Dolores M. “Dee” Meyer
Dee, a resident of Mukilteo, WA was born September 8, 1931 in Oil City, PA to Joseph L. Montana and Bertha A. Farringer and passed away peacefully in Everett, WA on February 3, 2011. Dee grew up in Oil City and in her teen years moved, at the end of WWII, with her family to Pasadena, CA. She attended John Muir Jr. College and earned her medical technologist credentials after studying at L.A. General Hospital. She graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 1952 with a BS degree in Biology, and subsequently worked her entire career at the University of Washington medical Center, Learning Resources Dept., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and Group Health Medical Center. She was proud to have been one of a very large team headed by Nobel Prize winner, Dr. E. Donnell Thomas, that developed the bone marrow transplant procedure. She earned a Master Degree in Education and a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the UW while raising a family and working full time at the UW Medical Center. Dee was a very dynamic, energetic, gregarious, and adventurous lady. She was determined that her beloved children receive the best education, a conviction she acquired from her parents. She loved to travel and was not one to sit still very long! She was always exploring new ways to educate and improve herself and was a fervent swimmer, sometimes swimming three to five miles a week. She also exercised at every opportunity and particularly enjoyed Jazzercise classes with her friends in Mukilteo. She was a voracious reader and library lover and it was not uncommon for her to read four to eight library books in a two week period. She was very proud to be Italian and had the great opportunity to travel with her mother and father to her father’s birthplace in Grota, Sicily. She was an excellent chef, like her sister and brother, and enjoyed entertaining and serving her guests one of her many delicious menu items. She was a wonderful, loving companion, buddy, and copilot to her husband in their many travels in the family’s Beechraft airplane and a fiercely loyal friend to those lucky enough to be considered her friend. She was a beautiful, dynamic, sensitive, humble, talented, devoted mother and wife. She will be missed terribly by her family and all who knew her. Dee is survived by her devoted husband of 35 years, Hal Meyer, of Mukilteo; her daughter, Dr. Christine A. Berven of Moscow, ID; and son, Jeff A. Berven and family, wife, Sally and grandsons, Joey and Robbie of Dallas, TX; her children from a former marriage to Don Berven (deceased); sister and brother-in-law, Dr. Florence Harrison and Dr. Melvin Harrison, of Friday Harbor, WA; Kay Montana, sister-in-law and widow of brother, Dr. Andrew Montana, of Edmonds, WA. Plans for a memorial service at the Congregational Church on Mercer Island are pending. Memorial Gifts may be made to the Seattle Pacific University, Montana Family Endowment, 3307 Third Ave. West, Suite 304, Seattle 98119; the Alzheimer’s Association, 100 W. Harrison St., North Towers, Suite 20, Seattle, 98110; or the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, P.O. Box 19023, Seattle, 98109.
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