Wanda Marie Fadness
1924 – 2013
My mother, Wanda Marie Fadness, passed away January 15, in Providence Hospital, Medford, OR. She was 89 years of age. She was admitted to the Hospital, on Thanksgiving Day, for the first time since 1974.
Wanda was a member of the greatest generation. She was the only daughter of Edna and Merlin Henderson Shumway. She was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. She was a pretty and popular student in Grant High School, in Sacramento. After she graduated, she volunteered to sit in a tower, watching for enemy aircraft during World War II, and attended community college.
She met my father, Blake, when he came home for a furlough with her brother, Merlin, from the Army Air Corp flight school for pilots in King City, CA. After a war-time romance, she and Blake had a military wedding in Washington, DC, in 1945.
As the wife of a military attaché, she played bridge with Mamie Eisenhower and enjoyed the postwar social life of Washington. She and my father wound up at March Air Force Base in 1949, where my father was the Air Force liaison with Hollywood, to make WW II movies following the war. After working in California and ranching in the Centennial Valley, my parents divorced in Dillon, Montana.
Wanda got a degree in Art and her teaching certificate from Western Montana College in Dillon, where she met and married my stepfather, John, in 1964. Mother taught school in Delake, Oregon, now Lincoln City; she was a teacher and principal in Edgewood, California, and taught school in Fortuna, California, until she retired in 1973. She continued to take art classes and was a creative teacher and artist; her students loved her.
John returned to school to become a psychologist. He became the mental health director in Humboldt County, California, and mother enjoyed being at home. Wanda cared for her house, gardened and continued to paint and do her art in Eureka, California, until my stepfather, John, passed away in 1988. Mother’s heart was broken. She moved to Central Point to be closer to her remaining family, in 1993.
Wanda loved her home and her garden. She was able to stay in her own home until November, following a fall. There will be a private service honoring both Wanda and John this summer, in Montana.
Wanda was preceded in death by her mother and father, her first husband, James Blake Bean (ret. Maj., US Air Force), her second husband, John Richard Fadness, her brother, Merlin Shumway (ret. Capt., US Air Force), and her son-in-law, Hank Collins.
If you wish to honor my mother, volunteer in an elementary school, help children learn to read, plant a garden, or buy an original piece of art from a local artist to place in your home.
Don B. Briggs
1930 – 2013
Don B. Briggs passed away in his home in Whitehall, on Jan. 17, 2013.
He was born Dec. 16, 1930, to Mary and Eli Briggs. He married Dahle Christensen on June 1, 1953. They have six sons and three daughters, 30 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his parents and brother, Merrill.
Funeral services were held Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Whitehall.
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