Bonnie Lou Clarkson passed peacefully in her sleep, in her own bed, next to her husband Jim, on August 5, 2015.

Bonnie was born in Houston, Texas to T.A. Taylor and Dora Hart on June 17, 1928. During the lean years of the Great Depression, Bonnie and her brother Dan Taylor lived in foster homes, and she attended [10] schools in a [12] year period. After working hard and graduating from Henderson High School, she enrolled in the University of Nevada, Reno. She became a Tri Delta and met her love for life, Jim Clarkson, who was on a football/basketball scholarship. Jim and Bon were married June 11, 1948 at the Carlstadt Baptist Church in New Jersey, where Jim had been baptized as a child.

It wasn’t long before they moved to Hawaii after Jim was enlisted in the Navy, and the islands became a place and culture they both loved. Together, they created lasting friendships wherever they went, and Bonnie was often the driving force to keep them together. It was Bonnie’s turbulent childhood that instilled in her the importance of unconditional love and acceptance that became such a significant part of her life and the groups that surrounded her. Bonnie enjoyed many passions and pastimes, including the garden club, her beloved bridge groups, countless other groups of friends, MIBC, traveling the U.S. and Europe, reading, interior decorating with friends, and she was always the first to greet new families in each of the neighborhoods of her life. She cherished the conversations with her brother Dan each and every Sunday. Through her beautiful, sparkling, smiling Irish eyes, she welcomed everyone into her Grace.

Bon and Jim had two sons, Dan and Bruce, who have never lived far from them except for the years spent attending school and commercial fishing in Alaska and Hawaii. The Clarkson family moved 4 times after the children were born, but unlike her own childhood that seemed to break each time she moved from [a different family to the next], Bonnie and Jim chose each of their homes to make their family stronger. The neighborhoods came with the best schools and the strongest communities that she could find: Paramus and Westfield in New Jersey, Moraga in the Bay Area. And best of all was her final home of 43 years, overlooking the waters of Lake Washington and the snow of Mt Rainier, on the South End of Mercer Island – a community and place she loved and that was perfect for the chore of raising her children and the process of letting them go as they went to college, law school, and started families of their own. The word “chore” is used only because she had two sons that pushed all the boundaries and made her work that much harder to keep them safe, while at the same time teaching them the importance of doing what they dreamed. She was good at that – her boys were everything to her, and she everything to them.

Bonnie (Mimi) also imparted her lessons of unconditional love, grace and optimism to her 5 grandchildren – Taylor, Carris, AnaLucia, Ariana and Margaret Davidson – and she cherished each of their accomplishments and their everyday moments. Her passing leaves an inconsolable hole in the lives of Jim, Dan and Bruce, and their wives Andrea and Julie, her grandchildren, other close family in Texas, and the rest of her immediate and extended family and friends from Hawaii to the East Coast.

Services celebrating Bonnie’s life will be held 11:00am on Thursday, August 13th at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church at 4400 86th Ave SE, Mercer Island, WA, with lunch at the Mercer Island Beach Club following the service.

Bonnie Lou will be laid to rest at the Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Bellevue at 2:30 on the 13th. Friends may also visit the family for a viewing at the Sunset Hills Funeral Home from 6:00 to 8:00 on the 11th and the 12th. Even though she never embraced the computer, view photos and leave your thoughts at www.Sunsethillsfuneralhome.com