These Times

Ralph Munro and the Statue of Liberty

Kirk Ericson | Mar 27, 20250

Courtesy of Washington State Archives

Ralph Munro.

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" — The Bible

South Sound, and our Washington, had a remarkable human being pass from these parts last week. Ralph Munro's vessel is gone, but it's a safe bet his vessel's effect will remain active in our people and our land.

Munro was Washington's secretary of state for five terms, from 1980 to 2000, and he lived on property along Eld Inlet on Mud Bay in Thurston County.

A mile-long trail through the woods that parallels Evergreen Parkway near The Evergreen State College is named after him. A large wooden sign that reads "Ralph Munro Trail" is posted at the junction of 17th Avenue and the parkway, a sign easy to see when he'd drive to and from home.

It must be satisfying to see your name on a trail through the woods, but maybe he got used to it. Life's like that.

On Monday, I went to the trail, to walk it and to talk to other walkers about Ralph Munro. I brought a piece of paper I printed out with three paragraphs from the news obituary The Seattle Times ran in its March 21 edition, and I put the piece of paper in a plastic sheaf to protect it from the rain. I planned to hand it to walkers on the trail and get their reaction to Munro's recollection of a conversation he had with then-Gov. Daniel Evans in 1975.

My hope was the people I talked to wouldn't know Munro and I'd be able to surprise them with the news that Munro, like Gov. Evans, was a Republican.

The surprise part didn't play out because the only two people I was able to interview already knew Ralph and his affiliation. Here's what they read:

"In 1975, as large numbers of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the U.S., California Gov. Jerry Brown said he didn't want them resettled in California. [Gov. Daniel] Evans, infuriated, sent Munro to a military base in California that was housing refugees, temporarily, with instructions to invite them to settle in Washington.

"He said, 'If you see that son of a - Jerry Brown, you just remind him what it says on the base of the Statue of Liberty,' " Munro recalled.

"Washington, which had virtually no Vietnamese community at the time, now has the third-largest Vietnamese population in the country."

Imagine a politician today, especially a Republican, making such a comment about immigrants. Imagine the sights and sounds of that politician's career exploding.

Mark, one of the trail walkers I interviewed, lives along 17th and he said he knew Ralph. He was a neighbor and said he had read the Times story.

"That sounds exactly like something Ralph would say," Mark said. "The thing about Ralph was that he didn't just do things, he was able to bring people together to accomplish things."

He told a story about Ralph. About 25 years ago, Mark said, the road was covered in snow when he saw a horse pulling a sleigh on 17th. No one was in the sleigh, no driver, no riders, no nothing. Then he saw Ralph driving up the road in his car to fetch the runaway sleigh. What an absurd sight that must have been. An empty horse-drawn sleigh has got to be as odd as a library without books. And it speaks to the novelty of experience Ralph Munro was party to.

I showed the quote to Stan, another neighbor of Ralph's who had just arrived to walk the trail.

"He [Ralph] was a previous Republican, the ones pre-2015, the ones before the emergence of you know who," Stan remarked. He said he'd see Ralph on the trail often with his sweeper, cleaning the trail.

"He was a swell guy. He had the charisma of a public official, but he was very approachable - and chatty," Stan said.

Dave Ammons, a longtime Capitol reporter for The Associated Press in Olympia who went on to work for the Secretary of State's Office as communications director for Munro's successors, Sam Reed and Kim Wyman, got to know Ralph well.

"Besides Ralph's well-known election reforms, heritage projects and co-chairing the Washington Centennial, his kind heart and steady work for those at the margins really spoke volumes about his humanity and character," Dave wrote me in an email.

"He advocated for the developmentally disabled, arranged the Washington welcome to refugees after Saigon fell, served dinners to the hungry, rang Salvation Army bells, gave polio vaccinations to kids in Africa, partnered with the tribes for fishing rights, promoted accessible and affordable state parks, preserved the stories and archives of the unforgotten and the oppressed, advanced women's rights and worked for racial equality."

Another newspaper reporter recalled his visit to the Munro property, called Triple Creek Farm.

"While a reporter at The Olympian, I visited Mr. Munro at his Triple Creek Farm in the late 1990s to write a story about his conservation efforts," Joel Coffidis emailed me. "I don't remember the details, but I do remember how committed he was to protecting South Puget Sound. That was a story I was happy to write about. It's no surprise when I read that in 2006 he and his wife, Karen, placed 203 acres of their farm and 3.5 miles of shoreline into a perpetual conservation easement."

Ammons visited Triple Creek Farm several times.

"When I went to dinners at Triple Creek Farm, the table was at least a third BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] and big shots mingling with ordinary community folks he had met someplace, and he often walked us down to the tribal dig on his Mud Bay property. Much of his philanthropy and good works went unnoticed and unannounced, as he intended. No press or staff photographers. Just Ralph 'doing small things with great love,' as Mother Teresa put it."