Vincent Jay Broze

Jay went from us without fear or
complaint following kidney failure. A
scholar and sportsman, he brought a
daunting intellect to a nearly limitless range of interests
and his sense of fun to skiing, sailing and flying.
His friends benefited from his sentimental and generous
heart.

Born to Mildred and Vince Broze at what is now Virginia
Mason Hospital in Seattle, Jay sailed on the SS
Aleutian with his mother and sisters to Anchorage
when he was 2. His father worked to establish Air
Mail routes for the Postal Service, and returned from
trips with slides of Native Alaskan outposts, mountain
ranges and hair-raising tales of flying without
instruments and emergency landings. Jay attended
Chugach Elementary and learned to ski at Arctic Valley.

Back in Seattle, he went to Nathan Eckstein and
graduated from Roosevelt in 1965, and began sailing
with his uncle, Jim Ekern. After receiving a B.A. in
history at Whitman College in 1969, he went on to
earn an M.A. at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies in Washington, D.C., with a
concentration in Arabic studies. He found both college
and graduate programs enormously stimulating
and they set the tone for his lifelong inquiry into
practically everything.

He returned to the Northwest once more and found
work as a copywriter for George Lowe at Kraft Smith
and Lowe. As Georg Lowe remembers it: “Jay fit in
perfectly — Johns Hopkins University, history degree,
no agency experience, but he could write. A man
of broad interests and powerful intellect, he could also
discourse — brilliantly — on just about any subject...
Always fun, always brave, smart and willing under
any and all conditions.”

Inquiry, writing, sailing, skiing, flying and having
fun would be the hallmarks of the rest of his life.

In the mid-’70s, Jay mailed an unsolicited story to
SAIL magazine about the de-masting of a boat off the
Washington coast. As Keith Taylor, editor at SAIL
during that splendid era, tells it, “… I know it came
across my desk and it was a wonderful piece. I seized
on it like a hungry dog clamps onto a juicy bone. From
then on Jay covered the America’s Cup for SAIL until
I departed in 1988. His last assignment for me was
Fremantle in 1987 when the Aussies unsuccessfully
defended the Cup. His name was on the masthead of
SAIL through the ‘70s and ‘80s. In 1983 in Newport,
R.I., he was one of the insiders who first understood
what Aussie designer had achieved with Australia II’s
winged-keel.

“.. (He had) a wonderful wry quirky view of the world
that endeared him to all he met. His ability to walk
down a dock and greet old sailor friends, and make
new ones, was unrivaled.”

In 1982, Jay wooed and married Diana Cochener, a
former Whitman classmate, and became a great dad
to her young son, Joaquin Mason. The couple had
two other sons, Rafael and Elliot, and Jay and the
boys were so close and played together so much that
friends joked that Diana had four boys. But there was
much more than just play going on, and all three sons
grew into good and successful young men who shared
Jay’s curiosity about all things.

Having been in love with planes and flying since
a child, Jay became a pilot, then aerobatic pilot, in
his 40s. As luck would have it, his passion for aerobatic
flying coincided with the births, in short order,
of his two younger sons, so he flew his Great Lakes
trainer for his own joy and his passengers’ pleasure
and, often, astonishment when they found themselves
upside down over the Cascades or spiraling over the
Scablands. Later, he aided and abetted his oldest and
youngest sons in working toward their glider licenses
when they were in their early teens.

After 1988, when SAIL chose to shift its focus away
from the big ocean races, Jay continued to write, but,
without a deadline and always willing to pick up a
ringing telephone to talk, most of his story ideas and
novel first chapters got put on the back burner. He
consistently opted instead to be a devoted father to
his sons and a generous and responsible friend.

In 2000, however, his great friend, Jim Dietz, asked
him to write the copy accompanying Jim’s work for a
book. “Portraits of Combat, The World War II Art of
James Dietz” was published the following year.
In 2011, Diana and Jay sold their home in Seattle,
and moved to the Walla Walla home they had owned
for many years.

He left behind his wife, Diana Cochener Broze of
Walla Walla; his sons, Joaquin Mason of Somerville,
Mass., Rafael Broze of Washington, D.C., and Elliot
Broze of Anchorage, Alaska; his sisters, Katherine
Flynn of Anchorage, Alaska, and Valerie Bystrom of
Seattle; as well as numerous adoring nieces; and a
prior marriage, to Ann Hunter (Wellborn), ended in
divorce.

A memorial to Jay will be held frequently whenever
two people who knew and loved him get together for
the rest of their lives.