Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.
Margaret Florence (Merchant) Smith, 98, a longtime resident of Wasco in Sherman County, passed away peacefully the evening of December 27, 2018, at Samaritan Pacific Hospital in Newport following a brief illness, with both of her children at her bedside.
Margaret was born June 18, 1920, on Juniper Butte, near Terrebonne, Oregon, to William Vern and Anna Lee (Martin) Merchant in the home of her midwife grandmother Josaphene (Isaac) Martin. She grew up in Culver, Oregon, where her parents operated a grocery and general merchandise store, after moving to town from his nearby Peck family homestead shortly after she was born.
After graduating from Culver High School in 1938, she attended Behnke-Walker Business College in Portland, Oregon. She returned home in April 1939 to help at the wedding of an older schoolmate, who was marrying her principal for the first three years of high school. She met the best man, Delmer Smith, first cousin to the groom, who offered her a ride back to Portland, where he was working for Otis Elevator. She apparently decided he was the “best man” as they were married the next year on June 23, 1940, in her parent’s new home in Redmond, Oregon, and enjoyed the next 68 years together, rarely parted.
Following a “gone fishing” honeymoon, they settled in Wasco, Oregon, and Delmer began harvest with his father and brother, Leon, on the family homestead farm East of Wasco that their Medler grandparents had established in 1898. Come December, Otis needed him temporarily in Spokane and ten years later they were still there. Two children followed, Marilyn in 1941, and William in 1945.
When his brother Leon died suddenly in 1950, Delmer and Margaret moved back to Wasco to farm. They moved into the homestead East of Wasco, where Delmer was born. Then to their new home they built in 1951, a mile “down the creek” off Scott Canyon Road with the view of her mountains that Margaret had requested. Great nephew Nathan and Samantha Smith are now raising their family to appreciate Margaret’s view as well as being the fifth and possibly sixth generations to operate the Smith Farm lands.
She learned knitting, crocheting, sewing and quilting from her mother and enjoyed them her entire life. She participated in The Dalles Hospital Auxiliary Volunteer Services for at least 25 years with a sewing circle of local friends and neighbors, making hand puppets for the hospital.
Margaret advanced through an amazing progression of handwork hobbies which she used for “road work” while traveling, beginning in the early 1960s, with hand embroidery, under Margilee Kaseberg’s tutelage, some bead crafting, pine needle basketry, and counted cross stitch. She gifted family and friends with beautiful baskets and cross stitch items.
In 2001, Marilyn helped her buy her first embroidery machine, and it immediately became a passionate daily activity she enjoyed the rest of her life, decorating clothes, shopping bags and squares for blocks in bed and crib quilts for family and hospitals. With the advent of grandchildren in the 1960s, Margaret had begun making Christmas ornaments each year, utilizing each of these handcrafts, and continued the tradition through 2017 to an ever-increasing list of grand and great- children, nieces, nephews and friends.
Delmer and Margaret enjoyed trips to Montana to visit their daughter and family, and south to Death Valley and Arizona. When William moved to Texas, they immediately became “snowbirds,” travelling different routes to Texas and staying for longer periods of time each winter before returning to Wasco and Montana in the summers. In 2001 they downsized, moving from the ranch into William’s duplex in Richland Hills, Texas, and continued an annual summer trek, joined by William, to Montana, Sherman County, down the Oregon Coast and returning to Texas, with Marilyn on board as well most years. Following Delmer’s death in 2008, Margaret and William decided to move back to Oregon, and in 2009 found a home in Seal Rock where they could watch the ocean waves and enjoyed visits from family and friends.
Margaret was preceded in death by her parents; husband; sister, Geraldine Bertsch; and grandson Paul Barnett. She is survived by her daughter Marilyn and Keith Barnett; son William Smith; grandson Lee Barnett and Laurie Booth; great-grandchildren Brandan and Abigayle Barnett and Morgan Barnett; two great-great-grandchildren Addyson Mae and Wyatt Benjamin; and many nieces, nephews and their families.
At her request, no services will be held, with a graveside gathering at a later date when she joins Delmer in a family plot in Sunrise Cemetery in Wasco.
