Some people are big in their own minds, reveling in titles and attention.

Bill Kush was the opposite: a big man, large-hearted with friends and family, but allergic to self-importance. He just went about building partnerships that would get good things done.

Kush, 71, died July 12 at Jefferson Healthcare hospital in Port Townsend, surrounded by family. He had waged a six-month battle against cancer that he had first beaten back 18 years ago, but that had reappeared late last year.

Kush was a central figure in the community of progressives, artists, urban refugees and hippies who came to the then marginal and cheap town of Port Townsend in the 1970s and 1980s.

Like many of them, he landed at the Town Tavern. After helping launch the collective enterprise that became the Salal Café, he turned his attention to youth recreation and enrichment, in which he worked for 15 years for thousands of boys and girls through city and YMCA programs.

He became a builder, a caregiver, a volunteer on behalf of schools and other causes.

Throughout his community work, however, providing love and support for his family remained his most cherished task. That may have been surprising, given that he had no role model as a father.

Born March 19, 1946 in west-central Chicago to Emily and William Kush, his namesake father was gone from the family picture by the time Bill was 5 years old. His mother, who never went to high school, provided for Bill and his younger sister, Frances, by working in a gun parts factory. He recalled a one-bedroom apartment, the single bed shared by his mother and sister while he slept on the sofa. The bathroom, down the tenement hall, offered no shower or bathtub.

Food was scarce. His daughters later heard about “ketchup soup.”

SAVED BY BASKETBALL

While Bill’s friends got into trouble on the streets, he instead found his way to the gym, where he took up basketball. That made the difference for him. He would later say, “Basketball saved my life.” He also said he did not expect to live past 30, counting every subsequent day an unexpected blessing.

He would become a 6-foot-4 post, playing for Tuley High School and, a few years after his 1965 graduation, at Northern Illinois University, where he took a degree in physical education in 1971. There, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, making lifelong pals, especially his great friend Jim Muellner.

Full-bearded and ready for the road, Bill headed out on a series of motorcycles to a series of places – some still unknown to the family.

There are Bill Kush stories from Sanibel Island, Florida; from Tucson, Arizona, where he briefly taught physical education; from Chicago, where he drove a cab in the early 1970s; from Elk, California, a coastal town where he helped raise rabbits, pigs and goats for a couple of years. “It was a major hippie situation,” noted his wife, Stephanie.

PT CHAPTER

Then there was the Port Townsend chapter, which started in 1980 and ended last week, 37 years later.

On a motorcycle, he came north from California to Seattle. In a Pioneer Square bar, while his motorcycle was being stolen on the nighttime street, a woman he met made a quick assessment and told him, “You’ve got to go to Port Townsend.” He got a ride, and was soon living in the Town Tavern (the N.D. Hill Building, Water and Quincy streets), and tending bar both at the Town and Tami’s Tavern.

He took on other part-time jobs, dove into the counterculture lifestream of Port Townsend and grew up with it.

Besides getting involved in various businesses, Bill was among the “hippie” element’s best athletes in basketball. Years of intense city league games followed, Bill playing center in his relentless Chicago style.

Young Stephanie Stephens arrived in Port Townsend from California about six months after Bill, and one day found him waiting on her table at the Blue Parrot Café. With others, including Jerry Gorsline, he soon started a collective that launched its own cafe as part of the Town Tavern, later moving out to Tom and Lainie Johnson’s building across Water Street, where it become the Salal Café.

The Salal, also a collective, was known for its fresh orange juice, healthy food worth the wait, and as a social center. One large round table, Table 6, became the gathering place of many characters, with Bill as the amiable hub of the wheel.

Stephanie also came to work at the Salal. On Feb. 28, 1983, they were married. Bill built the family a house near Cape George.

Babies came quickly, all girls, and today, all tall and beautiful. Mila was born on June 7, 1984; Lucia on Sept. 29, 1987, and Tessa on Jan. 5, 1990. The family moved to its current home on Blaine Street.

IMPORTANCE OF PARENTHOOD

Being a great dad was all important to Bill Kush, and he was. His daughters said he always supported and encouraged them. Tessa, the athlete of the family, noted that he went everywhere with her. Stephanie said he would become so vocal at games that none of his family or friends would sit with him.

One of Bill’s special treats was helping Mila (now Mila Darling of Seattle) with her now 2-year-old son, also named William. Bill would babysit a couple of days per week – “completely unsupervised” – while Mila worked. For Bill, it was the highlight of his week.

Kush also loved his community, and engaged with it in many ways beyond the Salal, which he left in the late 1980s. He coached middle school basketball, and was a referee and baseball umpire for many years. He joined QED Builders with Duke Rhoades and Carlos Quintana. He got involved in Rotary. He helped pass school levies, chairing one successful campaign, and also helped school board candidates whom he admired, like Monica Macguire and Jennifer James-Wilson. He volunteered with United Good Neighbors. He became a nursing assistant and a caretaker for severely disabled adults. Along with a dozen other Blaine Street residents, he hosted gigantic community Halloween parties along the block.

DRIVING FORCE

Perhaps his deepest community impact came from the 15 years he spent as the driving force behind the creation and operation of recreation and enrichment programs for Port Townsend’s youth.

First, he was manager of the City of Port Townsend’s new Recreation Department, a job he obtained in 1995 – he was the only applicant. Then, in 2002, the city decided to outsource the recreation program to the Jefferson County Family YMCA, and Kush was hired by the new board as its director, serving until 2010.

On a shoestring budget enhanced by his personal fundraising, he threw himself full-bodied into the task of building programs to make sure kids here had healthy things to do with adult supervision.

Wrote the Leader in mid-2010:

“Through his community connections, goodwill and stubborn pursuit, quality adult volunteers rarely said no. They were linked with dozens of kids to teach them basketball, tennis, fencing, face painting, volleyball.… Kush put them together and got them in motion. Having no facilities of his own, he strung together everything available – school gyms, the Recreation Center, tennis courts and outdoor fields all over the place, every day and evening, and many weekends.”

He personally launched the town’s summer enrichment program for kids, gathering up partners left and right. He was always engaged and in the thick of it. Even after a long day, he left his dinner table in a heartbeat when a call came in asking that he open a gym or a room for kids. He brought balls or other equipment. If a volunteer was missing, he’d do the coaching or supervision himself.

FROM CHALLENGES

Part of his motivation, said his family, can be traced to his childhood and the struggles of his lone mother. Kush was always aware of the challenges faced by single mothers, and he would do what he could to make their way easier, or to enrich the lives of their kids.

Further, he kept an eye out for other women in his neighborhood, checking in from time to time to make sure they knew that their homes were on his walking route. One Port Townsend neighbor, struggling to put Kush’s role into words, finally hit upon one that fit: He was a sentinel. He made them feel safer. He was a friendly, supportive presence, but if the time came that intervention was needed, you could count on Bill.

Kush’s central role in helping kids to play and learn lasted until the local YMCA was absorbed by the larger Clallam County YMCA, an arrangement that worked at first, but then fell apart when the Clallam YMCA had new leadership. The new director started imposing restrictions on Kush’s employees and programs. Then, according to Kush at the time, the new leadership moved to obtain control over this county’s reserve fund to help Clallam’s cash-strapped operations.

As a matter of principle, Kush fought back and spoke out. The two quickly parted ways, and Port Townsend’s golden age of youth recreation was over.

Kush’s firmness over principles was no different from his firm support of any friend in need. He was especially close to a group of guys of like age and interest – Andy Palmer, Peter Badame, Duke Rhoades, and hoops athletes like John Baker, Larry Heater and T.J. Durner.

GRATITUDE

The family wanted to pass on its deep thanks to the staff at Jefferson Healthcare and especially a nurse named Hope, who eased Bill’s way in his final days.

Survivors include his mother, Emily Kush, and his sister, Frances Schaaf of Schererville, Indiana, as well as wife Stephanie Stephens of Port Townsend; daughters Mila Darling (Kenny) and grandson William Shaw Darling, of Seattle; Lucia Kush (Andrew Sneed) of Olympia, who is immediately expecting a son; and Tessa Kush of Boston, Massachusetts.

A memorial service is being planned for the future.

(Scott Wilson is the former owner and editor of the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.)