Kathleen Forbes’ Everett house caught on fire on Friday, March 13, 1970. She stood outside and watched as firefighters put out the flames.
She could have thought about her beloved collections of books and music she was losing in the fire. Although everyone was safe, she could have expressed worry about her piano and other possessions left inside her home.
But she didn’t. Instead, Forbes turned to someone next to her and said, “I get to redecorate the kitchen.”
“That’s the way she was, it was just her. She made something positive out of a negative,” her son, Keith Forbes Jr., said.
Kathleen “Kay” Forbes of Everett died in her home on June 18. She was 91.
Forbes was preceded in death by her husband, Keith Forbes Sr. and her son, Michael. She is survived by her children, Keith “Skip” Forbes Jr., Ann Clothey, Mark, Patrick, Ira Bruce, Margaret Post and their spouses; 29 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchildren; four in-laws, Bud and Trudy Forbes and Ruth and Ray Berry; and several cousins in Canada and Colorado.
Her remark during the fire is just one example of his mother’s optimism, her son, Patrick Forbes said. She was also courageous and strong, surviving breast cancer when she was diagnosed once in 1961 and again in 1981.
Forbes was born in Bellingham to Guy and Pearl Ogden on December 1, 1918. Her mother died when she was 18 months old and her father died when she was 14. Growing up, Forbes was raised by her grandparents and spent summers in Edison and the rest of the year in Bellingham.
While attending Bellingham High School, she met Keith Forbes. They married on June 9, 1936, after she graduated from high school. They were married for 72 years and had seven children.
“Mom graduated and they got married. Dad wasn’t letting her go,” Keith Forbes said. “Money was tight so their close friends went on their honeymoon with them to Grand Coulee Dam.”
The Forbes family bought a three and a half acre farm in Bellingham in 1943. Everyone was expected to help work the farm that included cows, chickens and hogs.
Keith Forbes remembers the hogs caused some problems.
“They’d get out of the pen so mom and I would run for the barn and grab pitchforks and we would round those babies up and back in the pen,” he said.
Forbes had four children when she went to work as one of two female disc jockeys in 1944 at KVOS Radio in Bellingham. Keith Forbes kept a small radio nearby when in 1945, he spent a year at St. Joseph’s Hospital with polio.
“I would listen to mom spin the platters and I would call her up and request Spike Jones and his City Slickers, which were a hot item in those days, and she always came through for me,” he said.
The family moved to Everett in 1956 and Keith Forbes Sr. went to work for Prudential Insurance. Forbes started attending Western Washington College of Education at the same time her son, Keith, began taking classes at the college. A pianist, Forbes took music classes.
Forbes and her husband, Keith, founded Lynnwood Advent Christian Church in their daylight basement in 1957 and eventually began meeting in a social hall in Mukilteo. She served as the church organist and choir director for 45 years.
Forbes went to work for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office as a radio dispatcher in 1971. She was transferred to the Civil Division and worked there until her retirement in 1988.
During her career with the sheriff’s office, Forbes arrested one person who came to turn himself in, Keith Forbes said. She worked four years past when she was supposed to retire.
“She would have kept working if they hadn’t stumbled across her age,” Keith Forbes said.
After she retired, Forbes taught piano lessons from her home. She loved cats, crossword puzzles, and reading mysteries, especially “The Cat Who…” series by Lillian Jackson Braun.
She liked big Christmas celebrations with family and having a full house, said her son Bruce.
“She took in foster kids, especially family,” he said. “Even up until the end people would move right back in.”
Forbes also loved her Irish heritage and made corned beef and cabbage to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
“She was an Irish girl who loved being Irish,” Patrick Forbes said. “She stood all of five feet nothing and she had this spunk.”
Forbes and her daughter, Margaret Post, always promised that some day they would visit Ireland together. She made the trip with Post and her other daughter, Ann Clothey, in October 1996.
Post shared in her eulogy that between Galway and Limerick her mother had “discovered mixing Irish dance with Guinness (beer).”
“Two pints later I realized she would be the last one in that night,” Post wrote.
Keith Forbes said his mother told him several times she wanted to stay in her home and the only way she would leave would be feet first.
Her request was honored.
“We told them she wanted to go out feet first and she did,” he said.
Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491, adaybert@heraldnet.com.
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