Barbara Janet Khon

Barbara Janet Khon

Barbara Janet Khon, 79, a recent resident of Portland, Ore., was diagnosed with metastatic cancer of the gastrointestinal tract on June 20 and died Thursday, July 6, 2017 at Legacy Hopewell House Hospice in Portland with her daughter Angela Khon Rider by her side.

She was born May 23, 1938, in Addison, Mich., the daughter of Oscar and Jesse Bernice (Ladd) Siegfried. She lived, attended school, and worked around the Brooklyn, Mich., area until she moved to Florida in 1989. In 2006, she moved to Tennessee and lived there (and part-time in Florida) until June 2017 when she moved to Portland to be near her daughter Angela and son-in-law Doug Rider.

Barb loved to engage with people and easily made friends out of strangers where ever she went. She always had some sort of job to support her strong self-reliant nature but also because it gave her opportunities to enjoy interacting with others.

She worked on the family farm from a young age and also worked as a short order cook and waitress on the weekends during junior high school. When her parents moved out of the school district while she was in high school, she lived on her own in Brooklyn and supported herself by working at Weatherwax Drugstore. After graduation, she married Louis F. Khon, also from the Brooklyn area (divorced in 1981), and had four children while she continued to work full-time. She worked at a couple area industries before she was employed at General Motors in Tecumseh, Mich., from 1965 until she suffered a spinal injury on the job and took medical retirement in 1986.

Her numerous friends and co-workers at GM appreciated her integrity and hard-work ethic, but most of all they enjoyed her sparkly personality, bubbly laugh, and ability to always create a sense of community and fun. While at GM, Barb eventually took on the editor job of writing the UAW Local union newspaper. She not only created an award-winning publication, she also met her best friend for the past 35 years, Joan Baldwin, when Joan signed up to help on the paper in 1982.

In the early 1980’s, she became a valued member and office holder of the Jackson, Mich., Parents Without Partners group and had maintained close friendships with many of the members since that time. Over the years she attended the Brooklyn High School Alumni reunions and rekindled many friendships there too. When she wasn’t on the phone or communicating by email with her Michigan friends, she traveled back to Michigan to enjoy them in person.

When she moved to Bradenton, Fla., in 1989, she trained and served as a hurricane evacuation center director for the Red Cross. She also worked part-time for Target and served for several years as a host-mother for foreign students of the Yazigi Language Study Center. She maintained friendships with many of her former students and they came back to visit her and she traveled to visit them in South America.

While in Florida, she was initially an active member and then president of a local Bradenton/Sarasota singles social group that centered on dancing. She met Paul Tomaso (NJ) in that group in 1994 and they were married in 1997. Sadly, Paul passed away in 1999.

When she moved to the Nashville, Tenn., area in 2006 to be closer to her friend Joan, she obtained certification as a substitute teacher for area elementary and junior high schools for a couple of years. After she stopped teaching, she worked for a local Publix grocery store as a food-host. Every day that she worked, she got to create delicious and easy to make foods and share them with people. That job was a perfect match for her engaging personality and her cooking skills.

For the past several years, she had been retired from work but was still busy making and selling her sewing and crotchet craft creations at fairs and church fund raisers. She was looking forward to her recent move to Portland, to enjoy the diversity of the city, meet people, and learn new things to create.

Barb loved to learn and had many delightful talents and self-taught skills. She was always up for the challenge to fix or create something. Pretty much, if she was interested in something, she’d figure out a way to do it.

Her ingenuity and can-do attitude showed at a young age when she taught herself (in the family barn) how to yodel, how to twirl a baton using a cow-herding stick, and with the help of a couple of classmates, even tap dancing. There wasn’t much call for her yodeling or tap dance skills, but she parlayed the twirling into becoming a majorette at the Brooklyn High School as well as winning area baton competitions.

She thrived on ways to express her creativity and generously shared her abundant talents with her appreciative friends, family, and coworkers. She especially shined and liked to share her baking, cooking, and cake-decorating expertise; sewing, crocheting, and numerous crafts; painting, drawing, and calligraphy; party planning, dancing, and socializing; bargain finding, home repair improvements and gardening. Her gardening skills were so good that she liked to say that she didn’t have a green thumb, she had a green fist. Whether it was proliferating house plants, a garden surplus, or some canning or baked good deliciousness, many have been the lucky recipients of her green-fisted bounty.

Most of all, she loved to share a laugh with others.

While in hospice, she shared many stories and memories of her life. As was her nature, she focused on the good times and didn’t like to dwell on the hardships. Even at the end of her life, she delighted in making the nurses and staff laugh. She will be greatly missed by those that loved her.

Barb had a life-long faith that sustained her through many personal and physical challenges. She took comfort and gained spiritual strength from feeling she was connected to a higher-power no matter what the circumstances.  Now that she’s on the other side, she’s most likely having a great time creating, dancing, and most of all, laughing.

She is survived by her first husband Louis F. Khon of Michigan and their children; daughter Angela Khon Rider and son-in-law Doug Rider of Portland, Ore., daughter Lisa K. Khon of Florida, and sons Christopher A. Khon and Kelly J. Khon both of Michigan. She also leaves behind the children and grandchildren of her sons, as well as several of her siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and extended family.

At Barb’s request, there will be no formal memorial service and she chose to be cremated with her ashes placed in a garden setting in Portland. For those that would like to leave the family their condolences, light a virtual candle, or share a memory of Barb, please see the online memorial at http://www.anewtradition.com/obituaries/obituary/14954_Barbara_J_Khon.