Charles W Jensen

The second of five children born to Albert and Lena Jensen, Charles was born in Fortuna, North Dakota, on December 23, 1916. Forced out of North Dakota by the Great Depression, the family in 1933 moved to Amity, Oregon, where Charles graduated from high school in 1934 . He then attended Linfield College where he met his future wife, Victoria May Fuqua. After graduating from Linfield in 1939, he and Victoria married on Christmas Day of 1940. Until her death in 2008, they were together for 67 years, raising three children during the forty years they lived in Lake Oswego. In 1990, he and Victoria moved to a retirement home in the Tigard community of Summerfield which became their base for extensive travels and for entertaining their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren at numerous family gatherings.

Friendly and gregarious, Charles excelled at retail sales at West Portland Lumber--for nearly five decades something of an institution on Barbur Boulevard--where he partnered with father Albert and brother Norris. He was active in civic groups such as the Southwest Portland Lions. His climbs of Mt. Hood and other mountains with the Mazamas led to his joining the Mazamas in 1958 and to becoming a prominent member of the organization, leading many climbs, presiding over the club’s Basic Climbing School, serving on the Mazama Climbing Committee, and eventually becoming a Life Member. An active climber into his 70s, he stood on nearly all of the prominent summits of the Pacific Northwest as well as on the peaks of the Grand Teton Range in Wyoming and on the highest mountain tops of the Alps in Europe.

At the end of a long life, he had outlived most of his relatives and contemporaries. Watching them all vanish was not easy for him. The loss of Victoria was wrenching. He was preceded in death by his parents; by two brothers, Norris and Al Jensen; and by a sister, Ardis Johnson.

He is survived by his younger brother, John Jensen of Renton, Washington; by daughter Jane Bosket of Independence, Oregon; by daughter Molly Woolf of Beaverton, Oregon; by son David Jensen of Enterprise, Oregon; and by six grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

His memorial service will take place at Atkison Memorial Church in Oregon City at 10:30 AM on Friday, March 18

Arrangements under the direction of Caldwell's, Hennessey, Goetsch & McGee Funeral Home, Portland, OR.