Tony Maskal, Blueberry Farmer Who Befriended Asian Refugees

Anthony C. "Tony" Maskal, owner of a Pierce County organic blueberry farming business, had a fondness for airplanes, and loved to take people under his wing.

"Tony looked for people to work on his farms and looked for people to help along the way. Even during harvesting he would drop everything to help his friends," said his brother Tom Maskal of Auburn.

Mr. Maskal, 49, died when his airplane crashed July 5 southeast of Burns, Ore., while he was on a camping trip. Nick Maskal, his 57-year-old brother, also perished in the crash.

Nick, an elementary school principal in Eugene, Ore., had retired five days earlier.

Tom Maskal said his brother helped many refugee families from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia settle in the Puget Sound area. "Tony took these people under his wing," Maskal said. "He didn't necessarily go to church every Sunday, but he certainly lived by the convictions of a Christian."

Mr. Maskal paid the tuition for a Vietnamese girl at Bellarmine High School, a private school in Tacoma. He offered others the use of his home. He co-signed for a house.

As the owner of Sunrise Farms and Farmstand in Tacoma and Rainier View Farm in Puyallup, he marketed his blueberries around the world. An avid traveler, he flew to China three times in an effort to establish blueberry horticulture there.

Tacoma schoolteacher Bettie Shoop, Mr. Maskal's companion for the past three years, spent a month with him in China. But their

trip to Alaska made the biggest impression on her.

Taking off at a lodge near Mount McKinley, Mr. Maskal crashed their airplane. He managed to disassemble it, stuff it into a rental truck and drive it back to the Seattle area. Neither was injured.

Mr. Maskal, who also liked sailing, was born in Denver June 13, 1942, and raised in Portland.

Holder of a master's degree in education, he taught school in Native American villages in Alaska, at alternative schools and at Tacoma Community College.

Shoop said he came to her elementary school to help her students with science lessons.

"He was going to be a forester is how he started. He just loved nature," said Shoop, remembering their walks at Tacoma's Point Defiance Park. "He was really a very unique and interesting man with just an amazing amount of varied interests."

She said he was looking forward to building his own airplane.

Twenty years ago at a world hunger conference, Mr. Maskal met Tom Karlin, a furniture maker who lives near Eatonville, Pierce County. Last week, Karlin made Mr. Maskal's casket out of native alder.

"Tony was a very intelligent man but he was unconventional," Karlin said. "He didn't like the status quo. He lived very simply. I never saw him dressed up in a suit.

"Once somebody said, `I heard you only had one pair of shoes and he said, `Well, how many can you wear at one time?' He was a very compassionate person. He'll be missed."

In addition to his brother and Shoop, Mr. Maskal is survived by twin daughters in Vancouver, Wash.

A service was held today at St. Leo's Catholic Church in Tacoma.

Tom Maskal said his brother "died doing what he liked doing and lived life to the fullest. I'm sure they were laughing and carrying on until the last two seconds of life."

Burial was at Old Tacoma Cemetery.