“Beaver Jack”-his story

Jack Edward Zaccardo, age 77, passed away February 27 in Bellingham of a heart attack. Jack was born in 1945 to Joseph and Verylee Zaccardo in Port Angeles, Washington. He graduated from Port Angeles High School in 1964 and then attended Everett Junior College.

He received a certificate in Forestry from the Manpower Development Training Program in March 1966 from the college. Jack then started working for the Department of Natural Resources Inventory Section out of Olympia. He later transferred to Ahtanum in Yakima County. During the DNR reorganization in 1972, he was promoted to Beaver local manager in the Olympic Region, Forks.

His first assignment was Beaver local Manager and he bought a home in Beaver. Eventually, he was management forester for the region. Jack retired from DNR in May 1996.

In 1972 he started the Beaver Jack float in the Forks Old Fashioned 4th of July parade, featuring his 1916 Day Elder truck, a hillbilly outhouse on a trailer, and a revolving cast of characters.

In 1976 he married Jennifer and also acquired his dream car, a 1933 Plymouth coupe that summer; it was not ready for the road until 2000. He estimated that he drove 80,000 miles in the Plymouth, always with a smile on his face.

Son Michael was born in 1980.

Jack was a past president of the Forks Chamber of Commerce, past King Lion of the Forks Lions Club, a founding member of the Forks Timber Museum, Forks Volunteer of the Year, Forks Citizen of the Year, 1994 Chairman of the Olympic Logging Conference and a director of the Pacific logging Congress.

Jack was proud to be the fourth generation of his family to work in the timber industry. He lectured with photos, stories and humor using historic negatives from his maternal grandfather Bert Kellogg’s collection to show how logging evolved from the 1880s to the 1930s.

Jack enjoyed woodcarving in the coastal Native American tradition, the Bone Dry annual January campout to Norwegian Memorial on the Olympic Coast, cooking clam chowder, and a good campfire in the fire pit at his personal camp shelter in Beaver.

Mike and Jennifer have continued the campfire tradition since his passing.

Please join us Saturday, May 20, at 1 p.m. at the Roundhouse, Forks, at the intersection of La Push Road and Highway 101 to share memories of Jack.