North Seattle College, Seattle Central College and South Seattle College logos above a rooftop neon sign reading The College Minute, with the Seattle Colleges mascots perched on top: Star the tree frog, Theo the tiger and Olivia the otter.

NOVEMBER 2, 2026

The Queen of Neon — And Her Second Act

The clocks have rolled back, and the Long Dark is again upon us. What better time to recall the woman whose distinctive creations brighten the city’s long winter nights? She later found a second calling at South Seattle College.

Red neon script Dick’s sign glowing over a Dick’s Drive-In walk-up counter at night.

Above: Dick’s Drive-In. The 1954 script is Bea’s own hand. Photo: Matt Hucke

IN THIS ISSUE OF THE MINUTE

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The woman behind the iconic signs at Dick’s, Ivar’s, and the Elephant Car Wash

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Her surprising second act at South Seattle College

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Where her work still shines today

Dear Friend —

In 1969, South Seattle Community College hardly existed yet: a founding president, classes in borrowed buildings, and a future campus one early colleague remembered as “the mud of a January.” It also had a new secretary in her mid-fifties. She would go on to teach in the college’s brand-new horticulture program and become a beloved, motherly presence among students.

Her name was Bea Haverfield. While you’ve possibly never heard of her, you’ve almost certainly encountered her penmanship: it crowns every Dick’s Drive-In. Long before she came to South, Bea had designed many of the neon signs that cheer Seattle’s winter nights.

The orange neon Ivars script glowing above the blue neon Acres of Clams marquee on Pier 54 at night.

Above: Ivar’s Acres of Clams on Pier 54, one of her first commissions. Photo: Damon Tighe

BEFORE THE GARDEN, THE GLOW

Bea was born in Seattle in 1913 to Finnish immigrants. Her father worked at the Seattle Gas Light Company — the plant we now know as Gas Works Park. His daughter would build a career on gas too. She just preferred hers to glow.

She and her husband, Elden Filer, started a sign business: she designed, he built. During World War II she helped assemble airplanes at Boeing — her “Rosie the Riveter phase,” as historian Brad Holden puts it. Around 1946 the couple joined Campbell Neon, and Bea became one of its lead designers. Her portfolio reads like a tour of the city, past and sometimes present, after dark: Ivar’s, the Chubby & Tubby boomerang, Hat ’n’ Boots, Sunny Jim peanut butter, the Rainier “R,” Dick’s and Cinerama.

Then, in 1956, came Bea’s best-known design: the Elephant Super Car Wash signs at Battery and Denny, with four little elephants at the base, two blue, two pink, one for each of her children. Seattle’s postwar skyline wasn’t just being brightened. It was being lit with wit.

The pink neon Elephant Super Car Wash sign at dusk, its green Super script and gold lettering glowing in front of lit downtown office towers.

Above: One of Bea’s two pink elephants for the Elephant Super Car Wash at Battery and Denny. The smaller one now stands at Seventh and Blanchard. The larger, 22 feet tall, has been restored for the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), which is still looking for a space big enough to show it. Photo: M. Beneke

CHRONICLING THE CITY’S NEON

We owe much of what we know about Seattle’s neon to two enthusiasts. Brad Holden rescued Bea’s story in a 2020 Seattle Times profile, working from sketches her family had kept. Photographer Matt Hucke walked every Seattle neighborhood, by day and by night, to make Seattle Neon: Signs of the Emerald City, a tour of more than 450 signs, including many of Bea’s.

“Neon is a statement that a business expects to survive long enough to be worth the effort,” Hucke writes.

BUSY BEA: SOME OF HAVERFIELD’S WORK

The Hat n Boots gas station in Georgetown in the 1970s: a giant orange cowboy hat over the pumps, blue neon Hat n Boots script, and a towering white cowboy boot.

Hat ’n’ Boots, Georgetown, in the 1970s, on land now part of South’s Georgetown Campus. Photo: Flashbak.com

The weathered red boomerang-arrow Chubby and Tubby sign, its reader board advertising Christmas trees, against a pink dusk sky.

Chubby & Tubby, the Rainier Avenue South surplus store. Bea designed the boomerang. Photo: M. Beneke

Red and blue illuminated Cinerama marquee letters with neon trim.

Cinerama, Fourth Avenue. Bea helped design its first sign. Photo: Matt Hucke

The original Rainier R, its red and gold neon tubes glowing in the dark.

Rainier “R,” the 1950s original, aglow at MOHAI in 2009. Photo: robthebusinesswriter

A dusk street scene with a towering triangular Sunny Jim sign ringed in bulbs, reading Mmm Good Made in Seattle, with blue neon arms reading The and Finest and the smiling Sunny Jim boy at its center, above a small white building beside the highway.

Sunny Jim peanut butter, a long-gone Highway 99 landmark. Photo: Gerald Nielsen / Seattle Vintage 1.0. AI color-enhanced.

AFTER THE GLOW, THE GARDEN

Bea’s hands were damaged in a late-1960s car accident, tragically ending her design career. And then, in 1968, she lost her husband, Robert. She could have stopped there. Instead, she went to work at the new college in West Seattle.

South gave her a second act. In addition to teaching in the school’s new horticulture program, she embraced the idealism of the time, marching for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. She even offered her own house as collateral to bail out the Seattle Seven, antiwar activists charged with conspiracy after a 1970 protest at Seattle’s federal courthouse.

Bea died in 1996. Students in the horticulture program where she taught later went on to create the South Seattle College Arboretum. And her signs still glow across the city.

Any way you look at it, hers was a life that shone.

Sepia studio portrait of a young Bea Haverfield, her dark hair swept back, wearing a collared blouse with looping embroidery.

Color close-up of Bea Haverfield later in life, her white hair swept up, smiling softly.

Above: Bea Haverfield as a young woman, about 1935, and later in life. Photos: Seattle Refined

KEEP EXPLORING

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Landscape Horticulture at South →
The program Bea joined, still shaping the region’s green spaces