Straight-talking Lettie Gavin, newswoman

By Erik Lacitis

Seattle Times staff reporter




She was a character right out of newspaper lore, except she was the real thing.

Lettie Gavin, a journalist for 24 years, could curse with the best of them; she didn't mind a drink; she smoked; she could make an audience speechless with her bluntness.

She also was known for her love for the profession, for helping the younger generation of women reporters and for caring about the downtrodden.

Ms. Gavin died April 15 of pneumonia. She was 83. Ms. Gavin had been a longtime reporter and editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, retiring in 1982.

Early on, her son, Tom Gudmestad of Normandy Park, learned Ms. Gavin wasn't the usual mom.

"When I was a kid, she took me to a funeral and she was asked to say a few words," Gudmestad remembered. "She very quietly looked around and said, 'Just because he's dead doesn't mean he wasn't a son-of-a-bitch.' There was deathly silence in the place."

Ms. Gavin was born Nov. 25, 1922, in Oil City, Pa. In 1944, she earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Michigan.

In 1948, she and her husband, Gordon Gudmestad, an aeronautical engineer, moved to Normandy Park after he accepted a job with Boeing. They had two children — Tom, and Julie Gudmestad of Portland.

In the late 1950s, Ms. Gavin began working at the Highline Times as a reporter.

Pat Foote, an assistant managing editor at The Seattle Times, remembers being a 15-year-old unpaid intern at the community newspaper, and how Ms. Gavin helped her.

"She paid me $15 a week out of her own salary because she didn't think it was right that a kid worked for nothing," Foote said.

Ms. Gavin joined the P-I in 1968. Seattle City Councilwoman Jean Godden worked at the P-I from 1974 until 1991.

"She brooked no tokenism when it came to the young women who worked for her in the features section that had once been the 'women's pages.' She advised them never to date the men in the office," Godden said.

"And then, newly divorced, she proceeded to disregard her own advice. Her romance with one of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printers budded into a companionship that lasted until the end of her days."

Besides Ron Mittersteiner, her companion since 1977, her son and daughter and her former husband, Ms. Gavin is survived by two brothers, William Gavin of Charles Town, W.Va., and John Gavin of New York.

Ms. Gavin was not a religious woman.

"No services? That's an understatement," said her son. "She was very specific — no burial, no funeral, no memorial service."

Donations on her behalf can be sent to the Michael Copass Endowment, Harborview Medical Center, 325 Ninth Ave., Seattle 98104, or Northwest Harvest, P.O. Box 12272, Seattle 98102.