Remembrance for Tacoma environmental activist Kay Treakle

Remembrance for Tacoma environmental activist Kay Treakle

Conservation Northwest / Jun 18, 2020 / Our Staff, Work Updates

Environmental activist and long-time Conservation Northwest supporter passed at age of 65 after a two-year battle with cancer.

By Mitch Friedman, Executive Director

Kay Treakle will be missed. She pass last week after a long bout with cancer.

For over a decade, I would travel to Tacoma for lunch with Kay once a year. She was running The Harder Foundation, which has long and generously supported Conservation Northwest’s work. I looked forward to these lunches.

Kay Treakle. Photo: The Harder Foundation

Kay knew the work of conservation campaigning. She grew up as an activist with due cause and worked for years with Greenpeace, as this Tacoma News Tribune article details. And in our lunches, as we’d tick through a list of Conservation Northwest programs protecting, connecting and restoring wildlands and wildlife, Kay would ask all the right questions. Her support was important affirmation for me. And she was just genuinely nice.

I last saw Kay exactly a year ago, June 23rd. My wife, Jackie, and I met her for coffee at the new Elks Temple McMenamins (super cool!) in Tacoma. Kay looked great. She had been advised that she had a year to live without continued chemo or more with it. She chose the former so she could enjoy her final time working through a bucket list and making her gorgeous garden show her pride. I’ll hold the memory of that visit.

The Pacific Northwest and the world is better for having had Kay Treakle in it.

read more about kay treakle’s legacy IN THIS ARTICLE