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Editor’s note: This is an edited excerpt from Kate Krafft’s foreword to The Woman in the Room: A Memoir, by L. Jane Hastings. Read more from the memoir here.
Nearly 50 years ago I was lucky enough to walk into a room and meet Jane Hastings. This was a classroom at Seattle Central Community College at the time; she taught there and I studied there. At the time, I knew she was a successful architect, but I knew little about her role in creating the academic program I attended. I also could not have imagined the impact she would have on my subsequent career and the lives of so many others who crossed her path.
After pursuing a series of extraordinary professional and personal achievements, Jane has spent the past few years examining her path, from her childhood in Seattle’s Fauntleroy neighborhood to years of challenging academic work at the University of Washington , to a remarkable career in architecture and a love marriage to the University of Wisconsin School of Architecture. Professor Norman Johnston. This path was filled with extensive world travel, her hard work in construction jobs and professional organizations, and lifelong friendships.
She is now 95 and widowed, but her positivity and determination remain amazing. As we prepare to publish her memoir, she also prepares to move to a new unit in her Horizon House residence. So we recently found Jane drawing floor plans and measuring carpets and cabinets in order to build her newest home.
Jane’s entire story is a fascinating adventure. Jane has been fascinated by bridge building since childhood, and her own path is the story of connections that span nine decades through the city of Seattle and around the world. Now, in sharing her story, she continues to build bridges that connect her rich past to our present.
Today, more than ever, I realize how lucky I am to be in the classroom, and later on the drawing board, at the end of a tape measure, in the igloo above Snoqualmie Pass, and in her wonderful ’s Laurel Hearst House and the art-filled Horizon House.
Thank you, Jane, for inspiring us all to follow our dreams, face challenges with determination, and build connections. I’m still learning from you.
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