These days most homes, condos, and apartments have only one of two home heating fuel choices – natural gas or electricity. Those two sources account for over 90% of heating needs in Washington. There are still a few who heat with fuel oil, propane, or wood, with a tiny slice using solar, but Puget Sound Energy and city-managed utilities supply heating needs for the vast majority of homes.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1945, when this photo of Edwin Griffin was taken, the company he headed, Griffin Fuel supplied customers with a wide variety of fuels to their heat homes including wood, coal, presto-logs, and diesel oil. Edwin Griffin was born in 1908, the son of Fred and Ada (Parks) Griffin. His father, Fred started the business enterprise in 1889, the year Washington became a state.
With one employee, a wagon, and a team of horses, Fred’s Griffin Fuel and Transfer Company began delivering cut and split firewood from the wood yard he established at 25th and Dock Street in Tacoma. Soon he added coal from nearby Pierce County mines in Carbonado and Wilkeson, that was already being delivered by train loads to Tacoma’s booming ports. In the warm months of summer, Griffin sold ice during the era before most homes had electricity or owned refrigerators, so families relied on iceboxes to preserve perishable foods.
His son, Edwin Griffin attended Lowell Grade School in Tacoma and graduated from Stadium High School. After completing his degree at the University of Washington, Edwin finished his studies at Harvard’s School of Business Administration. Shortly after returning to Tacoma his father, Fred Griffin’s died in 1931. Edwin assumed management of the family firm renaming it the Griffin Fuel Company. The younger Griffin expanded the business becoming the largest of its kind in Tacoma and one of the leading fuel dealers in the Northwest. He joined all the right clubs and assembled a large collection of old automobiles. He was also an avid collector of old fire engines and an active member of the Horseless Carriage Club. This photo number D20921-3 by Richards Studios comes courtesy of the Tacoma Public Library.
As this Dec. 4, 1945 picture illustrates, Edwin Griffin was a spirited and forceful man. But after suffering head injuries during a serious auto accident in July 1953, Griffin was placed under the care of Dr. W.H. Goering and returned to work. On March 9, 1955, Edwin Griffin left his Tacoma office in apparently good spirits arriving home for lunch at about noon. He told the family’s caretaker Breuer that he would later see him in the basement. Less than an hour passed before the caretaker found his lifeless body, slumped backward in a chair with a .22 caliber rifle under his arm.
Griffin was survived by two sons, Edward Irving ‘Ted’ Griffin, then 19, James Scott Griffin, 18, and, a daughter, Elizabeth Ann Griffin, age 5, and his second wife of six months, Gail Thompson. Ted Griffin gained fame in 1965 when he became the first man to ever swim with a killer whale in a public exhibition. That orca, as they’re now called was named Namu. Ted Griffin also captured Shamu who gained fame after he sold her to Sea World in San Diego where she performed. In 1982, Griffin published “Namu, Quest for the Killer Whale,” telling of his time with Namu and how the public’s views about orcas gradually changed.
