Dick Taylor left his mark on Mukilteo, state

When Mukilteo was small, a huge man from one of its pioneering families was at the center of business and civic life.

Dick Taylor was on Mukilteo’s first City Council. The 6-foot-8 Taylor was the town’s second mayor. He went on to the state Legislature. For all his political clout, he may best be remembered for the landmark restaurant that bore his family’s name.

Taylor’s Landing, next to the Mukilteo ferry dock, was sold to Ivar’s in 1991.

“A lot of young people don’t even know about Taylor’s Landing,” said Tiffanie Pearson, Dick Taylor’s daughter. “Everybody at one time or another had eaten there. Even people from Seattle going to Whidbey, they all knew it, too.”

James Richard “Dick” Taylor died March 11. He was 86. Since suffering a stroke several years ago, he had lived at Bethany Silver Lake nursing home.

He is survived by Pearson, of Mill Creek, and another daughter, Sarah Taylor, of Mukilteo; his brother, Edgar Taylor, of Mukilteo; four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. His wife, Irene, died in 2002. Their son, Stephen Richard Taylor, died in a boating accident in 1981.

“We worked together all our lives at the restaurant,” said Ed Taylor, a co-owner of Taylor’s Landing with his older brother. “When he was at the Legislature, I was working.”

Ed Taylor remembers playing basketball with his brother at the old Rosehill School in Mukilteo. In the days before Cascade, Mariner or Kamiak high schools, they went on to Everett High School. “The Mukilteo people and the Everett people were all in the same cauldron,” Ed Taylor said.

Dick Taylor was born in 1918 and spent his early boyhood in Everett, where he attended Immaculate Conception School. He graduated from Everett High in 1936 and went on to play basketball at Stanford University. In 1941, he graduated from Stanford with a history degree.

His parents, Edgar Taylor Sr. and Mildred Leo Taylor, owned the Ferry Lunch Room, which became Taylor’s Landing. Built by Howard Josh, it was part of the landscape by the 1920s. “It was a tiny little lunch counter and fishing tackle and bait provider,” Pearson said. Her grandparents lived in the house next door.

While Ed Taylor served in the Marine Corps, Dick Taylor was deemed too tall for military service. “They had a height limit,” Pearson said. “He was huge, his feet were size 16.”

Ed Taylor said his brother’s political life began when he and “a bunch of the neighbors” formed the Mukilteo Improvement Club. The need for street maintenance fueled their push for incorporation.

Mukilteo became a city in 1947, with Dick Taylor on its first City Council. In the 1950s, he served two terms as mayor. In 1960, he was elected as a Democrat to the state House of Representatives, where he spent three terms.

Taylor worked to secure the land for Mukilteo State Park, now a city park. “The day they had all the legislators out to get them to buy the property for the state park, I tended bar,” Ed Taylor recalled.

Taylor’s Landing was remodeled in the late 1960s, just as the Everett Boeing plant opened in 1969.

Art Losvar was a longtime friend. Losvar’s grandfather was the first lighthouse keeper in Mukilteo, and his family owned the Mukilteo Boat House. Losvar later built condominiums on his property next to the ferry dock.

“He was a great fellow,” Losvar said of Dick Taylor. He recalled Taylor having to duck rather than hit his head on an archway at the Losvar home. Later, he sold boats to the Taylor brothers.

While Pearson said her father “worked all the time,” she was able to share in that. “I was a page in Olympia. We lived in a little apartment, Dad and I, when I was 15. Later, my younger sister did it,” Pearson said.

“Scoop (Sen. Henry M.) Jackson was a personal friend of Dad’s. We got to meet Dan Evans, Slade Gorton, all these people who went on into national politics. We were around some interesting people.”

Dick Taylor belonged to St. John’s Catholic Church in Mukilteo. He and his wife spent their retirement years on Whidbey Island, where the family had built a vacation home in the 1930s.

Tim Taylor, Ed Taylor’s son, was running the restaurant when it was sold to Ivar’s. “If you were to write a book of the most unforgettable characters, he’d be in it,” Tim Taylor said of his uncle.

Pearson credits her father’s mother for fostering his civic involvement. “My grandmother was interested in history and big on education. She had a real compassion and community service orientation.

“That’s how my dad was. Dad was very bright. He’d tell lots of stories, that Irish storytelling. He loved to talk about sports, politics and history,” Pearson said. “He knew so much about this area. He took a lot of that history with him.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.