by Karen Rogers

Edward “Ted” Leche of San Juan Island is an increasingly rare thing: a native Washingtonian. He was born in Longview, Washington – where his father worked at the time – on January 26, 1926. The family later moved to Seattle where Ted grew up. He also spent some time in his mother’s home town of Vancouver, B.C. where his grandfather was a municipal court judge.

In Seattle, Ted attended school in West Queen Anne where he enjoyed playing baseball. A highlight of Ted’s elementary baseball career was hitting a home run against John Hay Elementary with the bases loaded!

At the age of 17 in 1944, he joined the Navy. His father was a Navy man and Ted did not want to get drafted into the army. His Navy career began by attending the naval communications school at the University of Colorado with the goal of becoming a radio operator. After five months there, he joined the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier (the largest ship in the Navy) where he lived and worked through the war as a wireless telegrapher. Ted’s job mostly entailed copying the schedules that were broadcast. The schedules were in code so the radiomen did not know what they were copying. After the war, Ted worked sending telegrams in Morse code.

The radiomen also produced a daily newspaper for the crew. They stayed up all night copying the press, so the newspaper would be ready the next morning. Ted says, “What the crew really wanted was the sports scores.”

Ted survived a Kamikaze attack on the USS Saratoga in 1945. Saratoga was detached with an escort of three destroyers to join the amphibious forces and carry out night patrols over Iwo Jima and night heckler missions over nearby Chi-Chi Jima. He remembers, “We didn’t have a chance to launch a plane. We didn’t think the Japanese had so many troops. It was a three hour attack. The carrier sustained 300 casualties.”

Recently, while in Tokyo with his son-in-law, Ted noticed the predominance of modern buildings, and remembered watching Tokyo burn during the war.

After the Japanese surrender, Ted was involved in the transporting of 3,712 naval veterans home to the United States under Operation Magic Carpet. By the end of her Magic Carpet service, Saratoga had brought home 29,204 Pacific war veterans, more than any other individual ship. Ted was discharged at the age of 20.

After the war, Ted finished high school to fulfill a promise he made to his mother. He then attended the University of Washington’s Forestry School, and finished at Canterbury College in Indiana with a degree in History. He transferred to Canterbury because of the Pre-Theological courses they offered in classical Greek.

Ted met his wife Mary Jane Major at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City where they were both working. Mary was the head nurse and Ted was the assistant to the hospital chaplain. Ted was ordained as a Deacon in 1954 and an Anglican Priest in 1955. He says he “dragged Mary kicking and screaming to the Pacific Northwest. She still calls herself a New Englander.” They were married in 1955 and had four children – Mary, Jane, Martha, and Edward. They now have six grandchildren.

Ted’s career has taken him all over Western Washington – from Goldbar to Seattle to Pacific County. Ted says he loved working in Pacific County which borders the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River. He says he asked to work in the outlying areas of Washington State, musing, “it must have been a hold over from my Forestry days. I liked working outdoors.”

After Pacific County came jobs at St. Luke’s in Vancouver, St. Paul’s in Pt. Gamble, and the Anglican Church of St. Charles in Poulsbo. Ted and Mary finally ended up on San Juan Island when Ted was hired to be the pastor to the Episcopalians in San Juan County. He traveled by boat to Lopez, Waldron, Shaw, Stuart, and Orcas Island to see parishioners. He retired at the age of 62 in 1988 and built a log house with Mary where they live today. Ted now enjoys painting and sculpting. One of his sculptures can be viewed at the Islands Convalescent Center in Friday Harbor.

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