Potato foundation remembers larger than life Othello leader

MOSES LAKE - There were two categories of people Pete Taggares would help: Those he liked, and those he didn't like.

So remembered Roger Thieme during a video presentation as Taggares received this year's Industry Leadership Award at the Washington State Potato Foundation annual banquet.

"As long as the person was in trouble, if Pete could help, he was always there to do it," Thieme said on the video.

Tagagares died in 1999 at 67. In 1959, he moved to Othello, where he was one of the pioneers responsible for transforming a sagebrush area into one of the nation's most productive farming regions. He established the potato processing industry in Washington and in 1964 built the state's first large french fry plant, Chef Reddy Foods, in Othello. He owned the Snake River Concord grape vineyard, one of the largest in the country, and maintained a relatively low profile outside agriculture circles, even though the Associated Press called him one of the most powerful men in the state in 1978.

On the video, pictures and a biography of Taggares in his lifetime played across the screen as Thieme and Allen Floyd remembered him as a bigger than life, generous risk taker who kept reaching for new goals and made a lot of his deals by verbal commitment.

"I was never in a room with Pete where he didn't dominate the room in a good sort of way," Floyd said on the video. "He was a leader, he could see into the future better than anybody I've seen in my life."

Floyd remembered meeting with Taggares, who asked him how many grandchildren he had. When the answer was five, Taggares reached into his pocket and pulled out five $100 bills and told Floyd to give one to each.

"He said, 'Don't worry, I'm going to ask one of them to make sure they got it,'" Floyd remembered.

Thieme talked about a Taggares act of kindness after his family home was destroyed in a fire.

"Pete called about Monday morning and said, 'Understand you had a fire,'" Thieme said, mimicking Taggares' gruff voice.

Taggares asked where Thieme's family would live, and Thieme responded they would rent a trailer.

"'No you aren't, you're going to come and live in the guest house,'" Thieme remembered Taggares' reply. "I said, 'Well, Pete, it's going to be like six months.' 'I don't care if it's six years, you're going to come and live in the guest house.'"

Floyd thought Taggares would be proud to receive the award and would be looking down on the event from heaven.

"I hope he's having a great time and I hope God can control him, because he's probably trying to run things," Floyd said on the video, to applause from the audience.

"He, I know Allen, is looking down and I know God's in trouble," Taggares' wife Janet said as she accepted the award. "He's got his hands full. But imagine what

(Pete's) done for heaven. It's got to be really incredible."

As she thanked the people in the room, Janet Taggares said she considered it a huge privilege to be with an incredible human being like her husband, she said.

"I saw the people that he helped, but

I also saw all the many people that helped Pete," she said. "Above all, Pete loved people and he did what he did for the love of doing it. He was a farmer at heart who loved putting his boots on in the morning and walking out in the field."

Following presentation of the award and a raffle drawing for a year's supply of fuel, magician-comedian Gayle Becwar kept the banquet attendees in stitches for an hour with "invisible" card tricks and a performance full of audience participation.