La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Barbara A. Hammer

1944-2024

Shelter Bay/La Conner resident Barbara Ann Hammer died peacefully at age 79 on Tuesday, March 12, at Rosario Assisted Living in Anacortes.

Barbara was born to Billy Stanford and Anna Lorene Boehm on June 15, 1944, and grew up in Southern California. She was preceded in death by her sister and brother.

In 1978, Barbara married Karl C. Hammer, who passed away in August 2015. They moved to Washington 29 years ago from California, where Barbara worked in the airline industry as a customer service agent.

Barbara is survived by Karl's three children and their spouses: Chris and Tina Hammer, Carolyn and Raz Jessen, and Jeff and Kristin Hammer. She also leaves behind her beloved grandchildren, Shane, Samantha, Slater, Brooke, Hanna, Hailey, Aidan, Devin, Sierra and Kingston, and her niece, Natalie Boehm Wight.

Barbara was a strong, intelligent and passionate woman who was willing to teach the things she knew to anyone who wanted to learn. She loved music (especially opera), ballet, art and fashion. She served on the teen board of Seventeen Magazine and was a model and a modelling teacher.

She was a voracious reader of books, newspapers, magazines, catalogues and everything that kept her well informed about the world and where she lived. Good food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables she found in abundance in Skagit Valley, sustained her along with milkshakes from Schuh Farms in Mount Vernon. And chocolate. Barb gave up a dishwasher to have a dedicated chocolate drawer instead in her Shelter Bay kitchen.

Barb loved to cook and nurtured that love and interest for her grandson Devin, who now cooks professionally. She took great delight in her knowledge of all things Skagit and La Conner and loved to share information with any interested visitors she encountered.

Barb joined Soroptimist of La Conner in 2011 and was very active in helping to make lives better for women and kids and the community at large. As the chairperson of the Vintage Thrift Store, she raised the bar on how the store should be merchandised and presented to shoppers, making it an even more valuable going concern for the community and tourists alike.

The week of her passing was the 20-year anniversary of her surviving pancreatic cancer, a testament to the strong lady she was, who could endure anything you put in her way.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Barbara's name to: Virginia Mason Pancreaticobiliary Cancer Fund, Attention: Dr. Vincent Picozzi, 1100 Ninth Ave., Seattle, WA 98111.