Barbara Tomlinson Greening

Barbara Tomlinson GREENING Barbara Tomlinson Greening was able to be at home with her husband, Irl Palmer, when she lost her battle with cancer early on the morning of Saturday, March 12th, 2011. The setting was as she had wanted it. Barbara lived a life of exuberance and love, of sharing and creativity that will endure in the hearts and memories of all whose lives she touched. She will be missed and loved and remembered by family and friends beyond count. Her family moved to Seattle, Washington from her birthplace in Ontario, Canada in 1962 when Barbara was nine years old and brought the first of many whole new groups of friends into her life. Family camping trips introduced Barbara to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and started a lifelong quest to travel to and through beautiful places by car, on horseback, on foot and under sail. Her passions of horseback riding, boating, water skiing, and downhill snow skiing that started while in high school and flowed throughout her life were joined in the subsequent four decades by saltwater sailing, cross country skiing, tai chi instruction, travel by camper as well as canoe and kayak, her painting and the sharing of her love of art with many children. Barbara's first battle with cancer happened as she was starting college and with a grit and determination that would be in evidence repeatedly in her life, she not only beat it down but was inspired by the dedication and professionalism of the X-ray technicians to make that her career choice. After graduating from Rainier Beach High School in 1971, Barbara obtained her Associate's Degree from Bellevue Community College and was licensed as a radiology technician. She did her student rotations at Swedish Hospital in Seattle starting in 1975 and then worked in Special Procedures in Radiology until 1984 taking time off each year for months of sailing up the British Columbia and Alaska coastlines with Dr. Roy Greening. Barbara wanted to be free for them to travel when Roy was off work and she eventually made the decision to let her licensing lapse. With the plan to continue their liveaboard moorage in Juneau waters, Barbara and Roy drove to Portland, Maine, to camp in the boat-builder's parking lot where their steel-hulled sailboat, Gadfly II, was being built and its interior configured for year-round comfort to include the installation of a potbelly stove. Over the course of three summers and the attendant drives across country in their camper, Barbara and Roy sailed to and from the Bahamas via the Intracoastal Waterway, through the Erie Canal, the Trent-Severn Waterway, and the Great Lakes, before finally pulling the Gadfly II out of the waters of Lake Michigan for transport across country to Seattle for its sail out of Puget Sound to their new home port of Juneau. The two sailboats, Gadfly and Gadfly II, were in their turn Barbara's and Roy's homes on the water at Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle and then in Juneau, until Barbara's love of painting and her art projects had to have a studio with the space and permanence that only shoreside living could accommodate. The Gadfly II still sailed to Glacier Bay and regaled visiting friends and family with the magnificence of the Alaskan waters and its wildlife, but now there was a beachfront home where all could stay until May 1st each year, the day Roy and Barbara would begin sailing. Barbara's lifelong passion for horses was evident with extended riding vacations over the years to France, along the Atlantic coast and through the pastures of Sligo County in Ireland, the trails of the Bitterroot Ranch in Wyoming, and the Redwood forest and the beaches of the California coast. She had her own posse of extended family members join her for the beach rides during annual vacations on the Oregon coast, a gathering that she held dear. Barbara returned to France for an extended vacation in 2008 where others in the family joined her to create an 11-person memory-building time that celebrated the anticipated and completed graduations from high school. Once again 'Auntie Bee' had brought the magic to a party as only she could orchestrate it. The unforgettable beach house vacations on the Oregon Coast over an 18-year period introduced the little ones to both her love of the water and of horses. It was where only 'Auntie Bee' could tap the young cooking creativity and chaos of kid's pizza night to produce passable dinner selections and wonderful memories that would bond the children to her and to each other. It was not just to her own nephew and nieces that she brought this cooking and art instruction and lessons of life. She embraced what is truly her extended family of nieces and nephews and let them feel her unconditional love. Those same little ones would grow to visit her in Alaska. Their lives came forward in a better way because of Barbara's extraordinary example of grace, her joy, and her overwhelming power to cast a net of fun over everything and everyone she touched. Juneau had been Barbara's home since she moved there with her first husband in 1984 after years of taking summer-long sailing trips up the coastline from their Seattle moorings. The lifestyle of living right on their sailboat continued in Juneau waters until they finally took a Land Home so Barbara would have a place for painting and a place for the children to come, and the relatives and the friends. And come they did, to be part of Barbara's life, to be touched by the way she enjoyed every day and made every day special for those around her. The move to Se Trouver, as Barbara called her current home, came about to replace a residence with many stairs with one that provided an easier access as she cared for her husband, Dr. Roy Greening, in his final stages of Alzheimer's. Barbara and Roy had been married for twenty-five years and shared the passions of sailing and skiing and traveling in their camper. The treks across the lower states were done with a dedicated avoidance of interstate highways and zigzagged to make the stops at all of the family and friends and favorite national parks to soak up the beauty and the love at every location. And all the while collecting more friends. The hard work and dedication with which she pursued the things important to her in the community showed her resolve to make things better whether teaching art to children, supporting health programs, or tackling the gold mining issue by creating a diorama of the valley to help people at the meetings see what and where the impact would be. The bookmaking and paper making classes she taught on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands for 220 students in kindergarten to sixth grade with the help of 15 teachers, staff and many mother/father helpers were another of her special projects. Barbara was predeceased by her mother, Jean Tomlinson, and her first husband, Dr. Roy Greening. Barbara was the caregiver for both Jean before her death from cancer and Roy as he faced Alzheimer's. Barbara's care allowed both to be able to die at home and the importance of that to Barbara was evident in the strength she showed in making the flight back to Juneau from Seattle two days before she died. Irl got her home where she wanted to be. Two weeks before her death, Barbara had written 'He is my hero.' We are so grateful that Irl was in her life with all his love and strength and his kind and gentle way. Barbara is survived by her loving husband, Irl Palmer, and his children Daniel Joshua and Brigette Karla. The surviving Tomlinson relations are: Barbara's father, William James; her brothers, William John (Cathie) and Robert Jeffrey (Susan) known to family as Murphy and Jeff; her sister, Leslie Jane; and her nieces and nephew, Elan Leslie, Michael Murphy, Annelle Barbara, and Corianna Marie. This can by no means begin to identify the depths of the ties to