On Thursday, September 21, Skagit Valley lost a living link to its pioneer history. Bruce McCormick (aka, “Honker”) passed away, just a few months shy of his 92nd birthday.

Bruce was the grandson of David L. McCormick, who came to the Skagit Valley from Ohio as a young man. In 1877, Bruce’s grandad purchased 120 acres of cleared land northeast of La Conner for $10 an acre. Twelve years later he returned to Ohio and married Margaret Case, the daughter of a well-regarded family in Hocking County, and brought her back to the Skagit Valley. They raised six children, including Bruce’s father George and his father’s twin brother Charles, who were born on November 7, 1898.

I got to know Bruce through his partner of 25 years, Sally Rode, with whom my wife and I attend church. As the daughter of respected Mount Vernon physician Maynard Johnson, I should point out that Sally boasts her own pioneer bona fides. As a lover of local history, I was quick to accept her invitation to learn about the Magic Skagit’s pioneer years from someone whose grandfather had very prominently lived them.

But meeting Bruce, as anyone who ever met him can attest, was an experience that had a significance far beyond the man’s lineage. He was, as I quickly discovered, a larger than life character whose passions (or perhaps “obsessions” is a better word) were as intense, varied, and unique as the Magic Skagit he grew up in — with nearly three-quarters of that life spent on the same acre of land on McClean Road, hardly a stone’s throw from the original McCormick homestead on La Conner Road.

The best way I can convey my first impressions of Bruce is to quote from a Tales of the Magic Skagit story I wrote about him back in August 2021:

Bruce McCormick turned 90 last December. By any measure, nine decades is an impressive run — particularly when you are still spry enough to incubate waterfowl eggs, tend to nesting boxes, maintain an aquatic avian refuge, organize binders full of newspaper clippings of life in the Skagit Valley, collect shotgun shells and baseball caps, catalog and display wildfowl art in various media, and occasionally entertain guests with a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Roll On Columbia” on a well worn six string. It takes more than a few decades to incorporate that many proclivities into a single unique carbon-based entity. At best, a half century would constitute a good start. At 90, however, you’re pretty much cruising in overdrive. And in Bruce’s case, you’d be whistling “Peggy Sue” with the top down in your ’47 Chevy and the wind in your hair —or what’s left of it.

A few months after my initial story about Bruce, I wrote another about a book of Skagit and Snohomish County history that he had inherited from his father and grandfather — a huge leather bound tome that was published in 1906. We also collaborated on a couple of Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast episodes about the book and one of its subjects, John J. Peth (another well known pioneer family that Bruce had married into years ago). I’ve posthumously added an interview with Bruce from back in May that covered another figure of Skagit Valley pioneer history (Isaac Chilberg) as well as a retrospective on the origins of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and the valley’s early farming history.

But of all my media accounts of my friend Bruce, the one that will always be the most precious is my recording of his rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Roll On Columbia” — the song Bruce steadfastly maintained should have been the State of Washington’s anthem. I threw in a little harmony for the occasion, just for the honor of being able to blend my voice with his.

Given my regard for Bruce McCormick, I’m proud to say that I’ll get one more opportunity to have him as the subject of a recording. On October 7, I’ll be attending his memorial service at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. I won’t be in the pews, but in a loft above the sanctuary where I’ll be working the audio system. I think Bruce would find that pleasingly appropriate, and you can be sure that I’ll be softly humming “Roll on Columbia” even as I’m adjusting the sliders on the soundboard for one last tribute to Honker.