Gayer Gordon Dominick II

Gayer Gordon Dominick II

Died January 27, 2009

Gayer Dominick entered Yale in 1957 but left for a three-year tour with the Army Security Agency before graduating in 1965.
 
He proposed to Patricia (Patty) Coggeshall on their second date and married her in 1963. After graduation, they moved to Hawaii where he taught high school English and earned his masters’ in American studies at the University of Hawaii. After four years and two children, Tracey and Bayard, the Dominick family moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan Law School. Two years later, with a J.D. and a third child, Wendy, in hand, they moved to Washington State and spent the next 35 years of their lives on the Olympic Peninsula.

Writing for his 25th reunion, Gayer described his life as “wonderful because of those who are sharing it with me.” His days were taken up with “small town living, small town law practice, and small town concerns (school committees, college boards, Big Brothers, etc.)” as well as founding and coaching the Cooper Point Kickers and managing a menagerie of llamas, bison, Herefords, miniature donkeys, wild turkeys, pheasant, quail, goats, sheep and pigs. He practiced law for a living, but his family says “his greatest successes were those that touch people on a personal level” – helping a couple to adopt a child, or encouraging a young man who would never have gone to college to become the first in his family to do so.

After retiring from the practice of law, Gayer and Patty moved to Whitefish, Montana, to be close to some of their grandchildren. They loved every precious moment with their seven grandchildren. Both Gayer and Patty battled cancer in their final years. He passed away on January 27, 2009 at the age of 69, and she followed him two years later.