Milan Krukar, 93, passed away peacefully on the afternoon of May 24, 2026, in Seattle, Washington. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, to Adam Krukar and Katerina Pajtas in 1933. Milan led a happy, active life filled with family, friends, and activities including reading, dancing, listening to music, watching sports, and dining and drinking with friends and family. As a young child, Milan’s first language was Slovak. He could read, write and speak Slovak. He first went to public school at 3 years old, and he was the only child in his class that didn’t speak English. He eventually learned English, French, and Spanish. In 1956 he graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering. After graduation, he took a job as a senior mining engineer with Cerro de Pasco Corporation in Peru from 1956-1960. He worked at mines in the Andes at 14,000 feet elevation. During the time he was mining, he was almost killed three times. One of those times was when he didn’t see that he had almost stepped into a shaft/small hole that was 50 feet deep. Another time a platform collapsed under him, and he quickly grabbed a rope to prevent himself from falling. He quit mining in 1960 and moved to Seattle to get a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at the University of Washington, which he completed in 1962. He chose Seattle partially because of a National Geographic article about the Puget Sound, where the mountain ranges reminded him of the Andes. He worked as a civil engineer for the Washington State Highway Department in Seattle and acquired his third degree in 1964 from UW, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering. In 1964, he went to work for Washington State University at Pullman as an associate civil engineer where he did highway research and taught. One thing he developed there was the use of steel road plates for construction projects, which came about due to his highway research for the US Department of Transportation. During his time at WSU, he also studied economics, working towards an economics Ph.D. In 1974, he took a job as a senior economic analyst in planning at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in Madison. In 1975, he returned to WSU to continue highway research and economic studies. In 1979, he moved to Salem, Oregon and was a senior transportation economist, planning highways with the Oregon Department of Transportation until his retirement in 1998. One of the major projects he developed for ODOT in the 1990s was the Port-of-Entry Advanced Sorting System (PASS) automated weigh-in motion system. At the University of Washington in the 1960s, he met his future wife, Ruth, at a party that was a weekly gathering for South Americans. Everyone knew Milan and Ruth as they were an interesting and dynamic couple that everyone liked. However, when Milan announced to his friends that he was marrying Ruth, they thought he was crazy because she already had 4 kids. Love prevailed, and they eventually married in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in 1967 and had a child together. They ended up getting divorced in 1972, but remained friends, and he was active in the lives of his children. However, due to those connections, he and Ruth eventually decided to get back together 20 years later. They remarried in Honolulu in 1993 and lived separately until his retirement in 1997. After he retired, they lived half time in Honolulu, HI, and half time in Sequim, WA, until moving to Hawaii full time in 2007. They lived in Honolulu together until Ruth passed away in 2024. That’s where he remained until 2025, when he moved to the Puget Sound area to be closer to family. Milan is preceded in death by his parents, his wife Ruth, and his brother-in-law, Stephen Misata. Milan is survived by his son, Mark (Melissa), his 4 stepchildren, Barbara McCartan (Richard), Johannette Rowley (Brian Hill), Louis, and Michael (Fraya), numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his sister, Victoria Misata, and her sons James and Tim. Milan was proud of all his children, and happy and grateful that they helped care for him.