Obituary-
Mrs. Thompson grew up and went to school in small town Banks, nestled up against the Coast Range on the western fringe of the Tualatin Valley in Washington County. Alta and her husband Jack Thompson were married in the Banks’ First Methodist Church in 1958. Alta and Jack square-danced for many years with the Hillsboro Hoedowners and Alta worked for many years for the Washington County Health Department in the county seat, Hillsboro.
Alta and Jack stopped working full-time in the late 1990s and enjoyed a long retirement, snow birding between various locations in the sunny Southwest and Bend in Central Oregon, and then back home again in Washington County. They spent their long retirement riding ATVs with friends in western deserts and mountains, and vacationing with family. Alta and Jack were married for 67 years.
Alta was born in 1938. Her mother’s family lived near Banks going back to the late 19th century. Alta was named after her grandmother, Alta Carstens, matriarch of some family property on the north end of Banks. The Carstens had migrated from England and established a homestead near Banks in the 1880s. Alta’s father’s family, Winters, formerly Van Winters, were of English and Dutch ancestry. Her dad, Louis, worked in sawmills, from Alaska to Northern California before settling in the Banks area and Washington County.
Alta graduated from Banks High School in 1956, a graduating class of 29 students. She married Jack C. Thompson, graduate of nearby Hillsboro High School, at a small church in Banks. Alta and Jack raised two children, Jack II and Deborah, living for a time in Banks, Hillsboro, Beaverton, and the longest stint on a small piece of property in Mountaindale, a narrow valley in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. All in Washington County.
Alta worked for the Washington County Health Department for 23 years as a secretary and administrative clerk. She took great pride in her work and the government services to which she contributed. Jack and Alta joined the Hillsboro Hoedowners, a square-dancing club, in the late 1960s and were active members until the mid 1990s. Their social lives were filled with family and square-dancing events, and frequent vacation trips to the Oregon coast and bigger summer camping adventures to surrounding states and national parks.
Alta contributed to a family tradition of quilt making, read romance mysteries by the box full, and was a big Portland Trail Blazers fan. Surviving are Alta’s husband, Jack, a son, Jack II, and granddaughter, Salome.
Endings are always hard (a personal reflection),
Maybe for however much you want to imagine yourself to be a unique individual, hanging out with your mother, or your parents anyway, is always going to remind you that to a perhaps uncomfortable degree the apple never falls far from the tree. We’re a mixture of our mothers and fathers, or the people who raised us anyway, the folks who wiped our noses and taught us how to tie our shoes and ride a bike.
In my mom’s retirement years, she became a big Portland Trail Blazer fan. She’d always been a fan but in her golden years she tried not to miss a game on TV and became fiercely partisan about the Blazers. She always rooted for them and never picked on the them when they were struggling; as I, by contrast, once I’d moved away from home, was often quick to. She loved it when Blazer players chose to live in the Portland area permanently and would refer to a player appearing in the news with tender affection, like family. But truth be told I never saw a game with her in those years, 2000s and 2010s, when she would not swear the refs and sometimes even the NBA had it in for the Blazers. She’d even grumble about the refs when they were winning, even if that complaining was quickly forgotten in the victory celebration. It could get so bad when things weren’t going well for the Blazers, and there was no shortage of losing Blazer games in those years, fit to be tied, my mom would insist on turning the game off, and then have to check back to see if there was any change in the score every 15 minutes until the game was over. She was fiercely loyal and partisan about the Blazers and took all their ups and downs very personally.
My mom was fiercely emotional and loyal like that in all her loving attachments, my dad, us kids, family, friends, her work, Banks, Oregon, Washington County, the Blazers, everything. Her love was fiercely loyal and tender like that. She beamed when you visited her and cried when you had to leave. She defended loved ones, right or wrong. But be that as it may, you most definitely did not want to get crosswise with my mom over any of the other things she loved. She was like one of those scrappy NBA players who you love when they’re on your team, on your side, in your corner, but find hard to take when part of the opposition.
Which was a particular worry for me when Trump rose to power in 2015. I feared my mom and dad might go for the guy. They were from the same demographic as his voting base. Both came from rural backgrounds, no college educations. They shared many of the grievances of his constituencies. A lot of the nativist myths Trump rose to power on-- foreigners are all ripping us off and our tax dollars pay for DEI minorities living off gov’t handouts, for two prime examples-- were popular coin in working class circles in the Oregon I grew up in.
But I’d underestimated my mom on this one. She never hesitated, “Trump is a bad man” was her succinct conclusion the first time his candidacy came up; this was before he’d even been elected. And I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. She was already a Hillary Clinton fan, had read a couple of her books. But she was also a Republican John McCain fan, so I couldn’t be certain? Plus, by that time they were living again on the property of my dad’s niece, who in the Obama years expressed fears the government was going to try to take away their guns. So I had my concerns.
Although, must say, my parents never really pushed any partisan politics on us as kids. If the subject ever came up, my mom would say her dad was a Democrat, presumably because he was a working man, and her mom was Republican, presumably because she was the daughter of a relatively large landholder in a small community. And, for that matter, I don’t remember a lot of partisan politics from either my mom’s or dad’s sides of the family while growing up. A loud bigot uncle here, the occasional ethnic slur there, but very little indication of the bitter grievances that have come out in the Trump Era.
What grievances, or from what I heard of them? Gun control, too many immigrants, liberals are bad and, most unexpected, a near hysterical hostility towards Portland-- and cities in general, I gathered-- where I have lived for the last 40 plus years! At any rate, I never needed to add my two cents or brace myself too much visiting my parents but, unfortunately, much of Trump’s first term was filled with my mom's stories about the shocking support for him she encountered in various other extended family members, whom she was seeing more of again now that they were settled back in Washington County.
Mostly, I found in my parent’s hostility to Trump some relief or even humor. One of her brothers, a former cop, was outraged by her hostility to Trump. She’d relate every encounter with puzzled and funny indignation. Curiously, another relative, on my dad’s side, also justified her Trump support as owing to the fact she also had police friends. Supporting Trump, apparently, was Backing the Blue. That Trump, a convicted felon, serial sex abuser, the most criminally litigated POTUS in history, did not raise any alarms or concerns about police or police union support for him because the police were family and friends.
The stories could be funny if outrageous from my safe distance but a few particularly upsetting incidents, when I was not present, were unfortunately deeply alienating experiences for my mom. She never openly quarreled with anyone, in her tellings anyway, but would replay a couple of the most trying episodes incessantly when I visited. Basically, some relative would grouse that Trump would do great things if only the damn democrats would stop trying to get in his way. His so-called crimes were overblown by liberals, etc. And my mom would feel shut down, disrespected, and ostracized, and replay the bad encounter over every time I visited.
I was sympathetic with her position, of course, but it was sad to watch it strain family relationships. And, really, my sympathies were no help in bridging the growing distance. I’d always thought Trump was a crazy fascist who promoted violence against his enemies. Enemies he slandered and scapegoated on TV no less! Poor immigrants, people of color, Trans, street protesters, liberals, Democrats, etc. (Again, as a person living in a Blue city, Me!) My mom was right, he was a bad man, and he was dangerous. I viewed his supporters first with puzzled alarm and whenever possible wary distance. I still think there is something extremely broken in popular support for him and anybody that supports him cannot be entirely trusted, sorry to say.
That said, my Aunt Bert, on my mom’s side, and my dad’s niece, Patty, stayed in contact with my mom until the end, and my mom was always grateful for their support; if also always humorously mystified by their Trump support. They don’t like chauvinist men, or at least she didn’t think they did, why would they go for a sexist creep like Trump, she’d ask me? I had my hunches but was about as baffled as she was, to be honest.
This is backdrop to this last five year run for my parents and my efforts to support them through this difficult period. It wasn’t easy for anybody concerned.
I first started getting more involved during Covid, April 2020, when they were living again on my dad’s niece’s place. This was the second time during their retirement when my parent’s wanted to go home, move back to Washington County for a spell and Patty had generously offered them a spot on her place.
I protested their second stay as soon as I heard about it. Patty lived 20 miles from town and health care. I really didn’t know yet exactly how bad it had gotten for them, but I knew their RV was breaking down and their health appeared to be weakening fast enough that they needed to be settling closer to health care than Dixie Mountain! But my dad’s curt response to my protests anticipated the hard times ahead, “The only way you’ll get me off this Hill now is in a pine box,” he exclaimed.
This was a wildly impractical position to take, and I said so, but I also understood where they were coming from. The Hill where Patty lives, way up in the West Hills outside Portland, was literally the same area where my dad had grown up and was deeply rural and what my parents had always called home: Not having to live in town but living on some property outside town was their idea of the American dream. Like their sweet place in Mountaindale, the place they cashed-in to embark on their 20-year-plus big retirement. I got all that. Patty’s place was like going home for them or the closest available facsimile, but it was too far away from health care when their health care needs were obviously only going to increase.
I’d always visited them a handful of times a year, holidays, weekends, vacations, although fewer visits in their hardcore snow birding years, as Bend and Arizona were much further away from Seattle than Portland. But during Covid I began driving down once a week to keep them in groceries and ferry them to and from the doctor. Once I was seeing them more regularly again, I recognized quickly that they were losing their ability to live independently and the living situation for them at Patty’s was totally unsustainable.
When I arrived on the scene they were already struggling to prepare their own meals. Dad could no longer drive safely but was in fierce denial about this. This was funny at first but soon enough grew scary and dangerous. Patty helped out however she could but mom was increasingly needing help going to the restroom or even getting out of a chair, was often on the edge of tears for fear of falling when taking any stairs, even one or two steps, and finally fell one time in the RV where my dad and Patty could not lift her off the floor and an ambulance had to be called from town, again, 20 miles away.
After a very difficult year, I got them vaccinated as soon as I could and into a senior living facility in Hillsboro in the summer of 2021.
My parents were always great sweethearts. I’m not saying they were not old fashion about some things in a way modern couples might object to. Mom ran the house, dad took care of the outside chores, etc. And I cannot count the number of times I would ask my mom her opinion or preference about something, anything, and this got worse the longer they were together, when she wouldn’t invariably respond first with her account of dad’s opinion or preference, even though you hadn’t asked for his opinion but hers. The funny part of this was my mom had actually always been full of opinions about many things, especially her fierce loving attachments, and liked talking about pretty much whatever, much more than my dad, and undoubtably where I got these tendencies from, but increasingly the longer my parents were together to access my mom’s opinions on anything-- to get beyond, ‘Well, your dad thinks this or that’-- you had to patiently crack the hardshell united front of their relationship and that could take some time.
This closeness, the loving tenderness between them, was obviously a source of great strength for them. More than anything else, this is what comes through for me sorting through their boxes of old photos. They were married 67 years, went through their share of ups and downs, were never rich but always rich in love for each other and their family. Or for as long as their own health and physical strength held up, at any rate. Which like everything else, admittedly, got very difficult for them at the end.
Their last four or five years, the last year and half up at Patty’s, and then three years living in an assisted living facility in Hillsboro, my dad’s ability to physically support my mom was breaking down. And, unfortunately, my mom could never quite adjust to this new fact, nor could he to her growing immobility and aches and pains associated with Parkinson’s disease. She was always tormented by the threat of injuring him but couldn’t stop calling out to him for help. And when she would call out, he’d always try to help her, but then they’d get into arguments about how he should go about helping her, and it would go on like this day-in-day-out until he got injured again. He thankfully retained his sense of humor and showed remarkable resilience in the face of her pained wrath but as his dementia got worse matters got worse between them. Everything became hard for them.
Still, when they finally first moved my dad into memory care, separating him from her for the first time in 65 years, memory care staff told me for the first few days they found him wondering the hallways, trying all the locked doors, and when they’d ask him what he was doing he’d say, “I’m trying to get back to my wife!”
My mom, by contrast, knew his name and who he was to the bitter end, was tormented by any separation from him, and would rage with jealously at what she perceived in his growing dementia as the loss of his affections and then in calmer, more reflective moments, would muse about him, “He’s funny. I love him so,” and then she’d cry again, this time smiling through her tears.
Even great sweethearts struggle as declining health and ultimately death separates and isolates them. This was wrenchingly sad to watch up close but looking back it appears to me now as kind of heroic. They struggled the best they could to stay together until death did part them.
My mother was always a fiercely loving person and I am tremendously grateful to have had her in my corner. It was terrible to watch her suffer as she did in her last years but, finally at rest, I hope I have done justice to her loving memory. I love you, Mom. R.I.P.
Photo memorial: I put together a photo memorial to her memory at: www.flickr.com/photos/swellsvillefamilyalbums/albums.
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