Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/68594
Eddie Bauer set out to create a jacket – he ended up creating a successful and innovative company and helping to win World War II. S porting Life J By Jameson Parker ust in case you don't believe truth is stranger than fiction, consider that the down-filled parka that got you through the winter might never have come into being if it hadn't been for Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. The influence of German-speaking people in Russia actually goes back to the reign of Peter the Great, the first tsar ever to travel to western Europe and the man who in a single generation moved Russia from medieval times into the modern age. Well, modern for the early 1700s anyway. But when the German-born princess Catherine the Great married tsar Peter the Third, she brought German mercenaries with her to the land she would eventually rule, including Eddie Bauer's ancestors. That martial spirit would have a direct influence on Eddie Bauer and his signature down-filled clothing. Initially, Germans in Russia were granted special privileges, but in 1871 tsar Alexander II issued a ukase rescinding those rights, and in the next 30 years, thousands of German- speaking Russians emigrated. Eddie's parents immigrated to the Seattle area in 1890, and Eddie was born on Orcas Island in 1899. He grew up fishing and hunting and – like most children of immigrants – working hard, as a caddie at a country club, doing odd jobs, cutting firewood, caring for some of the first pheasants imported to the Northwest, and as a clerk at a sporting goods store SPOR TIN G CL ASSICS 50