J. Kenneth Pearce, 92, Launched Many Careers As UW Forest Prof

Retired University of Washington forestry professor J. Kenneth Pearce, a virtual one-man-employment agency and benefactor for his students, died last week (May 8) in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 92.

Last December, Mr. Pearce, who left the school's College of Forestry as a full-time professor in 1968, "was still getting Christmas cards from over 50 of his old students," recalled David Thomas of Seattle, who is among them.

Said Thomas: "The reason is, so many owe him so much for the jobs he got them."

Thomas later joined his former professor on the college faculty, and like Mr. Pearce, also became a professor emeritus in forestry.

"I'd been a great `C' student," Thomas recalled of his undergraduate days.

"Ken made it possible for me to get into grad school, even though my grade point didn't qualify."

Jim Bethel of Mercer Island, former dean of the UW forestry school, also was one of Mr. Pearce's students.

"He kept track of them (his students) throughout their whole careers," Bethel recalled.

"He was the kind of person you could expect to help you with information on employment and recommendations for positions and so on. And he was respected, so that his recommendations counted for something."

Mr. Pearce's contributions to safety in the logging industry were among his greatest achievements, Thomas and Bethel said.

"He trained engineers in school so they were safety conscious," Thomas said. "He was really a leader in initiating the reduction of logging accidents."

Born in Hutonville, Ill., on Aug. 12, 1898, Mr. Pearce was 3-years-old when his family moved to Walla Walla. He met his future wife, Gladys Gose, daughter of a prominent attorney, at Walla Walla High School.

After graduating in 1915, he worked two years in Oregon logging camps. His employer offered to make him manager if he'd go to the UW and get a forestry degree.

World War I interrupted those plans, but Mr. Pearce earned his degree, cum laude, in 1921.

He worked a year as logging engineer with Williamette Valley Lumber Co., then the UW invited him to return as an instructor for a year.

For a decade starting in 1923, he worked as a logging engineer in India. While there, he persuaded his high-school sweetheart to board a ship for India, where they married in 1926.

In 1934, the UW invited him to return as associate professor of logging engineering.

During the Depression, he placed graduates and nongraduates in jobs in the emergency conservation programs and followed the progress of more than a thousand men.

During World War II, he served on the War Production Board in Washington, D.C., as chief of lumber production for 11 Western states.

He was an adviser on forestry missions to Surinam and Paraguay for The International Finance Corporation of the World Bank.

Among his many organizational honors were a lifetime membership in the Pacific Logging Congress; fellow in the Society of American Foresters; and honored alumnus of the UW College of Forest Resources.

Mr. Pearce made his final trip to Seattle in 1988 to receive the Washington Foresters' Alumni Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award.

At that event, the Professor J. Kenneth Pearce Forest Engineering Scholarship was endowed through contributions from hundreds of alumni and friends.

Mr. Pearce is survived by Gladys, his wife of 64 years; their son, John Kenneth Pearce Jr. M.D., of Cambridge, Mass.; their daughter, Jillian Winslow, of Santa Barbara, Calif.; seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service was held in Santa Barbara Saturday.