Rex Robert Campbell of Burlington, Washington, born 14 January 1899, was a problem at an early age. In February 1919 he pled guilty to stealing Sheriff Charles Stevenson's car from the main streets of Anacortes, Washington on a Friday evening. Rex rode "in state" from Anacortes to Burlington, and then abandoned the car without knowing whose car he was driving.
In April 1919 he was selling "Dago Red" at a cement works in Balfour. It was prohibition, and he was selling bootlegged booze made from raisins, sugar and water, a sort of wine with an "awful kick." The men at the plant bought the stuff and went wild after drinking it, becoming unmanageable. The steam shovel operator was apparently really hit hard, and damaged the shovel so badly that repairs cost $700. Campbell was sentenced to one year at the Monroe Reformatory and the sheriff seized his still.
Campbell's life did not get any easier. In the 1920 census he is an inmate in the Washington State Reformatory. Somewhere along the line he married, but wife Kathleen divorced him in 1932 for non-support.
He made papers all over the country in April 1938, when a fishing boat blew up off Orcas Island in Puget Sound. George Patrick, a Coal Point Indian, reported hearing a blast and seeing the boat blown to pieces more than a mile offshore. He rowed to the scene but said the last survivor lost his hold on the wreckage and disappeared before he arrived. No wreckage was found, but search parties found three bodies. I haven't found reports of them finding Rex's, but he has a grave marker at Green Hill Memorial Cemberary, Burlington, Skagit County Washington, and the death date is that of the explosion.
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