A wonderful woman, mother, grandmother, sister, teacher, and friend, Marilyn Moore Storey, passed away Sunday, Jan. 17, 2021 at Island Hospital in Anacortes due to complications from Leukemia.

She is survived by her three children (Matthew, Adam, and Anna), 3 grandchildren (Holden, Amos, and Wyatt), her brother (Michael) and his family, along with a caring and supportive community.

Marilyn was born in Dallas, TX on March 1, 1949 to Lee Buckner Moore and Amanda Ernestine Humphries Moore, with one older brother, Michael Lee Moore. She spent the early part of her life in Dallas, attending Lakewood Elementary School, Woodrow Wilson High School, and then Southern Methodist University, where she cultivated her passion for teaching, graduating in 1970 with a major in deaf education. From there, she began her career teaching deaf children at the Callier Center for the Deaf in Dallas and married her high school sweetheart, John Charles Storey, in 1972. Not long after, she set aside her career to start a family of her own.

In 1986, Marilyn moved to Orcas Island, WA with John and her 3 young kids where she fell in love with the tranquility of the island and the tight-knit community. She dedicated her initial years on Orcas to shuttling kids from one activity to the next; piano lessons, football games, tap dance recitals, and ski trips. There was hardly a school or community event that she missed. As her kids got older and moved away, she went back to school and received her Masters in Education and began teaching at the elementary school on Orcas. She spent the next 2 decades shaping minds at almost every grade level through elementary and middle school, watching class after class progress through high school and move on into the big world.

Teaching and nurturing were in her DNA. Outside of work, she loved to tend to her garden and help things grow, she had multiple pets (often dogs that outweighed her) at any given time, and she invited virtually the entire adolescent community in Deer Harbor into her home at one time or another. Her natural tendency to teach carried on into the next generation as she spent hours with her grandchildren, finding learning opportunities in every aspect of day-to-day activity. Her legacy will undoubtedly live on in her endowment to others of endless curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge and new perspectives.

We are so sad that she is gone but we are so thankful for the time we had with her. We celebrate her, we love her, and we will miss her very much.

We want to thank Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, the University of Washington medical center, the staff at Island Hospital in Anacortes, and the doctors on Orcas who helped Marilyn through her final years. We also want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who knew her and the positive impact each of you had on her life.

Given the times, the immediate family opted for a small memorial service where Marilyn’s ashes were laid to rest on the waters outside of Deer Harbor. Thank you, Deer Harbor Charters and crew, for a beautiful celebration of life. We can all feel comforted that the tides will carry her to every corner of the San Juan’s where we will always be able to visit.

For those who would like to donate in her memory, the Storey family has established a memorial grant through the Orcas Island Education Foundation that we hope to benefit K-8 teachers for years to come. You can make contributions here: https://oief.smalldognet.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=1043.