Jeanette Lucile (Wyatt) Burton was born Sept. 22, 1922, in Effingham, Kansas, a small town surrounded by farming communities. She was the youngest of nine children on the family farm of her parents, Joseph B. Wyatt and Margaret C. Scott.
During her formative years, between eight and eighteen years old, she lived through some of the worst events in U.S. history. It began with the Great Depression (1929-1939) causing disastrous hardship to farmers in the mid-west when the price of wheat dropped. Then the Dust Bowl years began (1930-1940) and the extreme drought, high temperatures and poor agricultural practices caused soil erosion and winds that blew dust all the way to Washington, D.C.
World War II began in 1939 and the United States entered in 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Jeanette joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and attended the U.S. Naval Training School for Radioman at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. At this fateful juncture in her life, she received orders to the U.S. Naval Communications Center on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. Jeanette served there from Sept. 1944 until Feb. 1946. As a Radio Intercept Operator, she helped the war effort by capturing Japanese code transmissions from the Naval Base at Sasabe, Japan.
After her honorable discharge, Jeanette returned to Kansas, attended college for some time and then moved to Denver, Colorado, where she worked for the Bell Telephone Company. Luckily for us Burton’s, she decided to return to Bainbridge Island and found a job in Winslow as a telephone switchboard operator.
Jeanette frequented a diner in Winslow where she would ultimately meet her husband, Jim Burton. He was an enlisted man in the Navy home on leave. He was in this particular diner because his mother and stepfather owned and ran it. Jim was sitting on a bar stool when Jennie walked in. Upon seeing the chemistry between them, his stepfather told him, “You’re going to marry that girl!” Jennie shared later that she knew he was the one because she was "shaking.” In 1951, two months after meeting, they were married. They conceived the first of their six children on their honeymoon in La Push, Washington.
After fourteen years, over twenty family moves and too many stories to tell, Jim retired from the U.S. Navy. The family moved from Oakland, California, to a 9-acre parcel at Dugualla Bay, on Whidbey Island. We all fondly refer to this home as “the farm.” Here Jeanette flourished. She had several vegetable gardens, a greenhouse, a chicken run, a few geese, and flowers everywhere. Always on a budget and very frugal, she preplanned all the meals. Twice a month, the children helped unload the family station wagon filled with bags of groceries from the commissary. And who can forget coming home from school to the smell of fresh baked cinnamon rolls? At Christmas time, Jeanette made hard candy, peanut brittle, fudge and white fudge with nuts, to name a few. She was a competent seamstress and homemaker, making and repairing clothes and doing laundry twice a week for eight people. We had three balanced meals a day and there was always homemade dessert after dinner. All the children had their chores and the house was clean.
After a few more moves (Guam and Adak, Alaska) Jim retired again, this time from working Civil Service at the Calibration Lab at NAS Whidbey. The couple had finished raising all their children. Some say that during this time Jeanette was the happiest, as the couple took to the road, making regular trips to Reno, Nevada. Free of child rearing, they enjoyed being able to actually gamble with their money. They were on the road and they were on vacation! All their previous vacations had been camping trips with Jeanette feeding eight hungry campers off a cook stove.
Then Jeanette began quilting prodigiously! Stitching by hand, she quilted over one hundred quilts, gifting them all to her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, friends, and as donations to charity. She leaves this legacy behind. There is nothing like sleeping under a quilt your mother has made for you.
James G. Burton preceded Jeanette in death and died of Alzheimer’s on March 27, 2014. Her six children survive her: Lana K. Burton, Oak Harbor, WA; Rex J. Burton, Toledo, OR; Rita J. (Burton) Fulkerson, Montesano, WA; Christopher J. Burton, Virginia Beach, VA; Michelle A. Burton, Vancouver, WA; and Suzanne M. (Burton) Scales, Ocean Shores, WA. She has four grandchildren: Jenika M. Burton, Michael G. Grant II, Bryan R. Kelley and Roxanne M. Grant. Additionally, there are five great grandchildren: Regan M. Chavez, Michael G. Grant III, Quentin J. Day, Grace L. Grant and Khya M. Day.
Jeanette was a devout Roman Catholic and was never more peaceful and serene than when praying or at mass. She was a faithful member of St. Augustine’s Catholic Church from 1965 to 2022. For many years, she supplied beautiful flower arrangements for Sunday services, and more recently, she donated quilts for fund raising bazaars.
Jeanette spent her last years at Harbor Tower Village in Oak Harbor, where she had a reputation for quick comebacks and witty one-liners. The staff appreciated her sense of humor and she enjoyed telling stories about her family in Kansas. One that is particularly memorable is about her grandmother who mistakenly traded her young daughter (Jennie’s mom) to an Indian woman for a pony. Jeanette was the last of her eight siblings to die. Mildred M. (Wyatt) Sullivan, Marjorie A. Wyatt, Dorothy M. Wyatt, Joseph C. Wyatt, Gertrude C. (Wyatt) Haines, Ethelred A. (Wyatt) Stephenson, Raymond A. Wyatt and Edward E. Wyatt all preceded her.
Jeanette’s funeral mass will be held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Oct. 26 at 10:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you donate to the Alzheimer’s Foundation to help find a cure. //https://act.alz.org