Since 1946, air harbor has made a splash in Kenmore

By BRUCE RAMSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Kenmore Air Harbor is a business so emblematic of Kenmore that a seaplane is part of the city logo.

In 1946, Pan Am mechanic Robert Munro started Kenmore Air Harbor, now the largest seaplane base in the United States -- and still run by three generations of the Munro family.

For Craig Hunt, 31, Kenmore Air was the answer to a dream. His degree was in business administration, but he wanted to fly. He worked installing carpets, pumping gas and several other things while he put hours behind the stick.

"The way flying works is you do something else in order to fly," he says.

Hunt now takes fishermen and sea kayakers to the San Juans and to Campbell River and Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, piloting three-passenger Cessna 180s and seven-passenger DeHavilland Turbine Beavers.

"We do everything," he says. "We load the bags, we're the flight attendants, we're flight control. Once we leave Kenmore, we're the one responsible. We can fly low, show the people the bluffs, the seals, the whole nine yards."

It's not business management.

But Hunt says, "I'm not too much into hard sales."