Jean Atthowe died just shy of her 86th birthday on December 19, 2016 at home in Richland, Oregon with her daughter (Helen), son-in-law (Carl Rosato) and surrounded by her five rescue pets: two dogs and three cats.
Jean was born in Brooklyn, New York February 26, 1931 and grew up in two worlds. Part of her childhood was spent in her father’s sparse western hometown of Price, Utah. The other part was in New York City where both her parents (Lynn Fausett and Helen Wessels) were artists and her father (Lynn) was president of the Art Students League 1932 through 1934. Jean graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in English literature and went on to work at Sunset magazine in Palo Alto, California and live in San Francisco. In California, she met and married John (Jack) Atthowe in 1954 and the two spent their first five years of marriage living in Germany and England where Jack was teaching psychology. They traveled and camped all over Europe and came back to the US to start a family: daughter Helen and son John.
The family moved to Missoula, Montana and Jean completed her Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Montana while raising two young children. Jean was a writer and taught creative writing and English at the University of Montana. She was also deeply involved in Missoula politics and education. In the 1980s, Jean and Jack bought 80 acres near Stevensville, Montana and retired there in 1989 to build an earth-sheltered, solar home. They were part of the Montana State University Forest Stewardship Program and turned their 80 acres into a healthy, weed-free forest. Jean’s flower and vegetable gardens were legendary and her native plant garden was featured in a Montana Native Plant Society garden tour. Jean was passionately involved in Ravalli County community, political, and natural resource management issues. Jean was one of the founding Grandmothers of the Bitterroot Water Forum in 1993, cared deeply about the protection and restoration of western Montana’s water resources, and worked along with her husband to educate about the many facets that support a healthy, functioning watershed.
In 1992, Jean founded and was president of the Montana Spay Neuter Task Force whose mission is to help Montana communities solve their pet over-population problems with education, sterilization, and local volunteer involvement. One of Jean’s major accomplishments with the task force was being the leader and driving force in spaying and neutering 57,289 dogs and cats over nine years in Montana through educational, community-involved, free events; changing most of the state of Montana’s overburdened shelters into dog training no-kill shelters. The task force motto was “Why mop up the flood, when you can turn off the spigot?” Jean felt that each spay/neuter event was a chance to educate about alternative solutions to animal populations other than euthanasia. At one spay-neuter event in Browning, Montana, Jean connected the Task Force’s mission to help animals with a healthy community in general, saying, “We want to help break the cycle of violence. To live with animals that are being abused is not respecting life in general. It’s a major issue for every place.”
After Jack died in 2014, Jean moved in with her daughter and son-in-law on their organic orchard in the Sierra foothills of northern California. Jean enjoyed helping at Bay Area farmers markets and revisiting some of her favorite places when she was a young woman in San Francisco, but along with her daughter, missed the mountains and open sagebrush country of her home in Montana. In 2015, Jean, Helen, and Carl combined their financial resources to purchase and steward a 211-acre ranch outside of Richland, Oregon with 70 irrigated acres along a mile of Eagle Creek which drains out of the Wallowa Mountains and the Eagle Cap Wilderness.
While Carl and Helen put in a new orchard, vegetable gardens, and a greenhouse, Jean designed and planted a large flower garden with terraces and rock-wall borders to replace the garden she left in Montana. All summer, she planted perennials, shrubs, and roses in her garden and picked and enjoyed the wild blackberries, apricots, peaches, apples, and plums that were abundant on the new property. Over the long, warm fall along Eagle Creek, as the cottonwoods turned a brilliant gold, Jean completed the new garden she could see in her mind’s eye by planting 3000 bulbs which will bloom next spring. The last two weeks of her life, Jean helped her daughter rescue a 7-month-old, neglected Lab mix puppy whom they are trying to find a good home for.
Jean was preceded in death by her beloved son John, who tragically died while mountain climbing in Wyoming in 1985.
For those who would like to make a memorial donation in memory of Jean, the family suggests Best Friends of Baker City (animal care and rescue) through Tami’s Pine Valley Funeral Home & Cremation Services, PO Box 543, Halfway OR 97834. On line condolences may be shared at www.tamispinevalleyfuneralhome.com.