Marion Augusta Noss Howe

Gussie was raised in Andover, Massachusetts. Andover was then a small town with a real Main Street, library within walking distance, trees to climb, woods in which to roam, a pond for skating, plus its Addison Gallery of American Art, a favorite Sunday afternoon haunt. The youngest of three girls, her father was rector of the South Congregational Church.

Summers always meant time in New Hampshire. Her parents purchased over four hundred acres of forestland in the Sandwich Range area and built a one-room cabin with no running water or electricity. At the age of four, she climbed her first mountain on an overnight hike with her family and was disappointed to be walking instead of climbing!

Gussie followed her older sister Jane as a day student at Abbot Academy in Andover and later in 1952 to Oberlin College in Ohio, attracted by its welcoming interracial policy and the fact that it was a stop on the Underground Railroad. After graduating from Oberlin with a degree in Fine Arts, she was a gopher for a Quaker lobbying group in DC and later worked on American Friends Service Committee projects on reservations in Fort Hall, Idaho and Lame Deer, Montana. In 1957 Gussie took advantage of a fully funded program offered by Harvard School of Education offering a Master in Teaching degree after which she taught elementary and special education in New England and Washington State.

In 1962, at the urging of friends living in Seattle she opted to spend an experimental year there. She never left. Seattle became home, though she never lost her deep love of New England.

Gussie had a sense of humor and the ridiculous, a taste for a touch of elegance, a streak of rebel, and above all love for the holiness of life. Friends were her ballast and treasured gift. Her greatest joy was her two sons James and Tom, the latter whose health problems took him at the age of seven.

For forty-five years she lived in the same small house in Laurelhurst surrounded by the trees she had planted. For many years she belonged to a neighborhood writing group where they shared personal narratives about the landscapes of their life and community. Bob and Gussie sailed, mostly in the San Juans, as long as they were able.

She enjoyed the richness of her retirement years and later life at Horizon House. The nearby community of Trinity Episcopal Parish was her spiritual home.

Her parents, sister Letitia, sister Jane, nephew Rudolph Frederick Mutter, and son Tom predeceased her. Besides several nieces and nephews, Gussie leaves her companion of many years, Bob Emminger, her son James, and his wife Lyn, and three grandchildren, Jimmy, Rose, and Emily.

A memorial service will be held on October 10 at 11:00 a.m. at Trinity Parish Church in Seattle.

In her memory, spend some time with a friend you have not seen in a while, listen to some Bach, or make a donation to Trinity Parish or the Horizon House Residents’ Assistance Fund.