April 19, 2024, Damaris “Demy” Dean, 97, of Puyallup, WA, passed away peacefully with her family at her side after a sudden and unexpected decline in her health.
Born in Auburn, WA on July 17, 1926, she spent her childhood in Juneau, Alaska during the Great Depression.
Demy moved to Whidbey Island in her teens where she met her future husband, Orlan, at Coupeville High School. He joined the Marines during World War II and they married after his return. Living in Seattle while he completed his degree at the UW, she worked in the office of Bartell Drugs, studied music and was an accomplished singer.
They returned to Coupeville and moved to his childhood home on Penn Cove. Orlan worked with his father at Dean Motor Company and later bought the business that they ran together as Dean Chevrolet. Orlan passed away in 2010 they were married 61 years.
They were a fixture of the Coupeville business community for many years as well as the Elks, yacht club and golf club and their active bridge club. They enjoyed 20 years as snowbirds. Forever proud of their daughters, Paula (deceased 2002) and Althea (Bill) Riley. She and Orlan adored family life on the beach in the little town of Coupeville. They beachcombed, camped, fished, Demy was the queen of clam digging, they skied, sailed, and hosted many a luau around their little above ground pool and she made the best Barbie doll cakes.
She was abundantly creative and full to the brim with knowledge gained through all of her life experiences. She had a hack for everything, spent hours on Facebook, made lists upon lists, and loved to sort her ‘stuff’ while wearing red lipstick and clip-on earrings. Demy could fix or refurbish anything from reupholstering Jeep seats to pouring a concrete sea wall and more! She was strong willed, energetic, loyal, had an enormous heart and a love of conversation. Her roles as Gram and GG were her favorite in her later years.
Granddaughter Merritt was her best friend from the beginning. She always said I just want to live long enough to see Merritt graduate and she did, then to marry and she did, then to have my Great Grandchildren and her dream came true twice. Little Georgie and Garland brought her so much delight these last few years. She was still living alone and going strong until the week she passed and only slowed by Macular degeneration and glaucoma (she would say, Wear your sunglasses!) She had been in great health, out for a pedicure and a perm before she suffered a heart attack during the night and her health declined over the period of a week.As she told the numerous kind hospital staff that cared for her “she was ready to go.”
In typical Demy fashion, there are no services planned, certainly no pomp and circumstance. Just remember her and a life well lived the next time you wander a thrift store, peek into the .25 box at a garage sale, admire a gardenia blossom or Hawaiian lei, enjoy a perfectly ripened cantaloupe or hear the yipping of a tiny, much-loved Chihuahua.
