Neil Twelker, 85, pushed for fixing the viaduct

Neil Twelker liked to say that anybody can come up with a $500 solution to a problem, but a true engineer can figure out a $100 solution.

So his admirers weren't surprised that in old age he proposed strengthening the fragile Alaskan Way Viaduct along Seattle's waterfront, instead of replacing it with a $4 billion tunnel.

His dissident idea will outlive him — or at least, the controversy will.

Mr. Twelker, an 85-year-old master of soils and slopes, died of bone-marrow cancer Saturday.

He was born March 13, 1921, in San Diego and graduated from Seattle's Ballard High School. He earned his civil-engineering degree from the University of Washington and taught there for three years.

Still in his 20s, he was sent by the Army Corps of Engineers to help build the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River. He devised an enormous earthen barrier between the concrete dam and the riverbank. The barrier, nestled alongside the dam, absorbed some of the water's force.

Mr. Twelker earned a doctorate in soil mechanics at Harvard University, and he worked on the St. Lawrence Seaway, buildings in downtown Portland and the grain terminal at Elliott Bay in Seattle.

He founded a small engineering firm, where he taught his office manager, Alice Mascher, to do drafting. She became his second wife. They were married for 46 years.

Over a six-decade career, he was known as a maverick, often trying new ideas.

One was the "hanging grade beam," which prevented mudslides by laying concrete beams just below the soil's surface, following the slope — instead of the typical method of driving piles deep into the soil.

"He was this genius, but he was so unassuming. He's perfectly happy to talk to some little old lady who has a slide in her backyard, and tell her how to deal with it," said Randy Spaan, a Seattle architect. Mr. Twelker designed a retaining wall just west of the Magnolia Bridge to protect six homes from slides.

Mr. Twelker worried that the engineering profession had devolved into a corporate mindset, with a goal of collecting consulting fees and avoiding liability instead of solving problems, Spaan said.

Seattle contractor Dick Scheumann said he and Mr. Twelker helped the state decide how to bore the Interstate 90 Mount Baker Tunnel through soft soil. Several small-diameter shafts were drilled to form an arc, those were filled, and then crews could remove the dirt beneath to make the wide tunnel.

He built a sailboat, the September, on which he and a friend circumnavigated Vancouver Island. On other trips he listened to Italian opera, or sailed naked.

During a surprise 80th birthday party, he discussed the city's future with Victor Gray, a retired structural and civil engineer. "We both had a couple wines and were talking about [others] wanting to take the viaduct down. We said, 'No way,' " Gray recalled.

The pair contended that only two of the elevated road's 62 segments were damaged by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake — and that the viaduct could be fortified with fluid-filled steel braces to absorb vibrations, plus an injection of concrete to stiffen the soil. Soon, the state will release a technical study, expected to criticize the Gray-Twelker proposal.

In addition to his wife, Alice, Mr. Twelker's survivors include brothers Ed of Missoula, Mont., and Al of Ocean Shores, Grays Harbor County; three children from his first marriage, Eric of Juneau, Alaska, Brian of Seattle, and Paula Burgess of Portland; six grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be organized later.

His wife is arranging to borrow the sailboat from its current owner so Mr. Twelker's ashes can be tossed into the sea.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com