Todd Anderson was raised in a Christian family.
“He was conservative, he was JROTC, he was Republican Party precinct chairman for Clearview,” said Glenn Brauteset, his best friend. “He was analytical, linear and very logical. In college he excelled in math, chemistry, physics and sciences. He loathed English, art and literature.”
Total opposites, Brauteset and Anderson worked together as volunteer firefighters in District 7. Brauteset was the best man at Anderson’s wedding in New York.
His buddy died of a heart attack Nov. 25.
“He ignored his high blood pressure,” said Todd Anderson’s wife, Nancy. “He held himself to impossible standards.”
The nurse met her beau when she was doing post-graduate work at Yale University. She came to Seattle to take a cardiopulmonary resuscitation class and met her future husband.
They have three daughters: Jessamine, 10, Isabel, 7, and Elise, 6.
Todd Eric Anderson, 40, is survived by his family in Snohomish; parents, Eric and Nancy Anderson; siblings, Chad Anderson, Heather and Jason Lenihan and Sonja and Tycen Stafford.
In 1987, he graduated from Snohomish High School, where he was captain of the JROTC program. He worked as an electrical contractor.
The couple loved diving, hiking, bicycling and spending time with their children.
His daily wear was jeans and T-shirts, but Nancy Anderson said her husband loved to dress up and go out to dinner. He didn’t watch television, but rather did woodwork, gardening and played with the dog.
His friend, Connie Coyner, said Todd Anderson had a wonderful sense of humor. They often went hiking.
“I think that Todd got a kick out of my lack of athletic ability,” said Coyner. “Laughing while I stumbled along the trail, but also holding his hand out to help. That was Todd.”
She made it to the top of a mountain during one hike, and remembers her friend standing there, smiling.
“Todd left a precious legacy behind in this three daughters,” she said. “Their dad was a jokester, a playmate, a bath giver and the true measure of a man — a gentle, honest, hardworking family man who left the earth much too soon.”
He called his daughters his three little jewels.
Coyner said losing Anderson was a loss to his family and community. At midnight, he would go fix a residential power outage. If it was Sunday and there was a problem with a hot tub, he’d go over and fix it. He did a lot of work for free, his wife said.
“I couldn’t go anywhere without someone knowing him.”
Nancy Anderson said her husband left no life insurance. She plans to return to nursing. A fund to help the family has been established at Washington Mutual branches for the Todd Anderson Beneficiary Fund.
His wife begged and pleaded with her husband to see a doctor about his heart disease.
The morning he died, he told her he would go to see a physician — in one more day.
“That is what he always said,” Nancy Anderson said. “In one more day.”
She wants others to take their health seriously, she said.
“If this can be a lesson to others, then his death was not in vain.”
Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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