BTW, Coe is VERY much alive and still VERY cranky, this is not an obituary.
(Picture by David Choe)
The history of CoeTug according to Coe (October 2009):
My Dad had a supposed 'uncle' named Coe. He thought he was a real uncle,
not a sort of uncle like I am a sort grandpa. But I have never found
anything that proved there was an Uncle Coe. My Dad's mother referred to
him once or twice like he was my father brother but then other times it
sounded like he was just a close family friend. So I don't know. I have
over the years run into a few other people with the name, a couple women
here in Seattle and another man. There was a school in Seattle top of Queen
Anne Hill called Coe School. It was a last name and there are people with
the last name of Coe. So you go figure.
Tug was my father's name. The story I was told was that his Grandmother,
his father's mother ruled the roost. She insisted that Dad, her first
grandson be named Tug after her best friend in St. Louis or somewhere like
that. There was a major football coach in the 1960s named Tug Wilson (I
think it was Wilson) The little searching I did I found that in the 19th
Century there were two names shortened to Tug, Tugwell and Tugworth.
So my Dad wanted to use the name Coe and my Mother thought I should have the
second name of Tug. Back in the 1930s it was pretty common to use a
particular family name for the second name.
But my parents did select off beat first names, Coe, Gary (no not so
uncommon as it was in 1939) and Kim because both Mon and Dad like Kipling's
novel "Kim." I was told that each time mother had a addition they argued if
Kim should be the name and agreed on the last one.
I began using Coe Tug when I started working in theater because it was
different and my Equity/AGMA/AGVA/AFTRA cards were CoeTug.
Coe
