Timber Giant, Philanthropist Dies At 95

His name became nearly as ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest as the trees that bore his family its fortune. But family and friends say timber magnate and philanthropist Prentice Bloedel - a man who altered the face of Seattle during his long life - was a true gentleman, not one given to self-promotion.

"He was a very private, measured man. He didn't offer his opinion freely, but he had a very simple code of ethics and he lived by it," said his son-in-law, Bagley Wright, founding president of the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Those ethics, Wright said, were based on "forthrightness and loyalties."

Mr. Bloedel died peacefully in his sleep in his Capitol Hill home Saturday night, June 15. His daughter, Seattle art collector Virginia Wright, did not know the exact cause of death but said her father had suffered a bout of pneumonia several months earlier. Mr. Bloedel was 95.

Mr. Bloedel was a principal founder of MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., a large Vancouver, B.C.-based logging company that is a major supplier of newsprint, paper and lumber to the United States.

In addition to creating the Bloedel Conservatory, an indoor garden in Vancouver, Mr. Bloedel contributed generously to organizations around Seattle. A long list of beneficiaries includes the Children's Hospital & Medical Center, the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Washington. According to the family, Mr. Bloedel's gifts enabled the UW to build the Japanese Garden in the Washington Park Arboretum.

In 1988, moved by his wife's longtime hearing disorder, Mr. Bloedel gave $5 million to the UW for research into hearing impairments, which led to the creation of the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center.

Dr. George Gates, director of the center, called Mr. Bloedel a "gentleman in the classic sense of the word" who asked penetrating questions whenever he visited the center.

Mr. Bloedel was born in Bellingham in 1900, within sight of his father's lumber mill on Lake Whatcom. After graduating from Yale University and marrying Virginia Merrill, daughter of another local timber family, Mr. Bloedel returned to run his father's company.

In 1951, when the company merged with H.R. MacMillan, a large forest-products company, and became MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., Mr. Bloedel effectively retired and moved to Bainbridge Island.

It was there that Mr. Bloedel and his wife lived in their French country house and began gardening. Eventually they cultivated the grounds into the 150-acre Bloedel Reserve, which opened to the public in 1988.

Virginia Wright recalled her father as a serious and reflective man with wide intellectual interests ranging from science to poetry.

"He had a noble kind of outlook," she said.

Her father had suffered from polio as a young man, she said, and walked with a limp. She recalled her father taking her on a Christmas ski trip to Banff, in Alberta, Canada, even though he couldn't ski.

"He . . . just had to sit around reading magazines. It seemed like a very sweet, kind thing to do," she said.

MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. in recent years became the focus of an intense international battle with conservationists over its intention to log in the temperate rain forests of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island. Canadian officials have since allowed the company to log there, but banned conventional clear-cutting.

A close friend, Seattle attorney John Hall, said Mr. Bloedel was environmentally conscious, had long practiced replanting forests and was very conservative in his use of clear-cutting.

"He realized that man is just a part of nature," Hall said.

Mr. Bloedel's wife of 62 years, Virginia Merrill Bloedel, died in 1989. Besides his daughter Virginia Wright of Seattle, he is survived by another daughter, Eulalie Schneider of Geneva, Switzerland; seven grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

A memorial service for Mr. Bloedel will be held at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle at 3:30 p.m. Monday.

The family suggests that donations in Mr. Bloedel's name be made to The Bloedel Reserve at 7571 N.E. Dolphin Drive, Bainbridge Island, WA, 98110; The Arboretum Foundation for the Japanese Garden at 2300 Arboretum Drive East, Seattle, WA, 98112-2300; or the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center at the UW, P.O. Box 357923, Seattle, WA 98195-7923.