SEQUIM — A lifetime of thrift will buy a bit of immortality for Edward Markusen.
The 88-year-old retired high school teacher has donated $50,000 to two North Olympic Peninsula animal shelters.
“It’s an investment in the future,” he said of the gifts of $10,000 to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s shelter and $40,000 to the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society.
It was the Depression that taught Markusen and his late wife, Dorothy, to save their money.
Soon those dollars, donated earlier this month, may make a down payment on new quarters for the humane society in Port Angeles, and enhance care at the East Jefferson County shelter.
“I don’t know if you’d call me an animal lover, but I’m aware of the need,” Markusen said in his cozy apartment in the Fifth Avenue Retirement Center, 500 W. Hendrickson Road, in Sequim.
He said he’d read about Scott Chandler, the society’s executive director since September.
“It impressed me, because it sounded like you have some pretty good plans,” he told Chandler, who visited him on Friday.
In a note that accompanied his check to the Jefferson County shelter, Markusen said only that he used to teach in Quilcene and had been a longtime Quilcene resident, said Sheriff Mike Brasfield.
“There was no other explanation.”
But roots of Markusen’s involvement in Quilcene — where he both taught and retired — run deep, Brasfield said.
As a biology teacher at Quilcene High School, Markusen “has taught parents and grandparents of some of our own deputies.
“He is a delightful person,” Brasfield said, adding that although he has written a letter thanking Markusen — “we were flabbergasted,” he said — he also plans to visit him soon.
“I want to thank him personally.”
Brasfield said that the donation will be used “exclusively for enhancing the level of care,” at the no-kill shelter, “and extending as necessary the shelter capability for animals.”
