Mary Louise Cox Ackerman died July 19, 2003, at her long time residence of Horizon House in Seattle. She was 89 years old.

Mrs. Ackerman was born Sept. 5, 1903, on a family homestead in Guthrie, Okla. Following graduation from Skiatook High School in 1922, the family moved to southern California where she graduated from the Methodist Hospital School of Nursing in Arcadia in 1927. She worked there as a private duty nurse.

She was commissioned in the Army Nurse Corps in WWII and served in Utah and Oklahoma, before shipping overseas to serve in Okinawa and Japan, returning to the Seattle area after the war. She was a member of the Army Reserve/50th General Hospital Unit at Ft. Lewis for many years, retiring with the commission of Major.

She lived and worked in Seattle as an office nurse for her late husband Dr. Frederick F. Ackerman, who specialized in ophthalmology, until his retirement. They spent much time at Ackerman Acre, their home on Vashon Island.

Mrs. Ackerman will be remembered for her accomplishments in knitting for the whole family, tailoring her own clothes, loving a series of cats in her life and her joy of gardening at the Acre and mostly her pleasure in being a grandmother.

She was known in the family for always having an appropriate proverb to apply to any situation.

Her parents, husband, sisters Beth and Helen, and brother Nathan all died earlier.

Survivors include nieces Mary McDougal, Sara Gustafson, and Anna Ellison of California and Jeanne Ann Blue of Lake Stevens, and step-daughter Constance Clarke of Vashon Island, four grandchildren and five great-grandsons.

She was pleased to be the first of three generations of nurses in the family. She would say that “Life was often hard work, but a purring cat and laughing children made it all worthwhile.” Louise’s family says that “Her love for us and our love for her will continue forever.”

Her ashes were inurned in the memorial garden at Church of the Holy Spirit on Vashon Island.