William J. Erickson, 85, of Tacoma, Washington, passed away on April 1, 2014, in Bellevue. He was the loving husband of the late Doris Bremner Erickson and devoted father of Kathryn Jarvis and husband Albie of Bedford, Massachusetts; Kristine Erickson of Seattle; David Erickson and wife Victoria of Lancaster, California; Elaine Erickson and partner Carla Galloway of Los Altos, California; and Bruce Erickson and wife Mary of Seattle. He is also survived by five beloved grandchildren: Luke and Adrien Jarvis and Nikole, Sarah and Maxwell Erickson.

Bill was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1928, and then moved as a child with his parents to Tacoma. He lived in Tacoma most of his life, but he also spent extended periods in Indiana, Alaska, California, Germany and China. He was a capable and talented structural engineer who worked on numerous large-scale construction projects, including container cranes, dams and modular buildings for the oil fields on the Alaska North Slope. He began as an engineer at Star Iron & Steel in Tacoma and was there for 15 years before he moved his family to southern Indiana where he was chief maintenance engineer at American Synthetic Rubber in Louisville, Kentucky. He returned to Tacoma with his family in the early 1970's and worked once more for Star Iron, then for Ralph M. Parsons, Inc. in both Tacoma and southern California, before moving to Alaska to work for a local construction company in Anchorage.

When Doris, who was an education counselor with the U.S. Army, had the opportunity to work in Germany, Bill was thrilled to move there with her, living first in Bamberg and later near Stuttgart. He enjoyed the country, the people and the language, and took full advantage of the chance to travel around Europe.

Bill always loved adventure. Although he settled into the working life once he married and had children, as a very young man he ran away from high school to be a cowboy in Wyoming, returned and worked for Foss Tug and Barge while he was in school, and then left again immediately before graduation to serve as a deckhand on a tug towing barges to China in 1946. After delivering the barges, he stayed for several months working on a riverboat and helping to train a Chinese crew. After his return to the U.S. he finally graduated from high school, but then went to sea again as an oiler on an old wooden ship sailing to the Aleutians in Alaska.

Back in Tacoma he enrolled at what was then the College of Puget Sound (CPS), where he met his beloved wife, Doris, to whom he was married for more than 55 years, until her death in 2006. He also made many life-long friends at CPS. He did not complete college at the time, but he eventually returned after his children were grown and graduated with a degree in business administration from what had by then become the University of Puget Sound.

Bill was an excellent carpenter and electrician who could build or fix just about anything. He also enjoyed gardening and working outdoors. He liked camping, hiking and canoeing in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky during the time the family lived in Indiana, but he especially loved Western Washington, where he went backpacking, hiking and birding with Doris, who was an avid birder, throughout the Cascades and the Olympics. Bill was a self-taught student who studied science, mathematics, history and German throughout his life, and he was an enthusiastic fan of opera, ballet and classical music.

Since being stricken with illness in 2010, Bill had been a resident of Mission Healthcare in Bellevue, and he was deeply grateful to the dedicated staff there for the attentive and wonderful care he received.

He was a devoted husband and a proud and loving father and grandfather who will be deeply missed by his bereaved family.