Mike Griswold passed away at home on December 20, 2023. He was surrounded by loved ones, and hospice care made his last days peaceful.

Mike was born into a Forest Service family in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on January 15, 1932. Faye (Carter) and Gerry Griswold would move the family to North Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, where Mike graduated from high school. He was active in the Boy Scouts, honing outdoor skills in the forests of the Deep South that would serve him well throughout his life.

He attended Iowa State University, where he met the love of his life, Marion, and even gained a degree in forestry. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Army. He was released as a 1st Lieutenant in 1957 and went into the U.S. Forest Service, working in National Forests in Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In the meantime, his family grew to include children Kim, Leslie, and Dean.

In 1965, Mike participated in a yearlong Congressional Fellowship Program, after which, rather than returning to the Forest Service, Mike joined the staff of Oregon Congressman Bob Duncan. A side effect of stafferhood was gaining a deep appreciation for the beauty of the Pacific Northwest that would only grow as Mike joined the Senate Interior Committee with Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson of Washington and as he wrote legislation leading to the establishment of the North Cascades National Park.

He didn’t stop there. After joining the National Park Service, he helped create more new national parks, national monuments, and national historic places, most notably Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan and Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado. Returning to the Forest Service as Director of Recreation and New Areas, Mike supervised the Forest Service portion of the Second Roadless Areas Review and Evaluation (RARE II), a project recommending the creation of new wilderness areas from roadless areas managed by the Forest Service. Ultimately, vast tracts of land were designated as protected wilderness, including the 103,297-acre Henry M. Jackson Wilderness in Washington state and 57 million acres of land in Alaska.

Mike retired at 56 and began to really indulge in lifetime passions of golf, hunting, and fishing, while gaining new hobbies building model railroads and later sailing miniature boats. He was always up to volunteer, serving as President of the Lions Club and President of the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District in southwest Colorado, and Finance Chairman at the Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim, Washington. He loved the church, offering homegrown and home-processed pumpkin puree to the pumpkin pie bakers, muscle to secure church rummage sales, and his voice to the choir.

Mike was challenged in his final years by dementia and the debilitating effects of a stroke, but his courage, creativity, and humor remained with him until the end. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sisters Pat and Peg. He is survived by his wife of seventy years Marion, brother Jack, daughters Kim Gardner and Leslie Bishop, son Dean Griswold, and six grandchildren. All will miss his storytelling, his endless jokes, and the love he gave them.

The family would like to invite those wishing to remember Mike to attend Trinity United Methodist Church on January 14, 2024, where a frugal repast will follow the service. Mike especially enjoyed these fellowship times, always ready with a smile and a story—now we share about him.

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