Ed Penhale, a communications director for two governors and an ex-Highline Times editor, passed away March 24.

Mr. Penhale graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he was editor of the school paper. He then worked for a year as a newspaper reporter in Dover, N.H., before driving to the west coast with his college girlfriend.

He first job here was with the Highline Times.

Ken Robinson, associate publisher of the Times/News, gave Mr. Penhale his first newspaper job in Washington.

Recalling Mr. Penhale, Robinson said, "When Ed Penhale came to the Highline Times in 1975, he arrived with a year's experience on a paper in his home state, New Hampshire, and a history degree.

“Ed was a fine writer and exceptional interviewer but a bit of an enigma. He was a slightly built man who always seemed to have a cigarette dangling from his lip and his head, with long hair and a beard, in a cloud of smoke.

“In those days, people smoked in the office and everywhere else. What didn't seemed matched was his interest in hiking, skiing and running.

“One day he regaled the staff with a story about his weekend climb of Mt. Si, in Earth shoes, a popular everyday footwear of the time. We learned from friends of his that Ed was lately an avid tennis player and downhill skier. And when he had a cold, he said he would run along Alki Avenue near his apartment until he ‘burned out’ the sickness.

“Ed was a serious journalist with a fine mind and sardonic wit."

In a Seattle Post-Intelligencer obituary, Regan Robinson, his cross-country companion, recalled Mr. Penhale even enjoyed covering sewer districts for the Times because “he understood that where sewers go, development follows.”

He was eventually promoted to editor of the paper.

Mr. Penhale joined the P-I in 1984, covering county government, courts and state government.

In 1988, he quit to become communications director for Gov. Gary Locke’s Office of Financial Management. Mr. Penhale also headed up communications for Locke’s 2000 re-election campaign.

When Christine Gregoire was elected governor in 2004, he remained at the budget office.

P-I reporter Neil Modie wrote Mr. Penhale was an “unbureaucratic bureaucrat.”

David Postman, the Seattle Times’ chief political writer, in an obituary noted, “Mr. Penhale could come across as surly and hard-bitten. He was like a film-noir character.

“He smoked and drank; he walked slowly with his shoulders slumped; grumbled and cursed; and is said to have had as much luck with the ladies as Frank Sinatra.”

He died of a rare form of cancer, just a day short of his 55th birthday.

Mr. Penhale is survived by Debora Merle, his companion; his parents, William and Mildred Penhale of Dunham, N.H.; and three brothers, David of Aspen, Colo., Jim of Vail, Colo., and Tom of Newton, Mass.