Irene Barinoff

Irene Barinoff, 76, left this world peacefully in her sleep in the early morning of July 30, 2026, in Edmonds, Washington, surrounded, in every way that mattered, by the scores of family, friends, colleagues, and former students she had spent her life drawing close.

Born April 15, 1950, in Detroit, Michigan, Irene earned degrees in Russian Language and Engineering from the University of Michigan before moving to Seattle to complete a Master's degree in Oceanography at the University of Washington, an early sign of the restless curiosity that would define the rest of her life.

The first time one of her closest friends became aware of her, she was on the stage of a school assembly at Lakeside, translating for a delegation of Uzbek dignitaries. He was a first-year teacher watching from the audience; she was poised, polished and professional, translating with a spontaneous, easy grace. "What a remarkable woman," he thought. He would spend the next four decades finding out just how remarkable, first as a colleague, then a neighbor, and finally, as one of her many, many close friends.

Irene's mind ranged everywhere: she was a mathematician, a scientist, a musician, a student of art, history, literature, and theology, the kind of person who worked through a knotty calculus problem simply for the pleasure of it. But what made her curiosity remarkable wasn't its breadth so much as where it came from. Her curiosity never chose its own subjects; it was inspired by the people she loved. Whatever you cared about, whatever you were curious about, became what she learned about, until she could meet you already fluent in your particular corner of the world. She was famous among her friends as a kind of human search engine, and when insomnia struck, she put the sleepless hours to use, sending 2 a.m. emails whenever she found something online she thought a friend, specifically, would want to know.

She loved a good debate, but more than that, she loved the people brave enough to have one with her, especially over a good meal and a fine glass of wine, or on a summer evening on her back deck with a whiskey in hand, working through the mysteries of life and the follies of humanity.

Irene taught mathematics at Lakeside School for 26 years, and her gift went well beyond the subject. She had a way of making the intimidating approachable: equations became puzzles, proofs became stories, and countless students discovered they were more capable than they had ever imagined. More than the math, they learned that they mattered, as human beings.

That gift didn't end when class did, or even when a student graduated. Years later, one of Irene's dearest friends traveled to the Midwest for her son's college graduation, and one evening, before finals, she and her husband took a group of his hockey teammates out to dinner. The team's goalie, a young man from Sweden named Anton, mentioned, with a big smile, as if of course they'd know what he meant, that the group had just been on the phone earlier that day with "their friend Irene."

"I'm afraid, Anton," she said, "we don't know your friend, Irene."

Perplexed, he tried again: "You know... our friend Irene... from Seattle... who helps us with our math..."

She had no idea her own son had ever reached out to Irene. He hadn't told her. Irene hadn't told her either. Why would she? It was their own relationship, built on nothing more than a young man knowing exactly who to call when he was in a mathematical pinch, because Irene had made sure he knew, as she made sure every student she taught or tutored knew, that she'd be there if he needed her. She never once mentioned it, not even to her own friend. Recognition was never the point.

Above all, Irene identified as an Orthodox Christian, and her life was anchored by a deep and abiding faith, not something she merely professed, but something she lived out daily, through prayer, service, and compassion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, she worked to help rebuild Orthodox communities in Russia. As the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “… the only thing that counts is faith working through love;” Irene counted beautifully in her faith and in her expansive love.

Saint Herman of Spruce Island held a special place in her heart. She desired to emulate him in every way: his love and care for animals, his robust vegetable garden, his devotion to the trees and understory of his island home, and his welcome to anyone who visited. That devotion led her, for years, to support St. Herman's Seminary in Alaska. She spoke for years with a dear friend of making a pilgrimage to Spruce Island itself, planning airfare and tide charts for the boat crossing, but the trip never quite fit into either of their lives. Still, some of Spruce Island came to her by way of returning pilgrim friends, who brought back small pouches of soil from the saint's gravesite. After her death, those same pouches turned up tucked here and there around her home, each kept in its own container. Typical of Irene, the soils could not be combined but had to remain in individually treasured containers.

If there was a constant in Irene's life, it was hospitality without limit. Summer trips with her niece and nephew, what she called Power Touring, always ended the same way, with a few nights back at her home on Puget Sound, a card table set with a tablecloth and fresh flowers from her garden, and hours of canasta by citronella candlelight, melding both the cards and the stories, long after everyone should have gone to bed. They set that tablecloth on fire exactly once. It didn't stop the game for more than a couple of minutes; the three of them were far too competitive to let a little scorch mark end a hand.

She cooked with the same devotion she brought to everything else, studying each guest well ahead of time, what they loved, what they craved, what would make them feel truly fed, then learning new techniques and hunting down the right ingredients just for them. She always made more than any one meal required, on purpose, so that everyone left with a container in hand and something to nourish them through the week ahead. Her home in Innis Arden became an oasis for the people she loved, with couches that felt like clouds, gardens in bloom, and a tent and fans rigged up on her deck overlooking Puget Sound each summer so no one had to leave on a hot day.

That same abundant energy carried her well beyond her own backyard, too, often at reckless speed.

Irene gave the slip to KGB agents in a Moscow subway in 1987. She took the compression corner at the bottom of Innis Arden Drive at a breathtaking fifty miles an hour, twice the speed limit, most evenings on her way home from school. Those same Power Touring trips, self-designed itineraries she mapped out each summer across the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies in her 1988 Toyota Corolla, had just enough structure to be an adventure and just enough freedom to make them her niece and nephew's own.

Leaning out a hotel window in Vancouver once, her nephew asked how anyone had gotten a two-hundred-foot tree onto a skyscraper's roof deck. Irene knew the answer instantly, right down to the engineering and the concrete column built to carry a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of soil, all while reminding him, mid-lean, "don't get blown off the edge!" It became her refrain with her niece and nephew on every hike and every overlook for years to come, turning them loose to explore on their own, trusting them to come back, while making absolutely sure they felt safe enough to go.

That same fierce, watchful love extended just as naturally to the animals in her care.

Irene's dogs were never just dogs. She called Casey, her golden retriever, "Puppy" for the whole of his life, sometimes referring to him as "the Prince," who could never do wrong in her eyes. When a plate of homemade cookies vanished from the coffee table one Thanksgiving, Irene was certain a guest's husband was responsible, dismissing out of hand the two telltale nostril marks found beside the empty plate. She also doted on Javier, a chihuahua as big as a dime, who had his own great green quilt reserved on the couch; the two of them would settle in there together for hours, watching the birds outside. Both dogs were read aloud to most days, from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, though Javier, notably, preferred the Times.

For all that people knew of her, Irene kept something of herself in reserve. She was outspoken and loyal, sweet-tempered and stubborn in the same breath, puckish one moment and stoic the next, quick to a bell-like, quiet laugh. She could be fierce, and she could be gentle. Her life was, at once, entirely transparent and a little mysterious. She did it her way.

Her departure was much the same: peaceful, without fanfare, trusting the people she loved to grieve in their own time and carry on, the way she'd always trusted them to find their own way back from a hike or a hard problem or a long trip away.

Irene was predeceased by her parents, Catherine and Basil Barinoff. She is survived by her sister, Mary Barinoff Glencer of Ann Arbor, Michigan; her niece, Alexa Catherine Glencer of Palo Alto, California; and her nephew, Nathan Basil Glencer of Oakland, California, along with countless friends, colleagues, and former students who loved her dearly.

She leaves behind the Noah's Ark toys she gave her grand-nephew, Noah, bought, presciently, years before he was born. She leaves behind art, carvings, and books scattered through the homes of people she loved, and hydrangeas she grew from cuttings, still blooming in their gardens, keeping her close. And she leaves behind her signature red clogs, big shoes to fill, and a colorful, unmistakable reminder of her sly wit, her warm smile, and a life joyfully, fully lived.

A funeral service will be held at Holy Apostles Orthodox Church in Shoreline at 10:00 a.m. on August 7, 2026, followed by burial at Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park at noon. The service will be available for livestream at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82132108714.