Edmond S. Meany

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The Mountaineers ~ A History

by Jim Kjeldsen, pp 13-19

Slipping in just after the Charter rolls closed was Edmond S. Meany, the engaging University of Washington history professor and lover of the outdoors who would become the guiding light of The Mountaineers for twenty-seven years.

The club continued to grow at quite an unexpected rate until by the end of 1907 it had 233 members, mostly Seattle residents but a few scattered in a great arc from Eastern Washington to Banff, Alberta; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon. By November 15, 1907, the founders seem to have realized what they had going. They altered the name of the club to reflect its wide appeal, calling it simply The Mountaineers and dropping the appended “Auxiliary to the Maramas,” which had been part of the original name.

It says a great deal about the quality of the early leaders that so many women felt secure in joining a club that had as its intention exploration of the wilderness. Out of the 151 charter members, 77 were women. From the beginning. women helped determine club policies, arranged trips and programs, kept records, and edited publications. Thanks in large part to The Mountaineers, both men and women made many first ascents in the Northwest mountains.

In keeping with the era, however, the organization was led by men, and they were the prime decision-makers. Also, it must be said that women usually were relegated to subordinate positions. But it was still a bit unusual in 1907 for men and women to associate as peers in a club setting. It is further notable that in a period when there were so few female college graduates, four of the women charter members were identified as “Dr.” surgeon L. Maud Parker, physicians Cora Smith Eaton and Sarah Kendall, and dentist Martha G. Covey. Physicians Myra L. Everly and Mary M. Mars joined later in 1907.

After a year as president, Henry Landes prevailed upon Meany, his fellow University of Washington professor, to take over. Meany was already well known to club members as a speaker at the monthly meetings. Meany knew Chinook, the native trading language, so the Indian history he related at the meetings was authentic, augmented by items from his own collection of artifacts. He also presented accounts of pioneer history.

Just as Muir had been the Sierra Club’s primary leader, and Steel the inspiration behind the Mazamas, so Meany would become the most powerful force in The Mountaineers. He retained the presidency until his death in 1935 from a stroke just before he was to teach a class at the university. Curtis and the others had organized the club and left their imprint on it, but Meany became the backbone of the organization.

Meany was born in East Saginaw, Michigan, in 1862 and came to Washington Territory with his family while he was still a teenager. During the summer of 1880, his father, who was working on a steamer on the Skagit River during a minor gold rush, fell overboard and drowned. This left Meany, not yet eighteen, as the principal support of his mother, sister, and baby brother.

To get by, Meany operated a tiny dairy, pasturing cows on grass that grew alongside Seattle’s unpaved streets. He also got a job delivering newspapers, kept books for a grocer, and hired himself out as janitor at his church and at the only bank in town. The sheriff was so impressed by the young man’s efforts that he stopped Meany on the street one day and told him that if he ever needed anything, he had only to ask.

Because of such support, Meany was able to enter the University of Washington, from which he graduated in 1885 at the top of his class. He became a reporter at the Seattle Press, then was promoted to city editor. During his tenure, the newspaper sponsored the Press Exploratory Expedition of 1889-90 into Washington’s the Olympic Range, and the explorers thought enough of Meany to name a mountain after him. He would get the chance to climb his namesake peak on the first Mountaineers outing.

In 1891, Meany was elected to the state legislature and served for two sessions, during which he helped secure the University of Washington’s current campus. The decision to move the school drew criticism because the original campus was conveniently located downtown, while the new one was way out at the end of a streetcar line. Meany may have argued for the new campus in part because of its spectacular views of the Cascades to the east, the Olympics to the west, and Mount Rainier to the south.

After his stint in politics, Meany became registrar at the university, then settled in as a history lecturer. He became head of the history department in 1897, a position he held for the rest of his life.

By 1907 Meany was ready for new challenges, and The Mountaineers fit in with his love of Indian lore, Northwest history, and the outdoors. In the club, he seems to have found the combination of pioneer individualism, romance, and academic application that suited him. “It was Meany who came to exemplify the ideals of The Mountaineers,” the Washington Historical Quarterly reported in 1935 upon Meany’s death.

Legendary stories about Meany abound.

According to a retrospective report in the 1956 Mountaineer annual, “On the 1920 Olympic outing the party was making a return trip down the Quinault River in canoes paddled by Indians. Always ready to exhibit his knowledge of their tongue, Professor Meany hailed a canoe carrying some Indians coming upstream and in his best Chinook asked how many of our canoes they had met. In the best of English came back the reply, ‘Oh, about half a dozen.’

“On another occasion while watching an Indian ceremonial, Professor Meany in his best jargon asked an Indian chap standing nearby the meaning of it all. Imagine his delight when back came the answer, ‘Purely psychological.’”

Meany was devoted to the club and set very high standards of conduct, which many members felt it was their “privilege” to maintain. Meany “established standards of mountaineering ethics that have left a lasting imprint upon our organization–a priceless legacy. He gave so much dignity and prestige to the club that he made it outstanding in the nation,” according to the Historical Quarterly.

Early members recalled Meany most clearly at campfires in mountain meadows. He was a natural-born storyteller, enriching members appreciation of the locale by recounting its his tory and legends. He was also deeply religious and led Sunday services on summer outings.

Meany’s engaging manner and kind attention to all club members, no matter how new, made him a beloved figure the club could rally behind during its formative years. The first thing newcomers often noted when coming into the club was the atmosphere of camaraderie mingled with deference to Meany.

Some people felt that twenty-seven years at the helm was too long, and that the club leadership had grown out of touch with the membership and with the changes in outdoor recreation brought about by the automobile. Upon Meany’s death, the bylaws were revised so no president could serve for more than two years.

The Mountaineers in its early days was far ahead of many other organizations in social out-look, but it was not completely egalitarian. To join, each applicant needed endorsement by two current members. The applicants’ names were then published in the Mountaineer bulletin and, if no one objected, the board of trustees accepted them as members.

The early organization was not truly open to diversification in other ways. If you didn’t favor Protestant religious services, for example, you were out of luck. Meany led them, and his influence was pervasive. Or if you didn’t like the military structure of the early walks and outings, you were unlikely to get along very well. And if you happened to be Native American or Chinese, it was unlikely you would even gain membership approval in the first place.

All of this was socially acceptable among most club members at the time, and it would be decades before they thought to change such notions. Members who chafed at such limitations kept quiet and accepted them as the price for a safe excursion into the mountains.

During the 1960s and 1970s, as awareness of civil rights grew, the membership procedure was changed to welcome anyone fourteen years of age or older who agreed with the purposes of The Mountaineers and was willing to pay a small initiation fee and annual dues.

Portrait

Youth

by Annah Rogers

How the lapse of time had touched that word with magic

Now that time had brought me into full maturity,

Wistfully I thought of youth as holding in its hands

The best of life’s gifts - beauty, freedom, power.

Again I was to feel the magic of its pulse

To sip vicariously at its font in college classroom.

Eagerly I looked upon its creatures as they entered

Here a pretty face, there a lithe strong body,

But the epitome of those qualities which I had attributed to youth was not there.

Then entered the Professor - silver haired, erect, with princely poise,

And in his eyes both kindliness and fire.

Poise born of mastery, kindness born of unselfed service,

And the fire born of the joy and romance of life rightly lived and battles won.

Beauty, freedom, power? - a prompting thought

Bid me look not back but forward.