Dick Pace, an entrepreneur who loved the outdoors

Dick Pace was a make-it-happen kind of guy.

He started a business in his Woodinville basement almost 30 years ago that helped build Alaska's seafood-processing industry into an international powerhouse.

He envisioned tourists trekking to this country's last, icy frontier and built two hotels to accommodate them. He raised Thoroughbred horses and navigated his way up and down the Pacific Coast in his custom-built yacht.

"You couldn't say 'no' or 'it's impossible' because he wouldn't stand for it. Nothing was impossible in his mind," said Judy Pace, Mr. Pace's wife for nearly 44 years.

Mr. Pace was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2002. He battled the disease, but it returned in the spring. He died of cancer-related complications on Nov. 6 at Providence Everett Medical Center. He was 70.

A memorial service for Mr. Pace was held yesterday at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Everett.

James Richard "Dick" Pace was born April 26, 1933, in East Wenatchee. He was the youngest of seven children born to Bernie C. Pace, a home builder, and Cenia Adams Pace, a homemaker.

At a young age, Mr. Pace accompanied his uncles on fishing and hunting trips. Those trips sparked a lifelong passion for the outdoors that made Mr. Pace shun cities in favor of isolated outposts and rural homesteads, his wife said.

After graduating from Wenatchee High School in 1951, Mr. Pace attended Washington State University. He later worked for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Seattle and New York City.

But after a couple of years, "he got sick of New York and wanted to be posted in a rural area where he could hunt and fish," his wife said. But there were no openings, so he quit the FDA and took a job with Alaska's health department, where he worked from 1958 to 1961.

In September 1959, Judy Viebrock visited her sister and brother-in-law in Kodiak. The sisters went to a local rifle range where they were approached by Mr. Pace. His opening line: "Pretty good shot for a couple of girls."

Mr. Pace returned to Washington state for Christmas that year. On New Year's Eve, a friend set him up on a blind date — and his date turned out to be the girl from the Kodiak rifle range. They fell in love that night.

But Mr. Pace had to return to Alaska. The couple continued their romance through letters and married in May 1960. "It was our seventh date," Judy Pace laughed. The following year, Mr. Pace made his first foray into the seafood industry, eventually becoming the manager of a crab-processing plant in Seldovia, an isolated community accessible only by plane or boat.

In 1970, Mr. Pace moved with his wife and two young children, John and Heidi, back to the Seattle area for a job with another seafood company. (Mr. Pace was devastated by the death of his son, John, a commercial fisherman, who died of a heart attack in 1999, Judy Pace said.)

Four years after settling in Woodinville, Mr. Pace lined up investors and launched Universal Seafoods, a seafood-processing company with a large plant in Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutian Islands. Renamed UniSea Inc., the company later became a subsidiary of a large Japanese corporation, Nippon Suisan.

"He was a very, very dynamic person and for more than 20 years, 'UniSea' was synonymous with 'Dick Pace,' " said Terry Shaff, who took over as UniSea president when Mr. Pace retired in 1998.

UniSea's administrative offices and cold-storage operation are based in Redmond. Its plant in Dutch Harbor — where Mr. Pace also built the UniSea Inn and the four-star Grand Aleutian hotel — processes up to 3,000 tons of seafood a day.

UniSea products are made into imitation crab meat, fish sticks and McDonald's fish burgers. The company Mr. Pace built now brings in $200 million in annual revenues, Shaff said.

"I think the main reason he loved Alaska was because it was the last frontier. You could be a pioneer in Alaska," Shaff said. "Dick was a very big player who, with a handful of people, developed the entire (seafood processing) industry in Alaska."

From 1981 to 1997, Mr. Pace pursued another passion — horses. He and his wife bought property in Snohomish and named it "Pace Setter Farm," where they raised Thoroughbreds. But as Mr. Pace approached retirement, the couple sold the farm and moved to Mukilteo so they could spend more time on their custom-built, 54-foot yacht, Pace Setter.

In April, the Paces broke ground on a 15-acre plot in Snohomish. Mr. Pace was looking forward to moving into the house that was intentionally built far from subdivisions and strip malls.

"The house is almost finished now," Judy Pace said. "I can't wait to move in, even though it'll be big and lonely without Dick."

In addition to his wife and daughter, Heidi Davalos of Sultan, Mr. Pace is survived by his sister Norma Hanson and brother Bernie "Cliff" Pace Jr., both of Wenatchee; his daughter-in-law Lisa Pace of Mount Vernon; three granddaughters and numerous nieces and nephews.

The family suggests that memorials be made to the Seattle Fisherman's Memorial, P.O. Box 17356, Seattle, WA 98127, or to the Washington State University Athletic Foundation, P.O. Box 641602, Pullman, WA 99164-1602.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com