Elizabeth Niaz Bagshaw

Bagshaw—Elizabeth Niaz Bagshaw, 84, on December 6, 2017, in Seattle, Wash. Liz was born on May 27, 1933, in Amsterdam, N.Y., to Margaret Joyce Foster and Rahim Ahmad Jallie. During World War II, her family moved to Bremerton, Wash., for Rahim’s work in the Navy shipyards, and at the start of Liz’s high school freshman year, they moved to Seattle, where she attended Franklin High School and then University of Washington (UW). She was active in the YWCA and a member of Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa honor societies and graduated in 1954 with honors and a bachelor’s in sociology.

She volunteered in an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) summer project in New Mexico in 1954 and led Institutional Service Units in Pownal, Maine, in 1955 and 1957—all three projects in mental hospitals. Continuing her volunteer work with AFSC in Seattle in the 1960s, she visited a workcamp on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Lame Deer, Mont., in 1961 as Seattle AFSC regional representative. In the early ’60s she advised international students at UW for four years.

After directing the university Y in Eugene, Ore., where she became a member of Eugene Meeting, she moved back to Seattle to study social work at UW. In 1963, she and Bob Bagshaw were the first couple to marry in the then new University Friends meetinghouse. Soon after the marriage, they moved to the Montlake neighborhood in Seattle, where they helped to defeat the proposed R.H. Thomson Expressway, which was to have run north from I-90 through the Central District, Montlake, and the Arboretum.

She transferred her membership to University Meeting in Seattle in 1966. Eugene Meeting, which became a monthly meeting in 1956, does not have membership records for Liz’s joining, but University Meeting surmises that she became a member there in 1956 or 1957. Over the years, Liz served on committees, especially Finance in 1987–92, clerking it for part of that time. Most recently she served on the Scholarship Committee.

She was absent from meeting for several years, and when the Oversight Committee contacted her as an inactive member in 2003, she said that even though she herself did not oppose it, she was uncomfortable with the meeting’s treatment of same-sex marriage opponents. She did attend occasional events, such as memorials. Recently she had been attending quarterly meeting. She was particularly interested in the future of the meetinghouse and attended the fall 2017 retreat about the future of University Meeting campus.

Her family enjoyed hiking, backpacking, skiing, and swimming. She liked theater, dance, and opera. She loved people and engaged with all sorts, enjoying hearing others’ perspectives whether she agreed with them or not. She was not shy about speaking her mind.

Liz’s husband, Robert Bagshaw, died before her. She is survived by her children, Margaret Bagshaw Philbin (Pat) and Michelle Bagshaw (Guy Freeman); her step-children, Ann King (Dave) and Paul Bagshaw; three grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; a sister, Margaret Miller; three nieces; one nephew; many loved great-nieces and nephews; English relatives; other loving family; and an expansive community of dear friends. At her memorial meeting Friends, former students, and family shared memories from personal, artistic, political, and activist connections.

 

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