Monument to the Unknown

This was also published in this morning's Seattle Times:

Monument to the unknown

The parishioners of Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle lost an usher this week. I didn't know Charlie Chong, other than to occasionally pass the collection plate back to him ["Populist not afraid to speak his mind," Local News, April 27]. But I always wanted to tell him something: I think Seattle lost its soul in 1996 when it elected developer Paul Schell mayor rather than Charlie Chong.

In the years that followed his defeat, we have watched this city begin to disappear: neighborhoods fractured from astronomical housing prices, a school system in disarray, a lack of leadership on transportation and any number of issues facing us, and a general insistence upon rudderless rehashing and re-processing of minutia instead of facing our problems.

Would we have been better off with the common sense of Chong? Would he have been so eager to accommodate developers? Would he have fumbled, the way Schell did, with the WTO? Would there even have been a WTO during a Chong administration? Or a Mardi Gras riot? There is no way to know; maybe there would have been no difference. My guess is that, in a city with a strong mayor's office, like Seattle's, we would have a different city had Chong been at the helm.

He represented the best of Seattle. We need more like him. With Mr. Chong's passing this week goes an icon of the smaller, more humane vision of Seattle that could have been.

Thank you, sir; give my regards to Emmett Watson.

— Jim Sander, Seattle