During my Garfield High School days I often listened to historical vignettes on Seattle radio station King AM. Those mini-stories, floating from my parents’ living room floor console, were filtered through the nasal twang of Pacific Northwesterner Nard Jones.
Nard was rooted in Pacific Northwest soil. Raised in the tiny town of Weston, Oregon, he graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, then migrated to Seattle where his journalistic career took him to the position of chief editorial writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
His love of regional history was an integral part of his stories, basic news, and interview subjects. In spite of his journalistic duties Nard Jones wrote 17 books, most with Pacific Northwest themes; over 300 stories; and a mountain of radio programs. He had one national bestseller, Swift Flows the River, and several notable regional sellers, including a history of Washington State called Evergreen Land and The Great Command (a history of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman)…