Nora McLaren Swenson died peacefully at her Useless Bay beach house on the morning of July 7, 2002. She was 90 years old.

Mrs. Swenson was born in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. She was the youngest of seven children of Malcolm and Sarah McLaren. She left the Yukon at age 15 and settled in Seattle with her mother, entering Lincoln High School as a freshman. The Seattle School District tested her to determine what grade her one-room schoolhouse education would place her in and graduated her that spring.

After a brief career in a law office, she met and married Harvey F. “Sandy” Swenson. As an 18-year-old female in 1929, she was an adult and could marry without parental consent. Mr. Swenson, however, had to get permission to marry, and Mrs. Swenson teased him about this for 66 years of marriage.

Mrs. Swenson was a loving, nurturing woman who gave of herself without hesitation to family and loved ones. Even when her final illness was diagnosed as terminal, one of her greatest concerns was how to tell her sister, Dorothy Walloch, and her strong desire to not cast a shadow on Dorothy’s upcoming 100th birthday celebration.

Mrs. Swenson was preceded in death by her husband, Sandy, and leaves a daughter, Christine Schrecengost; granddaughters Alasun Rose and Shannon Nora Schrecengost of Freeland; son, Daniel Thor Swenson; and grandson, Steven Daniel Swenson, both of Seattle.

She also leaves behind her sister Dorothy of Seattle, and too many nieces, nephews, great-nieces, great-nephews, great-great- nieces and nephews to list, but she leaves them with memories.

A memorial service will be held at Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland at 1 p.m. July 13, 2002. The family requests memorials to be sent to the Steve Schrecengost Vision Endowment Fund of Trinity Lutheran Church or to the American Cancer Society.