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Obituaries: Friday, July 13, 2001
Garrett Eddy was conservationist, timberman
By David Olson
Conservationists and timber executives are often bitter enemies, but Garrett Eddy was a rare combination of both. The former president and chairman of Port Blakely Tree Farms in Seattle was a pioneer in tree research and in making logging more environmentally sensitive.
Mr. Eddy died July Fourth in Seattle after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 85.
"Garrett Eddy believed we could have our cake and eat it, too, in terms of being able to have a viable forest industry while at the same time maintaining and conserving biodiversity," said Neal Wilkins, a wildlife biologist with the company until 1998.
Jay Hair, former president of the National Wildlife Federation and the World Conservation Union, was so impressed by Port Blakely's policies that he joined the company's board in January.
"They have been as environmentally responsible and friendly a company as any in North America," Hair said. "Garrett Eddy's greatest legacy is the values of conservation and sustainable development that the company continues to reflect. He was an environmentalist before we knew what the word environmentalist meant." Mr. Eddy was born June 8, 1916, in Seattle, the son of early Seattle residents John Whittemore and Ethel Garrett Eddy.
The Eddy family bought Port Blakely Mill, founded in 1864, in 1903. Today, Port Blakely Tree Farms is a forestry and real-estate-development company.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Mr. Eddy was one of the pioneers in research in thinning tree stands, or cutting down smaller trees so larger ones could grow bigger, said Jim Warjone, chairman and chief executive officer of the company.
Port Blakely also broke with standard timber-industry practices by instituting long rotation patterns, Hair said. For example, Douglas firs were allowed to grow for as long as 80 years instead of the standard 40 years. That meant both higher-quality wood and a better habitat for wildlife, especially birds.
Birds were Mr. Eddy's great love. His contributions in the 1980s and '90s of more than $2 million to the University of Washington's Burke Museum transformed its bird-research center into one of the most prestigious in the world, said Sievert Rohwer, curator of birds at the museum and professor of zoology at the University of Washington.
Mr. Eddy funded 20 to 30 ornithology-research trips to Russia in the 1990s, he said, and participated in two of them, collecting bird samples, drying out specimens and setting up camp.
Mr. Eddy served as president of Port Blakely from 1952 until 1980 and as chairman of its board from 1981 to 1996.
He continued going to his Seattle office two or three days a week until early this year, when he became too sick to do so, Warjone said. At his office, he continued to do research and dispense advice to people such as Court Stanley, chief forester for Port Blakely.
"I could come to him with an idea, and he always had either already done that, considered that and not done it, or had some important insight into it," Stanley said.
Mr. Eddy is survived by a son, John W. Eddy II; a daughter, Barbara Ethel Eddy; and two grandsons. His wife, Mary Ford Eddy, died in 1990, and another son, Garrett Edward Eddy, was killed in combat in Cambodia in 197
Services were held Monday at Epiphany Parish of Seattle.
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