Anne Hartline possessed Southern sweetness, gracious charm and an expansive heart. Under it all was steely strength tested but never bent by adversity.
For more than a decade, beginning with a breast cancer diagnosis in 1997, she waged war on her own disease, and made a personal crusade of helping other sufferers. A caring nature was at her core long before cancer came into her life.
“She had this ability to make everyone in her presence feel valued and loved, like royalty. It was not something that happened because she had cancer,” said Madeleine O’Rourke, a longtime friend who was 16 when she met Hartline while working at Shorewood Hospital in the Seattle area. “She was a mentor, and such a wonderful friend,” O’Rourke said.
“Annie’s legacy is the lives of the people she touched. She continuously amazed me,” said John Hartline, her husband of 15 years. “She would take her own vacation time to go to doctors appointments with newly diagnosed patients. People were what Annie was all about.”
Anne Hartline died at her Arlington area home Nov. 11. She was 59.
In August, John Hartline said, “she made her decision to let nature take its course” and stopped cancer treatments. “It was a good, considered decision,” he said. Anne Hartline was quoted in a Herald article in September as saying “I want to have my wake and be there too.”
That’s what happened as scores of people visited to spend precious time with their friend. “People would get out of their cars with heads down and shoulders stooped, but leave feeling on top of the world,” John Hartline said.
“She was having a party,” said Tammara Gibbons, a longtime friend who met Anne Hartline when both women worked for Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.
Anne Hartline worked for Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, and before that in materials management at Virginia Mason. She was also an educator for Providence Hospice and Home Care of Snohomish County.
She had earned teaching credentials at University of Texas, El Paso, and early on taught seventh and eighth grade in El Paso, John Hartline said.
The daughter of Forest Fox and Alice Maudell Fox, she was born Nov. 5, 1950 in Carthage, Miss., her mother’s hometown. Along with her husband, she is survived by one son, 29-year-old JR Sevier; and by three sisters, Judy Bell, Donna Fox and Susie Adams. She was previously married and divorced.
At Virginia Mason, Gibbons said she dubbed Hartline “Mother Anne.”
She saw firsthand how Hartline would reach out to others. Gibbons said a woman named Betty, who worked in the hospital warehouse, was discovered by Hartline to be illiterate. “Betty didn’t read, but managed to fake it. Anne, having been an elementary school teacher, figured it out. Nobody knew this, but Anne got Betty a tutor,” Gibbons aid. “Anne would always keep confidences, and never said anything bad about people.”
And when Hartline met a woman through church who was struggling with breast cancer and raising two young children, Gibbons said, “Anne would go after working all day and bring food and cook. She would not give up on people.”
Both here and when John Hartline’s work took them to Tallahassee, Fla., Gibbons said that Anne started what she called a “women’s network.”
“It was just a social thing, but would always evolve into people meeting people,” Gibbons said. “She would open her doors one Saturday a month. With her Southern hospitality, she would have something scrumptious to eat. She thought women need to have that bond. You could never have too many women friends.”
That impulse stayed with her even at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett’s Regional Cancer Partnership. “In the chemo lounge, she was notorious for dragging her pole,” John Hartline said. “If anybody looked sad or forlorn, she would lean over, touch their arm and say ‘I’m feeling lonely and blue today. Would you mind if I sat down?’ You never knew that she was caring for you.”
In spite of illness, John Hartline said he and his wife treasured happy times together.
Anne loved the Southwest, and they often traveled to Arizona and New Mexico. “She loved road trips,” John Hartline said. “That time in the car was so peaceful. We could go hundreds of miles without saying anything, but saying everything.”
Her zany side came out when they’d happen upon a souvenir shop or dollar store. “She’d come out of a five-and-dime with corn necklaces, Neccos, all this crazy stuff,” he said.
O’Rourke was introduced by Hartline to the man who would become her husband, a doctor at the hospital where they had worked. “She had talked me up so much, when we met he said, ‘You must be the infamous Madeleine O’Rourke.’
“There was not any falseness about it,” O’Rourke said. “She just saw things in people that made them better than they would have been had they not known her.”
“If only we could all be as gracious and caring and open to people,” Gibbons said.
A memorial service for Anne Hartline is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Grace Academy School gymnasium, 8521 67th Ave. NE in Marysville.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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