Long time residents of Whatcom county, George and Lois Garlick, are well-known in the local community for their environmental work. George Garlick (1911-2006) was born at West Mountain View, near Ferndale, Washington to Edsil and Mary Garlick. He later attended the University of Washington and obtained a degree in Fisheries there. George was later drafted during World War II and sent to England in a hospital unit and then to France and Germany. After the war he came back to Ferndale and worked for Western Washington University as a science technician in the Biology department until his retirement.

Lois Garlick was born in 1920 in Seattle Washington to Myron and Hazel Buckman. She grew up in the Queen Anne neighborhood and later obtained a degree in Biology at the University of Washington.  Around this time she met and married her first husband.  They had five children together and eventually bought a farm on the Mount Baker Highway and opened the Circle-F Machine Shop there. Lois began working in Bellingham to help put the children through school and came to work for WWU as a science technician in the Science Education Department.

George and Lois often worked together. They shared a mutual love of science, the environment and boating and married in 1972. They were involved with the early development of Shoreline Management and later the Clean Water Alliance. They also helped begin the North Cascades Audubon Society in the 1970s and worked to protect birds and wildlife in the area.  Lois operated Raptor Roost, a bird rehabilitation business, for many years and George volunteered as a steward of the Chuckanut Island Preserve. They were active in public education as well.

George’s grandfather, Edwin Lopas, came to Whatcom County in the 1870s and found a land claim in the Mountain View area with the help of an earlier settler and moved his family in while completing a cabin on the property. He filled many roles in the community including county commissioner, postmaster, bank director, and board member for the Mountain View school district. He built and temporarily owned and operated the Mountain View Store and Post Office, and later the East Mountain View Shingle Mill.  The mill was successful and he later bought the West Mountain View Shingle Mill as well.  Edsil Garlick, came to work at the shingle mill and in 1902 married Edwin's youngest daughter, Mary Lopas. Edwin deeded the couple an 80 acre farm in the Mountain View area and they started a small dairy and farmed there.

Lois’s grandparents, Ella and Henry Broders, lived in from Albany, Oregon where her grandfather, owned the H. Broders butcher shop.  Their daughter Hazel, married Myron Buckman.  They lived in Seattle where Myron owned and operated M.F. Buckman Machine Works. 

Originally from the Bay Area of California, Gloria Trevino Newman met Lois and George Garlick in the course of bird rehabilitation work in Whatcom County. Gloria worked closely with both Lois and George to document the history of their families and also their years of environmental activism. Her research, including a large number of oral history interviews, comprises part of the Lois and George Garlick Family Papers.