PORT ANGELES — The late Bill Larson was probably best known on the North Olympic Peninsula as the first captain of the ocean-going Lady Washington, the official state tall ship.
But although he was an inveterate seafarer for most of his life, Larson’s life was marked by many other accomplishments as well, his friends and family say.
“Man, that man had adventures,” said his wife of 33 years, Kristen Larson.
Bill Larson, a Port Angeles resident for 24 years, died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 86 early last Tuesday morning at Dungeness Courte Memory Care in Sequim.
A combination Zen and full military memorial service is planned at 3 p.m. this coming Tuesday at Drennan-Ford Funeral Home, 260 Monroe Road. A reception will follow.
“He was extraordinarily accomplished,” said Larson’s longtime friend Bill Marsh, who met him in 1993 aboard the Scrimshaw, which Bill and Kristen Larson lived aboard when they moved to Port Angeles from Southern California in 1992.
“He was drafted into the Korean War as a private and came out from the military as a bird colonel,” Marsh said.
“While he was in the military, they sent him to University of Washington to get a doctorate in sociology.”
Larson, who served in the Army for 39 years, was one of the first Green Berets, the name by which members of the U.S. Army Special Forces were known.
“He got in a lot of bar fights over wearing the funny hat, which was unheard of at the time,” Kristen Larson said.
While in the Army, he earned a bachelor, master’s and doctorate (in 1965) in sociology from the University of Washington and taught in three Army colleges: the National War College in Washington, D.C.; the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks in Carlisle, Pa.; and the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., his widow said.
In 1969, he was hired to found and chair the new Department of Behavioral Sciences at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. In the 1970s, he served as co-director of the National Security Policy Center.
Late that decade, he and his first wife, the late Aili Evelyn Hupila, divorced after 24 years of marriage. They had two children.
“A firm belief in the inappropriateness of organizational leadership remaining in the same hands for too long” led him to step down as chair of the Cal Poly department, his widow said.
He and Kristine wed March 19, 1983, in Redondo Beach, Calif., in a full military ceremony while he was commandant of the 6222nd USAR School located in Fort McArthur, San Pedro, Calif.
Washington captain
In 1993, after moving to Port Angeles, Larson was recruited to serve as captain of the Lady Washington.
He was the first captain to take the ship to Alaska and to Southern California, where the tall ship was cast as the original Enterprise in the movie “Star Trek: Generations.”
The Larsons were liveaboards in the Port Angeles Boat Haven for five years before finding a home on land with a panoramic view of the harbor. They moved off the boat in 1997.
Larson bought a steamboat, Vital Spark, in 2002 and in 2003 welcomed the annual convention of the Pacific Northwest Steam Society, which displayed 17 steamboats off City Pier.
Soon after arriving in Port Angeles, in November 1992, the couple began “a contemplative prayer group with a Buddhist influence” that in 1997 evolved into the No Sanga, the name a pun connoting North Olympic as well as “emptiness and all the space that creates,” said Kristen Larson, who is now the teacher of the group.
A member of the sangha, Barbara Lott, had known Larson for 23 years.
“He’s definitely one of the most romantic men I’ve ever met in terms of his being such a gentleman,” she said.
“He had words of wisdom he could speak into the silence. I loved his attention to little things, like a dewdrop on a rose.”
Another member of the sangha, Jean Stratton, said her friend of 23 years “was like an uncle to me. He made our lives richer by knowing him.”
Larson also performed in Port Angeles plays. He had the lead role in “You Can’t Take it With You” in 2003 and played opposite his wife in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” in 2008.
Larson was born Feb. 14, 1930, in Spokane. The family moved to San Luis Obispo, Calif., in 1939, when his father, Einar Larson, joined the staff of The Telegram Tribune as editor and publisher. In 1941, the family moved back to Spokane.
Rick Mathis, owner of Smugglers Landing, a favorite restaurant of the Larsons, described his friend of at least 25 years as a “totally inspirational individual . . . He had a commanding presence.”
Said his widow: “He was really and truly the love of my life.
“I never understood how marriages survived when you weren’t just crazy about each other because I had been so fortunate.”
Larson is survived by his wife; his daughter, Marina Teresia Larson of Colorado; his son, Peter Gustav Larson of Florida; his stepdaughter, Karen Larson of Maine, six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
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Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3530 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
