Wilma Taylor

North Powder native and Baker City resident Wilma Jacobsen Bates Taylor, 87, died Sept. 10 at St. Elizebeth Health Care Center in Baker City. Viewing is today from 4 to 8 p.m. at Gray's West & Co. Pioneer Chapel in Baker City. A graveside will be conducted at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the North Powder Cemetery.

Wilma was born in the Dalton family home in North Powder Aug. 2, 1919, to Robert and Harriet Dalton Jacobsen. She grew up and attended North Powder schools where she graduated with the class of 1937. In 1941 she married Eugene R. Bates in Wieser, Idaho. The couple had a daughter, Sharon. The marriage later ended in divorce.

Wilma was chief operartor of the North Powder telephone office between 1950 and 1955. She transferred to Baker when the telephone system went to dial. She lived in Baker, and married Ralph E. Taylor in 1960. The couple had two daughters, Robin and Susan. Wilma and Ralph lived on the family farm until 1975 when they moved to North Powder. They built a home on the Dalton property where Wilma was born.
Due to ill health in 1997 they moved back to Baker. Since May she has lived at St. Elizbeth Care Center.

She is survived by her three daughters and their husbands, Sharon and Jim Jeffries, Robin and Tim Green, and Susan and Deven Sackett; nine grandchildren; nine-great-grandchildren; and a cousin, Vera Coday. She was preceded in death by her husband, Ralph.