The development of this Web site has been an incredible
learning experience for all of us at the Washington State Oral History Program,
and we very much hope readers will gain as much from using it as we did from
preparing it. As in any publishing
effort, a finished product requires the help of a great many individuals, and
we want to acknowledge them and express our thanks. We apologize for any omissions; this complex
project grew and changed as we discovered more of our topic and uncovered a
wealth of resources now assembled in part here for other researchers.
Sherry Boswell, Project Editor
Anne Kilgannon, Program Manager
Washington State Oral History Program
In particular, we had strong support from many members of
the staff of the Office of the Secretary of State, including Garann Means, our
extremely talented Web designer, and Matthew Edwards, who helped with the
initial conceptualization. Grace Spencer
and Sandy Kerr, both formerly with our office, were the backbone of our efforts--Grace
did much of the initial research and development for the site and Sandy
put it all into a useable format. Richard Allen, a volunteer for the Program
and Lois Fenske helped with testing the site. Patrick McDonald shared his
collection of maps with us. Dan Speigle, Steve Excell and Secretary of State
Sam Reed consistently offered much-needed encouragement, as did the members of
our Legislative Advisory Committee.
A site this complex makes use of materials from a wide
variety of sources, and we would also like to recognize the people and the
institutions that so willingly shared their knowledge or resources with
us.
Terry Badger and others at the State Archives, and several
librarians at the State Library and the Law Library at the Temple
of Justice provided invaluable
research assistance and access to materials.
We are especially
grateful to Howard McCurdy for his generous permission to reprint his
manuscript on redistricting from the Republican point of view. Discovering his
account tucked away in the Library was an impetus for the design of this site.
Claudia Downing and
the League of Women Voters of Washington State were very supportive of this
project. They lent the Program materials from their archives to help us in our
research and gave us permission to include some of their publications in the
site.
We worked closely
with Melissa Parr and Sue Rohrer of the State Capital Museum, a division of the Washington State
Historical Society to coordinate our presentation with their Redistricting in Washington State
exhibit and events of 2001. Riley
McLaughlin of JRA Interactive, who helped with the Museum presentation, also
helped us with our initial design for the Web site. We were excited to attend a
forum on redistricting held by the Museum and meet some of the luminaries of
the issue. This event was televised by TVW; we would like to thank Denny Heck
and his able staff for sharing some of their redistricting programs with us.
Ethan Moreno and
the staff of the Washington State Redistricting Commission provided us with
valuable information and guidance. They helped bring the topic into the present
era.
We would also like
to thank Dean Foster who gave us his time, experience and enthusiasm. He helped
us understand redistricting from both an historical perspective and a
contemporary issue.
Finally, we are grateful to the following newspapers and
individuals for permission to reprint selected articles:
Arval A. Morris
Philip Austin
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Weekly
The Tri-City Herald
United Press International
The Valley Daily News
