In 20 years of treks across the United States and locally to raise money for research into debilitating diseases and to bring awareness to them, retired pastor Don Stevenson of Auburn — familiarly known as The Pacin’ Parson — wore out many a walking shoe.

OK, how many?

Even his family wouldn’t hazard a guess.

“Oh, my goodness, a lot,” laughed Stevenson’s stepdaughter, Robin Wieland.

“The most miserable people in the world are the ones who think only of themselves,” Stephenson told the Auburn Reporter in 2001.

Stevenson died on Feb. 2, 2025. And on Feb. 8, family, friends and admirers gathered at the Bonney Lake Church of the Nazarene to celebrate, in the words of one speaker, “the long, beautiful life of Don Stevenson, and the loved he always showed to everyone he came into contact with, and always proclaiming the reason for his love and joy, which came from knowing God and his son Jesus Christ.”

Stevenson often said, “I don’t possess much of this world’s goods, but I do possess that which this world cannot purchase: love, joy and peace.”

One of eight children born to Donald and Alice Stevenson in Columbus, Ohio, Stevenson came into the world on Jan. 4, 1936. He joined the Marine Corps Reserves at age 17 in November 1953. Two months later, he enlisted in the regular Marines. He attended school while attached to the 1st Marine Division. He graduated at the head of his class, for which he received a commendation from the division general.

When Stevenson left the Marines in January 1957, he enrolled in high school and college classes at God’s Bible School and Missionary Training Home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thanks to the G.I Bill, he completed seven years of school in four years, receiving his high school diploma and earning a bachelor of theology degree with honors. He would go on to pastor his first church in Newark, Ohio, just one of many.

For 28 years, Stevenson drove 18-wheelers and smaller vehicles for Seattle-based Darigold Inc. He retired in 1994, he said, to “devote more time to my writing,” which he did, writing several novels and numerous poems and short stories.

Stevenson was a volunteer firefighter on Vashon Island, as well as an emergency medical technician with a fire district and a private ambulance company.

Stevenson was a man blessed with a seemingly inexhaustible store of optimism and ruddy good health until his final years. He began his walks for various charities in 1998, among them charities benefiting research for multiple sclerosis, cancer and Alzheimer’s. He also climbed Mount Rainier for the American Lung Association.

As Stevenson told the Auburn Reporter in 2017, by that year, he had walked more than 70,000 miles, including a 3,000-mile walk from Seattle to Portland, Maine, and 3,000-mile cross-country walk from Washington state to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to raise money for research into cancer, pulmonary hypertension (PH) and Lou Gehrig’s disease, among others.

On one trek, Stevenson used a walker and an oxygen tank to demonstrate the plight of many PH patients. PH is high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs — an incurable, debilitating disease that affects the functioning of the heart and can lead to death from heart failure. Without treatment, the average survival time is 2.8 years. Given symptoms that include shortness of breath, fatigue and fainting, PH is often misdiagnosed as asthma or other less-threatening illnesses.

He often limited his walks to 20 miles a day, Monday through Friday, with his wife of 40 years, Loretta, following him in a van. His benefit walks also took him to Kent, Sumner, Bonney Lake, Enumclaw, Tacoma, Spanaway and other area trails.

On his 80th birthday celebration at Zion Lutheran Church in 2016, Stevenson used the occasion to launch his then-latest charity jaunt — a 1,000-mile benefit and awareness walk for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association.

To polite inquiries about his own health, the Pacin’ Parson was unflinchingly upbeat.

“I feel good,” Stevenson told the Auburn Reporter at the birthday celebration. “I feel just like I did yesterday, but I feel younger inside than I do on the outside. It’s walking, the exercise that keeps me young.”

Stevenson leaves behind his wife, Loretta, eight children, 48 grandchildren, 78 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren.

Don Stevenson sings “A Corner of Heaven” to Jewell Sudbay, 3, a family friend, a song he wrote for his own son when he was a little boy. File photo.

The Pacing Parson Don Stevenson with Jack Meteyer, to whom Stevenson dedicated one of his many charity walk to.

Auburn’s Don Stevenson covered 3,000 miles and 10 states in four months in one of his many walks for charity, averaging 30 miles a day, and taking six million steps. File photo

Don Stevenson follows South 196th Street en route to the Interurban Trail in Kent. Stevenson walked 1,000 miles to bring awareness to and support for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association. File photo.