Kayla Skinner, who sowed seeds of arts scene here, dies at 84
She played a central role in the flowering of Seattle's arts scene since the 1962 World's Fair, serving on numerous boards, lobbying politicians, giving generously herself and asking others to do likewise.
"This was a seminal person in the development of the Seattle arts community," said Peter Donnelly, president of the arts-support group ArtsFund and a longtime friend. "This is one of the architects of our cultural life as we know it today."
Mrs. Skinner, matriarch of an old Seattle family and a pillar of local philanthropy, died yesterday (July 10), several days after suffering a brain aneurysm. She was 84.
Her name won't be quickly forgotten. There's a Kayla Skinner Stairway at McCaw Hall, a Kayla Skinner Board Room at the Tacoma Art Museum, and a Ned and Kayla Skinner Theater at Cornish College of the Arts.
She was a founding member of Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet. She served on the boards of the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Art Museum and The Empty Space Theatre, among others.
While those organizations benefited from her money, "it was really her innovative ideas and her thinking outside the box that I think they appreciated the most," said her son, David Skinner.
One of those innovative ideas was Poncho — Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and Charitable Organizations. Mrs. Skinner was one of three people who founded the organization in 1962 to bail out the Seattle Symphony after it had run up a big debt staging the opera "Aida." Over the past four decades, Poncho has become a mainstay of Seattle arts support, raising more than $28 million.
The arts were a passion, but they weren't Mrs. Skinner's only interest. Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center also benefited from her energy and generosity. She helped start the President's Club to raise money for the University of Washington. She organized the Seattle chapter of ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Students), which raises money for science scholarships.
"She had a professional career as a volunteer," Donnelly said. "If Kayla said something would work, it would work ... She was a formidable force."
"She was probably one of those women who was a genius, but had no outlet except for her civic activities," said Seattle painter Tom Wilson, a longtime friend. "I think there were a lot of women like that. She would have been a CEO if she were a young woman now."
Mrs. Skinner was born Kathryn LaGasa in Tacoma in 1919. She attended Annie Wright Seminary and Stanford University and graduated from the UW.
What got her interested in the arts? "She grew up in a prosperous family, in an era when young women went to good schools and read literature and went to plays," Donnelly said. "It was part of her DNA."
"I suppose it really came from a curiosity of what things were like beyond Seattle," David Skinner said. A famous English conductor had dismissed the city as a "cultural dustbin," a label that would haunt the city for decades, around the time Mrs. Skinner was reaching adulthood.
In 1942 she married David E. "Ned" Skinner, a third-generation Seattle patriarch. He was a prominent business, civic and cultural leader who helped organize the World's Fair and once was declared one of the 10 most powerful people in Seattle.
The Skinners raised three boys in a waterfront home in Hunts Point. A Seattle Times reporter visited on a summer morning in 1958, when Mrs. Skinner was serving on a Seattle Art Museum committee and as secretary of the Seattle Symphony board.
The phone rang almost continuously, the reporter wrote.
Mrs. Skinner was a small woman, not much more than 5 feet tall, who attracted attention wherever she went, Wilson said. When she went shopping downtown with Helen Marie Wyman, an old friend, in the 1950s, "the two of them used to stop traffic on Fifth Avenue, because people would stop to look at them," he said.
They were beautiful, Wilson said, but "Kayla was a somebody."
"She wasn't remotely like anyone I've ever known," said Gordon Brown, an old friend who met Mrs. Skinner when she was 18.
Mrs. Skinner loved to travel and entertain and was curious about world events, her son said.
Mrs. Skinner received many awards for her civic endeavors. In 1974 she and her husband were named First Citizens of Seattle by the Seattle-King County Board of Realtors.
The Corporate Council for the Arts — now ArtsFund — gave her an achievement award in 1995. She received the Poncho Founders Legacy Award two years ago.
Mrs. Skinner's husband died in 1988. Besides son David, her survivors include sons Paul Skinner of Seattle and Peter Skinner of Charlottesville, Va.; sisters Bobbie Fowler of Bellevue and Dodie Koon of Tacoma; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at St. Mark's Cathedral on Capitol Hill. Donations can be made to the Ned Skinner Endowment Fund in care of ArtsFund, P.O. Box 19780, Seattle 98109.
Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com