Mary Lou Reid

Leaving Spokane to explore the world beyond the Inland Northwest at 18, she first went to Seattle for a time before moving to southern California. After a sunny and warm Christmas and one earthquake she decided southern California wasn’t for her and she moved to San Francisco to be part of the burgeoning hippie movement.

Having found her place and her people, she quickly settled into the Bay Area, even meeting, and occasionally socializing with, such luminaries as Jack Kerouac, Janis Joplin, and Three Dog Night.

Going back and forth between Spokane and California for a time in the early seventies, she eventually returned to the Bay Area on a more permanent basis in 1974, where she would remain until a cross country trip in 1980 inspired her to pack up her belongings and her son and move back east in 1982.

They never quite made it back east but, after spending a few years in central California, she decided to return to Spokane to be closer to family.

After returning to Spokane she returned to school to complete her degree, eventually discovering a passion for the natural world and becoming a biologist, as well as purchasing a beautiful plot of land outside of Cheney, Washington, that reminded her of her happy place: the farm she grew up on.

After many years of good health she was diagnosed with COPD and entered long term care in 2009. Through sheer force of will she beat all the odds and survived for another 11 years to see her son get married to the love of his life and have a child of his own, and reconnect with her daughter. We would have gladly given her another 11 years plus 11 after that but, after more than a decade of defying every odd there is, she decided that it was time to rest.

Mary Lou Reid died as she lived: on her own terms, and ready for the next adventure.

She was preceded in death by her father Philip, her mother Irene, and her sister Ruth Ann. She lives on in her son Michael, her daughter Julie, and her grandchildren Apollo (Michael), Sean (Julie), and Christian (Julie), her siblings Raymond, James, and Marcia, and in the family and friends spread over four countries and three continents whose lives she touched and who will carry her memory.

She will be deeply missed, and never forgotten.