Born in Seattle on Sept. 2,1929, Anne grew up near Green Lake and graduated from Roosevelt High School, where she served a term as editor of the student newspaper. As a girl she enjoyed Green Lake swims, neighborhood baseball, English-style horseback riding and the companionship of her miniature pinscher, Pepper.

She studied piano with UW professor Edith Woodcock and served as accompanist for Seattle’s University Congregational Church youth choir, which undertook a national tour while Anne was in high school.

Anne’s parents were Alice and C. Arthur Swanson (she a first-grade teacher and he a freight agent for the C & O Railroad). Anne’s first job came young—she worked at a neighborhood drug store’s soda fountain and also at the Shop of China on University Way. Growing up, Anne was close to her Spokane aunts, Lillian Anderson and Mabel Wahlstrom, to her Swedish-immigrant grandmother, Anna Wahlstrom, and to family friends Manda Larson and Ruth Gregory. All of these special people who helped to shape Anne’s life preceded her in death.

Upon entering the University of Washington in 1947, Anne pledged Alpha Phi, transferring to what is now the University of Montana two years later, where she continued her Greek affiliation and graduated in 1951. She began college as a journalism major but ultimately graduated with an English and education degree.

In 1951 she married her Montana sweetheart, James Scott Martin, a college baseball player who drove a Model A and whose Phi Delta Theta fraternity pin she had been wearing for some time. She and Jim had five children born in various parts of the country as Jim’s career with J. Neils Lumber Co. (later St. Regis Paper Co. and Champion International) took them to Libby, MT, Tampa and Jacksonville, FL, Maine, Tacoma and Vashon. They also lived in Minnesota. In Tampa, Jim had a home office and Anne served as his secretary, learning to operate a teletype machine.

Anne had been an only child and therefore greatly enjoyed mothering her own large family. Adventures with that family included a backyard skating rink and springer spaniel puppies in Minneapolis and a cross-country car-and-train trip from Tampa to the Seattle Worlds Fair, via Bull Lake, MT, in 1962. For that trip she sewed matching summer outfits for the kids (she was accomplished at most of the needle arts). A later family adventure was a cruise to the Bahamas in 1966.

A talented and well-trained writer, she was often drafted by her churches or PTAs to work on their publications, and during the years when some of her children were competitive swimmers typed many a heat sheet for swim meets.

She enjoyed gardening and birds and was a great lover of dogs. Anne lived in Tacoma from 1966 to 1973 and returned to the Northwest in 1985. Her home was on Vashon Island for the next 25 years. There she hosted grandchildren for summer beach visits, blackberry picking, and dinners out of her vegetable garden.

Anne was a thoughtful citizen and a quietly literate, cultured, softspoken, generous person. Her handwritten letters, whether Christmas cards, condolence notes, thank-you notes or birthday cards to children or grandchildren, were gems of eloquence and, frequently, humor. She liked crossword puzzles and had many answers even in her last year.

She will be dearly missed by all of her surviving family members, who include: husband Jim, of Vashon Island, daughters Jamie Martin-Almy, Tacoma, Elizabeth Anne Martin, Seattle, and Caroline Alice Matter, Vashon; sons Scott Arthur Martin, DDS, of Redmond, and Gregory Frank Martin, Vashon; grandchildren Michaela, Tyler, Benjamin, Megan, Meredith, Mari´sca, Cazimir, Bohdin, and Kiryk; daughters-in-law Diane Martin, Redmond, and Amber Mozeleski, Vashon and sons-in-law Jim Almy, Tacoma, and Joe Matter, Vashon. Anne is also survived by cousins in Spokane.

Anne’s wishes were that memorials be made to the charity of the donor’s choice. Services will be private. Arrangements by Island Funeral Service.

Visit our online guestbook at www.islandfuneral.com.

(paid obituary)