Pauline WILLIAMS

WILLIAMS, Pauline

January 25, 1935 July 22, 2020

Pauline passed away at home from the effects of Lewy Body Dementia. She was born in Islip, England to Gwen and James White on January 25, 1935. Paula was awarded a Plus Eleven Scholarship at the age of 10 and went to Kettering Girls School. She grew up in rural England during WWII. After high school she worked in a chemist shop in her home town of Thrapston, England. She married Don Oxford, an American GI serving in England and spent the next 15 years as a military wife living in Texas, Kansas, Boston, Nuremberg, Germany, and in England. Don died in a car accident in Germany one month before his scheduled retirement from the U.S. Army in 1968. Paula relocated to the Pacific Northwest with her son Gareth and enrolled at Eastern Washington State College and earned her BS in Anthropology. She met her future husband, Larry Williams, at Eastern and they spent the next 49 years as a loving couple. After graduation she took a position as the first female institutional sales representative for Kraft Foods in the Pacific Northwest. In 1974, she received a Smithsonian Fellowship to do anthropology field work at Expo '74. Later she worked for the U.S. International Trade Administration and coordinated international group visits to Spokane; visits that included the British Ambassador to the U.S, Sir Oliver Wright and a cabinet level delegation from Poland. She taught Western Civilization at Heritage College to classes of international students. In 1985 she created, edited and published the Town and Country Gazette serving her readers and advertisers in Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Western Montana until she sold the publication and retired in 2002. Not staying idle for long she developed her crafting skills at ribbon rose making and taught classes to many area women. Paula will be missed by many including the wonderful friends in the "International Group" who have met for pot luck dinners monthly over much of the past 30 years.

Paula is survived by her sister Marian Bunker in Phoenix, Arizona; by her daughter-in-law, Lynn Oxford of Spokane; by her almost adopted granddaughter Katie Huff of Coeur d'Alene and Katie's daughter Annabelle; and by Paula's husband Larry of Spokane and by many nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews.

Paula wished we'd close with her signature signoff: Cheers My Dears