“Difficult to say. I am pretty fortunate,” said Louis “Lou” Messmer of being named the 11th Harborite of the Year by the Aberdeen Museum of History.
The 94-year-old spoke from Channel Point Village in Hoquiam where he moved after close to six decades of living on Bear Gulch Road in Aberdeen.
A career naturalist and botanist, Messmer began teaching at Grays Harbor College when his biology lab was in a vintage World War II surplus barracks. He headed the college’s Life Sciences department for 33 years before he retired from the South Aberdeen campus in 1986. He estimates he taught more than 7,000 students.
He celebrated his birthday June 5 aboard the Lady Washington, sailing the Grays Harbor he loves. “What a year, what a way to spend my birthday,” he said.
Messmer was born in Forsyth, Mont. He grew up in the Finch Farms area of South Aberdeen where his father built their home when they moved to Aberdeen.
A 1937 graduate of J.M. Weatherwax High School, he graduated Grays Harbor College in 1939 and the University of Washington in 1942. He is a member of what’s been called the “greatest generation,” serving in the U.S. Navy aboard “a couple of big carriers out in the Pacific” during World War II. In three and a half years, they were in eight major engagements, he said.
He married Ann Messmer in 1944 in San Francisco while they were both serving in the Navy. She passed away in 2011.
His first job teaching was at the logging camp in Camp Grisdale, a job he described in the bio compiled by his daughter Maryann Welch as “upper grades teacher, principal, bus driver and janitor.”
He earned his masters in botany at the UW and began teaching at Grays Harbor College in 1953 and helped plan the landscaping for the campus in 1958, with help from the Grays Harbor Rhododendron Society.
For 16 years, he continued to teach a course on how to identify native plants of the Pacific Northwest. He led many field trips around Grays Harbor to help identify and protect sensitive ecological habitats. He and fellow instructor John Smith even took people from other countries on natural history tours.
“We gave them a dose of the local economy, history, biology and all of that stuff,” he said.
Messmer has been involved in a number of studies for the UW that inventoried the plants and wildlife of the coast and Grays Harbor. He is particular to the salt marshes.
He calls proposals to transport crude oil through Grays Harbor The primary threat today to the Harbor is the possibility of crude oil transport, he said, adding he is “pretty active” in opposing those efforts.
He is a Fellow of the Washington Native Plant Society and past board member of the Washington State Nature Conservancy. He has been a member of the Noxious Weed Board since 1997. It battles the spread of invasive plant species.
The Messmers raised six children in Bear Gulch, keeping their own cattle, growing vegetables and maintaining hives of honey bees. Their yard included a collection of plants from all over the region as well as some from the countries they traveled to such as New Zealand and South Africa.
Messmer has worked with the Aberdeen Clothing Bank since it was established by wife Ann and others. He has also served on committees and volunteered for St. Mary’s Church.
Many of their six children live nearby: in North River, Auburn, Lilliwaup and Olympia. Two live in Alaska. He has six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
The celebration and dinner to salute Lou Messmer’s lifelong contributions to education and the community is on Saturday, Oct. 11 and begins at 6 p.m. at the museum at 111 E. Third St. Catering is by O’Brien’s. Tickets are $20 per person. Call 360-533-1976 for more information.
I would dearly love to have a chat with Lou Messmer. He was the first teacher in Camp Grisdale, and I was the last, teaching there for three years. I’m the one who locked the doors on that school the last day. I loved that camp, the school, and all the people of Grisdale. I still regard my time there as the best job I ever had. It truly was a privilege to live there.
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