Around 150 friends and family members of Daryl Lund gathered at the Jester Auto Museum and Event Center on Saturday, Feb. 1, to celebrate the life of the late Chehalis city councilor, local businessman and Chehalis community advocate.
Attendees were invited to wear suspenders in his honor.
“He would have loved this,” his cousin, Julie Lund, said to those in attendance. “Obviously, Daryl didn’t do things in a small way. He loved doing things in a big way, and in the right way. And so, I’m just very grateful to each of you who have come here today.”
From his childhood friends who knew him growing up in Chehalis to a former executive sous chef for Duke University’s Lifestyle and Weight Management Center who Daryl convinced to move across the country to be business partners in buying a bar, those who knew and loved him gathered to share stories of his life.
“His scope was far beyond even what I understood, and it’s just been mind boggling, to be honest with you, the kinds of connections he made in his life and the depth of the connections,” Connor Tucker, the Duke University sous chef originally from Texas who now calls Chehalis home, shared.
“Working for Duke, it’s a big corporation. And he knew I was not going to climb the (corporate) ladder. I was not set up for corporate life,” Tucker added. “I was entrepreneurial by heart. I always was doing some wheeling-and-dealing kind of stuff, and Daryl loved hearing about this.”
The two began talking business and, before long, Daryl proposed becoming business partners and buying a bar. Eventually, Tucker found himself visiting to scout local bars for sale.
“We got in that gold Cadillac of his, and we burned the trail,” Tucker said.
They eventually found a bar in Castle Rock, made the purchase and Tucker found himself settling in the area after Daryl introduced him to other community members.
“I got to realize what a wonderful community Chehalis is,” Tucker said.
While Daryl did love to play pranks on people, of which stories of many of his hijinks were told, he was also a long-serving member of the Chehalis City Council.
“I didn’t know until a few years ago that Daryl just lived a couple streets down from me growing up, so I never knew anything about Daryl. Never knew the name Daryl. Never saw his face,” Chehalis Mayor Tony Ketchum said. “It wasn’t until about six years after I was appointed to the city council, Daryl Lund won an election and I met Daryl. And for some unknown reason, Daryl and I just hit it off. It was like we knew each other forever.”
Although Ketchum and Daryl didn’t always agree with each other when it came to city council business, it was nothing their friendship couldn’t handle.
“Daryl was a man that stood on his convictions, and they were his convictions. It was basically, ‘tough sh-t.’ That was who he was,” Chad Taylor, publisher of The Chronicle and former Chehalis city councilor, added.
Following more than an hour of stories being shared, those in attendance enjoyed lunch catered by Once Upon A Thyme of Chehalis along with getting to tour the auto museum.
Daryl, a lifelong Chehalis resident, local business owner, former firefighter and a 1979 W.F. West High School graduate who recently turned 63, died on Dec. 7, 2024, after being hospitalized and diagnosed with septic shock.
He was a longtime city councilor who also served as a Port of Chehalis commissioner and was a board member for the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce. He also worked with the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum and many other community groups and organizations.
Along with having been the owner of the Minuteman Press in Chehalis, Daryl at one time was also the owner of the Chehalis Theater — now known as McFiler’s Chehalis Theater — where he would frequently hold movie screenings for residents. He also owned the theater inside the Yard Birds Shopping Center.
