NorthwestJanuary 1, 2004

Associated Press

SPOKANE -- Evelyn Stacey Blackwood, a member of a prominent Spokane family and mother-in-law of former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, has died.

She died Saturday at the age of 97.

Blackwood, who had lived in Spokane since 1994, was the grandmother of Stacey Cowles, publisher of The Spokesman-Review newspaper, and Elizabeth Allison Cowles, who runs KHQ-TV of Spokane. The family is involved in many other business and philanthropic enterprises.

Blackwood's daughter, Allison Stacey Cowles, is married to Sulzberger. Blackwood's son, Richard Stacey, is a Spokane physician.

"She lived a long, full life," Richard Stacey said.

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"She went from the horse-and-buggy days to people on the moon," Allison Cowles said of her mother Wednesday.

Blackwood was a supporter of women's rights, public health and efforts to promote contraception, she said. She could ride horses, shoot, and was healthy to the end of her life, her daughter said.

"She had a feeling of wanting to do things for people who were not as lucky as she was," Allison Cowles said.

Blackwood was born Aug. 13, 1906, in New Jersey, where her father's family was in the lumber business. She became a registered public health nurse, and worked in the slums of Newark, N.J., overseeing tubercular patients and teaching about contraception.

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