We continue our series on the teenaged young men of the Investor crew. There were four in all, including Coulthurst cousin Michael Stewart; veteran Coulthurst crewmember, Dean Moon; Dean’s high school friend, Jerome Keown; and Coulthurst family friend, Chris Heyman. In this installment, we focus on Jerome Keown. We owe many of our insights to Don Tapperson of the Bellingham Herald.
“By age 19, Jerome Keown had made an impression on just about everyone he had met, a fact underscored by the overflowing attendance at his memorial service Sept. 18.
“He was the all everything kid down the block, the paper boy and Little Leaguer who once banded together with his five brothers to handle the lawn work of 50 different Blaine residents.
“He had served as Saint Anne’s Catholic Church and had posted a 3.5 grade point average at Blaine High School, where he was class president his freshman and senior years. He was two weeks away from returning to Seattle University for his second year in the honors program.
“He was an athlete — center in football and catcher in baseball for the Borderites for four years. He liked weight lifting and swimming and was slightly prone to injury, ‘accumulating more knocks and bruises than all the rest of the kids put together,’ said Bill Keown, his father.
“‘Jerome was a competitor who worked hard when he put his mind to something,’ said Randy Deming, who coached him as a sophomore at Blaine High School. ‘I doubt if I have ever coached a brighter individual.’
“Jerome was also a young man with dreams, a person who knew where he was going and how he would get there.
“‘From the time he was in the eighth grade, his ambition was to be a lawyer,’ said his sister Anne. ‘He always had a feeling for it — he loved to debate and had a way of speaking that made people listen to him. He planned on getting his business degree and then going to law school.’
“Jerome Keown was also an artist, a talented individual who played the guitar, wrote poems and loved music. A teacher at Seattle University described him as gently strong and strongly gentle: ‘he was compassionate, but he wasn’t afraid to be his own person.’
“‘He loved to write poems and songs and music,’ remembered Anne. ‘He would play his guitar, get away from the world and drive us all crazy. At school one day he noticed a girl in his class was distressed and wrote a poem to her. He had a way of understanding other people.’
“Jerome was also a fisherman, following in the footsteps of three older brothers, Mike, Jeff and Brian. The previous summer, Jerome earned $12,000 commercial fishing. He was onboard the Investor by fate, having replaced Leroy Flammang, the Investor cook who returned home before the final two weeks of the season. ”
Sources: The Daily Evergreen, September 23, 1982; Don Tapperson, The Bellingham Herald, September 26, 1982
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