Passing of an Island Legend, Rick Chandler, avid Birder, Historian, Whale-watcher and more. Cheer on Salmon as they Return to Kitsap Streams

If you never had the opportunity to meet Rick Chandler face to face, you missed out on shaking hands with a kind, gentle and incredibly engaging person. Rick or “Ricky,” as he was sometimes called, passed away peacefully at his home on Bainbridge Island earlier this month at the age of 81. To many who knew him, he was a pillar of the Island community for decades, known most recently as the curator of the Bainbridge History Museum, where he retired in 2020 after two decades of service, including managing the Museum’s move to its current site in 2004.

Rick was born on April 13, 1944, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He attended Cornell University from 1962-66, earning a degree in Ornithology and Vertebrate Zoology. He went on to pursue a master’s degree at UCLA.

Rick worked for the Smithsonian Institute upon graduating from Cornell, traveling to the South Pacific to research and document birds. During this time, he earned a world record for banding over 6,000 birds in a 12-hour period. Years later, he would delight friends and family with a dance he called the “Bird-bander’s Stomp.” A self-proclaimed “bird maniac” back then, Rick was also passionate about whales. Rick worked with his friends Ken Balcomb and Dan McSweeney on the Orca Survey and the founding of the Moclips Cetalogical Society in 1976, which later became The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor.

By 1979, Rick was living on Bainbridge Island and met his future life partner and wife, Miriam “Timmie” Byers. He became a bonus dad to Timmie’s daughter Jessica and the three would go on to spend many winters in the ‘80s and ‘90s snow-birding on the Big Island of Hawaii. Rick and Timmie were married in 1983 in Lahaina, Maui, on the beachside balcony of the courthouse. They resided on Bainbridge Island, the Big Island, or in Suquamish together for over four decades, mostly living in houses that Rick designed and built himself.

Rick was involved with museums throughout his life, including the Harvard Museum of Natural History, The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and, of course, the Bainbridge History Museum (BHM). While with BHM, Rick curated an exhibit of Ansel Adams photographs called Portraits of Manzanar, which brought national recognition to the museum. In 2016, he co-authored Killer Whales: Magnificent Creatures of the Salish Sea.

“His love of nature, history, and community carried through everything he did,” said Amber Buell, executive director of BHM. “At BHM, he brought the same curiosity and care to preserve local stories as he once brought to documenting wildlife.  … Rick will be terribly missed, not only by those of us who worked alongside him, but by the many in the Bainbridge Island community whose lives he touched. His wife, Timmie, and their family remain in our hearts.”

Personally, our family got to know Rick pretty well some 35-plus years ago when he remodeled a bathroom in a former house of ours, carefully installing new sky windows, two vanities, sinks, a bathtub, fun fixtures, innovative wood paneling, tile flooring, and other features – including a pocket door – that turned it into a memorable space. With a sheepish grin, Rick asked us if he could have the bathroom’s old plastic shower unit. Of course we said. Why? Turned out he shipped it to Hawaii and used it in his Big Island home for years thereafter. We used to joke about that every time we’d run into each other.

Rick was preceded in death by his father Doug Chandler, mother Eileen “Mimi” Parker (Ingraham), and sister Sharon Lee Chandler. He is survived by his wife Timmie, stepdaughter Jessica Merkner (Matt Benotsch), grandson Eddie Benotsch, his brother Scott Chandler and his daughters Cassandra and Christine, and Sharon’s daughters Courtney and Jessica, and his nieces’ respective families.

Most of us will remember Rick as a patient, intelligent, and good-humored husband, son, brother, stepfather, and friend. He cared deeply for his family, community, and the natural world. He gave his family a good life, traveled the world with curiosity and an adventuresome spirit, and pursued earthly and astronomical interests with a childlike wonder.

Donations to honor Rick’s memory can be made to the Bainbridge History Museum or the Center for Whale Research.