Coming out was Cheryl Chow’s last gift to Seattle | Seattle Pride at 50

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a project recognizing LGBTQ+ people who have shaped Washington ahead of the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride. To read more, click here.

Cheryl Chow, a longtime Seattle educator and civic leader, made a momentous decision just months before her death from cancer at age 66: She would, in an interview with KING 5’s Lori Matsukawa, publicly come out.

In that interview in 2012, Chow said, “If I can save one child from feeling bad or even committing suicide because they felt terrible because they were gay, then I would have succeeded in my last crusade.”

“It was her last public service,” said Chow’s widow Sarah Morningstar, in an interview last month. “She did it for the kids.”

Chow was startled by the attention her coming out received. “She was humble in that way, and super overwhelmed,” Morningstar said. “I said, ‘It matters, every voice matters. Maybe you were the tipping point for someone; maybe that was the last time somebody needed to hear it before they decided it was OK.’ … Every time one person stands up for something, you never know when that one person will become the critical mass.”

Chow, a born-and-raised Seattleite, had spent her lifetime as an advocate for kids and families: as principal of Garfield and Franklin high schools, as a Seattle City Council member and president of the Seattle School Board, as a longtime coach of girls basketball and the Seattle Chinese Community Girls Drill Team.

“She was always a safe place, even if it was unsaid,” Morningstar said. “She created safe places, in drill team and in basketball, for kids to be who they were. When she came out when she did, she did it so that kids could say, Auntie Cheryl’s gay, Coach Chow‘s gay, it’s OK … You use your responsibility carefully, you use your positionality for good. And she did, right up until the end.”

Chow was born in 1946 to a prominent Chinese American family: Her parents, Ping and Ruby Chow, were community activists and owners of the popular restaurant Ruby Chow’s. In 1973, Ruby Chow became the first Asian American elected to the King County Council, where she served for three terms. The only daughter among five siblings, Cheryl grew up in the spotlight: A 1967 Seattle Times story, on the occasion of her 21^st birthday, described her as “self-effacing” and noted that “Whenever there was a job of work to be done, Cheryl did it, quietly and without fuss or needless spinning of wheels.”

At an early age, Chow began participating in the drill team, founded in 1952 by her mother and a group of girls from Garfield High School. A unique mix of Chinese culture and military-style precision marching, the team is a leadership group for Asian American girls, aged 11 to 18. “It helped me become what I wanted to become,” said Chow, reflecting on the experience in footage included in the 2023 short film “She Marches in Chinatown.” “Our society makes girls compete with each other so much. Drill team helped me not to compete against women in the real world.”

Taking over from her mother as the team’s director, Chow ran the drill team for nearly five decades; the girls called her Auntie Cheryl. It was, said her brother Mark Chow, one of her greatest legacies. “That whole drill team experience taught Cheryl teamwork and pride and fortitude,” he said, which she then passed on to generations. A young woman in the film sums up the team’s impact: “This is what women’s empowerment looks like.”

Ashli Chen-Dong, who knew Chow as both a drill team leader and a basketball coach, described how Chow instilled “a sense of discipline and respect, not only just for elders but also for each other as a team.” Years later, as a gay woman, she was moved by Chow’s coming out. “It inspired me to just be my authentic self,” she said.

In honor of Chow’s accomplishments, an honorary street sign was placed this year: Cheryl Chow Boulevard, on the corner of South Mount Baker Boulevard and 31st Avenue South. The resolution, passed by the Seattle City Council, noted that her “steadfast dedication to children and families of Seattle reaches back to the 1970’s.” Among the accomplishments listed in the resolution were her work on the City Council in the 1990s (which included pivotal roles in creating urban rest stops to aid unhoused people and developing partnerships to address crime in South Seattle), her many decades with the drill team and as a volunteer basketball coach, her championing of public education, and her late-life coming out “to help younger Asian Americans feel comfortable in their own bodies.”

Morningstar and Chow were married just 16 days before Chow’s death, in a ceremony performed in their living room by former state Supreme Court Justice Faith Ireland. Chow was in a wheelchair, and the brides and their young daughter, Liliana, wore matching pajamas. Getting married, and seeing Liliana turn 5, were Chow’s “palliative goals” during her last illness, Morningstar said. Liliana now plays basketball at Franklin High; Chow, said Morningstar, would have loved that.