Owen Mir, lifelong supporter of the newspaper and the local arts, dies at age 77

An eccentric lover of all things local arts and culture, Owen Mir will be remembered by many.

“Owen was gregarious on a scale you’ve seldom seen,” Justin Bell said. Wherever he went, “it didn’t matter if it was the head of the corporation or the security guard in the back – Owen knew them on a first-name basis.”

Mir died July 28. He was 77.

Born in Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1945, Mir’s family moved to Spokane in 1953. In 1961, their father – an agricultural specialist – moved the family, including Mir and his younger brothers, Vernon and Mark, to Afghanistan for two years before moving back to Spokane.

This early traveling was likely the source of Mir’s appetite for knowledge and exploration, Vernon Mir, 74, said.

Mir liked to joke: “He was the only Mensa drop out – that he knew of.”

Vernon Mir added: “He was always interested in learning and meeting and talking to people.”

Between a couple of enlistments and several years in the reserves, Mir spent nearly three decades in the military.

“Uncle Sam ‘invited’ him to join the military in 1967,” Vernon Mir said. “And his test scores allowed him to join the Army branch of the NSA (National Security Agency).”

Having casually learned Persian during his childhood years in Afghanistan, Mir was quickly able to pick up Turkish and Russian. He worked at a listening station in Turkey interpreting Russian transmissions for a year.

In April 2022, he was recognized by Honor Flight, a nonprofit organization that flies veterans at no cost to visit their respective war memorials in Washington, D.C. Mir often volunteered at the Vet’s Garage, a local nonprofit that helps military veterans readjust to civilian life.

Mir was constantly collecting information and objects, recycling, selling and repurposing them as he went, Bell said. He always “tried his darnedest to recycle,” finding homes for the misfit things he came across in his many adventures around town.

Despite limited means, Mir was a fixture of sorts in the local arts and culture community. His eclectic taste made him as likely to visit a gallery opening or a play as a lecture on engineering or a meeting held by a local archaeological society.

Johnny Culver met Mir when the two were working at a local insulation company in the late 1970s.

“He was so smart,” Carver said. “He wasn’t totally mechanically inclined, but he understood stuff – he taught me a lot of things that he didn’t even know how to do.”

Bill and Kathy Kostelec met Mir after a folk concert they had planned at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox just before renovations began in 2007.

Not long after, when their series of house concerts started growing, Mir was always ready to help.

“We were always short on chairs and he could always find more,” Bill Kostelec said. “So at one point we just said, ‘OK, from now on you don’t have to pay to come – so he always had free tickets.”

Constantly running into Mir at events around town, they soon learned he was “a man of many interests.”

“It was so cute – he would come here late after he’d been to all these other events around town,” Kathy Kostelec said. “He was so full of information – like a walking, talking magazine for arts and culture and events of all sorts. It was amazing.”

From paperboy to dedicated reader and Northwest Passages Book Club attendee, Mir was a lifelong supporter of The Spokesman-Review.

Mir “loved our newspaper, cared for the people who worked here,” Executive Editor Rob Curley said in an email. Mir, who customarily sat by Curley at events, remains the only Northwest Passages Book Club attendee to have earned a lifetime pass.

“Sure, he wasn’t everybody’s saint … he was like a funny uncle,” Bill Kostelec said. “Some people didn’t react to him very well, but most people did.”

“I mean, if he’d been rich, they’d be writing articles about him,” Kathy Kostelec said.

Mir was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

“He was an amazing character,” said Allan Foster, a fellow church member. “He had a wicked sense of humor and always had a project, always doing something helpful.”

A service for Mir will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, 4340 W. Whistalks Way, at 10 a.m. Sept. 21. His remains will be interred at the Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake.