December 23, 2020 at 9:03 am
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” has been a fixture on national TV every year since 1964. But not many people know that the animated narrator of the show has a direct connection to the Northwest.
Burl Ives, the Academy Award-winning actor who performed the voice of the narrator Sam the Snowman, lived in Anacortes in Skagit County on Fidalgo Island from 1989 until he passed away in 1995. Ives and his wife Dorothy – who passed away in 2016 – moved to Anacortes after visiting a friend there. As it turns out, the couple left something of a special “Rudolph” legacy in Anacortes that still resonates decades after they first arrived.