Seafair's Face Now Has Many Hues

As Seattle's neighborhoods become more ethnically diverse, so too is the face of the city's annual summer festival.

From the top down, Seafair, now in its 41st year, is showing more people of color in its ranks.

Last year's Seafair president was Jesus Sanchez, director of executive administration for King County, a Hispanic.

This year two Seafair vice presidents, Seattle Fire Chief Claude Harris and King County Councilman Ron Sims, are African Americans.

And this year, for the first time, Seafair's King Neptune is not a white man. King Neptune Rex XLI, who will be honorary ruler of the city through the Torchlight Parade Aug. 2 and the hydroplane races on Lake Washington Aug. 4, is Al Yuen, a real-estate broker and president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

Part of Seafair's growing ethnic look is a reflection of the changing demographic composition of Seattle's neighborhoods, and part is by design.

"Seafair is trying its darnedest to show Seattle and the whole world that Seattle is a diverse community and welcomes everybody with open arms," Yuen said.

Seafair's managing director, Bob Gobrecht, credits a vocal meeting three years ago with neighborhood groups and Sanchez's influence for setting the tone for diversity.

"He set the policies and standards, and I think everybody bought into it," Gobrecht said.

But the eye-opener for Gobrecht was the meeting with the community representatives.

Grobrecht found himself in the middle of a storm when it was proposed the Miss Seafair competition be dropped from the festival.

Neighborhood representatives argued that the annual crowning of a Miss Seafair was not a beauty pageant but an opportunity for a young woman to travel on behalf of Seafair and to win $6,000 in scholarships.

Gobrecht said that Michael Preston, executive director of the Central Area Youth Association and a member of the Seattle School Board, "single-handedly, perhaps, saved that program."

In the festivity's history, most Miss Seafairs have been white.

In 1962, Virgie Harris, who now operates an insurance agency in the Greenwood District, was Miss Mardi Gras, the Central Area's Seafair princess.

Back then, "unless you were blond, blue-eyed and Nordic, you were just a participant" and not a real competitor for the Miss Seafair title, Harris said.

It took 21 years before a person of color was chosen Miss Seafair.

In 1971, Callie Lynn Garcia, a Hispanic, broke the barrier. Since then, five other nonwhite Miss Seafairs have been chosen.

In 1974, Galen Marie Motin, became the first and only African-American Seafair queen. There have been three Asian-American queens, Susan Ishimitsu Wise in 1976, Deidre Joy Yen in 1982 and Jill Nishi in 1989.

The other nonwhite queen was Marisol Borromeo, from the Filipino community, in 1978.

Of this year's crop of Miss Seafair hopefuls, about a third are nonwhite.

Virgie Harris, who now chaperones the African Soul Festival's princess, said, "the thing I do know is there seems to be more of an open chance for a person of color to compete now than there was then."

The Chinese Girls Drill Team and other ethnic groups have been Seafair fixtures for years. But participation hasn't always been easy.

Fred Cordova, who helped organize the Filipino Drill Team in 1959, recalls that in those early days the team sometimes was greeted with rocks, spit and taunts.

But he added:

"It was important for us as an ethnic group to expose the existence of our ethnic community."