BREMERTON — Adele Ferguson answered the phone so gruffly and loud that a young state Senate staff member hung up in fear.
That staffer was in powerful company, because legislators had the same fear and respect for Ferguson throughout her career.
Ferguson, a pioneer in Olympia political journalism history, died Monday at Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton after a short illness.
She was 90, something a newspaper could never get away with revealing if she were still here.
She leaves behind siblings, two daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a lasting legacy within Washington political circles.
“She had an incredible impact on state government, probably more than any reporter ever in Olympia,” former Secretary of State Ralph Munro said.
Known for her brash personality, direct language and incredible knack for knowing stories ahead of other reporters, Ferguson also was known as the life of the party and a consummate story teller. She began a near five-decade career at the Bremerton Sun shortly after World War II, hired by Sun founder Julius Gius. She grabbed a desk in Olympia in 1961.
David Ammons, now with the Secretary of State’s Office after establishing a career as the longest-termed statehouse reporter in Washington history, had Ferguson to show him around when he began his reporting career in 1971.
“I loved that she was funny and fun to be around and the life of the party, but she was also willing to go toe-to-toe with governors and leaders in both parties and willing to ask embarrassing, tough questions when called upon to do that,” Ammons said.
He recalled the first news conference with Gov. Booth Gardner following the 1989 execution of serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida. Ferguson asked Gardner, “Well, what do you think of Ted Bundy being a grease spot?”
Former Gov. Dan Evans led one of the first group of Americans (six governors) to China following President Richard Nixon’s establishment of a relationship with the nation but didn’t forget about Ferguson when he was there. While shopping at a store in China he fancied a small package of acupuncture needles. The first one went to Ferguson, he said, because she was always needling him. “I couldn’t pass that up. I knew exactly where it was going.”
That Senate staffer who hung up the phone without speaking to Ferguson later credited her with making her own career possible. “If there had been no Adele Ferguson there would be no Rachel Pritchett,” said Pritchett, another former longtime Sun reporter. “If she hadn’t opened the door, I couldn’t have stepped through.”
Pritchett, who herself showed a fearlessness in her reporting and in conversations with sources, said Ferguson helped her once she did land a job at the Bremerton paper and backed her and other women who were fighting management when women were regularly being passed over for newsroom promotions. Pritchett said women in journalism owe Ferguson a lot.
There is near universal agreement in Olympia. “There weren’t many women around in those days. It was all guys, but boy that didn’t slow her down,” Munro said.
Ammons credited Ferguson with writing for readers not the politically entrenched, something he said helped him in his career. She also beat other reporters by days to some stories, he said, because she networked like no one else and didn’t overlook tips from secretaries and janitors in her work.
She also would work when others wouldn’t. “If my phone rang before 6:45 in the morning, my wife would lean over and say it was probably Adele Ferguson. And it was,” Munro said. “She could spring on you like a cat.”
Gordon Walgren, who was Senate majority leader from the 23rd District, said he was among those who would wait for the first copies of the Bremerton Sun to arrive in Olympia around 4 p.m. He’d take a quick glance at the front page but was more interested in what Ferguson might be writing in her column inside.
“I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief if she wasn’t skewering me and working someone else over,” Walgren said. “I had my share of skewering, but I also had my share of favorable reports from her.”
Walgren said Ferguson was the only reporter to sit through the entire Gamscam trial that resulted in Walgren serving about two years in prison. She remained a Walgren defender after the trial, believing he had been railroaded by the FBI. She also remained a friend, he said.
There was no target too large. In 1957, she needled the Navy for not letting her sail on a two-hour tour aboard a submarine. “The atomic submarine Nautilus will sally forth into Puget Sound today with a whole passel of visiting newspaper men aboard — but nary one female-type woman. Namely, me. Oh, how I tried,” she wrote.
She took on federal government issues, too. Former U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks said Ferguson was always fair in her criticism and credited her with helping him get elected in 1976 to his first term in Congress. She addressed his opponent’s claim that Dicks was a carpetbagger, writing that because of his experience in Washington, D.C., being a carpetbagger might be an asset.
John Hughes, statehouse reporter and later editor for the Aberdeen Daily World, described Ferguson as a “den mother” for Olympia journalists, a great and quick writer. In 2009, Hughes began work with the secretary of state’s Legacy Project and spent four days with Ferguson at her Hansville home to create her biography and oral history. “It just was a privilege,” Hughes said of the work. “She was a bona fide first-class newspaper woman.”
Ferguson left the Sun in 1993 and continued writing columns, mostly espousing conservative political values, which were run in papers throughout the state. She continued to take on statehouse issues and wrote on subjects as broad as international relations and as close as her cats.
“She was the only person I knew who could tell an interesting story about a cat,” Munro said.
A few of those columns inspired outrage, such as when she wrote in 2006, “I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it.”
Whatever emotions some of her work might have engendered later, there is no mistake about her legacy in journalism, particularly in Olympia and especially for women.
“The new crop of women reporters really owe her a lot. She opened doors and demanded equal treatment,” Ammons said.
Poulsbo is home to another Adele Ferguson legacy: A bridge named in her honor. Long championed by Ferguson, it is the Highway 3 overpass at Highway 305.
Karen Philipsen, Ferguson’s daughter, said Adele had been in good health generally. On Sunday, she went to the hospital with flu symptoms. She was admitted and her condition worsened. She died Monday.
Adele’s husband, John Philipsen, died in 2005. A grandson, Paul Rider, also preceded her in death.
She is survived by a brother and two sisters, and her daughters, Philipsen, of Bainbridge Island, and Annette Churbuck of Belfair, three grandchildren and their spouses and several great-grandchildren.
Services are being arranged.
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