Keith O Putnam | May 13, 1932 – May 4, 2026

Long-time Vashon resident Keith Putnam passed away peacefully in his own bed on Monday, May 4, in Pacific, Washington just shy of his 94th birthday. It was a sunny spring morning, and he would have been thinking about Opening Day at Quartermaster Yacht Club and spring sailing on the Sound.

Born in Seattle in 1932, Keith was the great grandson of Ira A Putnam, who moved to Seattle from Maine in the 1880s, when Seattle’s population was smaller than Vashon’s today.

Keith’s father, Otis “Put” Putnam, worked for Puget Power and the family moved frequently. Keith attended first grade at Seattle’s TT Minor, second grade at Center on Vashon in a 2-room school with an outhouse, third grade at the old brick Burton Elementary School, fourth and fifth grades at Kirkland Elementary, sixth grade at Seattle’s Latona Elementary, then back to Burton in 1944.

Keith graduated from Vashon High School in 1950, then earned an architectural engineering degree from Washington State College in Pullman. Upon graduation he joined the Army Signal Corps in 1955 as a second lieutenant and was soon shipped to Korea. As the company commander of a pole line construction company, he put his architectural skills to work on improved quarters for his men and infrastructure for the village. Discharged from the Army in 1958, Putnam returned to Vashon and called it home for another five decades.

Not long after returning to Vashon, Keith met the love of his life, Martha Stewart, daughter of Glenn and Alma Stewart of Ellensburg, who owned a summer home at Shawnee. Martha had recently returned from teaching abroad herself. The two met drinking depth charges at the home of the Stewarts’ neighbor, Island barber Don Kellogg. Keith proposed within six weeks, and the two were married from 1963 until Martha’s death in 2007.

Keith was active as an architect until 2023, designing homes and businesses throughout the Northwest. His work on Vashon included more than one hundred homes, four schools for the Vashon School District, the K2 factory complex, the Thriftway complex, Puget Sound Energy’s offices, Quartermaster Yacht Club, Inspiration Point lookout, and more. Keith was still actively consulting on the reuse of the K2 factory until health forced his retirement in 2023. Beyond Vashon, Keith’s work spanned five states including schools, factories, apartments, churches, parks, and even an astronomical observatory.

Like his father before him, Keith was also very active in Vashon life, a founding member of Vashon Golf & Country Club and an early member of the Quartermaster Yacht Club, a founding member of Vashon Rotary, and supported Island organizations including the Community Council, Vashon HouseHold, Vashon Community Care, Burn Lab, and more. As a member of Rotary, Keith hosted foreign exchange students and participated in overseas projects in Ethiopia and Siberia. On the board of Burn Lab, he supported development of factories for efficient solid fuel stoves for developing economies, helping to save the working poor from blindness caused by smoky indoor cooking fires. He was always happy to turn his skills to solving old problems in new ways.

Sailing was a lifelong passion for Keith. Since joining Quartermaster Yacht Club in 1958, he owned at least ten different boats, almost all of them sailboats. He served as Commodore of QYC in 1976 and volunteered countless hours designing and helping to build club facilities. In 2020, recognizing he was no longer agile enough to go forward on the deck of his sailboat, he bought his first and only cruising powerboat, which he worked on constantly until 2023.

Keith eventually decided his Shawnee house took too much maintenance – if he had to work all day, he’d rather be working on a boat. He sold the house and moved to the Thea apartments on the Foss Waterway in Tacoma, where he could get Tacoma Yacht Club moorage right below his apartment window.

When at last health forced him to retire, he moved to an adult family home in Pacific, Washington, where he enjoyed easy access to the Interurban Trail just one block away from dinner with Josh and Koralee, and just down the hill from Adam’s work in Fife.

Keith is survived by his brother. Greg Putnam of Ravensdale, three sons, Adam Putnam of Fox Island, Joshua Putnam of Pacific, Washington, and Stewart Putnam of Vashon, and two grandsons, Morgan Putnam of Pacific and Derek Putnam of Boston, MA.