Vivian Joyce Milleson (neé Cleworth) passed away peacefully in her sleep on Monday evening, October 21, and laid to rest in the Vashon Cemetery on October 27. She was born October 31, 1928, in Portland, Oregon. She lived with her father, Lorne Cleworth, and her mother, Melba (Harmon) Cleworth, in a river house right on the bank of the Columbia.

Unfortunately, her mother became ill with tuberculosis. Joyce, as she was called, and her older sister, Barbara, went to live on their maternal grandparents’ ranch in Estacata, Oregon. She and Barbara led a rustic, yet idyllic, life there with their grandmother, grandfather and uncles Bob and Bruce. This was during the Great Depression, therefore times were tough but on the ranch they had food, companionship and music. Bob played the banjo and Bruce the piano, and Joyce retained a love for music throughout her life. She was also a writer of prose and poetry and liked to draw cartoons.

In 1948 she met Marvin Michael Lee Falk at the Portland College of Art , where she was a student and he a teacher. They married after a whirlwind romance and had three children, Katherine Joy Falk, Melba Meredith Falk, and Mary Gail Falk. They divorced in 1956 and in 1957 Joyce met Ralph Milleson when they were both working at a newspaper on the Eastside of the Seattle area. They had two children, Grace Elaine Milleson and finally a boy, Hugh Winston Milleson.

They moved the family to Vashon Island in 1961 to a small farm on the west side overlooking Colvos Passage and the Olympic Mountains. Joyce raised all five children there and on the north end of the Island in a house she designed and had built.

Joyce had a great love for the Island and in her 35-year career as a real estate broker here, she helped hundreds of people to buy and sell homes, all of whom remember and love her. She will be missed.

Paid Obituary.