Obituary of Lowell Lyle Kuehn

Lowell Lyle Kuehn
August 17, 1945 - April 23, 2022
University Place, Washington - Dr. Lowell Lyle "Duke" Kuehn passed peacefully in his sleep at his home in University Place, Washington on April 23, 2022 at the age of 76. Dr. Kuehn was Professor Emeritus at The Evergreen State College.
Duke was born to Lyle and Dorothy Kuehn in Jacksonville, Florida on August 17, 1945 but grew up in Anaheim, California. He received his BA in Sociology from University of Redlands summa cum laude in 1967. He came to the Pacific Northwest for his graduate studies, receiving both his Masters and PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington in 1973.
In 1971 Duke joined the University of California at Riverside as an Associate Sociology professor, the beginning of a teaching career that would last 36 years. In 1975 Duke and his first wife, Mary Katherine Norton Kuehn, and their son Matthew, moved to Olympia, Washington where he joined the faculty of the Evergreen State College. He would go on to teach in a variety of areas, including sociology of organizations, quantitative methods, and, significantly for many governmental figures in Olympia, he was the Director of Evergreen's Masters in Public Administration for several years.
In 1985 Duke married Kathleen Larkin Daly, and their blended families provided Duke two daughters, Alyson and Errin, whom he loved dearly. He went on to have four grandchildren - the great joys of Duke's life over the last two decades.
In the late-1980s Duke began providing management consulting services, providing strategic planning to an assortment of governmental agencies and organizations. Nonetheless, his love for teaching, in particular finding a passion for teaching returning students at Evergreen's Tacoma Campus in the late-1990s, kept his consulting work secondary.
In 2007, after 31 years with Evergreen, Duke retired from fulltime teaching, and began consulting fulltime. He worked with hundreds of businesses, associations and governmental and non-governmental organizations and despite being informally retired over the last few years, remained in demand for consulting projects until his last days.
Duke and Kathleen moved to University Place, Washington in 1997, where he was an avid spectator at many of his children's and grandchildren's plays, sporting events, and school programs, as well as an active and devout member of the Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic parish. Beyond family and a series of Golden Retrievers, Duke had many eclectic interests he pursued with passion and humor over his life. These included (but certainly were not limited to) musical theater, cocktail mixology, naval warfare, golf, travel, Colorado Mesa University women's lacrosse, jazz, reading mystery novels, and, ultimately, even writing his own mystery novels. But ultimately no passion, aside from his family could match his all-consuming, often punishing, love for the Seattle Mariners, whose daily fortunes were fully predictive of Duke's mood every summer evening. He attended countless games, and scored every one by hand, a testament to his belief that any game could present something timeless, worthy of a permanent memorial.
Duke is lovingly survived by his wife Kathleen Larkin-Kuehn, his son Matthew Kuehn and his wife Amanda Kuehn, his daughter Alyson Cummings and her husband Joshua Cummings and his daughter Errin Daly and her partner Khrys Dent, and his grandchildren, Larkin Daly, Ellen Cummings, John Cummings and Kennedy Leonard-Daly. A funeral mass will be held on June 24th, 2022 at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church in Tacoma, Washington with a celebration of a truly unique life taking place June 25th, 2022 at Titlow Lodge in Tacoma, Washington. In lieu of flowers please make donations to either Mariners Care, https://www.mlb.com/mariners/community or to Catholic Community Services of Western Washington https://ccsww.org/donate-ccsww/.