Mark L. Gonzalez, angler and amateur racehorse handicapper, dies at 66.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was his birthplace. Westport, Washington, his home. Retired in 2004, he spent his time with family and friends enjoying beach life. He enjoyed razor clam digging in any weather, crabbing in secret spots for succulent Dungeness and Red Rocks. He loved jetty fishing and gave a shout out to Captain Marv as he brought in Red Tails for the fish fry. With persistence he found the occasional salmon in the Westport Marina. Ever the foodie, his winter getaway was Las Vegas with endless restaurants and timeless musicians.

Mark is predeceased by his parents Betty and Jose, his brother Peter, and his niece Elizabeth. Surviving Mark are his wife Marsha, his son Philip, his two sisters, Lee and Tina, their spouse and their children.

Mark opened his home to people who needed extra loving and caring. He didn’t put his life on hold to help them. Helping others was his life. He opened his heart to his brother and his brother’s family and never looked back. Mark helped Marsha care for her parents and her family whenever extra love and help was needed. Always chef extraordinaire he cooked for family friends and neighbors. He had a way of bringing people together with a kindness and generosity that touched our souls.

Mark supported The Wild Fish Conservancy, the International Federation of Fly Fishers, Trout Unlimited, the Westport Jetty cats, was a board member of the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle, a member of the Union County Sportsmen Club in Pennsylvania, a member of the Paddy Mountain Boys Rod and Gun Club in Pennsylvania, and a founding member of the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society of America.

Ever a man of integrity, Mark was depended on as a moral compass. He believed in honesty, a hard day’s work, liberty, freedom and equality, and the responsibility to do the right thing for the larger community. Mark did the right thing when it mattered and when it didn’t.

Mark enjoyed the finer things in life, gardening, the fragrance of oriental and trumpet lilies, bar-b-queuing, his preference ever a dry rub, handicapping racehorses, checking his stable for valuable quality long shots, cream donuts, family dinners, flounder fishing with Jose on the Jersey shore, fine scotch, hence a founding member in the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society of America. At a tender age Mark was lured and held by the charm of a fast-moving stream, the swirl of an eddy, the rushing of a mountain creek, just beyond the boulders, under a branching tree. Some of his fondest recollections were fly fishing with Peter, fly fishing with Philip, fly fishing with friends. Odell Shephard said it best “what can a man desire more when standing knee-deep in a mountain river, rod in hand, with trout on the rise. Here he has earth and air and sky before him, strangely interfused and woven into one element. The brook runs over the bones of the planet and carries the sky on its back, so that it is a complete world, and one who gazes into this crystal long and steadily will find not food and drink only but work and play, patience and excitement, knowledge and wisdom, fact and dream.”

Mark passed away on May 21, 2019, with Dinah, Dylan and the Neville Brothers in the background, caressed softly by his wife Marsha, supported compassionately by his friend Leslie. A crow waited on a branch just outside his bedroom window. He was cremated with his fishing rod, the Belmont stakes line up, Rendezvous BBQ sauce, a shot of good scotch, his body wrapped in a quilt of love with pictures of his family.

A service will be held at Abington Quaker Cemetery in the spring of 2020. Family and friends will be notified.

Cremation arrangements are entrusted to Twibell’s Fern Hill Funeral Home in Aberdeen, Washington.