Lemley Chapel
Serving Sedro-Woolley &
All of Skagit County Since 1935
1008 Third Street
Sedro-Woolley, WA
360-855-1288
www.LemleyChapel.com
Katherine Gardner Memorial
Katherine Gardner Memorial

Katherine Gardner

Katherine Gardner

Monday, March 5th, 2018

Katherine Gilbert Gardner, 99, of Edmonds, Washington, passed away March 5, 2018, in Shoreline, Washington.  Katherine was born September 26, 1918, in Bellingham, Washington.  Her parents were Howard Gilbert and Mary (Minnick) Gilbert of Wickersham, Washington. Katherine was the youngest of four children.  Katherine attended elementary school in Wickersham and graduated from Mount Baker High School in 1935 and Griffin Business College in Seattle in 1937.  Katherine had a long career with the US Civil Service.

Katherine and Andrew Gardner married in 1940 at her parents’ home in Wickersham, and they honeymooned at the San Francisco World’s Fair and Catalina Island.  They celebrated their 74th anniversary before Andy’s passing in 2014 at the age of 100.  They lived in Seattle and Oak Harbor before moving to Edmonds.

Katherine had many favorites during her long life, but family and friends were foremost.  Katherine loved to keep in touch with notes in her beautiful handwriting, chatty phone calls, and hospitality.  Who can forget Katherine’s tasty caramel cinnamon rolls, fried chicken, berry pies, yeast rolls, or Hungarian goulash!  Katherine’s indoor and outdoor gardening skills beautified everywhere she lived.   She enjoyed traveling with family on automobile trips to Ohio, summer vacations to Birch Bay, Europe, and on the Queen Elizabeth 2 to India and South Africa.  She traveled to New Zealand with her niece Viola Gramson and to San Diego to visit family and friends.  Everyone enjoyed talking with her about travelling and genealogy. Katherine enjoyed outdoor endeavors and loved to go snow skiing with family.  She helped her son Greg restore a 1938 Pontiac. She impressed her grandchildren by learning Gmail and Facebook on her iMac. Katherine also shared her sewing skills and knitted many personalized Christmas stockings.

Katherine is survived by her daughter, Lela and her husband, Dean Jamieson of Shoreline, her son, Greg and his wife, Janna Gardner of Edmonds, grandchildren, Becky, Gavin and Stephanie Jamieson, Amy and Randy Gardner, Jason Rambo and one great-granddaughter.

Katherine will be laid to rest at the family plot at Saxon Cemetery, near Acme, Washington.

Guestbook

  • Bruce Harwood

    Sad to hear of Kay’s passing. Although I only met her a couple of times,I was impressed at what a lovely person she was. I will always treasure the Family History book she made up for me. Condolences to Greg.Lela.and their families.

  • Leslie (Gilbert) Sisler

    I just learned of Katherine’s passing. I never met her in person but corresponded through Christmas cards & letters. She was truly a lovely lady. She shared many Gilbert family pages & photos with me, remembering my dad, her cousin, William Bill Gilbert, all the way back here in Ohio. Several years ago, she sent me a letter she’d received from my grandmother Hazel (Jacobs) Gilbert, from just after I was born in 1961. Grandma Hazel passed in 1962 so I did not have a chance to know her. That letter is very special to me. Katherine will be remembered as a loving, caring woman who was surely a joy to her family.

  • Albert Foster

    My cousin Katherine was my last living loving link with my once large Minnick Family that homesteaded in Whatcom County, Washington, in the 19th century. Katherine, and my grandmother Katherine, her namesake, both really lived an earlier Washington State life where fishing abundant salmon in local Whatcom and Skagit streams was important winter food for the family, brothers, husbands and sons hand cut eight foot diameter trees by hand to make a living, and preserving home grown food in root cellars and by canning was not a hobby. I mourn her passing today more deeply than I can explain, as with her goes my last living family link with that simpler, quieter, less populated, less developed world, that was really still living the Jeffersonian ideal of an Agrarian Democracy nation of small free hard working self-sufficient farmers. I will keep her stories of our Minnick family alive in me as long as I live. Thank you Katherine, you will be sorely missed. Rest in peace cousin.

  • Ben Woolsey

    Thank you “Aunt Kay” for a lifetime of memories… there’s so much more. You touched so many lives with your delightful company, strength and good cheer. You have so many friends and family on both sides of heaven and I am especially blessed to have been one of them. My favorite Kay Gardner story…? -hard to choose… Kay’s roller-skating adventures at the Wickersham Rink, Kay’s dance(s) with a “dashing” sailor from the USS Houston CA-30, making a pre war Seattle Port-Call and driving “Dad’s Model-T truck” from Wickersham to Bellingham to “fetch her sister” after a big dance… Kay’s best dish, easy, her “Hungarian” Chicken-n-Dumplings…