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OBITUARY
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OBITUARY |
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Mary Pendleton Hayden HermansAugust 1, 1937 - September 14, 2007 Mary H. Hermans died at home on San Juan Island on September 14, 2007 after a long battle with MS and cancer. Born August 1, 1937 in Phoenix, Arizona, daughter of Helen Pendleton Hayden and Julian Dodge Hayden, Mary Pendleton Hayden grew up in Tucson, and graduated from Tucson Senior High School. She attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she met her future husband and from which she graduated, cum laude, in History in 1958. On June 16, 1958 she married Colin Olmsted Hermans. They made their home first at Fort Sill, Oklahoma where he was on active duty and she worked in the Artillery and Missile Center Book Store. They moved to Seattle in 1959 where he enrolled in graduate School in Zoology and she worked as a secretary, first in the Surgery Department and then as the secretary to Robert L. Fernald, the director of the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington. She gave up working to raise her three children, Karen, Thomas, and Helen and to make a home for her family in 1962. When her husband completed his graduate work, they moved to the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, in 1966, and to the University of California in Berkeley in 1967 before settling in Rohnert Park, California where he obtained a professorship in Biology at Sonoma State University in 1969. In 1975-76, the whole family moved to Göttingen, Germany, where her husband was supported by a fellowship. She and her children became proficient in German. She returned to college to earn a second BA in Business and Accounting from Sonoma State University and began working as a CPA in 1981. She worked for Allen Hyko, CPA, in Friday Harbor, and Pisenti and Brinker, CPAs in Santa Rosa, California. In Rohnert Park, Mary volunteered as a water safety instructor, a teacher's aide, a member of the school board, before returning to work. Later she served on the boards of directors of Family Service Agency of Sonoma County, KRCB Public Broadcasting for the North Bay, and Face to Face of Sonoma County. When her husband retired from teaching in 1998, she gave up her accounting practice and they moved to San Juan Island where she lived until her death. During that time, she was treated successfully for breast cancer and leukemia before succumbing to uterine cancer. Mary is survived by her husband Colin, brothers Stephen and Julian Hayden, daughters Karen Mooney and Helen McKairnes, son Thomas Hermans, and granddaughters Allyson Mooney and Julia McKairnes. Her sister Serena Camacho preceded Mary in death. A memorial for Mary will be held in the Dining Hall at the Friday Harbor Laboratories, University Road, Friday Harbor, WA, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 20, 2007. Donations, in lieu of flowers, may be made in Mary’s memory to the following:
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