After her younger brother was shot down in the South Pacific during World War II, a young woman from Ohio joined the Navy.
She’d grown up a hard-working farm girl. By the time the war was under way, she’d earned degrees in teaching and nursing from Ohio State University. She was working at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital when her brother was reported missing.
“She had it in her mind to find her brother,” said John Hunter, one of Rose Ellen Hunter’s two sons, who shares a first name with John Downing Reed Jr., the Navy flier who never came home.
That story from more than 60 years ago doesn’t surprise Mary Duryee, a longtime friend of Rose Ellen Hunter’s.
“She was a remarkable person,” Duryee said. “She seemed to have a goal all the time.”
Rose Ellen Hunter died Jan. 14 at her Everett home. She was 89.
She was preceded in death by her parents, John and Blanche Reed; her brother John; and her husband, James Paton Hunter, who died in 1988. James Hunter was a founding partner of the Anderson Hunter Law Firm, the oldest and largest private law firm in Snohomish County.
She is survived by sons John and Jamie Hunter, their wives Wendy and Kathy, and five grandchildren, Reed, Jamie, Annie, Kimberly and Scott Hunter.
After what John Hunter called “a tough year of duty” treating injured Americans in the New Hebrides islands, Rose Ellen Reed, a first lieutenant, was stationed in New Zealand, where she met James Hunter.
In 1945, Rose Ellen married the Navy lieutenant from Everett, and here they made their home.
Mark Nesse, director of the Everett Public Library, said the community has lost “a dear lady.”
“Her spryness was legendary in Everett,” Nesse said.
She was involved in the First Presbyterian Church of Everett, the Everett Golf and Country Club, and as a volunteer for Providence Hospital. She was a longtime member of the Everett Woman’s Book Club, in a small group with civic leaders Duryee, Idamae Schack and the late Jane Best, another close friend.
Spryness is an understatement for Rose Ellen Hunter, who was a lifelong athlete.
At her memorial service at First Presbyterian Church, son Jamie Hunter of Everett said that at 65 his mother took a helicopter skiing trip to the Canadian Rockies.
Several times, she went rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. With friends and family, she bicycled through Europe, and she traveled to Africa and to Burma while in her 80s.
Year after year, ski season after ski season, she made the long drive to Sun Valley, Idaho, often alone. There, she was involved in a master’s ski program. It was a sport she’d loved all her life. By the time they were 5, her boys were on skis at Stevens Pass, where they went on to competitive ski racing.
Once, well into her 80s, she had car trouble on the way to Sun Valley and hitchhiked to find help. Mary Duryee laughed about her friend getting a ride with a truck driver to a nearby town.
Duryee has good memories of a trip to Sun Valley with friends Rose Ellen, Jane Best and Clare Hulbert. “It was probably 10 years ago. The four of us went for the fun of it,” Duryee said. When their friend would drive there by herself, “we would marvel at Rose,” she said.
In later years, Rose Ellen Hunter played duplicate bridge. As a girl, she was an accomplished horseback rider and a basketball player, her son John said. She’d been competitive all her life.
“You can be a great skier, and tennis player and golfer. My feeling is, it’s friendship that means the most,” Duryee said.
“With all her other attributes, she was able to be a very good friend. I was fortunate enough to have been one of those good friends.”
Granddaughter Reed Hunter traveled with her grandmother and cousin, Kimberly Hunter, to a family wedding in Florida when the girls were about 12. The girls wanted to go to Walt Disney World. Their grandmother instead took them to nearby Epcot, with its pavilions of other countries.
“Grammy Hunter wanted our travels to be educational,” said Reed Hunter, who recalled that their grandmother bought them pearls on the trip.
Jamie Hunter remembered that in every aspect of her life, “Mother did it the right way.” Proper etiquette was always in order, but it came with grace and natural ease, he said.
“Whether you knew her as Rosie, Rosebud, Rose Ellen or Mrs. Hunter, she was a beautiful lady,” said son John, who lives in Seattle.
“She was a classy lady,” Jamie Hunter said. “Mother taught us how to live.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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