Ruth Mildred Sallows Brown

June 24, 1932 — April 23, 2020

Ruth Mildred Sallows Brown passed away at home with family present Thursday, April 23, 2020 in King City, Oregon.

Born June 24, 1932 in Geneva, Illinois, Ruth at age 13 moved with family to the territory of Alaska to experience the life of a true sourdough. Graduating from Anchorage High School with honors, Ruth and her partner for life, Chet Brown, moved to Eugene, Oregon, so Chet could attend the University of Oregon and pursue his lifelong goal of becoming a dentist.

Just before Chet’s graduation, his parents purchased a General Motors dealership in Seward and pleaded with Chet to come help out. So he and Ruth, then pregnant with their first child, moved back to Alaska with Ruth doing bookkeeping and Chet doing dealership mechanics.

The dealership eventually sold and a new opportunity arose in Nikiski where Standard Oil was building a refinery. With Chet’s background in chemistry, he was offered the job of chemist. Chet worked and built a house on Wik Lake while Ruth, busy raising four children, started doing occasional accounting. As the children got older, Ruth was hired at the Kenai employment office and managed unemployment insurance while she went back to school and earned her college degree.

At retirement, Ruth and Chet moved to Homer and built their dream home, with Ruth often volunteering at the place she loved most — the library. Ruth, who loved to read, devoured more than 100 books per year and joined book clubs wherever she lived. They purchased a sailboat and spent the last years of Chet’s life joyously sailing Kachemak Bay and the southern coast of Alaska.

With Chet’s passing in 1999, Ruth moved to Arizona where she was finally able to “warm up” and then to Portland, Oregon to be closer to her children: Greg, David, Teri and Mark; as well as three grandchildren, Sasha, Justin and Aaron.

Ruth will join her husband for their final voyage with a following sea at Kachemak Bay in Homer, Alaska.

All memorials/condolences can be sent to Mark Brown at mpwbrown@gmail.com.