David John Grocott

David John Grocott: October 18, 1929 – February 13, 2025

LONGVIEW- David John Grocott passed away on February 13, 2025, in Longview, Washington, at the age of 95. He was a loving husband and father, an educator, captain, forester, singer and punmaker. Dave was the principal at several Longview elementary schools, served as a longtime leader at the Longview Community Church and was a dedicated volunteer in the Longview community. He is survived by his loving wife of 72 years, Mellicent Elaine (Becker) Grocott.

Born in Kelso on October 18, 1929, just in time for the great stock market crash, Dave got to work quickly. He milked the cow at his family’s home on Pine Street in Longview before heading to classes at Columbia Valley Gardens elementary. As a young man, he cut meat at the Kelso Piggly Wiggly, maintained railroads (as a “gandy dancer”) for Weyerhaeuser and ferried guests across Spirit Lake to the Harmony Falls Lodge aboard the M/V Ruby and M/V Tressa.

He spent his professional career as a principal at Longview’s Robert Gray, Mint Valley and Northlake elementary schools, where he pitched kickballs at recess, presided over model rocket launches and introduced kids to outdoor school at Cispus Learning Center. He operated salmon charter boats out of Ilwaco, Washington – originally a “summer job” between school years — for 35 years.

Dave embraced all those jobs, though his pride was in providing for his family. He married his lifelong love, Millie, in 1953. Dave’s parents and Millie’s parents were all present in the area prior to Longview’s founding in 1923, ensuring them excellent seats at 23 Club dinners. Dave and Millie built the home on Sunset Way where they raised children Laura (Floodeen), Beth (Sammons), John and Jeff. Dave dragooned his kids for work parties to sand and paint elderly charter boats, and he regularly roused them out of bed on Saturdays to gather cords of firewood (‘…warms you twice – once when you haul it and once when you burn it’).

Dave graduated from RA Long High School in 1947 and Western Washington State College in Bellingham. He received a Master’s degree from Colorado State College of Education at Greeley and enlisted in US Army, serving as a sergeant in the Korean War.

By then, his lifelong passions were set. Dave took to the water as a six-year-old, rowing his parents’ skiff around Mud Bay in Olympia, eventually trading up to a 50-ton captain’s license and 40-foot charter boat. Walks in the woods with his father-in-law, Andrew Becker, nurtured a lifelong love of forestry. A half-miler in high school and college track, Dave would spend most mornings jogging at the shoulder of Sunset Way, three decades before Nike advised us to “Just Do It.”

After Dave’s retirement from the Longview School District, he loved to travel with Millie — to Hawaii and across the southwest, south and northeastern US; to England, Scandinavia, Russia, Estonia and China; and dropping in on exchange students from Belgium, Germany and New Zealand they had hosted in their home. Dave and Millie enjoyed driving up the Alcan highway to remote Alaska; Dave took three more trips to Alaska via 30-foot fishing boats that he helped son John pilot to Cordova via the Inside Passage and Gulf of Alaska. Dave took great joy in recounting the latest doings and wanderings of his

children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Another favorite activity: running into former students, anywhere and everywhere around Longview.

Dave served his church and community. He led Boy Scouts of Longview’s Troop 514 and was a founding member of Longview’s Morning Rotary Club. He was for decades a fixture at the Longview Community Church – a live-in custodian in the 1950s, a deacon and a director, and a congregant of deepening faith. He sang baritone in the church’s Temple Singers choir for more than 60 years and performed in 100 of the church’s holiday performances of Handel’s Messiah – missing just one concert to stay home to battle a flue fire in the wood stove.

He was especially fond of a successful sales pitch he once made. In 1965, Longview Community Church members Francis and Nellie Clark donated 80 acres of forest near Silver Lake. A few years later, church leaders decided to sell the property to raise a lofty amount – tens of thousands of dollars, as Dave later recalled. Dave asked the church board to take a longer view: Over the coming decades, with proper management, the timber on the land would pay out multiples of that, again and again, he said. He ultimately swayed the board, and in the bargain he secured himself another volunteer job — 50 years of clearing windfall trees, maintaining trails and helping to manage timber harvests that have helped sustain the church to this day. Although Dave received honors here and there over the years, none meant more to him than when church members gathered in September 2022 for celebratory cupcakes and apple juice, served from a folding table in the clearing of his beloved church tree farm.

Dave is preceded in death by his parents, John Henry Grocott and Madeline Grace (Archer) Grocott, and by his siblings Dawn James and Betty Wilson, and his beloved daughter, Laura. He is survived by Millie; his sister, Sandra Kure Shaw; children Beth (Milton), John (Cheri) and Jeff (Barbara); son-in-law Eric Floodeen; and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Finally, as those who knew Dave can attest, getting him out the door, off the boat or away from church social hour was a waiting game: He always had just one more task to complete, or one more person to catch, or one more stranger to meet who might just know a person he knew or teach him a thing he didn’t. There was always more to do, but after almost a century, he got it done. A celebration of life will be forthcoming. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests supporting Longview Community Church’s scholarships for Christian ministries students, as Dave did.