Marie Yates was community presence

During Marie Yates’ lifetime, she managed to volunteer many hours to the community, raise a family and even stir up a little controversy.

Yates, who died Jan. 6 at age 85, was born in Colville, the youngest of seven children. After graduating from high school in 1940, she bucked the trends of the day and got a job instead of getting married.

“My mom didn’t really fit the pattern,” said Sheri Kever, Yates’ daughter.

Yates worked as a receptionist and business manager at the Associated Doctors clinic in Colville and, because it was one of the few doctors’ offices in the area, she knew many folks from three counties.

“She knew everybody,” Kever said.

Kever said Yates got to see everything there. Doctors would often let her observe surgeries or babies being delivered, and she had both tragic and hilarious stories to tell.

Yates would sometimes take the bus into Spokane, rent a room at the Davenport and spend the next day shopping for an outfit downtown.

In 1955 Yates married. She had two children, Kever and Doug Bayley, born a year to the day apart.

Yates had planned to stay at home to raise the children, but she instead began her advocacy of police throughout the area.

She worked as a matron and deputy sheriff in Colville. Kever remembers seeing her mother wearing her star-shaped badge.

When her marriage ended in 1965, Yates moved her two children to Wenatchee, where she was a single mother and a court clerk at the Police Department.

Yates was busy, but Kever has fond memories of her mother during this time. “She took really good care of our family,” she said. “She was there when we got home after school.”

Kever remembers that it was hard for Yates to make ends meet. “It was tough,” she said. “We didn’t have any money, and she went without.”

In 1968, she married Herbert Yates and moved to Spokane. She stayed at home with her children and began volunteering with different organizations.

A family friend and co-worker at COPS Southeast, Brenda Yates, who was not related to Marie, said that for every organization Marie joined, she ended up being its president at least once.

“Everywhere she went she was just unstoppable,” Brenda Yates said.

She helped set up a scholarship program through the Women of Water Power. Kever said her mother was very proud of that project because she felt it was important for people to go to college, even though she couldn’t afford to attend herself.

Yates also spent time volunteering with the Regina Hall Auxiliary, a rehabilitation home for women. She was also a member of the Lilac City chapter of the Sweet Adelines, serving as the group’s president in 1976 and 1977.

“I never even heard her humming,” Kever said, but knew music was always a big part of her mother’s life. “Music was just in her,” Kever said.

Probably one of her biggest services was with Spokane COPS. Yates volunteered at COPS Southeast since it opened.

“She loved the Police Department,” said Brenda Yates. She said Marie Yates’ sense of humor made COPS Southeast a fun place to be. “She opened every meeting with a joke.”

Marie Yates served as the president of COPS Southeast three times, and when the shop moved to a new location in the Lincoln Heights Shopping Mall, the volunteers and Spokane COPS dedicated the building in her memory.

“She was the heart and soul of the place,” Brenda Yates said.

She once donated a dog to the K-9 Unit of the Spokane Police Department, served on the Police Advisory Committee and was a member of the Spokane Police Department Citizens Review Committee.

She was a vocal advocate for the police when she felt the department was being treated unfairly. Kever said her mother would write letters to the editor, or call editors when she didn’t agree with something she read in the paper.

“A lot of people would gripe about stuff,” Kever said. “But they wouldn’t take the time to write a letter.”

It was through the Citizens Review Committee that Yates stirred up some controversy and made the news. The committee was formed as an oversight group to decide whether proper police procedure is followed.

During a June 2006 meeting of the committee, which had been inactive for several years, a heated discussion broke out between Marie Yates and Bob DeMotte, who had brought to the committee for review a case involving an off-duty police lieutenant.

When the committee decided the officer involved had already been disciplined for the lieutenant’s actions and tossed the case, Marie Yates called DeMotte an “ass” while cameras from local TV news stations were rolling.

“I was in shock for a few minutes,” DeMotte said recently.

A few months later, DeMotte filed a $1 million claim for damages against the city.

Both Kever and Brenda Yates believed that the two had made up after the incident, but DeMotte disagrees. His claim is still pending.

Kever, who lives in Puyallup, said that she and her mother didn’t really talk about the incident, but she did remember saying, “Mom, I can’t believe you’re still making headlines.”

Soon after the incident, Marie Yates began to lose her vision and couldn’t keep up with her favorite hobby – greeting cards. She never forgot someone’s birthday and enjoyed picking out the perfect card for her friends and family.

“Some of them were a little off-color,” said Kever. “Like, a lot off-color.”

Yates’ funeral at Manito Presbyterian Church earlier this month was attended by former police Chief Roger Bragdon, who gave the eulogy, a partial honor guard from the Police Department, and members of the K-9 Unit.

“She would have been tickled,” Brenda Yates said. “She would have been so damn happy to see everybody.”

Marie Yates is survived by her daughter, Sheri Bayley Kever, and her husband, Kevin; her son, Douglas James Bayley and his wife Debbie; her stepsons, Karl and Keith Yates, and their wives, Kay and Barbara; a sister, Gladys Stewart, of Colville; a sister-in-law, Lucile Hotchkiss, of Proctor, Wash.; eight grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.