Life's good on the tip of Three Tree Point for retired Ray Rice

stevievanb — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:03:37 +0000

stevievanb Tue, 05/24/2011 - 12:03am

Ray Rice displays the silver salmon he caught off the Three Tree Point shoreline.

Photos by Jerry Robinson

SLIDESHOW: For additional photos, please click on the above image.

Meet Ray Rice

He and his wife Louise have lived in Burien next to the lighthouse on the tip of Three Tree Point for fifteen years.

He is an occasional fisherman and got lucky one day last year hooking this small silver salmon, casting a spoon off the shoreline.

They lived in West Seattle for many years when he was a fuel-oil company owner, driving a truck to customers in the Fauntleroy area and all points north and south. At one time he had about 600 customers and three trucks going two shifts a day. This was during the post WW2 years before natural gas took over the heating industry. Those days during the fifties he had lots of competition from the likes of Leo Thomas, Dave Coe and a slew of ambitious others.

A former Bellingham boy, he served in the Merchant Marines during WW2.

After graduating from Broadway High where he was an all-star baseball player, he went to the University of Washington and played under famed coach Tubby Graves who told him he was the best infielder he had ever coached.

In 1942, he joined the Navy and was sent to Long Island Naval Academy in New York and learned seamanship.

After two years, he graduated and was sent to active wartime duties in the Pacific. He only screwed up once when he was guiding a convoy zigzagging through enemy waters. He recovered a navigation error he made. In split-second timing, he avoided a disastrous collision that still makes him shudder.

He is retired now and up till this year was an avid tennis player. He is 86.

He and Louise have three adult children.