Former store owner, PA mayor, dies at 88

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 16, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Frank McPhee didn’t just run a grocery store at the corner of Race and Eighth streets — he created something that was an unmistakable expression of who he was.

For more than four decades, McPhee’s Parkway Grocery was a place to buy milk, bread and candy. But it was also an experience — irreverent, unexpected and idiosyncratic.

A bit like McPhee himself.

McPhee, who owned Parkway Grocery for more than 40 years and served on the Port Angeles City Council and as mayor in the 1980s, died Jan. 2. He was 88.

When he bought Parkway Grocery in 1977 after he left the corporate world, it was among a number of small neighborhood markets that sold basics and staples.

It didn’t stay ordinary for long.

Well before specialty foods became available in supermarkets, McPhee began stocking his grocery with items people couldn’t find anywhere in Port Angeles.

He drove to Seattle and Tacoma to track down what he couldn’t get locally, bringing back condiments, spices and snacks from around the world — Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Russia — as well as special requests.

You wanted linguiça? McPhee could get it for you.

“He was very secretive about where he got his stuff,” said Tom McCurdy, a retired optometrist and friend. “Nobody knew where he would go. He headed down the highway in his van to these places.”

Shopping at Parkway Grocery meant stepping into McPhee’s world.

“He was an equal opportunity jokester,” McCurdy said. “Nobody was immune.”

Customers might get a joke. They might get a story. On a hot day, they might get hit with a squirt gun.

His daughters, Laura Miller and Anne McPhee, saw it firsthand.

Laura remembers him climbing onto the roof of the store with a water pistol to catch delivery drivers off guard.

Anne McPhee recalls hiding behind aisles with her father, waiting to surprise customers.

“Believe it or not, he was quite introverted,” Anne said. “He really enjoyed the store because he was able to bring out this other side of him.”

When Laura was attending Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, McPhee arrived on campus in a Slush Puppie costume from the store.

“He decided it would be hilarious,” she said. “That was the first time my [now] husband had ever seen him.”

The newspaper ads that McPhee wrote were as much for himself as they were to attract customers, his daughters said.

One of the first was a classified listing that read: “Middle-aged grocery store seeks companionship. Visit Christmas Day, 9-6, ask for Parkway Grocery at 8th and Race. No triflers.”

Then there were the “Top 10” lists drafted on the backs of cigarette cartons he repurposed as scratch paper. The one announcing the sale of the store started with: 1. I’m tired of leaning on the counter, so now I’m going to lean on Social Security.

To most customers, McPhee was the man behind the counter. To those who knew him, there was more.

He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force before he went into banking in Vancouver and Seattle.

He was a devout Catholic, often attending Mass in the morning before the store opened.

Ed Bedford met McPhee the day his store opened when he was a salesman for United Distributors. Bedford continued to with work with him when McPhee bought a second store, San Juan Grocery, in Port Townsend.

“He was a very serious businessman,” Bedford said. “But you never came to the store without getting a joke.”

But McPhee had a different side to him that could sometimes take his daughters by surprise.

Anne McPhee recalled a crash in front of the store that involved a horse trailer.

“My dad left the counter,” she said. “He told me, ‘It’s yours,’ and he went out.”

For more than an hour, he stayed with the injured horse, talking to it and helping to keep it calm while others worked to free it from the wreckage.

“They ended up saving it,” she said.

In the late 1980s, McPhee served on the Port Angeles City Council and as mayor. His tenure was marked by frequent conflict — with colleagues, city staff and the public — as debates over governance, transparency and development often spilled into open disputes.

“He was very outspoken,” McCurdy said. “So, you always knew he was in the room.”

“If he thought he was right, he wouldn’t fold,” Bedford said.

McCurdy pointed to one decision that had a lasting effect — helping push the city toward mechanized garbage collection.

“It doesn’t sound like much now,” he said, “but it was a big change.”

After the original Parkway Grocery constructed in 1937 was destroyed by fire in the 1990s, McPhee had it rebuilt — configured a bit differently but with the same distinctive selection and character.

So it was that when McPhee decided to sell the store. He didn’t want to turn it over to just anyone.

He ultimately chose Nick Burnette.

Burnette, a Port Angeles native who worked his way up in grocery management at Safeway, was introduced to McPhee by his brother, Phil.

McPhee was a shewed negotiator. Burnette said it took several months to reach a deal in 2021.

Burnette said he has tried to carry forward McPhee’s approach, pointing to items like dog biscuits and gallon jugs of soy sauce — things he said he wouldn’t have thought to stock, but McPhee knew customers would want.

“He had a great little store,” Burnett said. “You’ve got to give him credit.”

McPhee and McCurdy had bonded over their shared Scottish heritage and the bagpipes. McCurdy would sometimes play outside the store — “piping up business,” as he put it — while McPhee listened and talked about learning the instrument himself.

He never did.

At McPhee’s funeral at 11 a.m. Friday at Queen of Angels Catholic Church, 209 W. 11th St., Port Angeles, McCurdy will play the “RCAF March Past” in his friend’s honor — for a man who, like his store, was always full of surprises.

In addition to his daughters, McPhee is survived by his wife, Susan, and son, Ian, who serves in the military.

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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.