JoAnn B. Skow died peacefully at her home, The Kenney in West Seattle, on September 3, 2015. She was with family from her sudden hospitalization a week prior, until her passing.
JoAnn was born to Albert Barron and Vivian Hales Barron on October 15, 1933, in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the third of four children: her older brother and sister, Gene and Barbara, and her younger brother, Blaine. The family moved to Richland, Washington, and JoAnn graduated from Richland (formerly Columbia) High School.
As a young girl, JoAnn loved horseback riding, earning her own money and driving her own car, a 1938 baby blue Plymouth.
She married Paul Pazaruski of Tacoma, Washington, in 1954 and they had two daughters, Paula and Pamela. She later married Darwin (Pete) Peterson and had a daughter, Cindy, in 1962. Pete adopted the two older daughters, and the family lived in North Tacoma, then University Place, where Pete’s son, David, and all three daughters graduated from Curtis High School.
JoAnn worked for many years as an office manager at General Plastics Company in Tacoma. Prior to General Plastics, she had worked for West Coast Grocery Company, Moss Adams Accounting and as a private accountant and tax preparer for clients such as Ghilarducci’s Flowers and for her inventory business with her husband, Pete. She enjoyed travelling to visit family in Maryland, Salt Lake City, Germany, and to contract bridge tournaments around the country.
In 1992, JoAnn married Earl Skow, a former classmate from Richland High School. They moved to Vashon Island, where they purchased a waterfront home and spent 18 years enjoying island life, annual travels to Hawaii and Arizona for sun and golf, and hosting and visiting family. JoAnn and Earl moved to The Kenney in West Seattle in 2012.
JoAnn’s greatest joy was raising children and being with family. Her greatest pride was that all her children graduated from college, a gift she had worked extra hard to help support. JoAnn also loved bridge, gardening, cooking and reading. She was a member of the First United Methodist Church of Tacoma, and was an active participant and volunteer in her daughters’ childhood activities and interests, including Bluebird and Brownie troops, PTA, riding clubs, ice-skating and skiing lessons, piano and painting. She was a member of the University Place Garden club.
A generous and loving grandmother, mother, daughter and sister, she often stated that her only wish as a young woman was to have children. Then, when she became a grandmother, that was her new greatest joy – and something she said her daughters ‘could look forward to.’ A beautiful woman with a beautiful smile, she will be remembered for the pride she took in all of her children, the pure enjoyment of her grandchildren and her grace.
JoAnn was preceded in death by her husband, Earl Skow, by her parents, Albert Barron and Vivian Rinesmith, her brothers Gene and Blaine Barron, and her sister Barbara Doyle of Richland, Washington. She is survived by her daughters Paula Birchman of Seattle, Pamela Laulainen of Hillsboro, Oregon, Cindy Peterson-Peart of Beaverton, Oregon, her stepson David Peterson of Olympia, six grandchildren, six step-grandchildren and many beloved nieces and nephews from the Barron, Doyle and Leddingham families.