Jacqueline Gwenith Kelley

Jacqueline Gwenith Kelley passed away on January 15, 2015 in her Portland, Oregon home which she shared with family, including her dog Misty. Services will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday January 31 at Daniels-Knopp Funeral Home in La Grande.

Jackie was born in La Grande on May 31, 1926 to Elizabeth Irene (Mansfield) and William Monroe Wiese. A first chair violinist, honor student and proud member of the LHS Class of '44, she joined the United States Cadet Nurses Corps after graduation. While still in high school Jackie fell in love with a USAAF cadet from Texas, whom she had met as a 16 year-old at a chaperoned dance at Zuber Hall. She married her pilot on June 2, 1945 in Merced, California and that evening Lt. and Mrs. Arthur T. Kelley danced to the music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, the first of hundreds of such dances they shared during 61 years of marriage.

Jackie spent the next several years as an Air Force wife, living in Germany as well as Illinois and Texas, finally settling in La Grande in 1954. While she cherished and excelled at being a mother, Jackie also enjoyed employment outside the home, including ownership of the 10th Street Grocery as well as two decades as an Albertson's retail clerk. Always an early adaptor of technology, she eagerly welcomed the "computer age", including becoming one of the first local owners of a Commodore 64. She also tutored neighborhood children and others interested in becoming "computer literate". Community service was a constant in her life as well. In the late 1950s, she became a member of "Operation Skywatch" , an arm of the United States Air Force Civil Defense network, and volunteered as a "spotter" to track aircraft flying over La Grande. Jackie also enjoyed decades of participation with the local organizing committee for her high school reunions and maintained life-long friendships with her classmates. A consummate Democrat, she frequently volunteered at polling stations for local elections.

Jackie was preceded in death by her husband Art in 2006. She is survived by son John Kelley and his wife Jan of La Grande; daughter Dana Kelley and her partner Jessica of Portland; daughter Colleen Kelley of Waterford, Pennsylvania, and grandson John-Daniel Kelley of Arlington, Virginia. She has two nephews, Denis Bonner of Ontario, Oregon and Bill Wiese of San Jose, California. For those of us who knew and loved her, Jackie will be forever in our hearts, waltzing across Texas with her beloved Art.

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