Read Politics Never Broke His Heart - Washington Secretary of State

MATTERS OF THE HEART
3
Spellman Family Album
Denny Spellman, seated, in the offices of his plumbing company at 215 Columbia Street
in Seattle around the turn of the century.
The Klondike gold rush of 1897 transformed Seattle into a city. Between
1890 and the turn of the century, its population nearly doubled to 81,000.
By 1910 it was 237,000. Henry Broderick, a shrewd bon vivant who became
one of Denny Spellman’s best friends, made a fortune in real estate.
In 1892, Denny Spellman married Catherine McClory, another offspring
of Irish immigrants. Their son, Sterling Bartholomew Spellman,
Governor Spellman’s father, was born in 1895. They called him “Bart.”
Grandpa Spellman by then was emerging as one of Seattle’s most prosperous
plumbers. He was also an artful dodger, somehow managing to be
both an observant Roman Catholic and a member of the Masonic Lodge.
Spellman supported the Republican Party but professed always to cast “an
independent local ballot, voting for the candidate whom he considers best
qualified for office.” 4 In 1912, he backed Teddy Roosevelt, who bolted the
GOP to run for president on the Progressive “Bull Moose” ticket.
The governor’s father inherited his father’s ambition, independent
streak and powerful upper torso. Bart was a natural athlete, more interested
in football than plumbing. In the years to come, the Oregon branch of the
family would crow that the University of Washington passed up a chance
to give a future star a scholarship. Football, to Bart Spellman, was not just
a game.
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 1917, Pasadena boasted a million roses and 27,000