Obituary

Allan Raymond Bredy passed away on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. He was born on November 6, 1956 at the US Army hospital in Fort Monmouth, NJ to Helen Sollied and Allan A Bredy, both Canadian citizens, making Allan a dual citizen. As their family grew, Allan Sr. eventually served in three branches of the US military, taking his young family to live in Germany, France, and Oklahoma. This experience marked Allan as an international kid and helped him develop valuable skills in adaptability.

Allan’s family eventually settled in Bellingham, WA where he roamed around Lake Whatcom, picked summer berries, and participated on youth wrestling and soccer teams. He became a competitive wrestler in high school and after graduating from Sehome High School in 1975, earned a Canadian junior national wrestling title.

As a young adult, Allan worked at various jobs from shoe salesman to oil rig derrickhand in the NW Territories. He returned to Bellingham and attended WWU where he met Julie Langford in an anthropology class. They were engaged in 3 weeks and married in 6 months, celebrating their 40th anniversary last August. 

While in college, majoring in history, Allan was encouraged to begin a middle school wrestling club that he named Sons of Thunder. So many 6th grade boys turned out that he had to recruit many of his local wrestling buddies to help him. He found that he loved teaching, so he added an education certification to his major. Post graduation he was hired to teach and coach at Bellingham High School, taking a core of those 6th grade boys through to a state championship when they were in high school.

Allan became a father to two wonderful sons, Gabel and Anton, and finished a master’s degree in educational administration. Moving location for a job wasn’t a foreign idea to him, so he accepted his first assistant principal position at Lewis and Clark high school in Spokane, WA for two years. At the age of forty, he was named as principal of Port Angeles High School. At this time, he was researching opportunities to work in American international schools and in 2000, the family moved to Singapore where Allan was an assistant high school principal at Singapore American School. Five years later, Allan was named director of the Lincoln School in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Five years after that he accepted the role as director of the American Cooperative School of Tunis in Tunisia. After seven years at ACST, he finished his overseas career as director of the American School of Brasilia in Brazil. Allan considered recruitment of staff to work in his schools to be his strongest skill. He was proud and protective of the individuals he pulled together and found joy in helping further their growth and ongoing opportunities as he could.

In 2020, Allan and Julie returned to the farm on Lummi Island they had nurtured during their years away. Allan loved being back in Washington where he could frequently reconnect with his mother, Helen Bemis, his sisters Cheryl Knapp and Kim Kirby, all of Bellingham, his sister Kirstin Bradford, Kennewick,WA and brother Brian Bredy, Morton, WA,  in addition to many other relatives in Washington and B.C.  He maintained a vast network of Facebook friends around the world where he genuinely liked every life celebration and bore every sorrow.  He himself regularly shared the small joys of daily life on Lummi Island, most of all, sunsets and shipping traffic on Rosario Strait.

Allan continued to use his leadership gifts and training through an interim administration job at the Dar Essalam American School in Rabat, Morocco in the spring of 2023 and most recently, as the part time principal/superintendent of the Index School District in Index, Washington.

At home on Lummi, Allan’s involvement was at the Lummi Island Congregational Church and its associated facility, The Gathering Place, designed as a space for community connection, sheltering, health care, and sanctuary. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Allan’s memory can be made to further this vision at The Gathering Place, PO Box 6, Lummi Island, WA 98263 or through this link.

A memorial service will be held at Hillcrest Chapel, Bellingham, WA, on Saturday June 22nd, at 2:00 PM.