Dixy Lee Ray

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Dixy Lee Ray

Dixy Lee Ray (September 3, 1914- January 2, 1994) was the seventeenth governor of Washington and the first woman to hold that position (for one term, from 1977 until 1981).

She was born Marguerite Ray; at twelve, she changed her name to "Dixy Lee". She attended Mills College and later graduated from Stanford University. Ray was a marine biologist and taught at the University of Washington from 1947 until 1972. From 1963 until 1972, she was the director of Seattle's Pacific Science Center, guiding its future after the founding as part of the 1962 World's Fair. An advocate of nuclear power, she was appointed by Richard Nixon to chair the Atomic Energy Commission in 1973 and was the first and only woman to serve as chair of the AEC.

Nominally a Democrat, she won the governorship in largely Democratic Washington in 1976, but quickly astonished her supporters with her strongly conservative views. She lost in the 1980 Democratic primary election to then-State Senator Jim McDermott, who went on to lose in the general election to John D. Spellman.

She was the co-author (with Lou Guzzo) of two books critical of the environmentalist movement: Trashing the Planet and Environmental Overkill.

She was governor when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980.

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