PORT ANGELES — The dread thought always floated at the back of John Willits’ mind, a raven’s feather blown about by an ill wind:
His daughter, Kristine Fairbanks, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service, one day might face a man with a mind full of hate and a fist full of firearms, he worried.
“I’ve been living in dread of this happening for years,” he said Tuesday, sounding out of breath on the telephone with the effort of speaking.
“It wasn’t totally unexpected.”
Fairbanks’ friends and family members say she learned her love of the outdoors from her father, who is retired from Peninsula College but who remains active in conservation efforts.
He serves as the conservation committee chairman of the North Olympic Land Trust, to which he has granted a conservation easement in perpetuity.