Marie Louise Overturf

May 21, 1927 – July 2, 2015

“What’s that!” were Mary Lou’s most used words.

In good health, her sharp mind could take in a lot. She advanced past two grades in school and received a full college scholarship.

She chose to support her mother by becoming an ace typist at Seattle’s Port of Embarkation and waited for her soldier boyfriend to come back from WWII service.

Clarence “Clancy” Overturf and she were married February 5, 1947.

She realized her dream of opening a ballet school.

They raised three children: Janet, Scot and Christy in the home they built in Shoreline. Mary Lou guided them to share her love of learning by walking them to the bookmobile stop monthly — several books for each. She amassed a large personal library and loved it late into life.

Home improvement ideas, gardening facts and places to visit enthused her with the most action. For the woodsy Shoreline property, she demonstrated rhododendron expertise and made it beautiful.

Clancy’s employer offered a good buyout for early retirement, and they “played house” at a cottage above Saratoga Passage and got hooked on Whidbey Island. They had a house built on one-third acre of unobstructed, high bank water view. Now in her 50s, she learned gardening in the sun was a great new adventure! She beautified both properties, never stopping over tiredness. It was said, “Mary Lou could make a stick grow!”

They turned the cottage into a bed and breakfast rental, and made even more friends with their cheery and sweet ways. Many were repeat customers, and wrote to them for years. Mary Lou decorated the houses for every Hallmark holiday, and was the queen of greeting cards. People felt thought of, and I’ve saved many of those cards with her long notes.

She was loving to each of her immediate and extended family members and babysat her grandsons; each later sought the quality of marriage “grandma and grandpa” had.

Painful osteoporosis slowed Mary Lou considerably, and about seven years ago she was limited by Alzheimer’s disease. Clancy was her caregiver into his late 80s, and this year she moved to a pleasant memory care home. She died in hospice care just three months after Clancy died.

Their spirits are released and they are loved forever by their children: Janet Wartinger, Scot Overturf and Christy Hagglund; grandchildren, Donna Granados, Ben Hagglund, Tim Hagglund, Jeff Hagglund and Andrea Overturf; great-grandchildren, Jonathan Hagglund, Abby Hagglund, Matthew Hagglund, Andrew Hagglund, Lucas Hagglund; and many nieces, nephews and friends.

Author: Janet Wartinger