SEQUIM — Andrew Nisbet Jr., a retired military officer who moved to Sequim and conducted a post-retirement life in public service, has died in Kansas.
Nisbet, 91, who served in the state House of Representatives as well as the Port of Port Angeles commission, died Feb. 24 in Leavenworth, Kan., said his daughter, Gwyneth Hawk.
He and his wife, Haroldine, moved to Leavenworth in 2009 to be cared for by their daughter.
Andy Nisbet, a retired Army colonel, was born Sept. 10, 1921, in Oakland, Calif., the son of Andrew and Edith Nisbet, and grew up in the San Francisco area and in California’s Sierra Nevada.
As a teenager, he worked on a cattle ranch and in the gold fields with his father, who was a mining engineer.
He attended Stanford University and the University of Georgia, and received a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York City.
In 1945, he met Haroldine Hart while visiting a submarine on Navy Day in Seattle, and they married in 1947, Haroldine said.
Nisbet had joined the Army as a private in 1942.
He served for 33 years — from Okinawa and China in World War II through the Vietnam War — and retired in 1975 as a colonel.
The Nisbets moved to Sequim in 1976.
As a Republican, he was a state representative from the 24th District in 1978-1982.
“He was prouder of the things he didn’t allow to be passed than what he passed,” Haroldine Nisbet said Monday.
Nisbet fought against raising taxes and believed in term limits for legislators, she said.
After his terms in Olympia, Nisbet was an elected Port of Port Angeles commissioner for 12 years, from 1983 through 1995.
Also during his time in the Dungeness Valley, Nisbet was a Clallam County United Way chairman, past president of the Sequim Rotary Club and the Dungeness Community Club, and a founder of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and the now-defunct Sequim Zucchini Festival.
Andrew and Haroldine were married for 65 years and had four children, daughter Gwyneth Hawk and sons Andrew Nisbet of Portland, Ore., and Kevin Nisbet of Fripp Island, S.C.
He was preceded in death by his son, Phillp Clark Nisbet.
Nisbet also is survived by nine grandchildren, Jennifer Davis, Brooke Plemmons, Andrew J. Nisbet, Jonathan Z. Nisbet, Kathleen Nisbet, Abigail Nisbet, Nathanialcq Nisbet, Aaron Nisbet and Benjamin Nisbet, and six great-grandchildren, Hayden, Abigail and Grace Davis and Julia, Elora and Pierce Plemmons.
A memorial service will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 209 N. Seventh St., in Leavenworth.
Memorial contributions are asked to be sent to Rotary Foundation, in care of Leavenworth Rotary Club, P.O. Box 605, Leavenworth, KS 66048.
Nisbet will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Condolences can be sent to www.davisfuneralchapelinc.com.
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
