BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

when he became Pierce County executive in 1981 was Greg Barlow, a former Army Special
Forces chopper pilot who had logged a thousand hours of combat, dodging surface-toair
missiles in Vietnam. Booth loved it when Barlow, a National Guard officer, landed a
helicopter on the seldom-used pad outside the county offices in Tacoma and sent everyone
running to the windows.
Rosellini, his memory still sharp at 99 in 2009, chuckled when asked about The
Helicopter Story. He said he’d heard Booth tell it many times. “It’s a true story,” he said,
“but the fact is we had to kind of push him into running for governor in 1984. He was in
Pierce County and kept saying he didn’t really know many people outside the county.
I knew he’d be a good candidate, so I got two or three people together and set up a
luncheon and we talked him into running.”
One thing Booth never mentioned when he told The Helicopter Story was his
deep-seated motive for wanting to be governor. For as long as he could remember, Brick
had made him feel like a loser. “You’re always trouble,” he’d hissed when the boy was 4. “I
became determined to someday prove my father wrong,” Booth says. Friends say he even
daydreamed about becoming president of the United States.
* * *
Looking classically preppy in a sweater vest and chinos, Booth belonged to the Oval
Club and Sun Dodgers and served as chairman of the Organizations Assembly on the UW
campus. He was leafing through Life magazine one day when he came upon a photo of a
stunning cheerleader from Roosevelt High School in Seattle. He clipped the photo and kept
it in a drawer. A year later, there she was again, this time in the UW Daily as “Frosh Day
Queen.”
Booth had an office in the HUB, the Husky Union
Building. “If you turned right you went into one room,
and if you turned left you went into another. I was walking
through there one day, when I saw her sitting at a desk
typing. And I went, ‘Oh wow!’ You know, love at first sight.
I walked right into the door jamb and cut my eyebrow.
She had to take me to the nurse. I needed a couple of
stitches.” Any red-blooded American boy would have
done a double take. Jean Forstrom, a freshman from
Seattle, was also figuratively a knock-out. A blue-eyed
Scandinavian blonde with a Pepsodent smile and great
figure, she was a future Husky cheerleader and Seafair
princess. “He came up with some story about how he
needed some extra work done and could I help him
with that,” Jean recalls with a laugh. “When he puts his
mind to it, he can be very charming. You kind of know
Frosh Day Queen Jean Forstrom.
1957 Tyee yearbook, pg. 156.
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