Former Spokane councilor Mike Brewer, a longtime Hillyard booster, transportation advocate, and WWII veteran dies

After serving 14 years on the city’s planning committee, longtime Hillyard resident Mike Brewer was unwilling to leave the civil service in the late 1980s.

“He said to a guy in the church, ‘I’m running for two cents for the city council,’” recalled Brewer’s wife, Marjorie.

The parishioner pulled out a few pennies, and in November 1989 Brewer was elected to Spokane City Council for the first of two terms.

Brewer, a World War II US Coast Guard veteran, Hillyard neighborhood patron, and Spokane transportation advocate, died May 20. He was 93 years old.

Brewer, a lifelong resident of Spokane, graduated from North Central High School just months before his 18th birthday and asked his parents to sign admission papers. He served as a radio operator in Astoria, Oregon as part of a mine patrol during the war, Marjorie Brewer said.

After the war, Mike Brewer enrolled at Gonzaga University. During his studies, Mike and Marjorie began exchanging letters and taking trains to see each other. They met through a family Marjorie looked out for at Post Falls, with Brewer’s mother suggesting.

“I said, ‘One day I want to marry an Irishman,'” said Marjorie Brewer. “And she said, ‘I only know the Irish guy for you – Mickey Brewer.’ ”

The couple married in August 1951 and moved to a house on Stone Street that they shared for nearly 70 years.

Mike Brewer worked in finance and helped found Marjorie, Spokane Catholic Credit Union in 1964. He was also the manager of Kaiser Mead Credit Union and Inland Power and Light Credit Union in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple raised six children, all of them Gonzaga graduates.

His foray into politics began with a failed application for a seat on the Spokane School Board in 1967, vacated by future US MP George Nethercutt. In 1974, Mayor David H. Rodgers appointed him to the city’s planning committee.

Paul Hamilton, now the State Farm family’s insurance agent and also a Hillyard booster, met Brewer through Brewer’s sons, who were also attending Rogers High School.

“He had a way if he liked you he would give you advice,” said Hamilton. “He really didn’t have anything bad to say about anyone.”

The main theme in the 1989 city council elections was the construction of the waste incinerator in the West Plains, a project Brewer supported although he was concerned about the location near the airport. Stories about his campaign included his support for a north-south freeway that runs along Havana Street and the old railroad access road.

Marjorie Brewer remembered her husband and sons discussing the location of the street over the breakfast table.

“They first discussed why Hamilton Street was such a stupid choice for the freeway,” said Marjorie Brewer, referring to early plans for the North Spokane Corridor, which listed the arteries as the location for the freeway. “You were supposed to take it over to the railroad, and so it went.

“So finally I said, ‘Why don’t you tell this to someone who can do something?’ ”

Mike Brewer pushed for the route to get semi-trailers off the streets in Hillyard, a dream that could soon come true with the completion of the corridor planned for 2029.

Brewer and then-Mayor Shari Barnard found themselves pushed back from the neighborhood because of the plan that would require the removal of 500 to 600 houses to support the freeway alignment.

“No matter where we put it, someone will be hit,” Brewer told the newspaper in October 1993 when he was running for a second term. “It will work. The biggest problem is the unknown. “

Brewer also pushed for more public transportation and assisted a downtown bus depot in a dispute with Barnard threatening his removal from the Spokane Transit Authority’s board of directors. He also pushed for additional housing options for low-income areas in wider parts of the city and supported a proposal to enlarge the areas where prefabricated houses could be built, but to subject these houses to stricter building standards.

“We have to create affordable housing for young people who are starting out,” he said in 1994.

Brewer declined to run for re-election in 1997, and later years of his life were devoted to the community service and preservation of Hillyard. He was president of the Hillyard Lions Club and helped found the Hillyard Heritage Museum Society in 2004 by acquiring the title deed to the property on Queen and Market Street where the museum is located.

“Mike Brewer represents an age group who believed in the humble community servant and didn’t look for the plaque or awards,” said Hamilton.

Brewer is buried in a private ceremony in Holy Cross Cemetery, according to the family. Memories can be left on the website of the Holy Cross.