Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 9, September 2003

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Dorothy Stapp: Vigilant supporter

By CLAYTON PARK

The name Dorothy Stapp is well known to longtime readers of her husband's columns, as Stan has frequently referred to her in chronicling their various adventures, whether eating at some of their favorite restaurants or visiting friends or relatives.

Like Stan, Dorothy grew up in North Seattle, in the University District, the neighborhood just east of Wallingford where Stan was raised and spent most of his career as publisher and editor of the old North Central Outlook.

As a high school student, she attended Roosevelt, the arch rival to Lincoln, Stan's alma mater. Unlike Stan, who immediately embarked on his career upon graduating from high school, Dorothy went on to attend the University of Washington, where her father, Trevor Kincaid, was a professor of zoology at the University of Washington. Her father would later have a building on campus named after him: Kincaid Hall.

But despite having spent most of her life in North Seattle, she had never heard of The Outlook when she first met Stan in the early 1960s.

"It was (mainly) a Wallingford paper at that time," she recalls.

The two met when Dorothy joined a local folk dancing group and agreed to serve on its board of directors. Stan was the perennial board president.

The two formed a friendship, which eventually evolved into romance. After two years of dating, they got married in 1965.

The next year, Dorothy decided to quit her job as a research assistant at the UW to go to work for the Outlook as a bookkeeper, in part so their work schedules would be more compatible: Dorothy used to have to get up early in the morning when she was working at the UW, while Stan, because of the nature of the newspaper business, tended to stay up late at night.

Dorothy also did it to help keep costs down at The Outlook, which began to struggle financially, particularly in the late 1960s when The Boeing Co. began laying off workers here in droves, resulting in the infamous 1970 billboard: "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn off the lights?"

Since she and Stan were married, "there was no use in paying me," Dorothy recalls. As owners, "We lived on as little money as we possibly could, about $100 a week. We were always hoping for better times and that things would get more prosperous, but it never did. ... Most business owners in the Wallingford shopping district were just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. It wasn't a prosperous neighborhood at all.

"Stan never cared about making money. He just wanted to survive to be able to put out another edition of the paper."

At The Outlook, Dorothy learned to do a little bit of practically everything, including teaching an employee who was deaf how to operate the company's new IBM typesetting machine, and occasionally delivering papers.

By keeping a tight control on their expenses, the Stapps managed to stay on top of their bills, with the exception of their printing bill, which they always seemed to be behind in paying, Dorothy recalls. "It was tough to get caught up," especially as the local economy worsened, she said. "It was just more and more pressure."

When the Stapps got an offer to sell the paper to a newly formed citywide chain called Today Newspapers, which had been buying most of the independent community papers, including The Outlook's chief rival, the University Herald, Dorothy says "we jumped on it."

"The woman at The Grange (The Outlook's printer) had tears in her eyes," when the Stapps presented her with a check to settle their debt, Dorothy remembers. "She told us, 'I always knew you'd be good for it!'"

After selling the paper, Dorothy briefly took over management of their typesetting business, Seagraphics, when Stan went to work for the Today newspapers, a stint that only lasted a couple months before he quit in frustration over the chain's lack of editorial standards.

While Stan would eventually resume his newspaper career as a columnist, Dorothy began pursuing her interest in becoming a master gardener. Her garden was the subject of a feature article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the late 1990s.

For the most part, however, Dorothy has been content to leave the limelight to her husband. "I don't have any regrets," she says. "For me personally, I've been an assister all this time, helping others do what they do rather than my own thing."