By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
Al Ziontz photo by Marianne McCoy
“People urged me to write the book — specifically my wife,” says Bellevue resident Alvin Ziontz of his memoir, A Lawyer in Indian Country. Seventy-eight-years old when he started in 2006, he remembers thinking, “I’d better get busy.”
He’d always told stories about working with Native Americans, but writing gave him the opportunity “to flesh it out,” especially for those who know little about these tribes. And after nearly three years of “painfully long” rewriting and revising required by University of Washington Press, the book was released this year.
Al spent the better part of a long career in tribal work, work he fell into somewhat by accident as a junior lawyer working in a West Seattle storefront office in the 1960s.
As he tells it, serendipity often played a role in his life. The Chicago native struggled through law school and had started graduate school when he was drafted during the Korean War. The Army brought him to California, making it easy to move to Seattle — where he’d worked one summer — when the war ended.
He struggled again as a junior lawyer with a boss who was often absent, but that first, serendipitous, Indian job led to the long career he details in the book.
After he retired, he spent a decade as a professional photographer until an increasingly bad back led him to real retirement.
He’s always tended to view his life through a historical lens, appreciating his working-class pedigree and the very different life he made for himself in the Northwest.
“I never lose sight or awareness of my roots,” Al says.
The book “has brought Chicago back into my consciousness,” as several high school classmates have read it and contacted him.
“It’s very nice,” he says, to have an old part of your existence “come back to life.”
With the writing habit fully ingrained, he started another project once the book was complete. It’s a journal — not for publication — a reflection on “living in the red zone, after age 70, when death is approaching.” Shortly after starting, his wife Lenore (Lennie) was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, “and it became a journal focused on her.”
After a “terrifically hard” surgery, chemotherapy and recuperation, “she came out of it and made a dramatic recovery,” and writing has shifted back to him.
Now, he says, “I’m currently writing on the subject of decrepitude.”
Active at the Stroum Jewish Community Center, Al is president of the active seniors club, arranging programs and conducting two round-table discussions each month. He and Lennie also spend time with their four grown children and five grandchildren, all in the area.
Native American tribes are making progress, he reflects, but, “there’s still room for improvement…. I would first like to see healthy Indian communities.”
The tribes are “recovering from [years of] historical damage,” but in their work for environmental preservation, tribes have really led the way for the rest of society.
“The natural environment is their sustenance and they are very, very protective of it — and it’s all to our benefit,” he says.
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Born and raised in Seattle, Tatum Greenblatt, a 2000 graduate of Garfield High School, has been carving out a professional music career in New York since he was 18.
“I’ve kind of been playing my whole life,” he explains.
Growing up in a musical household, a toddler’s natural instinct to hit things with sticks had him playing his brother’s drums at an early age.
His father, saxophonist Dan Green—blatt, is a professional musician and Tatum calls his mom, Karyn Cline “an avid fan” of all kinds of music.
Having a professional parent didn’t guarantee he’d become a musician, but his parents did insist that music be part of his education. He started trumpet at Madrona Elementary after a friend left town and left his horn with Tatum. He had an affinity for the instrument, and playing well became its own reward. That “turned into a long line of opportunities that were rewarding and fun,” he says.
It did help that Dad could seek out the best teachers and could help during “times of frustration and confusion.”
At 12, he says, he remembers deciding, “I’m going to move to New York and do this for the rest of my life.”
He attended the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. The college years were “advantageous” for transitioning into life in the Big Apple, but playing professionally “is an old-school, word-of-mouth business,” even in the digital age. “Everybody has a Web site, everyone has a CD… but what it really comes down to is so-and-so who has a gig and vouches for you.”
After college he played exclusively for a year — “a dismal existence” — then returned to school, getting a Master’s from Juilliard in 2008. Now he plays often, “with about 20 different groups.”
When we spoke, he was rehearsing for the on-stage band for the musical Hair.
His parents are also in New York now, his dad working at the New School, Tatum’s alma mater, and his mom studying film.
“It’s nice to have your mom cook dinner for you once in a while,” he observes.
Tatum sneaks back to Seattle for two shows this month. He plays with Jay Thomas at Tula’s on Dec. 23, and his own Here and Now Quintet appears at the Triple Door on Dec. 26. Both shows feature quintet member and another former Seattleite, Ben Roseth. For more information, visit myspace.com/tatumgreenblatt.