She’s that accessible. Yet, just across the hardwood floor of her grand foyer is a hallway where framed photographs give a different view.
There’s a picture of her late husband, Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, playing baseball with John F. Kennedy.
Another photo shows the Jacksons’ son, Peter, on his second birthday with President Johnson.
The cover of a Time magazine from 1975, a year before Scoop Jackson sought the Democratic nomination for president, reads “Scoop Out Front.”
The senator’s 69-year-old widow is not like anyone else in the neighborhood. No one else has family photographs like hers.
I visited her stately home Friday to talk about the life of public service she shared with her husband and how that involvement continues today. She graciously spoke of politics, her beloved grandchildren and local causes she supports. She was modest about receiving a prestigious award.
On Tuesday, at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle, the American Jewish Committee’s Seattle chapter honored Helen Jackson and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation with its 2002 Human Relations Award.
“Under her leadership as chair of the Jackson Foundation, great strides have been made in promoting human rights in the former Soviet Union and in training future leaders through the Jackson School of International Relations at the University of Washington,” said Carol Gown, president of the committee’s Seattle chapter.
The foundation was started in 1983, the year the senator died. Since then, it has provided more than $13 million to organizations that support projects addressing human rights, international affairs and environmental issues.
Those efforts reach around the globe, but home is where Helen Jackson’s heart is.
“I love it here,” she said, adding that she gave no thought to leaving Everett after her husband’s death. “He was so proud of this town.”
A native of Albuquerque, N.M., she met her future husband the first day she went to work for New Mexico Sen. Clinton Anderson in Washington, D.C.
“He introduced me to Scoop. I was maybe 28,” she recalled. “It didn’t take long” before they were a couple.
By that time, the Democrat from Everett was already a member of the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1953 to 1983 after having been elected five times to the House of Representatives.
It was a life Helen Jackson remembers as wonderful. “It was a joy meeting so many people,” she said.
The presidential run was hard, traveling to so many states. But except for those losses, there was never a close election night.
Everett owes its Navy base to the late senator, although he died before its completion. “I wish Scoop could have seen that,” his widow said. “The Navy people are wonderful, and the facility looks like a college campus. He’d be so proud of that.”
Today, she lends her home and her time to many causes, from Democratic Party politics to local agencies such as Cocoon House for homeless teens and the Children’s Museum in Snohomish County.
“I’m also involved with my grandchildren, which is best of all,” she said.
Daughter Annamarie and her husband live in north Seattle and have two children, Jack and Julia.
As for ever entertaining the idea of seeking political office herself, her answer is simple.
“Never,” she said.
“It’s a hard job, and I don’t feel competent. And having to raise all that money, I think it’s obscene the way it is now.”
She declined to speculate on what her late husband’s stance might have been on today’s terrorist threats and possible war with Iraq. Nor would she comment on initiative king Tim Eyman, saying only, “I don’t think I will.” About the nasty tone of political discourse today, she said, “It shouldn’t be that way.”
We can all agree on her opinion of freeway gridlock. “Traffic is horrendous,” she said.
It’s a dumb question, but I asked the woman who might have been first lady if her husband had really wanted to be in the White House.
“I think he did. I’m glad I’m right here,” she said.
I’m very glad she’s here, in a big white house in Everett where grandchildren’s pictures are more prominently displayed than those of former presidents.
“What’s important is Scoop’s legacy,” she said. “I think about him every day, and how he loved this community.”
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