Donald Niven Wheeler, age 89, died Nov. 8 in Seattle.
He was born Oct. 23, 1913 in White Bluffs, Wash., the fifth child of Francis Marion Wheeler, a stonemason and orchardist, and Jeanie Shaw Wheeler, a teacher.
He attended White Bluffs and Woodland high schools and graduated from Queen Anne High School in Seattle.
He enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Ore. — to which he traveled his first year by boat over the Columbia River rapids.
After graduating from Reed, he attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. There, he rowed for the crew team, received a First on his exams and was granted a third year at the University of Paris.
In Paris, he worked for the International Brigades Office and helped returning vets on their way back home from Spain.
Upon returning to the United States, he married Mary Lukes Vause, the widow of his best friend at Reed, Clare Vause.
Following a year of teaching at Yale University, he spent almost a decade in government in Washington, D.C., including five years as chief economist in the Office of Strategic Services.
In 1947 the family moved to Sequim, where they bought a dairy farm. They ran the dairy until 1965 when he accepted a teaching position at Franconia College in New Hampshire.
In 1968, the family went back to Oxford. Assisted by his wife, he researched the scale of agricultural enterprises under a socialist economy, for which he received his D. Phil in 1975.
In 1970 he was hired by Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada to teach economics. He retired in 1980 with the rank of Professor Emeritus and lived with his wife on Bainbridge Island,
The couple continued to lead an active life, which included political work and travel.
He was known for some amazing adventures, including ferrying logs and timber through the Priest Rapids 13 times and crossing the country several times by hitching rides on freight trains.
He played football in high school and college, and was a lifelong skater and cross-country skier.
He was an amateur mechanic and maintained his own vehicle, a Chevy II which he bought new in 1965 and was still running in 2002 — with more than 400,000 miles on the odometer — when it was bequeathed to his great nephew, a mechanic on Bainbridge Island.
He wrote almost every day: major papers on Poland, Afghanistan, Cuba and Mexico, in addition to commentaries and letters to family, friends and political representatives. His papers will be archived at the University of Washington.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 54 years, Mary, and his son, Nathaniel Robinson Wheeler. He is survived by his sons Stephen Vause and Timothy Wheeler; his daughters Susan Wheeler and Marion Wheeler Burns; his sisters Marian Wheeler Coleman and Helen Wheeler Hastay; 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A gathering to celebrate his life will be held 1:30 p.m. Dec. 28 at Seabold Community Hall.
Remembrances may be made to People’s Weekly World or any of the vast number of organizations his family supported.
