Jack Lee Dunham

Jack Lee Dunham

(August 21, 1928 - April 4, 2013)

Jack Lee Dunham of Sequim died at home on April 4, 2013. He was 84.

Dunham was born on August 21, 1928, in Guymon, Oklahoma, to Joe and Isabelle (Armstrong) Dunham. He lived through the Dust Bowl in the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, working at his family's ranching, farming and dairy efforts.

He graduated from high school in Pampa, Texas, and attended Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he earned a degree in teaching and met Mary Ann Sherrod, whom he married.

He performed in traveling musical productions, sold insurance and roughnecked in the north Texas oilfields until the Bureau of Indian Affairs gave him the chance to use his teaching degree.

In 1955, he moved his family to the Yup'ik Eskimo village of Quinhagak, Alaska, on the Bering Sea. In addition to teaching, his duties included maintaining radio contact with the outside world, administering government programs and providing primary medical care to the remote village.

He taught and later became a district superintendent in several other rural Alaska settlements off the road system, including Mountain Village, Togiak, Afognak, Tanana and Newhalen. He also lived and taught in Homer, Haines and Anchorage, Alaska, as well as in Colorado, where he lived, at various times, in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Estes Park, Denver and Evergreen.

During the summer, when not teaching, he worked as a tally scow operator in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, a cat skinner (bulldozer operator), septic tank pumper, longshoreman, dude ranch manager and commercial fisherman. He built homes in Estes Park, Homer and Hawaii.

While living in Alaska, he taught himself to fly and made two prop-powered snow machines from the parts of wrecked airplanes.

In the 1980s, having retired, he sailed the single-master Rodonis from Alaska to Hawaii, an experience he later recalled as being, "six weeks wide-awake in sheer terror the whole time."

He lived for a while on Molokai until he decided Hawaii was too dull and moved to Sequim, where he spent his final years in the late 1980s. He enjoyed singing, particularly in barbershop ensembles, and often took his keyboard to perform for local Alzheimer's disease patients.

Ten years ago, he suffered a stroke, a prelude to the heart disease that took his life.

Dunham was preceded in death by his parents; his brother, Bobby; and daughter Molli Ann Dunham Klein.

He is survived by his partner, Jean Ernst of Sequim; first wife Mary Ann Dunham; son Michael (Evelyn) Dunham; grandson Samuel (Chelsea) Dunham; grandson Benjamin Dunham; great-granddaughter Lily Ryan Dunham; and son-in-law Ron Klein, all of Anchorage.

Private celebrations of his life will take place in Sequim and Anchorage at future dates