Years ago a school-aged Jeff Tozzer noticed one of his classmates had clothes very similar to his. In fact, they were his clothes.
As it turns out, his mother decided to donate some of her son’s apparel to a less fortunate youth.
“He needed them more,” Jeff Tozzer said Saturday to friends and family, gathered to celebrate the life of his mother Judy Tozzer.
“That’s how she taught our family about giving.”
Dozens of community members shared stories, snacks and more at the dedication of the Judith McInnes Tozzer Art Gallery on June 29, the first official event in the Sequim Museum & Arts’s new, not-quite-open facility on North Sequim Avenue.
“She believed this community had helped her,” Jeff Tozzer said. “Dad joked she would have given to the Kennedys.”
A fifth generation Sequim native, Judith McInnes Tozzer died on July 25, 2018, in Port Angeles, leaving behind a legacy of advocating for needy children throughout the Sequim area as well as numerous civic projects.
She served as a Sequim School Board director starting in 1988 and was part of the board that promoted the successful bond vote to construct Greywolf Elementary School.
Tozzer also volunteered with Guardian Ad Litem, a program that sought to give voice to every child in the Clallam the legal system. She sought more education later in life and at age 50 she earned a bachelor of arts degree, then was hired to supervise the Guardian Ad Litem program. She managed 45 volunteers and oversaw the needs of hundreds of area youths. At the time of her retirement, Clallam County as the only jurisdiction in the state that saw every child in Child Protective Services had an advocate.
Tozzer was active with the Sequim Alumni Association and planned several reunions, including the first Sequim all-school reunion.
“She was in on the beginning of everything: the (Sequim pioneer family histories) books, the museum, pioneer dinners … she never stopped performing for her community,” Judy Reandeau Stipe, executive director of Sequim Museum & Arts said Saturday.
“She was in love with her family and that branched out to the community.”
Several items from Tozzer’s personal art collection line the walls of a portion of the new museum — the majority of them scenes of her family’s homestead in Dungeness.
“She didn’t paint herself, but she supported local artists,” Stipe said.
Tozzer (then McInnes) married Sequim local Larrie “Red” Tozzer in 1966 and, in 1975 moved to a 20-acre cattle farm ion Atterberry Road. She and Red later divorced but remained close friends and business partners, family members note.
In 1993, Tozzer renovated her family farmhouse on Jamestown Road and moved there.
In 2014, soon after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Tozzer wrote a note to friends and family. She wrote, “Everybody has something. My ‘something’ has provided me the opportunity to get things in order and I am thankful for that.”
Tozzer also recorded an interview for the museum that family members shared Saturday (you can see the interview online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RYTnhkp1FE).
Always seeking to make things a bit better, family members note Tozzer used to pick up garbage in her neighborhood when she walked a 3.6-mile loop in the Jamestown neighborhood — a practice she kept for 10 years.
“We should use her as an example of what we should do for our community,” she said.
Tozzer was is survived by Larrie Tozzer, children Jana Grasser (Steven Grasser) of Sequim and Jeff Tozzer (Doug Miner) of Seattle, and grandchildren Alisha and Joe Grasser, both of Sequim.
