Staff & Board Members

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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Gretta joined the Vashon Heritage Museum as Executive Director in July of 2024. Having grown up in Ballard and Shoreline, her Washington roots run deep. She received her BA from the University of Hawai’i in Anthropology, where she did her first museum internship and fell in love with museums’ capacity to tell stories and impact community. She went on to get her MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester in the U.K. Since then she has worked with collections and historic properties in several Bay Area museums in California. She loves being part of the museum community and is honored to help preserve and share Vashon stories.

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

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Marissa has been happily involved with the Vashon Heritage Museum since 2018, She first visited Vashon for Strawberry Festival in 2009. On the dock at Fauntleroy, she had an inkling that Vashon would be cool and the giant puppets confirmed her suspicions. She has lived on the island since 2016 and is raising her two children as islanders. She also works part-time at Forest Garden Farm, a historic strawberry and Lingonberry farm, operated by the Fujioka family during the 30s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. She enjoys the people she has come to know through the museum and loves that she hears old stories and sees old photos every week.

PRESIDENT

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Sue graduated with a BA degree in English and a teaching credential from UC Davis. She taught high school English and drama before becoming involved in a community theater in the town of Mendocino on the California coast, both as a play director and as the theater executive director. During her theater years she also stage-directed six operas for the Mendocino Music Festival. In 2002 she moved to Oregon and began an active retirement, serving as a board member for a nonprofit organization centered on the historic Applegate House. She moved north again in 2017 to join family on Vashon, where she soon found her way to the Vashon Heritage Museum.

VICE PRESIDENT

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Susan arrived on the island about four years ago. Her undergraduate degree was in history so being in the museum was a natural fit for her. She retired from teaching in Burbank, California in 2017 after 25 years. Vashon became a new chapter in her life. Between the two passions of teaching and history, she has enjoyed being a docent for the last two years. She also serves on the education committee at the museum. Her goal with the Education committee is to get more of Vashon Island kids into the museum to appreciate the home where they are living. She enjoys all the people she has met and worked with both in her role of docent and as a committee member. She is very grateful for the opportunities that the museum has offered her.

SECRETARY

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Alexandrais a longtime volunteer at the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum, currently in the roles of chair of the permanent exhibit committee and secretary of the board.  She has been lucky enough in this time and in these capacities to see and contribute to the museum’s growth as an institution that combines passion with best standards and practices for the modern age, one with the scope to serve the community and visitors from farther afield. With an academic background in Museum Studies, she is interested in and aware of the importance of knowledge seeking and is deeply invested in museums’ capacity to both inspire and satiate curiosity.

TREASURER

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Marc Coté brings engineering expertise and nonprofit leadership to his role as Treasurer of the VMIHA. After 12 years as a civilian electrical engineer for the U.S. Air Force in Boston, he moved to Seattle in 1995. In 1998 he joined Parkview Services as a counselor, later creating its Homeownership Program to help people with developmental disabilities achieve housing stability. He directed that program until becoming Executive Director in 2012. Marc, who holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, was honored with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission’s “Friend of Housing” award in 2011. At VMIHA, he applies his financial and leadership experience to ensure the museum preserves and shares the stories of Vashon and Maury Islands.

PAST PRESIDENT

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Bruce served as President of the Vashon Heritage Museum from 2020 to 2024. He has a PhD in History from the University of Washington, an MA in International Relations from Florida State University, and a BA in American Studies from Stetson University. He taught history for more than 35 years in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand and he is the author of A Brief History of Vashon Island. His current projects include the book Joy and Heartache: The Story of the Vashon Island Japanese American Community, co-authored with Rita Brogan, to be published in 2026; managing the website vashonhistory.com; co-hosting the weekly Brown Briefly on Voice of Vashon; and coordinating the development of the Vashon Interactive Map Project for the Vashon Heritage Museum.

MEMBER

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Cyrus grew up in Walla Walla. After graduating from Whitman College in 1967, he entered the Navy and was a Supply Officer aboard USS Juneau, LPD-10. Following the Navy he earned a Master’s Degree, worked in various capacities, and became a Certified Financial Planner for the last few decades of his working life. He sold his practice in Vancouver, WA, in 2012 and moved to Vashon in 2013 after spending a year working on the house he and his wife bought. In 2014, he became involved with the museum, serving on the Board from 2018 through 2023. After taking a year off, he has been reelected to the Board, where he is currently the Finance Committee chair. His wife Liz, is a “cat whisperer” at VIPP, and he has two adult daughters and two rambunctious grandchildren.

MEMBER

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Although born in the United States, Patricia identifies as Mexican, having grown up and studied in Mexico. She is the oldest of four sisters and the mother of a daughter and a son. She received a BA in Radiation Therapy and trained at the National Institute of Nuclear Research in Mexico and at the Elekta/Karolinska Institute in Sweden, working for over twenty years in an oncology department in Mexico. During her last years in Mexico, she worked as a freelance journalist for cultural magazines and she is the author of the book Amores Instantáneos (Instant Loves) and has published in several short story anthologies (in Spanish) in both Mexico and the United States. She returned to the US in 2019 and moved to Vashon three years ago, where she immediately fell in love with the island. She currently works as a Resource Navigator for Vashon Youth and Family Services.

MEMBER

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Kim was born in Oregon and raised in Tacoma.  Her dad was a forester for Weyerhaeuser, her grandpa a logger, her mom an organic farmer, her uncle an ornithologist for USFW, and her brother is a commercial fisherman. Her youth was spent outside, honoring and harvesting in the PNW. Curiosity led her to employment at the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) office in Klamath Falls, Oregon, serving with the Organization of the Forgotten Americans (OFA).  The Klamath were terminated in 1954, and restoration efforts led by the tribe were supported by the OFA attorneys and staff. Throughout her years in college, at no time was the dismantlement of tribes being discussed as a current event, nor was there ever a discussion of the legacy of genocide. This is what motivates Kim to serve with others to bring the factual history of all peoples to light. 

MEMBER

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Bob is a fourth-generation Island resident, with family dating back to the early 1900s. A graduate of Vashon High School in 1970 and WSU in 1975 with Architectural degrees, his 45-year architectural career focused on educational, commercial, and civic construction and the renovation and restoration of historic buildings. Since retirement, Bob’s work at the museum has given him an opportunity to apply his professional experience as chair of the Campus Facilities Committee and to help the museum develop current and long-range plans. He has become fascinated with Vashon-Maury Island history, its stages of growth, its past and present cultures, and the notable people who have contributed to the Island’s unique character.

MEMBER

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Jenny was born in the UK and educated there, earning a degree in Education. She retired after thirty-eight years of teaching children at all school levels, aged four to sixteen. Her final job was as head of a very small two-class primary school for sixteen years. It was her dream job—lots of contact with the children, but also experience with planning, property management, and budgets. After retiring, she managed a voluntary project setting up libraries in Uganda, sending books to children and teachers with no resources in their schools. She continues to maintain this project. Five years ago, she came to live on Vashon when she married Cliff Marks and proudly obtained a green card. She could not be happier being kept busy as a museum volunteer with all the strands of activities that the museum offers—docent duties, education work, helping in collections, and even the garden.

MEMBER

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Jenny was born in Ogden, Utah. She also resided in New Jersey with her parents before moving to Portland, Oregon, in 1961. She and her husband, Kevin, along with their son, Patrick, and daughter, Wren, relocated to Vashon in 1997. She graduated from the University of Washington with high honors in history. Jenny is an avid equestrian and has several national horse show titles. While living in Oregon City she was a board member of the Baker Cabin Historical Society. She has a profound interest in history and genealogy, and has written two books on family history.

MEMBER

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Back in the day, I was a terrible student. Calculus made no sense to me. Chemistry was a puzzle- especially trying to figure out the difference between molar and molal. Dates and names have always been a dilemma as well, so history for me was a jumbled mess. Then six years ago, while stepping around a king snake in the Utah desert, somewhere along the dusty road that once had been a part of the Central Overland Trail, the reality of grass and water at one time being essential to emigrant movement and survival out on “vacant” land struck me unlike any book or class ever had. I have found moments like that at the Vashon Heritage Museum, which is why I am here.

MEMBER

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After retiring from 31 years teaching high school in the Midwest, Jim and his wife Mary Fran Lyons moved to Vashon in 2006. He began volunteering right away with Drama Dock and Vashon Opera. His interest in Vashon Island and its history led him to join the Heritage Museum. Currently he is on the Events committee at the museum, and he enjoys participating in museum activities like the Ghost Walk in October 2024, where he portrayed an early 20th Century wood cutter, and the Japanese Festival in August 2025, where he told the story of an interned Japanese American. He also volunteers at Granny’s Attic and is a member of the Vashon Golf Club and the Athletic Club.

MEMBER

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Bradford Smith moved to Vashon three years ago and has loved becoming part of the island’s close-knit and creative community. A former high school math teacher with fifteen years in education, he now works as a graphic designer and brings a lifelong passion for learning and storytelling to his work. Bradford has attended the museum’s annual fundraiser for the past two years and has deeply enjoyed hearing stories and seeing exhibits that bring Vashon’s history to life. He’s eager to contribute to the Heritage Museum’s efforts to preserve and share the island’s unique past while becoming more involved in the community he now calls home.

MEMBER

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Born and raised in the Puget Sound area, Laurie Tucker worked at the Vashon Library and spent many hours volunteering for school and local organizations while raising a family. An empty nest and now retirement left her with time to follow her lifelong interest in local history, currently chairing the collection committee, doing research and assisting with exhibit planning. Believing that the history of the native presence on Vashon has not been adequately told, she co-curated an exhibit titled Vashon Island’s Native People: “Navigating Seas of Change in 2014” and continues to serve as the museum’s liaison with the Puyallup Tribe. Gardening, camping at the ocean, genealogy, weaving baskets, cleaning headstones, and spending time with family bring her joy.