The president of the Lummi Island Community Association (LICA) board of directors, Louis Green—who preferred Lou among family and friends—died the end of January at age 71 in PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, Bellingham. At the outset of his 5th year on the board he had just been reelected by the team for his 4th year as leader of the pack.
Our condolences to his wife, Christine; their daughter and son-in-law, Dominique and Chris Toomey; twin grandchildren Abigail and Madeline who are about to turn 3, and Lou’s sister, Honey Day.
Lou originally came from New Jersey, born in Jersey City and graduating from North Bergen High School. Lou then earned a degree from Brandeis University in Boston, followed by graduate work and a law degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
His career developed in civil law, practiced in California many years before he retired with Chris on Lummi Island in 2013. The Greens’ life together the last 22 years, as recounted by Chris for us, has been a true-to-life love story.
Starting with a blind date and two weddings. The first and formal ceremony took place in Los Angeles for his aging mom to attend. The second was held in northern California where they lived — “a huge outdoor party for friends, and the rain came down….”
Before moving here, Lou was the appointed counsel for El Dorado County. County administration buildings lowered their flags to half-mast when they received news of Lou’s death. Previously, he also served as a volunteer attorney for the board of directors of the San Jose County Ballet Company.
Lou and Chris met through an online dating service when each was fully ingrained in career pursuits and seeking merely informal social companionship for dinner, movies and the sort. “I wasn’t interested in dating, per se,” Chris said. “And at first I didn’t think we had anything in common. He wasn’t an archetypical mountain climber” (says she who was…albeit “a beginner.”).
He asked her out to dinner and they met up on a riverboat cruising restaurant. Soon, they discovered many mutual interests. In the arts—particularly ballet and theater (“we were addicted to musicals”). In activities outdoors. In traveling. And in abandoned animals.
Chris is an environmental scientist whose long career has been locked into forestry conservation with the National Park Service (and before meeting Lou, an adjunct professor in ecology at UC-Davis). She was an avid hiker. She said Lou’s version of a hike with her was great walks on Lummi Island.
Their rural life together unfolded in the Coloma-Lotus Valley region of California, northeast of Sacramento—overlooking the Sierras and near the South Fork of the American River where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848 and sparked the historical gold rush.
They enlivened their acreage there with rescued dogs, goats, and horses. “Meeting him changed my life,” Chris said.
When the time came around 8 years ago, Lou “took off his jacket” and went into full retirement. He and Chris started a northward sojourn to seek out where they would settle. From San Francisco they began to drive and explore—up through Oregon, the Portland area, the Olympic Peninsula, and they wound up in Bellingham. The real estate agent showing them around suggested that they look at Lummi Island.
Their response after touring the community: “Yes! Yes!”
Just three years later in 2017, Lou was elected to the LICA board and immediately selected by his peers as vice president. The next year the board tabbed him as president, and he was beginning his 4th year in that role. He was, as one board member put it, “a genteel but resolute leader with a firm grasp on procedural matters drawn from his law experience….”
Lou’s other personal interests included visits to the Far East and to Australia among many travel adventures, working crossword puzzles, and he held an avid, undying love for Stanford football! Chris said they and his Cardinal friends would meet up at home games, and the guys would watch football all day in the fall—either in Palo Alto, or over burgers or hot dogs in front of a TV.
The Greens had taken boating classes, and Lou remodeled a small boat that Chris recalled might have been put in once with help from a friend. Another undertaking together was going through the Emergency Response Team classes.
As 2021 dawned Lou and Chris were just finishing up a painting project on their home and admiring it the day he became ill and they called 9-1-1 for the first responders. Certainly, the island’s volunteer Fire/EMT would be apropos for a memorial donation, though Chris emphasized that the family would appreciate any commemorative gesture to any other organization preferred by the donor. “The outpouring of love and generosity of islanders has been amazing.”
In lieu of an immediate memorial service during the time of the pandemic, Chris said she plans to hold a celebration of his life on the island later this year. “A big smorgasbord party!”
And Chris spoke this wonderful, heartwarming epitaph in summing up Lou and her life with him:
“What a guy. He was such a soft, resolved personality. Very quiet, except during Stanford football games. I awoke one morning recently and felt like it had all been a dream, an absolutely romantic dream. Everything around me seemed new and yet had been very real, but the sensation I had was that I’d lived a magnificent dream that lasted 22 years. And it had a happy ending.
“Our last words to each other were, ‘I love you.’”