Tayeko June Kawahara Durham

June 27, 1922 - December 3, 2017

Our dear, sweet, kind, generous, joyful, beautiful mother died in her home from complications of old age. She was 95.

Her childhood was enjoyed on a small truck farm in Los Angeles County with many adventures and hard work along with her parents, Kosa and Nobu Kawahara and her much loved siblings, Keiko, Tsutomu, and Hagemu. In her teens she was a 'house girl' to a wealthy couple in Pasadena where she was treated as a daughter and was respected and adored by them. They became like a second family to mom and her own family. She attended high school and was a happy young woman until 1942 when her family was uprooted from their farm to go with other of the Los Angeles area Japanese population to Manzanar Internment camp near Lone Pine, California in the Sierra Nevada foothills. She was fortunate to have the assistance of the Quakers and her Pasadena 'family' to help her escape the camp to attend college in Illinois and Philadelphia. She made many friends there and after the war returned to the West Coast.

She met our father, George (Bill) Durham at Whittier College near Los Angeles and she later shared with us, "How I managed to catch his eye, I'll never know!" They had a long distance romance through letters while he was at sea as a Merchant Mariner. He wooed and then wed her in 1949. They were happily married (never a dull moment!) for 65 years until our dad's death in 2014. They traveled to NYC where one daughter was born, to Port Angeles, Washington, where the next one was and then to Seattle where the third one showed up. They lived in the same house in Wallingford for 62 years. Our mom worked in the University of Washington Hospital for many years and didn't retire completely until she was 79 years old. She was 'Employee of the Year' in 1981. We didn't learn this until we found the plaque that said so.

She was a practitioner and member of the Ikenobu Ikebana Society of America, learned Mizuhiki in her later years, sewed many of our clothes when we were children, taught us how to never overcook our vegetables and served the best fruit plate imaginable. Her middle and later years were spent enjoying her four grandchildren and for the last year her great-granddaughter.

She leaves behind her daughters, Yuki Durham, Zoe Durham, Rebecca Durham, her sons-in-law, Tom Hagen and Pat McDonald, her grandchildren, Kimiko Goldberg (Kento Oiwa) and Noah Goldberg, Teru McDonald Brach (Eric Brach), and Asa McDonald and her great-granddaughter, Hanami Moon Oiwa, many relatives in Japan, Seattle, Colorado, NYC, and the greater Los Angeles area, including her surviving brother, Hagemu Kawahara. 

In her memory, please sing while you wash the dishes, marvel at the beauty of nature and be kind to everyone you meet. We will miss her every single day.

The Seattle Times, December 17, 2017