A land legacy with feelings

PRESTON

John Temcov's philanthropy started with a heart attack.

A Bulgarian immigrant who sported a chest-length beard, Temcov was driving to his Issaquah real-estate office to meet his son, Michael, for lunch in 1994 when he collapsed behind the wheel of his aging Chevy.

He survived, and when he got out of Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, he tore up his will and wrote a more creative version.

Instead of divvying up about $4 million worth of land among his family, Temcov assigned his son, Michael, a sacred duty: to operate a foundation to fund local environmentalists and promote education in Bulgaria.

John Temcov died a year after his heart attack at age 83. The owner of 18 valuable properties but cash-poor, he drove his olive-green 1978 Malibu and ate at McDonald's.

His will supports an eclectic array of causes: Greenpeace, $500,000 for a Bulgarian library, money for a dancer in Bulgaria, maintenance of his ancestors' graves in the old country, a hospital in Pakistan and the rebuilding of an art studio in Preston that was used by Carl Freemanson, a once-famous wood sculptor who died in 1975.

Michael Temcov said he feels a great weight in carrying out his father's vision, and he doesn't like the hassles involved in selling the land.

"I just want to go away and live on a boat and get away from land (dealings) and society, from all the greed that's out there," he said.

One of Temcov's land holdings is a 9-acre lot next to the Tiger Mountain State Forest, which is property sought after by the Mountains-to-Sound Greenway movement. After a decade of work, the greenway has set aside thousands of acres from Seattle to Cle Elum for preservation.

The Temcovs' land would further buffer Tiger Mountain from development.

John Temcov also left behind rural land just south of Tiger Mountain, which the state or King County likely will want to incorporate into the greenway.

But Michael Temcov is suspicious of the greenway movement, and government and big business in general. And he also doesn't care for Jim Ellis, president of the greenway trust.

As a teenager, Ellis and a brother built a log cabin in 1937 along the Raging River near Preston that was later discovered to be on Temcov land. After John Temcov died, Ellis sued in what he considered a routine step to buy the cabin and the land around it, but the ensuing legal wrangling angered Michael Temcov.

Ellis eventually bought the land, but Temcov is still bitter about the sale and has been reluctant to make land deals with the greenway.

He also faults the greenway trust for endorsing a proposed gravel pit in North Bend and for allowing biosolids - mixes of treated sewage and sawdust - to be spread in the woods as fertilizer.

But Ellis and the state haven't given up. Bonnie Bunning, regional manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, yesterday said there will be a renewed effort to acquire the Temcov High Point acreage near Tiger Mountain.

The DNR, a greenway ally, may be the only institution that can buy Temcov's High Point land and save it from development, Ellis argues.

"If it goes into permanent forest and he still gets money to carry out his causes, that's the ideal solution," said Ellis, who recalls talking philosophy with John Temcov years ago.

Michael Temcov says he may be willing to sell, but he insists that an interpretive center must be built to honor a former mill site and explain the despoiling of the Eastside's environment.

It's an idea his dad would have liked, he said. Despite the hard times his dad lived through, John Temcov was an idealist, his son said.

During the rise of fascism in Europe, John Temcov's mother sent her 21-year-old son to be educated in the United States, where one of his three brothers already lived.

During World War II, Temcov drove an ambulance at Fort Lewis, where he wrote in an Army newspaper about a new postwar world order based on a borderless society.

After the war, he married and moved to West Seattle and for decades sold homes there, in Surrey Downs near downtown Bellevue and in the Mirrormont neighborhood south of Issaquah.

As he weighs his decisions, the fact that his dad trusted him to execute his will offers Michael Temcov some spiritual comfort.

"We're in no hurry," he said. "The assets can be around when I'm gone as far as I'm concerned. We want to do the most we can, with the least."

Mike Lindblom's phone message number is 206-515-5631. His e-mail address is mlindblom@seattletimes.com