booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Booth fondly remembers another game one drizzly Saturday in mid-October. His
team was playing a team from Laurelhurst, an upscale Seattle neighborhood. “Our kids
were dressed in a combination of street clothes and uniforms. It was about 40 degrees
and raining hard.” They were
doing their warm-ups when
the opposing team arrived in a
chartered bus, wearing spiffy
uniforms, complete with hand
warmers and slickers. “It was
the mismatch of the season,” he
says, “but something happened
that day that was little short
of a miracle. I noticed the
determined look on my kids’
faces. We scored twice so fast
that it took the other team off
guard.” Laurelhurst eventually
rallied to tie the score and
Booth, center, with the UW’s high school relations committe.
Booth’s kids spent most of the
Tyee yearbook, 1955, pg. 103.
rest of the game on defense, with
the enemy deep in their territory. The score was still deadlocked when time expired. They left
the field feeling like winners in more ways than one.
The idealistic college student met “all kinds of people who needed help. They
came from neighborhoods where incarceration, drugs, aggression, dysfunctional family
structures and single-parent homes were the norm,” Booth says. “I saw kids with severe
disabilities and met their brave and frustrated parents. I saw things that were very different
from my own upbringing. Even though I thought I’d been pretty much hammered as a kid,
they had it a lot worse. I did what I could to make life a little better for them and to create
as many opportunities as I could, in my limited way.”
One day when Booth was coaching a baseball game at Broadway Playfield, a striking
woman named Katie Dolan showed up with her autistic son, Patrick, who was around 7. He
was in a wheelchair in the wake of the latest in a series of mishaps. The boy was non-verbal
but Booth found a way to include him in the game. “I had him hold the baseballs when we
were taking batting practice. I’d walk over and take one ball at a time from him.” Katie was
impressed and they struck up a friendship.
Kathleen Houlahan Dolan, 33 when she and Booth became friends and allies, had
a degree in drama from the University of Washington. “As audacious and driven as she
was beautiful and charming,” Katie had worked as an actress and model and hosted KIRO-
TV’s popular “Women’s World” program. When Patrick was diagnosed with autism and
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