Biography
Kim Wahl was a peace activist jailed following a protest at Boeing against the murders of Jesuits in El Salvador. Her account distinguishes her own imprisonment from that of her husband, Bill Wahl.
Kathleen “Kim” Irene Melchior Wahl was born in Evanston, Illinois, and died July 31, 2024. She earned her RN degree at St. Francis School of Nursing and married physician William Wahl in 1959. After raising their family in Bellevue, they moved to Seattle in 1985 to work with Ground Zero against nuclear weapons. Her obituary explicitly reports multiple arrests and jail time. She also worked as a crisis counselor at Eastside Mental Health and served as a Eucharistic minister at St. Therese Parish. The obituary’s portrait caption identifies her at the August 7, 2023 Ground Zero action. Source: https://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/October-2024-newsletter-for-website.pdf#page=7
Trident-blockade custody clarified
Kim Wahl's first-person interview in Rosalie G. Riegle's Doing Time for Peace, pp. 255–263, describes her August 12, 1982 arrest and transfer to a Coast Guard vessel with a brig. Matt Dundas's University of Washington oral-history-based account, drawing on Wahl's interview and the contemporary Ground Zero newsletter, reports recognizance release before dismissal eight days later. Custody began August12; release remains August1982 MONTH, bounded August12–20. The stored August12 is an earliest bound, not a verified discharge day. Dismissal is not substituted for release, and no exact served-day count is inferred. The university identifies her video interview; still reuse remains unresolved, so no new photo is installed.
Memorial confirms July 31, 2024 death. Its May 27 birth date conflicts with the previously cited obituary’s May 22; birth data remain unchanged. NR205.
Ground Zero’s October 2024 memorial identifies Kim Wahl by the fuller name Kathleen Irene Melchior Wahl and explicitly gives her birth date as May 22, 1937. Its July 31, 2024 death date agrees with the previously documented date. The portrait caption places her at the August 7, 2023 Ground Zero action; attendance in that photograph alone does not establish a separate arrest.
