When she was still a high school student, Kellie Daniels met U.S. Senator Slade Gorton. It began a 30-year, life-altering relationship that will, like Gorton’s legacy, live on well past his death.

“In 1989 I was a junior at Lake Quinault High School and dad took me to an advisory committee meeting at the Grays Harbor Chamber of Commerce where Slade was meeting with several leaders of the timber industry,” said Daniels.

The daughter of logger Jim Carlson, she was fully aware of the spotted owl controversy promising to gut the local timber industry that her family, and so many others on the Olympic Peninsula, depended on to put food on their tables, clothes on their back, roofs over heads.

“At that time he was the only one willing to represent our side of the story and represent the timber community throughout Washington State,” said Daniels. “I met him and knew at that meeting that one day I was going to work for him one day.”

She continued, “I left that day and remember how all of us were still worried about our livelihoods and our communities, then went on to work hand-in-hand with Slade at the local level for many years.”

Daniels made good on her pledge to work with Gorton. In 1992, while a sophomore at Washington State University, she interned in Gorton’s Spokane office.

“And in my junior year in college I spent a summer as a Congressional intern,” she said. “It was a fabulous experience, we had so much fun.”

Daniels graduated college in 1994, and immediately went to work on the Senator’s 1994 re-election campaign.

“That was a big job for someone 21 years old and just out of college,” said Daniels. “I graduated on Saturday, and on Monday morning I started the job in Bellevue working on his campaign.”

The young woman had a nerve wracking assignment her first day on the job: picking up the man himself from SeaTac Airport.

“I was scared to death he would not know who I am, and I remember being in dad’s SUV, I had to borrow it, I didn’t have a car at the time,” she recalled. “I remember him walking down the street, hoping he’d know who I am, and he said, “Hi Kellie!’”

Gorton jumped into the big SUV – Daniels said her feet barely touched the pedals – and drove him to the ferry dock where Gorton was to walk on and cross to his Whidbey Island home.

“After I dropped him off I pulled over into a parking lot and just started to cry,” said Daniels. “I thought, my goodness, I’m really doing this.”

Daniels worked on that campaign, traveling across the state with Gorton from her first day on the job. Gorton would win that election, besting then Seattle City Councilman Ron Sims with 56% of the vote.

“I was offered a job in Washington D.C. and worked on natural resources, agriculture and timber resources,” said Daniels. “It was a dream job for a kid from Humptulips. I spent the first term with him in D.C. and it was the most incredible experience you could ask for, the thrill of being in the other Washington and working hard to make a difference for Grays Harbor.”

In 1999, Daniels returned to the state to prepare for the 2000 election. She was the state political director for the campaign, overseeing all the grassroots field operations across the entire state.

“During that campaign Slade and I spent so much time together, traveling to every square inch of the state, meeting with constituents,” she said. “It was an extraordinary opportunity and we became extremely close.”

When Daniels got married to her husband, Corey, in 1999, Gorton was there to wish the couple the best. “That was super special,” she said, sharing one of her favorite photos of she and Gorton, both beaming at the camera, she in her wedding dress.

That campaign, against Democrat Maria Cantwell, was hard-fought and the closest Congressional race in state history. In the end, Gorton was defeated by Cantwell by just 2,229 votes.

Gorton had an extremely close relationship with all the members of his staff, said Daniels. His influence, and friendship, did not diminish after his Congressional career came to an end.

“In 2000 after we lost I had the opportunity to – and Slade had a huge impact on this – work for Clyde Ballard and served as a Republican staff member for the redistricting commission in 2001,” she said.

Her time with the redistricting board was exciting, she said, recently married and pregnant with her first son, Cole. It was, for the young family, time to make a move. Daniels looked to Gorton for guidance.

“I talked to Slade at length about how he’d inspired so many of us to be public servants and invest in our communities, and I said Corey and I wanted to move home and get involved in the community of Grays Harbor, and he was thrilled with that decision,” said Daniels. “He encouraged us to start a business, a family, and make a difference. We moved here in 2002 and have been here since.”

In 2003, Daniels started D4 Sports and Apparel in the family laundry room. It outgrew that tiny space, so the operation moved to the barn, and eventually to its location in Cosmopolis. Corey is a manager with Pape Kenworth Northwest.

Down the decades, Gorton stayed in touch with Daniels, and all of his many staff members and supporters.

“One o the neat things with Slade is he stayed in steady contact with so many of us,” said Daniels. “I feel blessed and lucky to have stayed close to Slade. We had such a unique and close bond, all those road trips across the state, and I’m especially close with his daughters.”

In 2001, an all-female group of former Gorton staffers created the Gorton Legacy Group, the mission of which was to carry on Gorton’s support for women in the workplace in politics and the workplace.

When Gorton heard that Daniels’ son, Cole, had won the Little League Good Sport of the Year Award in 2014 – an award that singles out one Little Leaguer in the nation for fair play and good sportsmanship – he called Daniels to congratulate the young man on his “extraordinary” accomplishment, “and said Cole is going to throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game.”

It was the same sort of relationship shared by the former Congressman and all of his staff. “I was not unique in this,” she said, recalling Gorton as “a big part of our life. Every time he’d come to the Harbor we got together for lunch. He’d come so me, I’d go see him.”

Daniels continued, “Slade always said that we, his staff, were his greatest legacy. He changed my life and I will forever be grateful for the time, investments, education and love he poured into my life over the years.”

Just this past Monday, days before Gorton’s death, “I spent the afternoon with him along with his family,” said Daniels. “We shared a precious visit, a good laugh and many smiles on what was our final goodbye. I will miss him dearly.”

Daniels shared a “fun story” about her first few weeks working for Gorton in D.C.

“When I first went back to D.C. I was making $14,000 a year as a legislative aide. Times are tough; we’re in the middle of the spotted owl controversy and my parents were struggling,” said Daniels.

Used to the mild winters on the coast, Daniels went to D.C. during the winter and did not have an adequate winter coat for the conditions.

“We’re walking to an event and Slade said, ‘Kellie, where’s your coat?’ I said Slade, I don’t have a winter coat,” remembers Daniels. “He said, ‘Come with (his wife) Sally and I are going to get you a coat.”

She said she was “mortified, because I didn’t have money to get a coat, I’d spent all the money I had to move across the country, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to buy a coat tomorrow.”

The three piled into a Geo Metro, accompanied by a big dog named Greg “in the back seat slobbering all over me,” and headed for the outlet stores in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

“He said pick out a coat. I did, and he hands me some coupons,” said Daniels. “Typical Slade, he said, ‘These coupons are your contribution, and Sally and I will pick up the rest.’ They bought me this green wool coat, that I cherish to this day.”

Daniels said that Gorton, in nearly a half-century of public service, “was a patriot and a statesman, a public servant leader that never once embarrassed his constituents. And for a kid from Humptulips to have the opportunity to work with someone so extraordinary was amazing.” She said Grays Harbor timber country “will always be Gorton Country; the citizens of this county love and adore him.”

COURTESY PHOTO Slade Gorton and Kellie Daniels at her 1999 wedding.

COURTESY PHOTO Kellie Daniels and Slade Gorton in Washington, D.C. The year was 1992; Daniels was a junior at Washington State University and spent the summer as a Congressional intern.