Vashon, Washington - People of Note

People of Note

Vashon Island has been home to many notable individuals:

  • Gene Amondson, Prohibition Party presidential candidate
  • Gene "Bean" Baxter, co-host of KROQ's Kevin and Bean radio morning show.
  • Steve Berlin, of the Grammy Award winning band Los Lobos.
  • Alex Borstein, actress noted especially for her work on Fox's MAD TV and as the voice of Family Guy's Lois Griffin.
  • Berkeley Breathed, author of the political satire comic strip Bloom County, resided on Vashon for some time. He wrote a children's book based on a bicycle in a tree. The real-life tree, growing around a bicycle, can be seen on the island.
  • Michael Chabon, writer and 2001 Pulitzer winner.
  • Donald Cole (painter), abstract expressionist painter.
  • Karen Cushman, young adult fiction author.
  • Booth Gardner, former Washington state governor.
  • Rob Hotchkiss, founding member of Train.
  • Eyvind Kang, modern composer.
  • Betty MacDonald once lived on Vashon and used the island as the setting of her book Onions in the Stew.
  • Zach Mann, reality TV star from MTV's The Real World
  • Danny O'Keefe, singer-songwriter.
  • Basil Poledouris, film composer, spent the last four years of his life on Vashon Island.
  • Austin Post, aerial photographer and glaciologist.
  • John Ratzenberger, who played Clifford C. Clavin, Jr. on the television show Cheers, and also voiced a character in Toy Story, once lived on and still owns land on connected Maury Island. He also helped to start a school on the island.
  • Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger and the author of "Savage Love," a syndicated sex advice column, formerly lived on Vashon Island with his partner and adopted son. By his own account, he moved from Vashon because he was unsure that the local public schools would welcome the adopted son of gay partners.
  • Paul Seibert, author and principal of EHS-Design.
  • Tom Stewart (1945–2010), founder/chairman of Misty Isle Farms and Food Services of America, once lived on the island and moved to Arizona in 2006. Stewart, a prominent regional Republican leader, rekindled the Quartermaster Harbor fireworks show in 1991 after it was discontinued as Vashon Island's traditional local Independence Day celebration in 1989. In 1998, Stewart pled guilty to misdemeanor federal and local election-finance money laundering charges. He had to pay a $5 million fine and serve two months under house arrest, with work release, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.
  • J. Tillman, singer-songwriter, drummer with the Fleet Foxes.
  • Edith Derby Williams, historian, granddaughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt, lived on Vashon Island from 1949 until her death in 2008.
  • Susan Nattrass, a former world champion shooter from Canada.
  • Teppei Teranishi, guitarist for the post-hardcore band Thrice.
  • Frank Peretti, Christian fiction writer, grew up on Vashon Island
  • Matt Alber, singer-songwriter.

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