A hero in defiance: Remembering Ballard's Edith Macefield - She refused to move

[RamboLiberal]

Edith Macefield died at home, just the way she wanted.

The Ballard woman who captured hearts and admirers around the world when she stubbornly turned down $1 million to sell her home to make way for a commercial development died Sunday of pancreatic cancer. She was 86.

"I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't mean anything," she told the Seattle P-I in October.

She continued living in the little old house in the 1400 block of Northwest 46th Street even after concrete walls rose around her, coming within a few feet of her kitchen window. Cranes towered over her roof. Macefield turned up the television or her favorite opera music a little louder and stayed put.

"I went through World War II, the noise doesn't bother me," she said in October. "They'll get it done someday."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/367335_obitmacefield18.html


Edith Macefield's old blue car still sits in front of the home she refused to sell to developers, even when they offered $1 million

Good for her and and what a nice story about the senior superintendent on the construction project who befriended her and made sure to take care of her needs even driving her to appointments.

[pleah]

1. K&R Bravo, Edith!

[maxsolomon]

2. Sillyness all around.

watch her heirs sell the property so fast she spins in her grave.

what happens to the notch? incorporate it? build a separate building?

[Sal Minella]

3. They'd better fill it in with concrete really quick or -- horrors! -- someone might plant a tree.

[maxsolomon]

4. take a LOOK at that lot

4 stories on 3 sides. no windows looking into it. a tree (or several trees) seems like a fine solution, but this is seattle, usa. land must produce profit. are you proposing timber farming?

that lot will be brought back in to the embrace of capital. i cannot applaud her unreasonable stubbornness. a trader joe's, in the middle of a thriving, walkable neighborhood, with housing for 100's above, is not the epitome of evil.