Larry Flint (North Cascades ’62)
Posted: May 26, 2026
Larry was born on July 7,1942, in Glendale, CA, preceded by two sisters and followed by a brother. He passed away on May 18, 2026.
As a child, Larry spent several years living on a small farm in Covina, CA. Then he and his family moved to South Pasadena, CA, where he graduated from South Pasadena HS in 1960.
Growing up, Larry always had an interest in the outdoors. Some of his best memories were camping trips into the Sierras and hunting and fishing trips with his dad. His love of the outdoors drove his decision to attend Oregon State University and major in forestry.
Larry jumped at NCSB during the 1962 season.
In 1963, taking a break from school, he enlisted in the Army. He did so well on the aptitude tests, he was given a choice of jobs. He chose the Army Security Agency. After basic training at Fort Ord in California and a six-month electronics course at Fort Devens, MA, he was stationed in Japan at Camp Zama, near Tokyo. He was also assigned to an installation team that traveled around the Far East, including Vietnam.
In 1965, while in Japan, Larry met his future wife, Junko. They would correspond as pen-pals for eight years before getting married.
After a stint in Hawaii, he attended officer candidate school and then took a communications course, returning to Vietnam as a communications officer. He worked in a large teletype relay station before being transferred back to the Army Security Agency as a group signal officer. Other than driving through a firefight during the Tet Offensive in Nha Trang and one hairy flight over North Vietnam as an observer, Larry was fortunate to avoid actual combat. After a little over five years in the Army (including 25 months in Vietnam), he returned to Oregon State.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering/general science, Larry heard about job opportunities in Antarctica with a construction engineering firm under contract to the National Science Foundation. Larry was accepted for a job as a field-center manager at McMurdo Station, where he was responsible for maintaining and issuing all the field equipment for scientific parties. He always said this was the most fun he’d ever had at a job. In Antarctica, Larry came up with a new parka design for the US Navy and a stronger tent design for use in winds above 120 miles per hour.
After 13 months at McMurdo, his contract was up. He then married his pen-pal, Junko from Japan, and after an extended honeymoon, resumed work with the Antarctic program.
After his company lost the Antarctic contract with the NSF, Larry stayed with the company but moved to Virginia to help manage the Saudi Arabian Naval Expansion Project. He later left to work in Washington state with Energy Northwest, becoming a supervisor at the company’s nuclear power plant. Larry’s career also involved working as a consultant on the PassPort System, mostly at electric utilities but also for New York City schools and in England.
He retired for about a year. Then someone talked him into going back to work on contract as a procurement engineer at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. He did this for two years before his final retirement.
Larry spent his later years researching his family’s genealogical roots. He and Junko had two wonderful daughters and two fast-growing grandsons.
