PORT TOWNSEND — Dana Roberts was remembered Saturday as a community-minded individual who lived large, thought outside the box and embraced life with a zeal that left a lasting impression on the many who knew and loved him.

Mr. Roberts, who died Nov. 13 at the age of 74 after suffering from cardiac arrest a week earlier, was honored in a variety of stories and tributes to his memory during a celebration of his life that drew more than 300 people, who crowded into the Erickson Room at Jefferson County Fairgrounds.

His imprint in local history includes seven years as an elected Jefferson County Public Utility District commissioner and his active volunteer work for several organizations, including Wild Olympic Salmon, Water Resource Inventory Area 17 and the Jefferson County Conservation District.

He was a proponent of salmon protection, managing water and the county PUD having electrical power authority.

Talkative, joyful

On the lighter side, many recalled with laughter his penchant for talking — a lot — and his joy in his wife, good beer, gardening, antique autos, pie, Port Townsend skyscapes, attributing unidentified tokens and collecting rare coins.

He was a firm believer in re-use and recycling, to the point he had trouble getting rid of things, his friends said.

“Dana would be honored. He would be humbled, and he would be out there talking to each and every one of you,” said his widow, Carol Anne Modena, inciting loud laughter from an audience full of friends who remembered long conversations.

Wayne King, joked that, as PUD chairman, he brought an egg timer to the meetings to limit Roberts’ discussions — with or without citizens present.

“Dana was the only person I knew who could run out a digital answering machine,” King quipped, to much laughter.

Al Latham, Conservation District director, who first met Mr. Roberts while volunteering for Wild Olympic Salmon, joked that Mr. Roberts’ short comments were “based on geologic time.”

Modena said many wondered about her husband’s sudden death because he seemed so healthy. He was a vegetarian who ran more than 12,000 miles in the past 20 years.

“He lived life at full-tilt until the end,” she said, recalling one of his special sayings:

“It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.”

Actions matched beliefs

She also remembered her husband as a kind and giving man “who tried to make his actions match his beliefs more than anyone I’ve known.”

Modena said they met 30 years ago at a contra dance in Albany, N.Y.

She fell in love with him as they walked home from a dance one night while he sang all 26 verses of “The Logger Who Stirred His Coffee With His Thumb.”

She smiled as she told the story of Mr. Roberts, an avid composter, who would place food scraps such as citrus wedges not eaten at a restaurants in his socks to later take out and compost.

Once, she recalled, she found a shriveled lemon wedge in one of his socks while doing his laundry.

Many who worked with Mr. Roberts in water management circles wore red bandanas around their necks, a trademark piece of apparel for Mr. Roberts.

Born in Seattle on the Fourth of July, 1935, he attended Seattle schools, including University Heights Elementary where he became first lieutenant for the safety patrol boys.

He put himself through the University of Washington, taking 11 years to finish, and ending up with far more credits than he needed for his bachelor’s degree in English literature and his master’s degree in urban planning.

He served in the Washington Air National Guard for six years, leaving as a staff sergeant.

He worked in public agency planning jobs in Seattle, Pennsylvania and New York state.

Mr. Roberts was recruited to a job with the New York State Public Service Commission, spending 22 years overseeing environmental compliance in the construction of major gas and electric transmission lines.

Childhood friends, who remembered him as Danny and Dan before he became Dana, came from as far away as the East Coast and Alaska to share their memories of him.

They remembered him as a child and later a man of many euphemisms and a high level of energy and enthusiasm.

That spilled over into his adult life.

He was seen as a guide, a mentor and a good friend.

Steadfast volunteer

Latham said that Roberts served as a Conservation District tree sale volunteer for nearly 20 years.

“He was always working on the pragmatic issues of salmon and people,” Latham recalled.

“There’s now a big hole in several volunteer organizations,” Latham said, informing the audience that the best thing they could do to honor Mr. Roberts was to go out and volunteer.

King said that, because he and Mr. Roberts shared a passion for classic cars, they “hit it off right from the start.”

He said he first met Mr. Roberts after King spoke several years ago about the prospect of PUD getting into the public electrical power business.

The PUD commissioners, with Mr. Roberts as a big supporter of acquiring public power facilities from Puget Sound Energy, were negotiating with the private company late last year at the time of Mr. Roberts’ death. They have resumed those negotiations.

Jefferson County voters in November 2008 granted power authority to the PUD, paving way for the negotiations.

King said Roberts left the PUD fair booth last summer to buy a pie, one of his big joys in life. He returned with two pies that he said were for himself alone.

When King asked why the second pie, he was informed it was “a backup.”

“He could get a bunch of Republicans and Democrats in the same room, and afterwards they would be drinking beer together,” King recalled.

PUD General Manager Jim Parker read a PUD commissioners-approved resolution honoring Mr. Roberts for many years of service that included his counsel and patience in completion a new water system for Marrowstone Island and a community sewer system for 100-residents on the narrow sand spit in Discovery Bay known as Beckett Point.

Neil Harrington, Jefferson County’s water quality manager, remembered how Mr. Roberts “brightened a room” when he walked in.

“He made the meeting go a lot easier and it made life better,” Harrington said.

He smiled as he remembered often running into Mr. Roberts at the beer aisle at QFC supermarket in Port Townsend after some of the meeting.

“When I go to the QFC beer aisle, I think of Dana and it makes me sad,” Harrington said. “But luckily, I am in the beer aisle where I can buy beer and have one in his honor.”

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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.