SEQUIM — Marlyn Wayne Nelson Memorial Park — with breathtaking views across the Strait of Juan de Fuca of the snow-capped Cascade mountain range, Mount Baker, the San Juan Islands — is named after a Sequim-born Navy sailor who died from wounds in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Nelson, then 19 and a 1940 graduate of Sequim High School, was an engine room mechanic on the battleship USS California.
The California was hit by two bombs. Nelson succumbed to his wounds on Dec. 11. He was one of 98 California crewmen who died in the attack.
His body was later brought home and buried in Port Angeles” Mount Angeles Memorial Park.
The small, shoreline park at the end of Port Williams Road in Sequim was dedicated to Nelson on Nov. 11, 1944.
At that time only a plaque was placed.
Nelson’s first name — Marlyn — made many who visited in later years think the park was named after a woman.
In 1999, Sequim resident C.W. Mays, who was on the USS Nevada in Pearl Harbor the morning of the attack, made sure there was a face to go with that name.
Mays’ quest to discover the history of Marlyn Nelson began two years earlier, when a friend mentioned that Nelson was his cousin.
Intrigued by the idea of another Pearl Harbor victim so close to home, Mays started his research.
First, he tried to find out how much people at the park knew. Not much.
“A lot of people thought the name `Marlyn’ meant that it was a woman,” he told the Peninsula Daily News in 1999.
“I had a woman see the plaque the other day and say, `Gee, I didn’t know they allowed women on battleships in those days.’ I just about had to bite my tongue,” Mays said.
Then Mays looked for relatives.
“I called just about every Nelson in this country,” he said.
Finally he found one in Sequim.
Fern Dawley, then 82, was Marlyn Nelson’s older sister. She had lived her entire life in Sequim.
Eventually, another friend suggested to Mays that he put a picture on the rock by Nelson’s plaque.
Mays and Fern Dawley, along with her husband, Curtis, paid for an Olympia company to have the picture of Nelson made.
It was copied from his boot camp picture.
Today the metal-etched picture of Marlyn Wayne Nelson is attached — proudly — to a granite rock at the park.
County park
Marlyn Wayne Nelson Memorial Park, a 1-acre, day-use-only park, was deeded to the Clallam County Parks Department in 1976.
The state owns tidelands to the north that link with 1,000 feet of county tidelands which ends at the Graymarsh Farms property, which is privately owned.
This park has a saltwater boat launch, four picnic tables (one wheelchair-accessible), public beach access, vault toilets (wheelchair-accessible) and a parking area.
Favored activities of park users are boat launching (up to 18 feet), beachcombing, picnicking and scenic water view parking.
To reach the park from U.S. Highway 101, take Sequim Avenue north, then take a right onto Port Williams Road.
Follow the road to the end to the park.
