Kenneth H. Drummond

Kenneth H. Drummond, 87, of Bainbridge Island, died with grace on July 21, surrounded by family.

Affectionately known to his friends as “Ole Drum,” he was born on Jan. 19, 1922 in Riverside, Calif., to Mary Holland Drummond and Finlay McKay Drummond. The youngest of three boys, he grew up in La Jolla, Calif., where his mother operated the Mira Monte Hotel. He attended Bates College in Maine – where he arrived in a convertible and wearing bright “California” clothes – and was inducted into the U.S. Navy’s V-12 Program there during World War II. He was attached to a fleet in the Pacific, eventually taking command of a landing craft infantry during the Pacific campaigns as a lieutenant commander.

After the war, Ken became interested in oceanography and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona, where he received both a tennis scholarship and a trombone scholarship. He moved on to Texas A&M University for graduate work, becoming an enthusiastic and unapologetic “Aggie” and participating in the establishment of an oceanographic program as well as Project 21, which developed surveillance techniques and technology to locate foreign submarines in the Gulf.

In 1957 he moved to Boston, where he worked for the Smithsonian Institute at the inception of the space race and was sent around the world to arrange a satellite tracking program for the United States. He co-authored a book for young students, “Sky Rangers,” about the quest for space exploration. Ken returned to La Jolla to work for the Scripts Oceanographic Institute before moving with his family to the Washington, D.C. area in 1962, where he worked for Texas Instruments, Teledyne, and Ensco; for a year he was the director of the Marine Resource Centers on the coast of North Carolina before accepting a position with Wetland Resources at Louisiana State University as director of special projects. He retired from LSU in 1987.

He was a world traveler, loved adventure, unusual locales and experiences, and was a long-time member of the Explorers Club and the Circumnavigators Club. From his early youth until the age of 80, Ken was an avid tennis player; he was a ranked player during his college years and for many years he and his family played doubles every Sunday morning.

Ken moved to the Seattle area in 2001 with his wife, Patricia Kenney Drummond, who survives him. He is also survived by his brother, Donald Drummond and his children from his former marriage, daughter Laurie Lynn Drummond of Eugene, Ore.; sons Finlay Bruce Drummond of Tucson, Ariz., and Carter Holland Drummond of Salt Lake City, Utah; stepdaughter Tracy (Christopher) Burgess; and grandchildren Chase Drummond, 12, Cole Drummond, 10 and Jack Burgess, 13.

Services will be private at a future date, followed by burial at sea. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of Seattle, www.leukemia.org. An online guest book is at www.cookfamilyfuneralhome.com.