Puyallup elder Andrew 'Sonny' McCloud Jr. dies at 87

Andrew "Sonny" McCloud Jr. was not a tall man. By his family's estimate, he hovered around 5 feet 2 inches tall.

But height took backstage to his presence, they said. In life, the Puyallup tribal elder loomed large. He had 12 children. Was married for 65 years. Worked nearly 40 years laying power lines across the Northwest.

A prominent member of the Puyallup Tribe, Mr. McCloud died from a heart condition early Friday at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia. He was 87.

Mr. McCloud was born on Dec. 3, 1921, in Mud Bay, just west of Olympia. He was the older brother of Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and Theresa "Maiselle" Bridges, who was the founder of several Puyallup Tribe institutions for health and education services and the independent Wa He Lut Indian School at Franks Landing near Olympia.

Mr. McCloud was a retired member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 77 (Seattle).

Starting in the 1950s, he worked as a lineman in Washington, Idaho and western Montana, even venturing south to California and as far north as Alaska. He was also a fisherman on the Nisqually River.

An Army veteran of World War II, Mr. McCloud married Edith Kanine after receiving a medical discharge, his family said.

The couple bought a 20-acre home site in Yelm, Thurston County, and raised their children there. His second-oldest daughter, Billie McGee, said her father insisted that they do activities as a family.

"He would take us up to the mountains to pick huckleberries," said McGee, 62. "We were always together."

In the years before his health started to fail, Mr. McCloud traveled between Yelm and Pendleton, Ore., where his wife once worked in cultural education and language programs for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where she is an enrolled member.

Mr. McCloud's daughter, Sonny Gail Hernandez, remembered the couple as inseparable.

"They couldn't be without each other," said Hernandez, 50.

So much so that after being married for more than six decades, they renewed their vows this year at their Yelm home, McGee said.

"They repeated their vows and then we told him to kiss her," McGee said. He didn't hesitate, she said.

On Friday morning, after Mr. McCloud died at 1:30 a.m., family members gathered around his hospital bed, said Frank, his brother.

They stayed there for nearly five hours, reminiscing, crying and laughing, he said.

"We were trying to be happy," he said. "He had been struggling ... he knew his life was slowly slipping away."

In addition to his wife and McGee and Hernandez, Mr. McCloud is survived by his sons Andrew McCloud III of Nisqually Reservation; Mike McCloud of Pendleton, Ore.; Kenny McCloud of Yakima; Raymond McCloud of Tacoma; daughters Patricia Kalama of Warm Springs, Ore.; Norma EagleSpeaker of Yelm; Marcella EagleSpeaker of White Swan, Yakima County; Angie McCloud of Pendleton, Ore.; Rosie McCloud Johnson of Killeen, Texas, and Maiselle "Maisey" Altaha of Yelm.

A service, visitation and wake is scheduled for 6 p.m. today, at the Wa He Lut Indian School gymnasium at Franks Landing on the Nisqually River. A Wa Shat funeral service will be held at the Wa He Lut Indian School at 9 a.m. Monday followed by interment and burial at 11 a.m. at the Tobin Family Cemetery, Squaxin Island Tribe.

Sonia Krishnan: 206-515-5546 or skrishnan@seattletimes.com