Some people make their mark by just being who and what they are. Edith Macefield was that sort of person.

When she died on June 15, she was told about on newscasts and in newspapers around the world. "The Woman Who Wouldn't Sell" was the most frequent headline. The little house surrounded by high, thick cement walls was photographed in newspapers around the United States and Canada, even in Great Britain and Asia. Television reporters flocked to Ballard to see her house and to ask anyone they could buttonhole all sorts if relevant and irrelevant questions, reverent and not, silly and stupid and even bizarre questions.

The reactions were more those given to crazed pop stars or high politicians when they fall.

But Edith Macefield, by all accounts, was a quiet, patient woman who simply wanted to live out her life in her little house at 1438 N.W. 46th Street. She did that and she quietly died of dreaded pancreatic cancer.

A developer made her a star, without intent, when representatives offered her a lot of money for her 1,650 square feet of Ballard, a parcel smaller than some of the condominiums in the megalopolis being constructed around her and around the immediate area of our part of the world. (See Steve Shay's story on Page One.)

Edith Macefield was given fame, whether she wanted it or not, because she simply wanted to be left alone in the house she had called home since 1952.

But she represented a lot of people in Ballard who are seeing the place they grew up in or chose to live in when they moved to Seattle from places as distant as Somalia or Honduras, or as near as the University Disrict or Capitol Hill.

Little houses are disappearing in droves, to be replaced by large concrete structures with little architectural flare. Small businesses are fleeing either because there is no logical way they can expand here, or because the value of their land far exceeds the use they are making of it.

People are finding they have small, pleasant homes that are worth more as a condominium developer's prize than as the family home.

Ballard, we are a-changing. Change is inexorable and sometimes cruel.

When a 50-year-old restaurant, with a strange shape, is considered by many to be a historical structure, when a tacky bowling alley stirs a man to first seek its preservation, then seek to replace it for millions of dollars, what does this say about us?

It says we want the speed of change to slow a bit, to perhaps mellow so some of what we have always taken pride in can remain. People here, or anywhere, are not opposed to change, but want that change to evolve in a less frenetic manner.

Edith Macefield simply did not care about money; she wanted to finish her life in her little home. She told Ballard raconteur Richard Andrews, "I'm going to live here 'til the day I die." She did, and with that fulfillment of a life, reverberates on many in Ballard who want progress to continue around them, as it did Edith Macefield's little house.

We do not want developer's financial needs to overcome us as a place to live. We need change, but slow it a bit, and let us get used to it bit by bit. People who react negatively to change are simply saying, "Leave something for us."

Edith Macefield's home should remain exactly where it is, tucked into the innards of that condominium. It should be cared for as a local landmark far more deserving of that status than the soon to vanish old Denny's. The home should remain to honor a simple lady of class who had the gumption to just say no.

A Ballard landmark should forevermore be Edith Macefield's little house on 46th Street.

-Jack Mayne