SEQUIM — Glenn Greathouse reluctantly but officially walked away from more than 50 years of Sequim public service and community volunteer work this week after the City Council honored him with a certificate of appreciation.
“I have a lot of good memories,” Greathouse gently told the Sequim City Council, trying to contain his emotions while his wife, Jacqueline, looked on from the audience.
Now 78 and experiencing what he calls seizures after having had quadruple heart bypass surgery some four years ago, Greathouse now believes it is time to take it easy, although he plans to visit his winter home away from home in Mesa, Ariz., finally accepting retirement.
A skilled carpenter who built the home he and his wife have lived in for 20 years on Reservoir Road in south Sequim, Greathouse is once again working on smaller art projects these days.
He has long carved intricate pieces of wood sculpture that he proudly exhibits on walls and around the house.
“I really like to show people my carvings,’ he said with a smile, knowing he is carving out a new life of relaxation that will give him time to create.
Served on council
The council recognized Greathouse for his term on the City Council from May 1992 to December 1997.
During that time, he had a leadership hand in the comprehensive plan that led to making Sequim the commercial center of the North Olympic Peninsula.
That time period’s council planning was the precursor to the state Department of Transportation’s construction and opening in August 1999 of what was once called the “Sequim bypass,” a stretch of U.S. Highway 101, bisecting Sequim north and south.
The highway’s opening left downtown merchants worried about business passing them by.
That never happened.
On the contrary, Sequim’s downtown turned out to be more walkable once sidewalks were improved, and attracted local residents more than ever.
Greathouse points out the irony that Washington Street is once again heavy with traffic, the result of Sequim’s success: big box stores and newer retail shops, more still going up.
Took back Washington Street
“Sequim had to take back Washington Street,” Greathouse said of the city’s main thoroughfare where small cars once shared the road with giant, loud diesel-spewing log trucks and manufactured homes in tow.
He contends that Sequim developed as he and his fellow leaders envisioned.
“We thought those big box stores were going to be an asset to the community and I think they are,” he said, “but it takes a lot of people to run them.
“I hope they’re good jobs, but I’m not sure. When we first came to Sequim there were not too many jobs.”
Greathouse also served on the council as it switched to a council-manager form of government, hiring the first city manager and leaving the “strong mayor” system behind.
The council, with Greathouse’s support, also approved a state-of-the-art class A water treatment system that allowed them to reclaim treated sewage water for irrigation and other industrial uses, and prevented treated water discharges from polluting the shellfish beds in Sequim Bay.
The city has plans to upgrade the system even more to produce even more reclaimed water for Reuse Demonstration Park irrigation.
Of his work on the council, Greathouse said he wouldn’t do anything differently.
“I did the best I could,” he said.
Greathouse Motel
Greathouse owned and improved the Greathouse Motel, which today still bears his name on East Washington Street under the latest of many ownerships since he left the Sequim lodging business behind in 1992.
He and his wife operated the motel for 18 years. They lived in the house he built there.
Instrumental along with the Sequim Lions Club in building Guy Cole Community Center, developing Carry Blake Park’s ball fields and the Japanese Friendship Garden, Greathouse also served more than 10 years on the Citizen’s Park Advisory Board, leaving it just recently.
“I told them they could replace me any time,” he joked, adding that they finally did so.
He was a Sequim High School woodshop teacher for 30 years after moving to the sleepy farm town in 1955.
Volunteer labor built the Guy Cole Community Center in the 1960s and ’70s, Greathouse remembered.
“We’d work on Saturday, two shifts, and over a period of two to three years we built the building,” he said.
The Lions Club also raised the money to build the original ball fields at the park. The city of Sequim built two lavatories there.
Greathouse was instrumental in the pond that became part of the Yamasaki, Japan Sister City Friendship Garden, being completed with a stone lantern in it.
The stone was raised from a quarry, carved and donated by a Yamasaki artist and that Japan city.
Greathouse sums up his career, saying:
“I don’t know if I had any great accomplishments other than being a great big part of the system.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
