Lois MaryAnne Haynes
FREELAND - Lois Mary Anne Haynes passed away quietly on September 27, 2023 at her home on Whidbey Island, Washington, surrounded by her family. She passed just 1 hour and 8 minutes shy of her 86th birthday. Lois was preceded in death by her husband of 62 years, Donald Theodore Haynes, her parents Louis and Evelyn Mette, her parentsin-law Clyde and Olive Haynes, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law William and La Reece Haynes, and her brother-in-law Robert Denton.
Lois is survived by her children, Elaine Susan O’Toole, Donald William Haynes, Kirsten Anne Haynes, Amy Miriam and Leotis Givens Jr. and Daniel Timothy Haynes, her grandson and granddaughter Joshua David and Carrie Anne O’Toole and her adoptive granddaughter Faith Chepkirui. She is also survived by her sister-in-law Diana Gail Denton, her nephews John Michael Denton and Anthony Haynes and her niece Tracy Lang.
Lois grew up in California and Washington DC, the only child of Louis and Evelyn Mette. She attended college at the University of California, Berkeley. While there she met her future husband at the Newman Center, washing dishes after an event. They were both strong, complex, intellectual people, filled with deep faith and hope for the Catholic Church and the world on the eve of the 1960s, and driven to do their part through work and service. They were married on May 14, 1960.
Lois started her work by producing a large and happy family, while supporting her husband in completing his Masters and Doctoral degrees and embarking on his life’s work. When her youngest started school she started her own long and productive career. She started helping people find jobs, ran a program to help teenage mothers avoid the cycle of welfare poverty by providing the support they needed to finish high school, and ran another program helping retrain UAW members for new careers, whose factories in the Midwest were being closed.
During their time in the Midwest she completed her Master’s degree in Social Work and began work as a mental health counselor at Madison Center, in South Bend Indiana. After moving to Klamath Falls, Oregon she worked for many years with children who had been molested and abused. After retiring to Whidbey Island she opened a private mental health therapy practice working with members of the local community and the naval community from Oak Harbor. Lois continued her practice until she was forced to close it because of Covid-19. She was 82.
Everywhere she lived, Lois engaged deeply in the life of the church. She had a magnificent voice and always sang in the choirs and cantored. She served as a lector and Eucharistic minister. At different times she served on parish councils and helped teach catechism.
Singing was only a subset of Lois’s amazing creativity. She made clothes for the family, did macramé and crochet - she made intricate snowflakes— every one different - and snow angels that still grace our Christmas trees. She tended beautiful flower gardens. When we were young she augmented the family income creating and selling small terrariums at a hospital gift shop. There were innumerable holiday projects making ornaments out of egg cartons, glue, melted plastic cups, gold-painted walnuts, drinking straws, tin cans and lots of glitter. For Halloween she free-hand drew the characters from Charlie Brown and decorated our windows with a pumpkin patch scene, instead of witches and ghosts. One year she brought home a huge number of wooden cutout Christmas ornaments and we sat around the table painting them. Another year she brought home plain ceramic nativity figurines and each family member painted at least one. Fifty years later, they are still lovely.
Lois’s creativity did more than produce lovely artifacts. She used her talents to teach others to find and use their own creative spirits. Today her children identify many types of artistry in our own lives (singing, playing, painting, wood working, cooking, gardening, needle work, decorating, etc.) that we believe are the direct result of all we did with her and her encouragement of creativity. She never made us be ‘cookie cutter’ in our efforts or stay in the lines and she opened-up our imaginations in ways that are still producing results in our lives today.
Beyond the facts of her life, Lois was a tower of strength with an iron will and unending reserves of compassion. She had the unique ability to see the potential in everyone and everything. There was no stray animal or broken plant that she would not try to save, and no matter how damaged or wounded her clients were, she could always see the person they were meant to be. Lois also had no sense that there might not be enough time - that meant she was often late, and she has left us many unfinished projects, but more importantly she never gave up.
Lois lived her life passionately, hopefully and faithfully and she is already greatly missed.
On her behalf, her family would like to thank all the caregivers and medical personnel who tended to her needs in the last months of her life, especially Faith Chepkirui, Barbara McCallum and Meagan Butler, all the paramedics and EMT’s who came whenever we needed them, the emergency room staff at Whidbey General, her many doctors and clinicians at UWMedicine and the Pharmacy staff at Rite-Aid in Freeland, WA.
A funeral mass will be said at St. Hubert’s Catholic Church in Langley, WA on Monday October 9th, at 11:00am. Lois will be interred at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery in Roseburg, OR in the family plot.