PORT ANGELES — Arlene Engel, an Olympic Medical Center commissioner and a staunch advocate for health care access and mental health services who received a lifetime achievement award in 2009, died peacefully on Christmas morning, OMC Board Chairman Jim Cammack confirmed.
She was 91.
Engel suffered a stroke and died at the hospital, Cammack said.
Lasting effect
“She is going to be missed,” Cammack said.
“She had a big interest in mental health. She also had a big interest in the hospital, period.”
A longtime Sequim resident, Engel had been an OMC commissioner since 2002.
She served on numerous boards and committees as a champion for the mentally ill, seniors and the under-served.
Engel received the Clallam County Citizen of the Year award in 1992, and in 2009, she was awarded the Clallam County Lifetime Achievement Award and the Red Cross Hero Award.
Eric Lewis, OMC Chief Executive Officer, said Engel leaves a “lasting, positive effect” on OMC and the communities it serves.
“Arlene was an outstanding board member,” Lewis said.
“She was engaged and very committed to helping our patients and our community,” he added.
Lewis said that Engel “did an outstanding job right up to the last board meeting she attended in early December.”
“We’re going to miss Arlene,” he said.
Impacy on the community
“She has made quite an impact at OMC and our community.”
Cammack said Engel was instrumental in helping Sen. Jim Hargrove, a Democrat from Hoquiam who represents the 24th District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula, secure mental health funding in the state Legislature.
Engel also served the mentally ill through her work with the Clallam County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness — or NAMI.
A past president of the NAMI board, she was serving as a board member at her death.
“She was a real asset to the community,” Cammack said.
“She was able to get a lot things done as a Peninsula mental health advocate.”
Dr. Tom Locke, pubic health officer for Clallam and Jefferson counties, knew Engel for about 30 years.
Champion of mentally ill
“First and foremost, she had been a champion of the mentally ill and mental health services,” Locke said.
“That’s been a real uphill battle over the years.
“She also really had a passion for health care access in general,” he added.
“It wasn’t just confined to mental health.
“She was active in her role on hospital commission and the Access to Health Care Committee.”
After moving to Sequim in 1970, Engel and her husband, Paul Engel, helped develop Dominion Terrace, Sequim’s first retirement community.
Engel served on the Sequim Planning Commission for 16 years and two years on the Sequim City Council.
In addition to her service on OMC’s governing board, Engel served on advisory committees for mental health, hospice care, home health and health care access.
VIMO board
Engel was also on the board of Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics, or VIMO.
Locke said Engel was “involved and very supportive” of the effort to bring volunteer medicine to the Peninsula.
Other positions Engel held include board member with the Olympic Area Agency on Aging, Western State Hospital and the Peninsula Regional Support Network, as well as service on the Clallam County Human Services Coordinating Committee and the Washington Administrative Code Mental Health Law Rewrite Committee.
Fellow NAMI board member Kathleen Delgado quoted Engle in an item in the group’s August-September newsletter.
“I would like to share a definition of advocacy that Arleen Engle shared with me,” Delgado wrote.
“‘An advocate is someone who beats the drum for someone else when their drum is broken.’”
Said Locke: “Her’s was a life well lived.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.