Ed King, first principal of Wilkes Elementary, passes away

Ed King, the first principal of Captain Charles Wilkes Elementary, passed away Monday, March 19.

He was 92.

King was born in Logan, Kansas on Feb. 19, 1926. He served in the Navy from 1944-1946, and became a school teacher after his military service.

A Bainbridge resident for nearly 70 years, he recalled his early years on the island as a schoolteacher during the last school assembly held at Wilkes before it was torn down and replaced in 2012, and regaled the students with stories about the restroom being on the porch of the old wooden schoolhouse in Winslow, and his early years at Wilkes Elementary.

He was a fifth-grade teacher, “and by virtue of the telephone being in my classroom, I became principal,” he said at the time.

Ed King married Iris Bowden in June 1948 in Bellingham, and Iris also taught in the Bainbridge Island School District after the couple moved to the island. She was the PE teacher at the middle school.

The couple had three children; Carol, Peter and Molly.