Peninsula Daily News
and The Associated Press
Former Gov. Albert Rosellini, whose steadfast support of a Hood Canal floating bridge a half-century ago changed the North Olympic Peninsula’s economic fortunes forever, has died.
Democrat Rosellini, whose two four-year-terms as governor ended in 1965, was the oldest living former governor in America before he died at 101 Monday in a Seattle retirement home.
The family said Rosellini’s health had declined in recent weeks because of pneumonia.
Rosellini as governor was also chairman of the then-state Toll Bridge Authority in the late 1950s, and was a constant proponent of a floating bridge across the saltwater Hood Canal — a concept about which engineers worried not only because of salt corrosion but tidal motions that raise and lower the bridge up to 16 feet.
Indeed, the opening date of the Hood Canal Bridge was postponed a year when improperly built pontoons docked at Port Gamble took on water during a 1960 storm and sank before they could be anchored between Kitsap and Jefferson counties.
Rosellini lobbied for more funds for the bridge, the pontoons were raised, repaired and strengthened, and he cut the ribbon in August 1961 to mark the first time motor vehicles could reach Jefferson and Clallam counties without having to drive from Olympia, Shelton or Aberdeen.
Rosellini, who always wore a rosebud on his lapel, also led efforts to reform state prisons and modernize mental health institutions.
As the state’s chief executive, he presided over the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair — signing autographs on the new monorail alongside rock sensation Elvis Presley, who was making a movie at the fair.
Two years after the opening of the Hood Canal Bridge, Rosellini cut the ribbon on the state Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington that now bears his name.
Albert Dean Rosellini was born in Tacoma in 1910. He remembered selling newspapers at age 9 while also doing odd jobs for a woman for a penny a day.
He was a boxer in college and took three jobs to put himself through school, working as a butcher in Pike Place Market, working on an Alaska steamer and law clerking.
Then-King County Prosecutor Warren G. Magnuson — later the U.S. senator — hired Rosellini out of University of Washington law school.
Rosellini met his wife, Ethel, when he was a young attorney defending a literary agent on trial for grand larceny. They wed in 1937, and were married for 64 years. She died in 2002.
In 1938, when he was 28, Rosellini was elected to the state Senate and served for 18 years. He championed the creation of the medical and dental schools at UW.
Rosellini went on to serve as governor from 1957 until 1965 before losing to Republican Gov. Dan Evans.
In 1972, Rosellini made another run for governor, winning the Democratic primary but losing to Evans in the general election.
Rosellini believed ethnic and religious prejudice defeated him, as bumper stickers at the time said: “Does Washington Really Need Another Godfather.”
The Oscar-winning film “The Godfather” was released the same year.
“That Mafia crap really hurt. Overnight, I dropped over 12 percent in the ratings. They were scared away from me,” he said during a 1986 interview with The Associated Press.
After leaving politics, Rosellini went on to become a mentor for Democrats in the state, providing U.S. Sen. Patty Murray her first endorsement, helping raise campaign funds for U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and mentoring former Gov. Gary Locke, now U.S. ambassador to China.
He also bonded with Evans, his longtime political foe.
“One thing I really admired, he didn’t just retire and disappear,” Evans recalled Monday.
“He kept working and was active right up to the last couple of years.”
Rosellini as governor was a frequent visitor to the North Olympic Peninsula, especially to speak at statewide conventions held in Port Angeles and Port Townsend.
The Port Angeles Evening News — predecessor to the Peninsula Daily News — often reported on his speeches that reflected his visions for the Evergreen State.
Speaking to a Cold War-era gathering of civil defense officials at the Elks Naval Lodge ballroom in Port Angeles in September 1961, Rosellini suggested that the state’s less-populated counties should be given financial aid from more-populated counties to become a “brother’s keeper” for populated areas in case of nuclear attack.
Rosellini also suggested that Clallam, Jefferson and other rural counties plan a timetable toward the build-up of fallout shelter capacity within six months.
