Stanley B. McDonald developed his business sense at a young age. He had a paper route at 12, started cleaning planes in exchange for rides in the aircraft at age 13, then started installing drapes for a furniture company when he was 14.
He started many companies over the years, his first while in his 20s. But he is best known for starting Princess Cruises, which sprang out of the need for more hotel rooms during the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962.
“He was really an entrepreneur from the beginning,” his daughter Laurie McDonald Jonsson said. “He loved creating new things and working on new ideas.”
McDonald died Nov. 20 in his Bellevue, Wash., home on the shores of Lake Washington. His family said he had recently been ill with pneumonia. He was 94.
Born in Alberta, Canada, in 1920, McDonald grew up in Yakima, Wash. After moving to Seattle for high school, he graduated from Roosevelt High School and attended the University of Washington from 1938 to 1943. He enlisted in the Navy and was trained as a pilot during World War II, but not before marrying his sweetheart, Barbara, in 1944.