Gordon Esterberg
December 17, 1921 – November 12, 2012
An expression often heard from our Dad was, “Aren’t we lucky to live in the Great Pacific Northwest?” He passed away on November 12th but his question will be with us for our lifetimes.
He left Seattle as a boy of 13, and moved to Salem, Oregon. He returned after high school and got a job at Boeing, where he met our Mom, LeRae. They moved to Edmonds in 1950 and our Dad built our family a log house, with trees from all around the neighborhood. His hobby at the time was ham radio and he soon took up flying with a friend Dick Hladky.
He made good use of his expertise in electronics with a career at the National Marine Fisheries, supporting the biologists that were trying to understand the migration of salmon on the Columbia River. His most important contribution was the development of a radio tag that could be placed in the stomach of a salmon and the fish could be followed upstream, long before GPS was invented. Word of his tag spread quickly in the scientific world and soon biologists were using it to tag other animals, hard to observe, like seals. His greatest adventure in tagging was on man-eating bull sharks, as they migrated up the muddy Rio San Juan River from the Carribean and entered Lake Nicaragua. Considered a “land locked” species before, this proved they were not.
Dad built a 26 foot Thunderbird sailboat for our family. When he launched the new boat in 1962, it was the third sailboat in the brand new marina in Edmonds. He sailed Whither Bound for the next 45 years and during that time made many life-long friends. Both his daughters married sons of these friends. Sailing built a very special bond over all those years with his son. If ever out sailing in a southerly squall, you could just hear him saying “Aren’t we lucky….” with his gnarly hand gently on the helm and rain water running off the end of his nose. He and his good friend Darrell Emnott would often single-hand their two Thunderbirds and do short cruises together. Ultimately, he gave Whither Bound to his granddaughter Asha, and it is still sailed in the family.
At 70, Dad and Mom designed and built a lovely home in Kingston for their retirement, which overlooks Puget Sound. It was our Dad’s wish that he live there until the end of his life. With the help of some wonderful caretakers and Group Health Hospice of Kitsap County he was able to do just that.
He is survived by his wife LeRae Esterberg, son Kim Esterberg; daughters Kari Thompson and Wyn Abbott; as well as grandchildren, Asha Tran, Aanand Esterberg, Yuri Ruley and Caitlin Ruley, and finally but not least, his great grandchildren, Sydney and Peter Esterberg, Andrew and Colby Gordon Tran, and Aislinn, Kai and Elodie Ruley.
Memorial contributions can be made to Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Islands Assoc., P.O. Box 4484, Rolling Bay WA 98061 at Dad’s request.
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