Life Member
d. December 18, 2004, age 82
Reared in the Midwest, Cecil L. Browder served in the Army Air Force 1943-46, in training to become a fighter pilot in the renowned Tuskegee Airmen 99th Pursuit Squadron until suffering a back injury in the crash of a training flight in Michigan in 1944. He received his BS in architectural engineering from the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1950. He came to the Northwest in 1962, when Boeing recruited him from Arizona. He and his family lived for many years in Bellevue's Robinswood area near Phantom Lake.
While employed as assistant structural-engineering director with The Richardson Associates in Seattle in the early 1970s, Cecil managed the construction of the Sea-Tac Airport's parking garage and subway system. He consulted with Arnold Jacobson, Adrian Arnold, and N.G. Jacobson & Associates Inc. on the I-90 Rainier Avenue Interchange. He formed Cecil Browder & Associates, and retired in the early 1980s.
Cecil Browder became the first African American President of the Washington Society of Professional Engineers when elected in 1975, and a founding member of the National Society of Architectural Engineers in 1984. He took an active role in efforts to increase the number of minorities in the engineering profession. In 1972, WSPE named him Seattle Engineer of the Year.
In community activities, he served as a vice president and board member of the World Affairs Council of Seattle and on the board of Catholic Children's Services in the 1970s.
Posted May 2012. Primary source: Seattle Times obituary