Dr. Kenneth L. Partlow II died January 23, 2005 in Olympia, on a foggy evening with a nearly full moon, while taking a walk within sight and smell of Puget Sound. He was born in Olympia on July 14, 1917. He graduated from Olympia High School in 1935, attended the University of Washington and received his MD from George Washington University Medical School in 1943. He married Katherine Y. Phillips in 1944, and they remained happily married until her death in 2000. He was the first full time board-certified pathologist to make Olympia his home base, and was the founder of Olympia Medical Laboratory and Black Hills Pathology.
He enjoyed skiing, golf, and tennis, but his lifelong avocation was sailing. He and his cousin, Verne “Bud” Partlow, built a sailing canoe as boys, and spent many summers sailing southern Puget Sound. While in high school, he sailed his canoe to Seattle, provisioned with a five pound ham and a case of beer. He never liked ham quite as much again. Oddly enough, the experience did not put him off beer. While at the University of Washington, he kept a sailboat moored on Lake Washington. After owning a series of small boats, he gave his family the choice of building a new, larger boat, or a skiing vacation. The result was a Seafair 32, Sun Valley.
By the time I arrived in Olympia in 1972, He was racing Kate, his Cal 34. I walked into the Pathology lab to see about some test results, and we started talking about sailboats and racing. Thirty-three years later, we had not finished the conversation. He subsequently raced a Cal 33, Counterpoint, a J-24, and then Liza K, a Valiant 40, which he raced in the 1976 Vic-Maui Race, and the 1977 Transpac. He later owned a Cape George 31, Kate, and finally an S-2, Little Thunder, which he moored within sight of his condo on East Bay Drive.
Ken was one of the first sailors to campaign a boat in Olympia, Tacoma, and parts north. He raced in numerous Swiftsure, Straits of Georgia, Great Equalizer, Tri-Island, and other regional and local races. He was a member of Olympia Yacht Club for over forty years, and a member of the South Sound Sailing Society from its inception. Dozens of people he introduced to sailing went on to race boats of their own. Fore decking on Counterpoint, changing spinnakers in a raging snowstorm in Dana Pass during one Toliva Shoal Race, helped me realize that life might be more fun in the back of the boat.
Ken first sailed across the Pacific as crew for Taffy Sceva in 1958, on Westward Ho. It is said that while in mid-Pacific they realized that they had forgotten the chart of the Hawaiian Islands, and navigated to their destination using a Texaco road map. Similar navigational triumphs were to follow, including on-the-job learning of celestial navigation from the deck of Liza K during the Vic-Maui Race, and culminating in a recent Puget Sound voyage to Port Ludlow, in no breeze, completed with no chart, no fuel, and no anchor. He also crossed the Atlantic with George Bray in 1986, bringing George’s Swan 38 from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
Ken gave the first opportunity to crew in an ocean race to a number of local sailors, including the late Stew Bledsoe, the late Gene Sibold, Parks Weaver, Skip Steffen, Tom McPhee, his sons Kenneth, Keith, and Kevin, and myself. Needless to say, this blue water experience changed our lives forever, and we remain grateful to him for introducing us to this aspect of sailing. I will never forget the experience of surfing down the trades for days on end, sprawled in the cockpit, while one or another of the crew read aloud from William F. Buckley’s “Airborne”, or being rudely awakened from a sound sleep by a wet, torn spinnaker being thrown in my face, accompanied by the invocation: “Wake up, Betsy Ross, I have a flag for you to sew!”
By way of thanks, we threw a 60th birthday party for him in mid-Pacific, during the 1977 Transpac. We repeated the celebration on his 70th and 80th, on dry land, but with more wine. Ken appeared in his usual sartorial splendor, wearing a tie and jacket, docksiders, and no socks! We had hoped to have done a 90th.
Stew and Gene predeceased him. Parks, Tom, and I, at least, have tried to emulate him in our nautical careers, but we have not matched him.
We miss him dearly.
Sherwood Smith
with thanks to Keith Partlow for biographical data