It was a brisk mid-June morning at Gene Coulon Park in Renton. The overcast clouds had yet to burn off and reveal the blue skies and afternoon heat. The light waves of Lake Washington gently lapped against the docks on the Southside of the lake where the park stretched out across its shore.

Several people gathered near the covered area of tables adjacent to the park’s restaurants. They were a collection of strangers that had grown to be familiar with each other, and a few had grown to be close friends. It was a seemingly random assortment of people, brought together by one common denominator — a man named Sam.

Sam Velick was a man who, for decades, lived near and spent all his days in Gene Coulon Park. He was homeless and had been for some time. For nearly a lifetime, his presence at the park was as consistent as the lapping waves of the lake and the singing birds in the trees there.

On Saturday, May 13, Sam died from a heart attack. The news of his death was swift, as Facebook posts crowded the local Renton group pages and there was an outpouring of “R.I.P.” messages and anecdotes of Sam from people as he came to be, as one person put it, “a part of the Coulon experience.”

Sam’s circle of friends

It didn’t take long for a small memorial of flowers, cards and signs dedicated to Sam to seemingly spring from his favorite bench at the park.

The people who gathered in the park that chilly weekday morning had all come to know Sam, in one way or another, as he was a fixture of the park. Some of the people who worked at the park restaurants saw him on a daily basis — relaxing at the park tables, exercising in front of the restaurant, reading the newspaper, washing himself off in the restaurant bathrooms.

Others knew him on a personal level, even growing to be what they considered to be friends with Sam over their many years visiting the park.

Brian Shive said he met Sam more than 30 years ago. He remembered seeing him walking through the park by himself almost every time Shive visited Gene Coulon Park. He remembered saying “good morning” to him every time he saw him. He remembered greeting Sam for nearly three years before Sam ever said “good morning” back, beginning a friendship that would last the next three decades.

Scott Lumley also became friends with Shive at the park, and they shared a mutual friendship with Sam. Lumley said he used to play guitar in the park, which drew the attention of Sam, who would frequently listen to the tunes he strummed and sometimes even dance along.

Abraham Davis, who works in the kitchen at one of the restaurants in the park, remembered watching Sam do pull-ups on the awning covering the tables and benches by the docks. He remembered being impressed by his muscular physique, which made him one of the “buffest” homeless people he had ever seen.

Everyone who shared stories about Sam noted that he was quiet, kept himself clean, and engaged in his own routine of activities in the park on a daily basis.

Sam seemed to hold a special place in the heart of frequent Gene Coulon Park visitor Allen Nance. Nance said he remembered being introduced to Sam by his daughter when they visited the park one Sunday morning almost 20 years ago, he estimates. He remembered her meeting Sam near the rocks along the water and giddily bringing her father to meet him as well.

Their meeting sparked a friendship of sorts. Nance said he began routinely bringing Sam books to read from the local library and their many conversations about the Seattle Mariners. Nance said Sam finished a book just about every week.

Many of the park visitors who became familiar with Sam and even considered themselves his friends remembered the “childlike joy” Sam seemed to have about being in the park — whether it was watching the birds and squirrels or fishing in the lake. Some recalled him fashioning his own fishing lures out of junk and catching fish without using a pole, only to return the fish back to the lake.

“He was happy with very little,” said Shive. “And he had a lot of people helping him.”

Sam’s background

As stories were told that day of Sam’s life in the park, his younger sister Kathy LaPointe joined in, giving small interjections and clarifications that filled in gaps that Sam had left obscured over the years. While Sam touched many lives throughout his three decades living in the park, he wasn’t exactly an open book.

LaPointe’s perspective on her late brother brought a different layer to his story, revealing Sam to be a complex person who kept his past and his present completely separate, though pieces of one life still lingered in with the other.

Sam was the oldest of four, followed by LaPointe, and two more sisters, Julie and Marciann. They all grew up together in Renton near the border of Issaquah with their parents, Jerry and Avis Velick.

Their father Jerry was a teacher and wrestling coach at Hazen High School, LaPointe said, and he took a part-time job as a ski patroller on Crystal Mountain, which meant that the family spent a lot of time up in the snow.

“We skied a lot since we were three years old, my mom would even take us out of school,” said LaPointe, who was only 18 months younger than Sam. “Sam really loved skiing, he did flips and a bunch of aerial stuff.”

Along with skiing, Sam was involved in a number of activities the Velick family shared together. They were part of the Washington Retriever Club and would go hunting with their two black labradors.

“He was a brother and he had an awesome car that he restored and loved to drive,” LaPointe said of Sam recalling when they were in high school.

While Sam was friendly to those he met in the park, his relationship with his family was difficult. It began to fray with the death of his father Jerry at Gene Coulon Park in 1976, when Sam was in his late teens.

“Dad was into sailboats and he took lessons at Gene Coulon,” LaPointe said. “He bought himself a sailboat, and he was racing. When the gun sounded off, the excitement and adrenaline made him have a heart attack. He was only 46 in 1976.”

Five years later, Sam’s mother Avis passed away in a car accident. For a time, Sam worked at Boeing and he was even briefly in the military.

However, it wasn’t long before Sam chose to live off of the grid as a homeless person, preferring to spend his days at Gene Coulon Park. LaPointe says that his decision to live as a homeless person was what ultimately led to his estrangement from his sisters and their remaining family.

“We tried to help him not be homeless, but he wanted to live his life the way he wanted to live his life,” she said.

Sam’s life consisted of reading books, exercising and making lasting friendships with countless people at Gene Coulon Park.

In memory of Sam

However, in 2022, Sam was hospitalized with a hernia that required him to rest indoors. Many of the people who gathered to tell stories about Sam remember trying to convince Sam to come with them to get medical help for his hernia, which he was reportedly reluctant to accept.

Over the years, he had made friends with a woman named Tina who lived in the apartments near Gene Coulon. Sam recovered from his hernia surgery in her home.

LaPointe says that she had spoken with her brother for the first time in years around that time, and though their conversation hadn’t changed their relationship, she was glad that Sam had somewhere to stay.

“I was just happy that she was there to help him and that he actually was able to get help,” LaPointe said of Tina, who now lives in California.

When Sam had the heart attack that ultimately proved to be fatal, he was moved to a hospital and LaPointe was contacted by Allen Nance, the man who had become close friends with Sam over the years. LaPointe says that she and the family were able to speak to Sam in his final hours.

“We said some words over the phone, to tell him we loved him and that it would be okay,” she said.

On the day that Sam’s friends gathered to talk about his life, LaPointe enlightened everyone about her brother’s skiing skills and his past as a hunter.

When LaPointe learned that Sam lived the majority of his adult life as a vegan, she said that she couldn’t believe it.

“He loved duck hunting and pheasant hunting [when we were young] but he was…vegan,” she said. “When someone told me that, I had to laugh.”

LaPointe was only able to share that part of Sam’s life with his friends for a brief time though, as it was also on that same day that she was picking up Sam’s ashes.

LaPointe says that, once she can decide the exact day with her sisters, there will be an official memorial service and an ashes-spreading ceremony at Gene Coulon Park in Sam’s honor.

As for why she believes Sam chose to live at Gene Coulon, LaPointe simply said, “I think he really missed my dad, and just really wanted to be down at the park. He never said that, but they were close.”

Bailey Jo Josie / Renton Reporter Friends of Sam still place flower tributes at his favorite bench at Gene Coulon Park.

A few days after Sam’s passing, friends from all over the park came to write their messages at his favorite bench. Photo courtesy of Allen Nance.