Longtime Everett leader Ralph Mackey dies at 86

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 10, 2017

EVERETT — Ralph Mackey never held elective office, yet his influence left a lasting mark on Snohomish County’s political and physical landscape.

An Everett native whose ancestors brought their Washington Stove Works business to town in 1903, Mackey died last month at 86. He had lived in an Everett care facility for several years before his death Dec. 15. Since 2004, he had endured the effects of a stroke suffered while on a photo safari in Africa.

Mackey’s civic involvement stretched back decades. It included party politics, environmental lobbying, serving on the Washington State Parks Commission and, from the mid-1990s until 2004, as director of Everett’s senior center, now the Carl Gipson Senior Center.

He was a former chairman of the county’s Republican Party. In 1972, Mackey replaced Edward Nixon, brother of President Richard Nixon, as the GOP’s state committeeman.

Republican Gov. Dan Evans appointed Mackey to the state parks commission in 1966, and he served two six-year terms. Mackey helped acquire thousands of acres for park land. He can be credited with preserving the nearly 5,000-acre Wallace Falls State Park for public use.

Although a staunch Republican, in the 1990s Mackey was an environmental adviser to Gov. Mike Lowry, a Democrat. He worked as a lobbyist for the Snohomish County Council and the Washington Environmental Council.

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson said Monday that among Mackey’s many strengths were his political relationships and “the ability to persuade.”

“His relationships with legislators were really very remarkable,” said Stephanson, once a neighbor of Mackey’s. “He knew them well, and they had huge respect for his ability and his knowledge. He was a real renaissance man.”

In a 1993 Herald article, Mackey addressed the question of party lines — the paradox of a Republican working on environmental issues with a Democratic governor. “My personal feeling is you’ve got to solve the problem. That comes first,” said Mackey, who noted that he had seen GOP priorities change since the Evans gubernatorial era of the 1960s and ’70s.

His influence helped spare other local places from development. He was a driving force behind the acquisition of more than 1,000 acres in the Snohomish River delta, and pushed for the Centennial Trail project.

Everett’s political landscape is still marked by an early 1980s court battle over redistricting waged by Mackey and Ed Hansen, later the city’s mayor. They successfully fought to keep Everett in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

Mackey also headed the Everett Sister Cities Association, the all-volunteer Everett Mountain Rescue Unit and the Everett Mountaineers.

A 1949 graduate of Everett High School, Mackey is survived by three sons: Kevin Mackey, of De Pere, Wisconsin; David Mackey, of Covington; and Jeff Mackey, who lives at Lake Roesiger, where the Mackey family has had property since the 1920s. His second wife, Linda Mackey, died of cancer in May.

After graduating from Everett High, Mackey went on to the University of Puget Sound, where he was president of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He graduated from UPS and married his first wife, Maurine, in 1954.

He was the last of four generations in his family to own and run Washington Stove Works, which he sold in 1981. The company, no longer in operation, was founded in 1875 as William Mackey and Sons Foundry in South Haven, Michigan. The manufacturer of stoves, ranges, furnaces and custom iron castings was located for years on Everett’s Smith Avenue.

The son of Earle and Laura Mackey, Ralph was born in Everett on June 17, 1930.

More than a political player and environmentalist, Mackey was a notable outdoorsman who in 1963 was The Herald’s “Man of the Year in Sports.” He climbed the highest peaks on five continents: Mount McKinley (now Denali) in Alaska, Aconcagua in Argentina, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Kosciuszko in Australia, and Elbrus in Russia.

“The thing I remember most is the effort he made to be at all the kids’ sports activities,” said Jeff Mackey, who climbed Mount Elbrus with his dad in 1979. “He kept us three boys in line.”

He recalled his father showing up, by float plane, halfway through a 50-mile canoe trip on Ross Lake. “That’s how dedicated he was. He couldn’t make the beginning of our trip, but he made it when we were 25 miles in.”

Kevin Mackey remembers tagging along to watch as his father taught rock climbing at Mount Erie in Skagit County. And when camping, his dad didn’t pitch a tent next to the car. “We’d go up near Monte Cristo and hike to find a spot near the river,” he said.

Everett’s Bill Vincent was a boyhood friend of Mackey’s. “We were Rucker Hill ‘rats.’ That’s where we had our flag football battles,” Vincent said. An Everett Elks Lodge member, Vincent recalled that his friend took an American flag from the club to the top of Denali.

Mackey was 74 when he suffered a stroke in Botswana. He spent weeks in a trauma hospital in South Africa before he could be flown home.

When Mackey’s eldest son remembers his father, a line from the Everett High School alma mater comes to mind: “I am an Everett man born, an Everett man till I die.”

“I think that best describes our dad,” Kevin Mackey said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

This story has been corrected to say Jeff Mackey climbed Mount Elbrus in Russia with his father, Ralph Mackey, in 1979. The original article misidentified the peak they climbed together.