Vivian Ruth Guy

Vivian Ruth Walker was born on October 14,1932 in Fort Benton, Montana to Fred E. and Ethel D. Walker. The fifth of ten children, Vivian grew up on her family’s farm in Highwood, Montana. She graduated from Highwood High School in 1949 and went on to earn a teaching degree from Northern Montana College in Havre, Montana. There she met her future husband, Arthur William “Bill” Guy. They married in 1952 in Havre, and raised four children in Seattle, where Bill attended school at the University of Washington. He eventually became a professor there and ran a research lab.

Vivian did not pursue a teaching career, rather she devoted her time to raising her children, taking them to music lessons, attending school activities, and helping with Camp Fire Girls and Scouts. When her children were a little older, Vivian took some bookkeeping courses and applied her skills doing part-time bookkeeping at an Enuresis Clinic. She later worked in Bill’s lab at the University of Washington. Vivian was a regular volunteer poll worker in her local precinct and volunteered at a local well-child clinic.

Vivian, Bill and their four children went on many backpacking and camping trips in the Cascade Mountains, Olympic Peninsula, and in Canada near Kamloops, British Columbia. At home, Vivian loved all manner of stitchery and produced many pieces of knit or crocheted items as well as producing beautiful pieces of tatting, hardanger, cross-stitch, and woven items with her loom. She loved working with wood, refinishing a five-legged oak table that had been in her Montana family home when she was growing up, and painstakingly restoring an antique picture frame with gold leaf. A tour-de-force was the grandfather clock she built from a kit, finishing and assembling the wood and installing the clock works. Though overmodest to a fault, Vivian was a person of diverse skills: she played the piano, and she built an amplifier for her and Bill’s stereo system¬—assembling and soldering the parts from a kit. Vivian loved gardening, cultivating numerous types of flowers and shrubs, and her yard was a sanctuary for birds attracted to her many feeders. The several native cedar trees she planted and nurtured stand tall as testimony to this remarkable woman.

Vivian was preceded in death by her parents, Fred E. Walker and Ethel D. (Buckmister) Walker, her husband Arthur William “Bill” Guy, and sisters Evelyn, Lucille, Bernadine, and Carol. She is survived by her children, Bill Guy (Kim), Fred Guy (Beth), Sandra Guy Zimmerman (Terry), and Arla Guy (Ming Li); five grandchildren, Sarah Guy Woodall (Cobey), Viridia Guy (Carl Mofjeld), Monika Rueb (Brian), Amanda Guy (Adam Beebe), and William Li (Ola); four great-grandchildren, Bradyn Rueb, Maddy Rueb, Jack Beebe, and Sabina Woodall; and siblings Fred Walker, Sidney Walker, Ralph Walker, Bonnie Vawter (Ron), and Bettie Herbison (Steve).

A memorial service for Vivian will be held Thursday, August 29, 2024 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM at Acacia Memorial Park & Funeral Home, 14951 Bothell Way NE, Seattle, WA 98155, followed by a committal service from 2:00 PM to 2:30 PM.