Editor,

This letter addresses all Washington State Ferry System employees.

We honor your work. We rely on you. We depend on you. We can’t get by without you. You are the dutiful father who day in and day out, no matter the weather, time of day, season of the year, phase of the moon, you show up, you man your post, you get us safely to Mukilteo and back again to Clinton.

But lately, for the past couple of months, Dad’s not been coming home at night, not reporting for work in the morning, leaving us all feeling anxious, uncertain, disconnected. Like so many things in life, father is under-appreciated until one night when he does not come home.

Dear worker, your getting a shot is throwing a life preserver to a child who’s fallen overboard. We’re all drowning here on the island. Please throw the doughnut.

While we’re all experiencing short-term pain due to reduced sailings, largely due to ferry worker noncompliance, in the long term, we’ll all be better off to wash such workers out of the system.

God forbid we ever have a real emergency on the ferry and we have to rely on the judgment of a worker who can’t even figure out a miracle vaccine saves lives — those of the ferry riders, his own life, the life of his own family.

May we never again have to sit in the ferry lot at Clinton and see the second boat sitting their idle, mocking us, holding us all hostage, while we sit in our cars for hours, missing chemotherapy appointments, mental health counseling sessions, important business meetings, the tragic death of a friend who died of COVID-19.

Steven V. Horton

Langley