Solwold described as one-man logging crew
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Dick Solwold was much like the timber he spent most of his 80 years logging and hauling: tough, resilient, rough-hewn and rail-straight.
He wasn't just a man who loved his work, he was his work, friends and family say. Logging, which long ago had gotten into his blood, wasn't about to let him retire to an easy chair.
"He had to be doing something," said longtime friend Bob Sanders, 72. "If he wasn't monkey-wrenching his trucks, he'd be out driving. There wasn't anything he wouldn't try."
Mr. Solwold, a man who was somewhat of a legend in logging circles, died Wednesday morning working timber, waiting to haul yet another load to yet another mill - the kind of job he had done countless times before.
He was standing beside his truck, waiting for a load at Dunlap Towing in Everett. A pile of logs broke loose and rolled on top of him, killing him.
"He lived a full life, and I take a lot of comfort in knowing he died doing what he loved," said his daughter Carmen Sager, of Bow, Skagit County.
Although the logging industry has become a shadow of its early days, with precious few tracts left to log and fewer people felling trees, Mr. Solwold persevered - a logger in search of his next job.
Most recently, Mr. Solwold had been driving a Kenworth truck, hauling raw timber to mills - always the first in line to accept and deliver loads. But in his life he had felled trees, cut logs, loaded them - earning himself a reputation as a one-man logging crew.
As news of his death spread, friends yesterday focused not on the circumstances of Mr. Solwold's death but on how it mirrors the gradual passing of a way of life.
He was a throwback to the days when small family timber mills worked the forests, sons following fathers, churning out the lumber used to build cities. In his early logging days forests were an endless sea of green, and work was boundless for anyone with an ax and the strength to swing it.
"There ain't many people like Dick left," said Roy Grant, 70, of Sedro-Woolley, who often hired Mr. Solwold to haul logs from his logging company. "That type of person doesn't exist anymore."
"He just loved what he did," added Bill Warrener, operations manager for the Seattle-Snohomish Mill in Snohomish, where Mr. Solwold often worked. "For somebody that old, working the hours that he did, the typical layman would just not understand it."
Sager, Mr. Solwold's daughter, understands it. Her father was passionate about his work, something instilled in him by his Norwegian immigrant parents. He learned early the value of a good day's work.
"He used to say he'd die if he didn't have work. He'd never retire," Sager said.
Mr. Solwold got into logging in Whatcom County in 1945, when he was a hard-boned man of 25. He bought an Army surplus truck in 1949, so he could deliver logs. He was a "gypo" logger, a man who did it all: felled trees, loaded them, hauled them, his daughter said.
His children all worked for him: his sons logged and drove trucks; his daughters did the bookkeeping.
He continued felling timber until the 1970s, when he started his own log-hauling business in Burlington. The logger kept working, always in his blue jeans, Hickory shirt and red suspenders.
He had two pairs of suspenders, his daughter said: a dress pair and a work pair.
Sanders, who had known Mr. Solwold for more than 20 years, remembers his fondness for long wool underwear. It cooled him in the warm months and kept him warm through winter's chill, he said.
"If it was 90 degrees, he had it on," Sanders said. "If it was 10 degrees he had it on."
Sager laughed knowingly when told of Sanders' recollection.
"Even at my wedding in a tuxedo he had them on," she said. "He just folded them up a bit so they didn't show."
Mr. Solwold's wife of 50 years, Joyce, died in 1995. For the past two years he had lived with a companion who shared his life.
Mr. Solwold recently passed his physical, a requirement by the state to continue hauling logs. He was a little hard of hearing but otherwise in good health.
He worked long days, sometimes 12 hours. He kept up a friendly competition with his son, Steve, who also hauled logs. Just last week he called his daughter to tell her he had hauled 10 loads of logs in one day.
"He said, `Boy, I'm pooped, but I got it,' " she said.
Mr. Solwold is also survived by a daughter, Debbie Fox, of Bow; sons Steve, Sedro-Woolley; Bruce, Bow; and Gary, Burlington; 14 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.