Hazel & Al Colvin
Al Colvin (June 19, 1922 – February 7, 2007) & Hazel Colvin (June 6, 1924 – March 9, 2016)
To Al Colvin, race was something that didn’t matter much unless you let it. And he didn’t.
When blacks struggled to get loans in the 1960’s, he started the Bremerton NAACP Peoples Federal Credit Union. To help underprivileged high-schoolers pay for college, he launched a local scholarship fund.
Bremerton was not known for political diversity. So Mr. Colvin ran for City Council in the 1980’s and became one of the first African Americans to win a seat. He spent hours on the phone with constituents, just listening. He was elected three times.
“His whole life, he insisted that race was not a problem,” said his daughter, Carolyn Colvin-Oden. “He refused to let his children be encumbered by that idea.”
Al was born on June 29, 1922, in Laredo, Texas, the son of an African-American postal worker and a Native American mother, who died when he was 3 years old. He was raised by his father and a Mexican housekeeper who taught him his first language – Spanish. He used to say he didn’t feel comfortable speaking English until he was 12 years old, his daugher said.
After high school in the 1940’s, he moved to Tuskegee, AL, and was later accepted to train as a fighter pilot for the Tuskegee Airmen of the U.S. Army Air Corps. The army base is where he fell in love with a pretty teenager named Hazel. She lived next door to his boarding-house, and whenever he walked by her window, “he whistled ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas,’ said his wife, Hazel Colvin. “That’s how I knew he was thinking of me.”
Mr. Colvin moved to Bremerton to work for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. He mailed Hazel a plane ticket to the Northwest. They married and lived in Sinclair Heights, located in what is now known as West Hills, and had four daughters. He worked as a planner and estimator in the naval shipyard for 35 years, juggling various community projects in the meantime.
The Colvins were deeply involved in the affairs of their city, community and church. Inspired to create change in the area, Al and Hazel, along with community members Lillian and James Walker, Elwood and Marie Greer, Loxie and Alyce Eagans, Bill Simmons, Reverend Chester Cooper (pastor of Ebenezer A.M.E. church), and others founded the Bremerton’s NAACP in 1943.
Blacks at the time were frustrated they couldn’t borrow money. So the Colvins devised a solution. “We’re going to put all of our money together and borrow from ourselves,'” their daughter said. It was originally called the NAACP Credit Union and later became the Peoples Credit Union. Whether it was one dollar or five, Al insisted that everyone (the credit union was open to all) set aside money from each paycheck. “The credit union started in a box on a red card table,” their daughter said. Each financial milestone was marked with a potluck. Pride swelled inside the Colvins when, years later, the assets reached $1 million dollars, their daughter said.
Al retired from the shipyard in 1980 and threw himself into city politics and in 1985 became the first of two African Americans elected to the city council in Bremerton (along with Marty Crutcher). In 2000, he was awarded Kitsap Bar Association’s Liberty Bell Award for outstanding community and public service.
Excert from Kitsap Sun Obituary