Long time Montesano resident, June Marie Denny, passed away peacefully in December 2018. She was 91 years old.

Born in Everett, Washington. June was the only daughter in the family, growing up with four brothers. She could climb a tree and shoot a gun with the best of them. While a senior at Everett High School, June worked for Boeing’s Everett facility alongside the famous “Rosie The Riveter” helping build the planes used in WWII. Her job was that of a “bucker”. The riveter used a gun to shoot rivets through the metal and fasten it together. The bucker used a bucking bar on the other side of the metal to smooth out the rivets. June was warned by her mother to “never hang out with those “older” women who rivet, they wear red lipstick!”

After graduating high school, June entered a Nursing Program in Everett to train as a Registered Nurse. As a nursing student, she contracted tuberculous from a patient and was forced to put her professional education on hold for two years as she recovered. After receiving her Registered Nursing degree she attended to patients who were in iron lungs suffering from polio and also worked at Childrens’ Orthopedic Hospital in Seattle.

In 1951, June married the true and everlasting love of her life, Harry Denny from Hoquiam, Washington. June and Harry had met as children, she was three and Harry was five. The newlyweds settled in Montesano where they raised their family and became quintessential members of the community.

June worked as an RN for Dr. James Moore and Dr. Dizon in Montesano and also with Grays Harbor County as part of the Visiting Nurse Program along with other volunteer organizations. She was an active member of the Montesano Presbyterian Church and with the patience of a saint, was a leader for a group of teenage Junior Girl Scouts.

In the 1980s, June and Harry retired and began their travels throughout the United States, eventually becoming annual snowbirds to the Arizona desert, where, with the eye of an artist, she began her new passion, painting. June also taught microwave cooking classes at their retirement community as this was “new technology” at the time.

She had some hard-core competitive moments playing board games and cards and cherished family reunions, enthusiastically showed her 8mm family movies to anyone who would watch and was determined to keep family traditions alive. She enjoyed singing Christmas carols…. A bit off-key, but God love her.

She loved her Lord; she was still “sweet” on her husband Harry, of 68 years who passed in 2016, she had a mother’s unfailing love for her three daughters and a special place in her heart for each of her son-in-laws. She adored her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and cherished all of her family members.

A moral compass in a world of lost direction, a woman of faith, family and friends. While we will miss her, she is always with us; yesterday, today and tomorrow. We love you forever!