booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

district “like a breath of fresh air.” In the flesh, however, he seemed tired and “appeared
stiff, frequently biting his lip and rarely moving his eyes” as he addressed a crowd of 125
in the high school library. “He spoke slowly, often taking long pauses before answering
questions, but was frequently funny and always articulate,” Michael Paulson of the Post-
Intelligencer added in an insightful story. He was the first reporter to document the impact
of Parkinson’s on Washington’s formerly effervescent ex-governor, although the patient
was a long way from being ready to reveal his condition. “It may not seem like I have a lot
of energy now,” Booth told the crowd, “but it’s 5 a.m. where I come from.” He always was
“a great masker,” Gittings notes.
Adele Ferguson warned Eatonville that he was all talk and no action. “As a man of
his word,” the Bremerton Sun’s syndicated flamethrower counseled, Booth Gardner “makes
Bill Clinton look like Thomas Jefferson.”
Perhaps spooked by the spotlight, the School Board played it safe. It voted 3-0 to
give the job to a superintendent from Eastern Washington. The crowd that night spilled
into the hallway. The fourth board member, who would have voted for Gardner, couldn’t
even make it to her seat.
Ralph Munro, the former secretary of state, heard him give a speech on world trade
and was shocked. “He was pausing for long moments, slurring his words and he looked
beat. It was awful. I was real scared for him.” Ron Dotzauer, Booth’s former campaign
manager, and Pete Taggares, the potato king who had loaned him his plane for the 1984
governor’s race, rented a hotel room in downtown Seattle to confront him about his health.
* * *
Gardner came home in January of 1997 and settled into a condo on the west side
of Lake Washington. The symptoms of Parkinson’s were accelerating, particularly muscle
rigidity. His handwriting began to look like hieroglyphics; his speech was frequently slurred.
It was like he was seeing himself in slow-motion. Sometimes an arm would jerk or a leg
would kick. His limbs seemed to have a mind of their own. They’d wake him up in the
middle of the night. The man with the exceptional memory was now forgetful. He’d lose
his keys, misplace a book, miss an appointment. His expressive face – the one that could
produce hilarious Johnny Carson double takes, feigned grimaces and boyish grins – was
changing. A good neurologist could spot it as Parkinson’s from across the room.
Burton peninsula on Vashon Island, where the Gardners have had a getaway since
the 1890s, was just a few miles downwind from the notorious Asarco smelter at Ruston.
Booth has no proof, but he’s convinced the smelter is the culprit. Its 562-foot smokestack
spewed a periodic table of environmental toxins into the air, soil and water for nearly a
century. Uncle Edwin Booth – Aunt Lou’s husband – had Parkinson’s, but he grew up in
Seattle with Booth’s mother. About 10 percent of those diagnosed with the disease have
what is called familial Parkinson’s. In those cases, the disease frequently has been rampant
for generations. For the other 90 percent, many researchers say genetics loads the gun
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