booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

your energies.” He managed to be simultaneously intense “and warm and playful.”
Nick Handy, now Washington State’s director of elections, had a regular tennis
game with Booth when he was with the Department of Natural Resources and Gardner
was governor. “He loved to play tennis and was a very accomplished player,” says Handy,
whose Wenatchee High School team won the state tennis title in 1966. Handy also played
tennis in college, so he knows talent when he sees it. “Booth was mentally very tough and
you always knew when the points really counted that you were going to have to really
fight for it. But he was also always very good natured about the match, win or lose. He
really enjoyed bantering with everyone from the desk clerk to the folks working around the
courts. I think he really liked these little forays into the world of real people where he was
very comfortable. Everybody liked Booth. Although he and I had great matches,” Handy adds,
“they were nothing compared to his matches with a guy named Cipriano Araiza, known as
‘Cip.’ I thought it was great that the governor of the state was slipping away from work to
play tennis with a blue-collar Hispanic truck driver with a heavy accent. Booth was great with
both of my kids, too. They were taking lessons and developing their games. He would always
talk with them. Years later, when I would run into Booth at various events, he would always
ask first about the kids and what they were up to. I loved that he cared about my family.”
* * *
Booth was chosen class president in the eighth grade – his first try for elective
office. He loved it. Merrill maintains that part of Booth’s charisma is temperament
and some is in the stars. A retired college professor, Merrill is also an astrologer. He
says he wasn’t the least bit surprised when Booth had an epiphany while working with
underprivileged kids as a college student. Not only did he have an unhappy childhood,
“he’s a Leo … and (working with kids) is very compatible with his energy. Leos like attention
and they need attention. They can take that attention and turn into positive energy. It’s like
actors talking about their relationships with an audience. When the audience is with them
they do better. Leos are at home on stage. … The feedback is instantaneous. Energy goes
out and immediately finds its mark, and for a Leo, that is heaven. I wasn’t surprised either
that Booth was able to run for governor and make it, even as a relative unknown.”
Joan Blethen wasn’t surprised either. After Millie and Brick divorced, she and
Booth stayed close and remain so a half century later. They never refer to one another as
stepbrother or stepsister. It’s “my sister Joan” and “my brother Booth.”
Norton Clapp endured heartache of his own during Booth’s bumpy years with Brick.
His ex-wife, Mary, who had remarried early in 1945, was killed in an auto accident that July
near Oxnard, Calif., together with their 10-year-old son, Ralph Davis Clapp. Ralph and his
brothers, Matthew, 11, and James, 14, lived with their father and stepmother in Seattle,
while their brother Roger, 5, lived with his mother and stepfather in California. The three
older Clapp boys had been visiting their mother and brother. They were all in the car driven
by Mary, 34, when another motorist swerved across the center line and hit them head on.
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