John Duncan URQUHART

John Duncan URQUHART

John died on August 8, 2013 in Nevada at the age of 95 years. He was born in 1918 in Marlin, WA to State Rep. John Urquhart (D-Grant County) and Katherine Urquhart. After his father passed away in 1925, his mother and the family moved to Spokane.

John graduated from Lewis and Clark High School, but as the story goes, lied about his age at 17 and joined the National Guard. However after Pearl Harbor he served as a Navy SeaBee, island-hopping through the South Pacific, building airstrips, bridges, and roads.

After the end of the war, John returned to Spokane and married Marion (Russell). They were married for the next 34 years until her death in 1979. They had one son, John William. John D. worked at Columbia Electric, a wholesale distributor of electrical products, and in 1958 the family moved to Seattle where John opened Columbia's Seattle branch, and eventually a branch in Tacoma.

John and partners Byron Falk and Jim Muscatel left Columbia Electric (by now Amfac Electric) in the late 1970's and started Stoneway Electric Supply. Over the years they expanded to several locations across Washington. Eventually employees purchased the store and Stoneway remains one of the few independently owned electrical distributors in the Northwest.

John was preceded in death by his parents and four sisters, Alice, Helen, Isabel, and Dora, as well as his wife Marion. He is survived by several nieces and nephews, and son John and his wife Shelley, granddaughters Meghan and Anne, and Duncan, a son from a second marriage.

John, by his own choosing, compartmentalized his life into 30 year increments. Nevertheless, he left behind happy, successful, well-adjusted descendants.

We should all be so lucky. RIP.