By Michael Dashiell
Olympic Peninsula News Group
SEQUIM — A longtime member of the then-Sequim Senior Center, Leo Shipley made it a habit to stop by Michael Smith’s office and share a few words with the executive director.
Invariably, he’d give Smith some money for center programs.
“Just brief visits. We got to talking more and more,” Smith recalled. “Sometimes he would donate a band of 10 $100 bills — a thousand, two thousand bucks on my desk — and say, ‘Thought you could use this.’ I’d say, ‘Yes we can.’ ”
Before he died, Shipley donated to the senior center about $2.2 million, Smith estimated.
“I think he, like a lot of people, wanted to leave a legacy,” Smith said. “He believed in what the senior center was doing.”
Smith and other friends and family are mourning the loss of Shipley, who died Jan. 21 at age 90 at Olympic Medical Center after battling a long illness.
They are hosting a celebration of his life and legacy at the building that now bears his name — Shipley Center at 921 E. Hammond St. in Sequim — at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
A “Life Member” at the senior center, R. Leo Shipley was active in cribbage and dominoes clubs and, up to about five months ago, at the center three days per week for morning exercise class.
But Shipley spent most of his professional life in education and real estate, making his mark on the Sequim-Dungeness Valley after moving here from the Midwest in the late 1970s.
He became a developer of mobile home parks, building a large one in Lawton, Okla., before moving to Washington and purchasing Baywood Village. He became an active member of the Sequim Noon Rotary Club. He also marketed a computerized “Realty Listing Service” to Realtors in the area in the early 1980s, a precursor of today’s Multiple Listing Service.
Smith, who met Shipley in 2005 when he joined the Sequim Senior Center staff, said Shipley believed in the need for a new center. In 2010, Shipley donated the money for a 4.5-acre site at the east end of town that was once earmarked for a rest stop. State officials had declared the land surplus.
Others had donated, Smith said, but he insisted on paying the whole amount: $218,542.
“The deal was, we were going to have to raise that money in eight weeks or finance it at 8.5 percent,” Smith recalled. “In six weeks, we raised about $80,000, mostly from members.
“I didn’t expect him to donate all of it. He asked, ‘How much did you bid for the land?’ I had calculated the difference. I thought maybe he would give a good chunk toward that. He pulled the check out of his shirt pocket.”
With Shipley insisting they use the previously donated funds for other things, center staff bought adjacent land that now stands at 5.8 acres.
In 2013, Shipley gave the senior center his Baywood Village, a 51-space mobile home park. When he bought Baywood Village in 1973, Smith said, there were 30 spaces. He expanded the park to 51 spaces and managed it for 40 years from his home, surrounded by many large trees and a fruit orchard he planted.
That’s where Shipley lived until the last few months of his life, Smith said.
The Bill and Esther Littlejohn Humanitarian Award was presented to R. Leo Shipley in 2014 recognition of the millions he has donated to the Sequim Senior Activity Center, which changed its name to the Shipley Senior Center in his honor.
Shipley was born in Chickasha, Okla., on Nov. 3, 1926. His father started several businesses in town, including a garbage service for the hospital and others. He had three sisters and belonged to the Future Farmers of America, raising award-winning swine.
He also was a star athlete in high school, captain of the football team — and an All-State High School Football team — and president of the Athletic Club and Pep Club.
A fall 1944 Chickasha newspaper article noted: “[Shipley] is the type of player who with an hour’s practice can pick up the fundamentals of any place on the eleven … hard blocking and tackling gridster … handled the position like a veteran … speedy … Backs on opposing teams will verify that when they were hit by Shipley, they knew it. Despite weighing only 160 pounds, Shipley was a veritable stonewall and a powerhouse on defense … a standout in every game, Shipley is one of those fellows who really loves to play football.”
In 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Showing acumen for both marksmanship and speedy typing, he was assigned to serve as a clerk-typist during the last year of World War II, receiving the Victory Ribbon and an honorable discharge.
After graduating from Oklahoma’s Central State College in 1949 with an education degree, he went on to teach biology, math and physical education at several schools in Oklahoma and New Mexico. He also coached junior high basketball and football teams.
He moved to Sequim in 1973 — two years after the Sequim Senior Center opened — and worked as a Realtor through the 1980s.
One real estate project that never came to fruition turned out to be a big blessing for public broadcasting: He donated land to KCTS Channel 9. KCTS then sold the land where Jennie’s Meadows now exists, generating a $1 million windfall.
Late in life, Shipley developed a passion for the senior center — his bequeaths earned naming rights to the current building and his 2013 donation of the 9-acre Baywood Village with its $1.7 million value earned him the Sequim-Dungeness Valley’s Bill and Esther Littlejohn Humanitarian Award — but he also was quite generous to people at Baywood Village, where he worked as manager for more than 40 years, Smith said.
“He helped people in the park buy a car or finance their unit,” Smith said.
Smith wrote of Shipley in the center newsletter, “I was privileged to be Leo’s friend, enjoying regular talks together over the years, and his sense of humor.”
Shipley was preceded in death by his son, Murray (Raymond Leo Shipley Jr.). He is survived by a daughter, Mary Whitehouse of Sequim; two granddaughters (Heather and Bandi); and four grandsons (Todd, Shane, Derek and Geoff).
To RSVP for the celebration of life, call 360-683-6806.
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Michael Dashiell is the editor of the Sequim Gazette of the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which also is composed of other Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum. Reach him at editor@sequimgazette.com.
