The first surprising thing about local historian and Madrona resident Junius Rochester is his age.
If 79 sounds old, the energetic, lifetime member of the Mountaineers Club —who, in his mid-60s, accomplished a nine-day trek across the Olympic range — gives baby boomers something to look forward to.
The other surprising thing about Rochester: The Harvard Business School graduate, with a career in international business behind him, moves among distinctly various social circles. Perfectly at home with Seattle’s old-guard establishment, Rochester also counts the late Bernie Whitebear, founder of the United Indian of All Tribes Foundation, as someone he knew “very well.” The memory of the former U.S. Army Ranger, who led the symbolic invasion of Fort Lawton in 1970, still sets some establishmentarian teeth on edge.
Not surprisingly, Rochester likes people, and it’s with people his treatment of history begins and ends.
“We have run out of Giovanni Costigans,” Rochester said of the legendary University of Washington history professor who died in 1990. “Costigan’s style related human beings to what happened.”
History immediate
The son of Al Rochester, Seattle City Council member from 1944 to 1956, Rochester grew up in a household that saw the likes of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Warren Magnuson and real estate figure Henry Broderick as cocktail party guests — a Democratic Party milieu, for sure.
“My father was a storyteller,” Rochester recalled. “When you’re around storytellers, you absorb a certain amount. I try to use personalities as keystones, as jumping-off points.”
His father, as a 14-year-old, operated a bread-slicing machine at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE) in 1909. Over a meeting at the Washington Athletic Club in the 1950s, the City Council member came up with the idea for a Seattle World’s Fair to commemorate the AYPE. Those were the days when a downtown power lunch or two pushed civic affairs along.
It’s no surprise, then, that history, for Rochester, is immediate. He talks about his topics the way others might recount yesterday’s weather.
“The Last Electric Trolley: Madrona and Denny-Blaine,” self-published in 2000, is neighborhood history at its best. Rochester, current president of the Pioneer Association of the State of Washington based in Madison Park, packs his 166-page book with stories and anecdotes, many of them as seen through his eyes. The cast runs from Chief Leschi to Kurt Cobain. The result, as former Seattle Weekly publisher and Madrona resident David Brewster has written, is “a lovely and evocative book.”
Certainly, Rochester has tales to tell. In his early 30s, he even served as badminton partner for Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke. The pair would compete at Roethke’s manse at 3802 E. John St. in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood and then repair to the veranda for a “wee tiddly,” as the poet put it. Translation: “Two large, full-to-the-brim whiskey appeared.”
‘Nice, neat topics’
Born in 1934, Rochester’s first five years were spent on Queen Anne. An all-city hurdler at Garfield High School, Rochester’s name resides in his alma mater’s hall of fame.
Rochester and his wife, Joanne, don’t go downtown much anymore — where once they could count on running into people they knew — unless it’s to the symphony.
Daughter Julie, a graduate of the University of Victoria (B.C.) in art history, has shown her sculptural work. Son Steve is chief engineer at Crowley Maritime. Son Tommie died of leukemia in 1970 at age 10; “The Last Electric Trolley” was published under the moniker Tommie Press.
An insight into Rochester’s makeup is revealed in an incident in “The Last Trolley”: The young Rochester’s “shaggy, little mutt” Paddy, hit by a car, crawled into Epiphany Parish Hall, only to be turned out by a church official. Paddy died on the street. The young Rochester never returned to worship at the church.
“That act was diametrically opposed to what Jesus would do,” he recalled nearly 70 years later.
Various institutions have commissioned a number of Rochester’s books. These include “Roots and Branches: the Religious Heritage of Washington State,” published by the Church Council of Greater Seattle and co-written with David Buerge; “Seattle’s Best-Kept Secret: A History of The Lighthouse for the Blind;” “SAS, 30 Years Over the Top” and “Traditions of Caring: Norwegian Immigration to the Pacific Northwest and Founding of the Norse Home.”
“The thing I like about what Junius does is, his books cover small, nice, neat topics,” said retired educator and local historian Charles Le Warne. “He’s not writing the grand epic but smaller topics and doing it in an engaging way.”
Le Warne first met Rochester in the late 1980s, when they were founding members of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild. “I’ve never known anyone quite like him. He seems to know everybody,” Le Warne said.
Paula Becker, staff historian at HistoryLink.org and co-author of “The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and Its Legacy,” found Rochester’s personal knowledge about the fair a great help while researching her book.
“He has very deep roots in Seattle; he knows the stories at different levels,” she said. Becker cited Rochester’s tightly focused subject matter: “A lot of the projects he’s been drawn to, the histories of these organizations, are extremely important.”
Writers and historians Rochester admires include Murray Morgan, author of the inimitable “Skid Road.” He also points to Vernon Parrington, University of Washington professor whose influential “Main Currents of American Thought” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as setting “a standard in writing using human lives, with all their warts, in a kind of joyful and exciting way.”
He’s not resting
Perspectives on Seattle’s foundations are never far from Rochester’s thoughts. He leads groups to the tribal town of Suquamish in Kitsap County, burial place of Chief Seattle, to explore its new museum.
“It’s the most complete setting for Native American culture,” he said of the museum. “The docent, a tribal member who took us through, was gracious and full of names; here, it’s a personal experience.”
As for the long-denied tribal recognition for the Duwamish tribe: “It’s very important. Also for the Clatsop and Chinook tribes, too. I don’t know how Lewis and Clark would have succeeded if the Clatsop hadn’t provided food and advice.”
The Duwamish called white settlers “Changers.” Not a few historians have pointed out that East Coast immigration has been changing Seattle ever since.
“We are a community influenced by Easterners and New Englanders,” Rochester said. “It goes back to lumber. But outsiders have been converted when they look around and wonder, ‘Where have I been all my life?’”
“Seattle is fulfilling its destiny,” Rochester observed of the “new,” tech-driven city. “Beginning with the Gold Rush, it was realized that Seattle is a port city of great importance to Alaska and the Pacific.”
Each week, Rochester participates in a breakfast gathering at Madrona’s Hi-Spot Cafe to talk over current affairs. Among the participants are David Brewster; Roger Sale, retired academic and author of “Seattle, Past to Present”; Seattle P-I.com columnist Joel Connelly; and recently ousted Seattle City Councilmember Richard Conlin — all Madrona residents.
“We learn everything that morning; by afternoon, all bets are off,” Rochester joked about the 24/7 news cycle’s disposable urgencies.
Rochester said a new project related to early Seattle history looms. The man who has won numerous history awards for his books, newspaper columns, radio narratives and presentations could be doing other things, but he isn’t: “We owe it to the younger generations to show the curvature and changes that have hopefully made their lives better.”
MIKE DILLON is former publisher of the Madison Park Times. To comment on this story, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.
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