| Notes |
- The Seattle Times
May 25, 1999
For years, the Cascades were alive with the sounds of James Ardele DePartee.
His love of the outdoors and of Austrian culture converged as he skied down the mountain slopes, yodeling as he went.
"He did it as a whoop-and-holler thing as he took off," said Richard DePartee of Seattle, one of Mr. DePartee's sons.
He learned to yodel while living in Vienna, Austria, after World War II, during his service in the U.S. Army.
The country "was a magical place" for Mr. DePartee, a Washington native who graduated from West Seattle High School in 1940, Richard DePartee said.
"He was exposed to a lot of art and opera and coffee houses," he said. "Seattle didn't have a lot of that at that time."
He returned to Seattle, earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1948, but his memories of Austria stayed with him.
He loved to make family movies, and "in at least one episode, we were tromping around the Cascades in lederhosen," said David DePartee of Seattle, Mr. DePartee's other son.
"We always seemed to be going somewhere having fun," he said.
The family spent a good deal of time skiing, and Mr. DePartee taught the sport on weekends.
Mr. DePartee died of Parkinson's disease on May 14. He was 77.
He was born in Walla Walla and lived in West Seattle for much of his youth. He excelled at archery, and loved building and flying large-scale model airplanes.
"He was a Northwest boy that grew up seeing the big ships and loved the outdoors," said Richard DePartee.
Mr. DePartee served as a combat infantry officer in Europe and was among the first American troops to enter some of the concentration camps.
In the 1950s, he helped design a home for his family in Medina, overlooking Meydenbauer Bay. "From his pillow, he could see Mount Rainier," David DePartee said.
He founded a firm that provided services to architects, the DePartee Company, and practiced a number of professions over the years. He retired in the late 1980s from Monarch Life Insurance, where he did financial planning.
He and his companion of the past 21 years, Jutta Rykken, lived most recently in Port Townsend.
Other survivors include a daughter, Diane DePartee of Seattle, Ms. Rykken's two daughters, and five grandchildren.
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1921 - 1999 (77 years)
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