-on-of-tasks, Mary Ellen’s words back her actions: “You never retire – you just repot and keep growing.â€
Anne McNamee Corbett
With parallel careers in writing, editing and publication design, Anne McNamee Corbett has spent her adult life immersed in non-fiction. Her degree is in journalism from the University of Washington, and she worked two sessions at the Washington State Legislature — as a reporting intern for The Seattle Times and as a staff writer in the Senate. An initiator, she was the founding editor of both a weekly community newspaper and a regional medical center newsmagazine, as well as the co-creator of an annual trade magazine. She also co-founded a community land trust and film development company. Her collective writing spans a variety of fields: education, state and county government, the courts, land use and community planning, legislative reporting and political campaigns, medical advances, pharmaceutical research, alternative heating technology, investments and theater. The mother of three lovely daughters and friend to two stepsons and a growing circle of daughters- and sons-in-law, she resides with her husband in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.