June 13, 1923
May 26, 2013
June Marie Haugen passed away in the early hours of May 26th, 2013, a few weeks shy of her ninetieth birthday.
Born in Ironwood, Mich., on June 13, 1923; June Marie Hakala was the fourth of eight children. Like the rest of her family, she enjoyed music, especially the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday radio broadcasts. June loved to sing and found a place in several church choirs over her long life.
In her youth, she was active in 4H, which took her to the bustling county fair – a welcome adventure for a depression-era farm girl who had no particular interest in gardening or tending animals, a girl whose big family, in those days, ate plenty of venison -- in-season and out-of-season.
During World War II, June and her dear friend Bette moved from Michigan’s upper peninsula to the warm paradise of San Diego.
For reasons that later mystified them both, they eventually moved to rainy Seattle, where they met their future husbands. Eugene Haugen asked June to dance at a Seattle-area ballroom, and told her that she was the girl he was going to marry. With Bette in attendance, June married Gene on December 17, 1949. They launched one son and four daughters into the world by the woodsy shore of Martha Lake, in what was then Alderwood Manor, Wash.
It is almost true that the children could swim before they could walk. The home at Martha Lake was the scene of many exuberant summer gatherings of both the Hakala and Haugen clans: sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles. June’s siblings would roar with laughter and prepare enormous feasts of pies, potato sausage or moose roast while carrying on English so heavily accented with the Finn of their forebears that one might think they had recently arrived from the old country rather than from Michigan or Alaska.
It took a while for June to pass the driver’s license test but that did not stop her from piloting a leaky 1950s era Buick -- whose floorboards sprouted mushrooms -- to the grocery or other excursions. She cherished the independence of driving since she was very social. With an easy sense of humor and an ability to laugh at herself, she could strike up a conversation with nearly anyone.
In the early 1960s, Gene was transferred by Honeywell, and the family moved from the rainy, rural Northwest to the arid suburbs of Littleton, Colorado, where June became a golfer – perhaps the first ever from the Hakala clan. She loved the sun, loved getting her skin as “brown as a berry.” In the early 70s, June and Gene and the two youngest daughters moved again, to Sunnyvale, California, where a swimming pool and winter-flowering camellias presided over the back yard. June was a long, long way from the farm now. When the youngest daughters were finished with school, June and Gene began to spend a brief part of winter in their condo on Maui, where Bette and her husband Jon Bedinger also wintered.
When Gene retired in the mid-eighties, the couple began to search for yet another place to call home, and settled on Sequim where Gene’s oldest friends, Tom and Evelyn Campbell (whom he had known since college) were living, as well as Bette and Jon.
June sometimes called herself a “country bumpkin.” As a young woman, she could not have imagined that she would one day tour Europe, or take her family on a cruise ship to celebrate her fiftieth wedding anniversary, but she did these things, and more.
She was preceded in death by five of her siblings; by an infant son, Craig; and by her adult daughter, Lori Alene Haugen.
She is survived by her husband, Eugene D. Haugen; sister, Ilona Hill; brother, Edward Hakala; by her children, Paul Haugen, Geneen Marie Haugen, Brita Clark and Susan Haugen; by her granddaughters, Amber Montemayor, Jenna Clark, Kelsey Clark and Helena Bassett; and by her great-grandchildren Darius and Angel Montemayor.
A memorial service will be held on her ninetieth birthday, June 13, 2013 at 10:30 a.m., at Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim.
Memorial contributions can be made to the church as well.
The family would like to thank the caregivers at Sherwood Assisted Living and Sequim Health and Rehab for their kindness.
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