Memorial service set for Saturday honoring former Secretary of State Ralph Munro
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- Ralph Munro to be honored with memorial at state Capitol following March passing at 81.
- Gov. Bob Ferguson ordered flags lowered on Saturday to honor Munro’s legacy.
- Munro remembered for bipartisan service and advocacy on voting access, disability rights.
Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro will be honored in a memorial service at 2 p.m. Saturday in the State Capitol Rotunda in Olympia.
Munro, the longest-serving secretary of state in Washington history, died March 20 at age 81.
To honor Munro, Gov. Bob Ferguson has ordered the state and U.S. flags to be lowered to half-staff at all state agency facilities on June 28.
“A native Washingtonian, Ralph Munro loved his state, his country and humanity,” an in-memoriam document accompanying the ceremony reads.
Munro was a moderate Republican who served as secretary of state for two decades, from 1981 to 2001. He’s remembered as an advocate for expanding voter access and disability rights, as well as causes such as immigration, historic preservation and orca conservation.
Munro also established the bald eagle sanctuary on the Skagit River.
In Olympia, he also is known for his work with the Squaxin Island Tribe and South Puget Sound Community College to preserve and study a 1,000-year-old Squaxin village discovered on his property on the shore of the eastern side of lower Eld Inlet. Munro and his wife, Karen, were instrumental in creating the William Cannon Footpath across the mud flats there. That property now belongs to the Capitol Land Trust.
He played a pivotal role in helping thousands of Southeast Asian refugees resettle following the 1975 fall of Saigon and assisted in eliminating polio in struggling countries through his work with Rotary International.
Before his time as secretary of state, Munro served as a special assistant to then-Republican Gov. Dan Evans, who died last fall.
Washington’s current Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, remembered Munro as embodying the “drive and attitude of a true statesman.”
“He often crossed the aisle in a bipartisan effort to serve the people of Washington and put their needs first,” Hobbs said in a March 20 statement.
Friend Sam Reed, who succeeded Munro as secretary of state, said his predecessor was “known for moderation, civility and bipartisanship,” according to the Washington State Standard. “He certainly exuded that in his role as secretary of state.”
Munro was proud of his Scottish heritage, at times appearing at formal occasions wearing a tartan kilt, often holding a bagpipe.
On Friday morning at the Capitol, the drone of bagpipes reverberated throughout the halls of the state Legislative Building.
The June 28 memorial ceremony will be livestreamed on TVW.org.
This story was originally published June 27, 2025 at 11:53 AM with the headline "Memorial service set for Saturday honoring former Secretary of State Ralph Munro."
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