Jeanette Thomson Fernández by Ronald Louis Fernández    Sept 16th version

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Jeanette's father, Henry Wilson was born in August 29, 1909, in Airdrie (near to Coatbridge). He started as a slater (roofer) and eventually wound up as "Clerk of Works" (sometimes referred to as Master of Works) whose job was to oversee the construction of school buildings around Glasgow and also in Ireland. He played in a local brass band. He was in the civil defense during the WWII. He apparently sang a bit, as Jeanette said he would sing an old Stephen Foster song "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair". For a working class man he was exceptionally well read. I inherited  a small part of his library after it had been picked over and it included Herodotus (the first history written in the western world), Shakespeare,  Chaucer,  Plato, Sophocles,  Virgil,  Epictetus, Charles Darwin, Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe), Confucius, R. W. Emerson, the Life of Budda, the Koran, Mark Twain, George Borrow's The Bible in Spain (a book about Gypsies and traveling through Spain in the mid 19th century)  and, of course, Robert Burns (the 18th century nationalist Scottish poet). I never got to meet him. He would have been interesting to talk to!

each other. Jemima died on May 13, 1992.




Jemima in the 1980s


Jeanette remembered her early life as happy.  She was close with her older sister, with her husband, Jimmy Stewart, and their adopted son, Calum.  She frequently mentioned her 2 first cousins, Hugh and Robert Pirie. They were the sons of Aunt Peg who was the sister of Jemima. She was close with these cousins and was fond of their wives Myrtle and Barbara as well as their children. Among whom where Victoria, Brian, Diane. As a child she had close friends among whom were  Elsie (a friend from primary school) and later in high school with Margaret Fraser.

She played piano as a child and read music. Later she played a bit of recorder and a chanter which was like the Scottish pipes without the bag. In Montreal before we were married I was teaching her classical guitar until she decided to sell her Matsuoka Guitar to pay for a Christmas trip to Scotland.

She was in awe of her cousin Hugh who played piano well and of her sister Margaret who played by ear. She liked reading, playing with her friends and she had a pen pal in Australia from whom she acquired a stuffed toy koala which I saw many years later at her Mum's house. Cousin Robert (who became a math teacher and school principal tutored her in high school math.

She typed books written by Dr. Bruce Trigger who wrote about Canadian Native peoples, Egypt and Anthropological Theory. One of those manuscripts paid for our first 12" black and white television set.  She typed my Master's Thesis and Ph.D. Dissertation. The thesis examiner noted that it had the least mistakes of any she had ever read. As always, good job, Jeanette!



     Working in Anthropology Office 1969                              Professor Fumiko Ikawa-Smith in 2001

After Jeanette arrived in Montreal in 1967 she made several life long friends. Among them were 4 women: a English woman, an Irish woman, a Canadian and a Polish woman (Martine, Crystal, Patty and Barbara). The Polish woman went on to become a priestess in an eastern religion and was lost to this group. With Jeanette as a Scotswoman, mention of these four almost sounded like a set up to a joke (a Scotswoman, an English woman, an Irish lass and a Canadian girl walk into a bar...). Throughout their lives they would speak on the phone and have occasional reunions despite eventually living far apart in Cambridge, Toronto, Victoria  and Anacortes.




Martine, Crystal, Jeanette and Patty


Jeanette was in Montreal during the hey day of the EXPO 67, the Montreal world's fair (April to October 1967) and she often visited it with her friends. This grand event made a great impression on everyone who attended it. She would often tell me about it as I only visited it in a scaled version a few years later. While looking through her things I would find mementos of  the grand fair. There was an EXPO passport which a person had stamped upon visiting each international pavilion. Jeanette had several photos of the fair and a number of postage stamps and brochures. It was a big event for everyone attending it.


Jeanette and Ron in Montreal

I (Ron Fernandez) first met Jeanette in September 1970 in the office of the Department of Anthropology on the 7th floor of the Stephen Leacock Building of the McGill University campus in central Montreal.  For one year I did not have much contact with her because although I was an Anthropology graduate student I had been assigned to the Sociology Department as a teaching assistant. The next fall our mutual friend and graduate student, Nels Johnson, brought us together. He told me that Jeanette was willing to pay for food if we came over and cooked it at her apartment. This was the beginning of our social contacts.





 Ron Jeanette and Nels October 1971 (Check out the red hair)



After a few dinners Jeanette and I just (how do you say it) fell in love. Considering that we were born on different continents we found we had much in common. We liked old musicals (Fred and Ginger). We have like opinions on politics. I liked her friends, She liked the way I cooked.  When I met her I thought that Scotland was a relic of history which had been swallowed up by England into Great Britain. I soon learned that I was wrong and that Jeanette was a supporter of the Scottish Nationalist Party. I also learned a bit of Scottish vocabulary including a few ancient swear words and the greatly revered for single malt Scotch.

Among the graduate students, at first, our relationship was a bit of a scandal because it was felt that I, a mere graduate student, should not be dating the Chairman's secretary. (I guess they perceived some power imbalance.) I always felt that was a ridiculous notion because Jeanette was within our age group. While Jeanette was part of the university staff and we were graduate students, she essentially experienced the social life of going to McGill. While she was not taking classes she was typing the book manuscripts and papers of top rated professional anthropologist and archaeologist. Consequently, she had a special insight in the professional world of anthropology.

Professor Peter Gutkind, who substituted for the late Henry Wilson at our wedding, watched what was going on with Jeanette and me (our courtship) and approved as did the Dr. Bruce Trigger, the department chairman.

Two years later Jeanette and I created the social event of the season when we got married in the University Chapel of McGill University in the School of Divinity. The ex-Dean (an Anglican) performed the ceremony in 94 degree heat (August 4th ,1973). Many of the anthropology graduate students and professors attended as well as friends from the Montreal Portuguese and Spanish communities where I was doing field work. A Portuguese (Artur Gaipo) and a Spanish fellow (Carlos Farran) played Romance de Amor on 2 Spanish guitars as we strolled down the aisle in the chapel.





I remember Jeanette very tightly squeezing my arm as we marched down the aisle in front of all our smiling friends. I seem to remember that with the heat of the day her simple gold wedding band almost didn't fit and that the minister was sweating profusely.

After the ceremony Peter Gutkind drove us up around the block to the Thomson House, an elegant 19th century limestone mansion, which served as the Post Graduate Student Center. In their wood paneled rooms we had a memorable reception which we had informally organized with wine and food. There was over 30 languages spoken at that event. Dr. Salisbury proposed a toast. My Spanish grandparents came up from New Jersey with my father, brothers and stepmother from California.  But alas, Jeanette 's widowed mother and other family members from Scotland could not attend because of distance. So, the next week we flew to Britain and Jemima held a traditional Scottish reception at the 19th century Georgian Hotel in Coatbridge. We danced, cut a wedding cake, ate and drank. At the end of the evening everyone got on the dance floor, joined hands and sang "God Save the Queen" and then, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, for me.






When I arrived in Scotland just before the wedding reception, I had never met Jeanette's family.  I could hardly understand Jemima because of her thick Scottish accent, it took nearly 3 days to understand her pronunciation.  Charmingly, at first, she referred to me as "The Yank. We stayed at her house, she went to stay with Margaret and she did everything to make us comfortable. She even borrowed a coffee pot so The Yank could perk up any time he liked. In contrast, Jemima never drank coffee, she filled her days with many cups of tea shared in the back kitchen of her house with her sister and old friends at 16 Dundyvan Road (You can see the house on Google, it's still there.)

There is an amusing fact about my first contact with Jeanette. When I applied for graduate school to McGill I was living in California. After I graduated from the University of California in Santa Barbara I arrived home in Costa Mesa. This was June 1970. There my father handed me a letter from McGill University. I opened it up and found that I had been accepted for September. Curiously, it was not signed by the head of the graduate program but rather by someone named Jeanette Wilson. 20 years later we found this letter in our files and Jeanette and I had a smile about it.

In 1973 I was researching the Portuguese immigrant community in Montreal and performing professionally with various Spanish and Portuguese musicians. Jeanette accompanied me to many of the performances that we had at restaurants, clubs and parties.. She met a cast of Portuguese workers, teachers, revolutionaries, salesmen, taxi drivers, reporters, chefs, barbers, waiters,  etc,. During this time Jeanette studied Portuguese Language along with me at the Movimento Democratico Portugues (which was a political association which was in opposition to the Fascist government then controlling Portugal). We studied for a year in a completely Portuguese environment--the teacher, Senhor Cunha Viana spoke only French and Portuguese.  Jeanette did very well. She had a great ear for language. In Scotland she had studied French and then in Montreal she took adult classes in French at the YMCA. Later in California she studied Spanish at the local college.

At the start of the summer of 1974 I received a grant to go to Portugal to study for the summer at the 800 year old University of Coimbra in central Portugal. Jeanette took off 6 weeks and we both went to study language and culture at Portugal's oldest university. This was interesting in itself. However, the political context of all of this was quite serious as the 48-year old Fascist Dictatorship of Salazar and his successor Caetano had fallen on Abril 25, 1974 just a few months before out departure to Portugal. In Coimbra, each day we had a few hours of Portuguese instruction and then a few hours of culture and history. There were a few hundred other students from a few dozens countries. It was a great international experience.  Attending Coimbra University was like attending Oxford in England. It always impressed anyone who was Portuguese, everyone else would ask where did you go? Queen-bra?

We returned from Portugal and I continued to do research on ethnic identity in the Montreal Portuguese community. Jeanette was completely immersed in this Portuguese immigrant experience. After her work we would often eat at La Bodega or El Gitano where typically there were 4 languages being spoken around us (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). Sometimes we would go up St. Lawrence Blvd (known as The Main) to eat in Greek, Italian or Hungarian Restaurants.

Around this time we moved to a 100 year old row house in the old working class/immigrant area on Drolet Street where no English was spoken. We lived in a French Canadian candy store which had been converted back to an apartment. Monsieur Laliberté rented it to us at $90 Canadian a month. Despite winters which were colder than Moscow, this little apartment/house was always warm in winters.  In the winter there would be 7 feet of snow stacked up on the street in front of our place.  The French Canadian kids would bang into our front window as they played hockey on the sidewalk. 

She made friends quickly and was given jobs in interesting departments. Very soon one department grabbed on to her because of her skills and personality. One of her long term friends from that job was Angelita Garcia just turned 90.

As in Montreal we walked all over the city. Jeanette liked to feed the ducks and geese in Stanley Park. We found special restaurants near Gastown--the Medieval Inn, Al Forno where the owner's father sang Silician peasant songs a capella, and the Spaghetti Factory--and Italian restaurants on Commercial Drive. Donna Marie and her husband Pedro (a Dutch fellow despite his name) bought us to one favored by Frank Sinatra where we had veal which we talked about for years.

During the 2 years in Vancouver we made friends with the Weaver Family who were long time residents of Vancouver. Peg Weaver (the mom) worked in the secretarial pool at the Anthropology Department. We became personal friends with her and her husband Ken. She bought us into her family circle which included adult sons who became lifelong friends, especially Michael and his wife Lorraine.  While attending Canada Day in at Stanley Park in 1977 we fortuitously encountered Rosa Serpa and her 2 children, Gina and Paula, friends we had known in Montreal who were beginning a new life out west. Jeanette was very fond of all these people.

Off to Orange County

My 2-year contract came to an end and instead of accepting a teaching position in the frozen province of Alberta. We decided to move to Orange County California and accept a job with my family in the international wood trade. Jeanette accepted this as our best option and we moved in April 1978--1300 miles south to sunny California. California was where Jeanette got to know her in-laws.



Brother-in-law Art, Chris (blond in front), Jeanette, Mother-in-law Stella, Sister-in-law Denise

We moved to Santa Ana, California. I entered the international wood trade working for my elder brother, John, and and my father, John.  Jeanette quickly found temporary secretarial jobs with Grace and a few other corporations. She got pregnant and then had a miscarriage of twin girls in the 5th month. She resumed secretarial work and then started to attend community college where she studied English, Spanish and American Government. She did very well in college and wrote original papers. One was about the California wine industry called "From Wine for the Mass to Wine for the Masses". She always had a cute turn of phrase. She got pregnant again and on February 22, 1980 gave birth to our daughter, Julia Margaret Fernandez. The name Julia was for my great uncle Julio Garrido and Margaret was after Jeanette's older sister.








We moved to Irvine (where the University of California was located)  to an apartment complex called Parkwood which was filled with children. Jeanette made many friends among the young mothers (Penny, Linda, Sylvia, Kita) and Julia had lots of playmates.  When Julia started kindergarten she only had to walk across the street. Jeanette took an active part as a volunteer beginning in kindergarten and continued all the way through 12th grade. She helped as a mother in the classes and did volunteer library work (which she especially liked). They gave her awards for her work.



PartyTime at Parkwood--Seth, Kita, Linda (hidden), Penny, Steve, Jim Spence, Sylvia

In 1994 we rented a townhouse at 26 Georgetown across the street from the high school. A few years a later we bought it and paid it off in little time. We were there for 21 years. We made many friends. I have to mention that Jeanette had special friendships with Mike and Aida Ellis, Lee Gross, Laura, and Ingrid and her little black poodle Gigi. One day Jeanette decided to bring Gigi in to our house while Ingrid was away at work. It was very hot outside and Gigi was in Ingrid's small yard by herself. This was all done with Ingrid's permission. For years each morning Jeanette would bring Gigi to our place for an 8 hour visit. Gigi would sit in front of Jeanette's desk in the dining room. She would be taken out for walks and at 1 pm I would give her a teaspoon of almond butter.
Jeanette's relationship with Gigi was special. There were a few run away dogs in the neighbor hood which Jeanette would capture and return to their owners. She would talk to them and make them feel comfortable. In later years she carried dog treats and shared them with nearly every dogs she met. Her favorite brand in Anacortes came from the Blue Dog Bakery in Seattle. 


The Guitar Business

I stayed working with my family in the wood business for 14 years. About 5 years before I left I started to build a musical instrument importing company dealing mainly with Spanish guitars, conga drums from Mexico and exotic woods from Central America. Soon Jeanette was involved with all of these activities. With her banking experience she did the books, correspondence and packing. She also did  liaison work for Carlos Pailles of International Hardwoods in Mexico. Our apartment became a music store with an inventory of exotic drums and fretted instruments. When Jim Messina (of Loggins and Messina) visited us and he asked our daughter how she liked living in a music store. 

We wound up supplying 200 music stores with high end classical guitars. We had 300 to 500 guitars in the garage. Jeanette evolved my simple accounting system into a modern computerized system. She packed thousands of guitars while I worked on preparing each one and selling to the stores.
We were a team--an actual Mom & Pop business. I could not have run the business without Jeanette. She was organized and a hard worker. We would work everyday for months and then we would travel some where. We knew how lucky we had been in business.

We developed close tied with Esteve Guitars located Valencia, Spain and consequently we wound up as their representative for 20 years at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) at Anaheim Convention Center (across from Disneyland). This was a large trade show with over 90,000 attendees. Jeanette and I ran 2 booths for 6 days each exhausting year. Jeanette was great at this work. She was personable, spoke a bit of French, Spanish and Portuguese in addition to her lovely accented Scottish. Jeanette wound up being well known in the international guitar industry. Shio Aria, owner of Aria Guitars would bring her special gifts from Japan.






            Jeanette and Manuel Adalid at NAMM                                    Jeanette and Felix Manzanero in his Madrid shop


These business contacts with Spanish and also Portuguese guitar makers allowed us to travel all over Spain and Portugal. We made many friends among the old guitar making families. In particular we developed a relationship with Felix Manzanero a famous guitar maker and his wife Soledad who came to visit us in Irvine. These special connections made our trips business trips very interesting and unique. We would visit the sites such as the Prado Museum in Madrid and then be taken to old historic restaurants. Jeanette was always shy about her Spanish and Portuguese but she functioned quite adequately.  On one of these trips we traveled to northwest Spain (Galicia) to visit my family's village and my cousins. Jeanette had met many of these relatives and would speak to them in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese which was similar to the local Galician Language.




 
     Cousin-in-law Diana Vazquez Fernandez                                            World's best Paella eaten in Galicia, near Ron's cousins house                                 

 Jeanette and Maruja, wife of Antonio Taibo


One of our special North American trips brought us to the east coast to attend a guitarmaker's convention in Maryland. We took a side trip Gettysburg PA and then visited Washington DC. Jeanette was fascinated with our visit to the Smithsonian Institution where she bought a sweatshirt she wore for years.  She was excited to see Abraham Lincoln's top hat and the Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz in the collection. And, Julia Child's original TV kitchen. Next, we went to the Library of Congress and got library cards. We found they had a collection of Stradivarius violins in a side room and visited them. Then, we went over to the Capitol Building where there was a demonstration for funding Public Television. The Sesame Street creatures were there. Representative (later Senator) Edward Markey was there speaking. About 15 feet away was a woman in a blue dress, Hillary Clinton.  Of course, Jeanette was a bit shy so I grabbed her hand and pull her over (she was glad that I did). I told Hillary that Jeanette had recently become a US Citizen and they spoke for a few moments as they held hands. I took 3 photos, 2 came out but the full  faced one did not because my camera was to slow to digest 3 shots.




  

             Jeanette and Hillary                                                                                                       Holding Hands                                                                                              

one in their homes. On other occasions they showed us good times in their cities. When Amalia Rodrigues, the most famous Fado singer died, Luis took us to a late night private dinner with Lisbon's circle of professional singers and musicians.  Jeanette often spoke of the special times we shared with these people.

In 1998 Julia moved to Santa Cruz to attend University and a few years later she moved to Portland, Oregon. Jeanette and I would see her on our trips to Vancouver every few years. We had maintained contacts in British Columbia since our residence there in 1976 to 1978. We would also attend the convention of the Guild of American Luthiers in Tacoma every few years. This convention was held at Pacific Lutheran University and was attended by 500 guitarmakers. I attended once by myself and then I brought Jeanette who having worked at the NAMM show in Anaheim and knew many of the participants. She knew all of the usual suspects. We would get lost in the guitarmaker's world with comrades for 6 days.  Attending lectures by day and music making parties at night. Jeanette loved the camaraderie of living in the hundred year old dorms and eating with everyone at the commons. It was a bit like our lives back in Montreal decades before. It was like the parties we use to have with the graduate students decades before. She made special friends at these conventions with Eugene Clark, John and Denise Park, Bob Park, and the Olsen family who ran the Convention and the Guild itself. She was much appreciated at these events. Everyone always asked, "Is Jeanette here?"

As in Montreal we found favorite places to eat over the years. One of particular importance was what became Einstein's Bagels in Irvine. For 14 years we ate lunch there almost daily. We met people who became close friends. Each week we would have Big Friday when we encouraged everyone to come. Thank you, Valerie,  Mike, Ingrid, David, Frida, Herb, Sylvia, Polly, Hunter, Rita and her grand kids, Brother Art and dozens of others.




Herb, Sylvia, Valerie, Jeanette, Ron, Ingrid at Einstein's Bagel Shop



Anacortes on Fidalgo island (connected by bridge to the Washington mainland)

In 2015 we decided to move to the Pacific North west. Five and 8 years years before we seriously entertained moving to Vancouver BC. We traveled to the US Canadian border and scouted places to live and a small warehouse to store imported guitars. Jeanette and I were excited about the prospect of living in Canada but continuing our import business on the US side of the border. When we carefully considered all of the problems we could not put the plan together and continue our guitar business California.  Julia moved to Tacoma  where she found work as a Speech Language Pathologist, her boyfriend from Portland, Charlie Bloomfield, moved up to Tacoma and they got married in the park.  Eventually house values in Irvine recovered and one morning I asked Jeanette  "Why are we here?", she looked at me and asked whether I was talking philosophically. I said no. "I mean why are we still living in Irvine considering that we travel up to the northwest each year. And, how can we put up with all of the traffic congestion here?"





                      Julia, Charlie and Jeanette



So, at age 71 Jeanette agreed that we should sell the Irvine townhouse, go up the coast and settle someplace near Anacortes.  Our old friends were Victoria and Vancouver, we attended the Guild every few years in Tacoma, our daughter was in Tacoma. Everything important to us was a few hours drive away. For years we had told people we would retire on Whidbey Island as a joke because in 1977 we visited Coupville where Jeanette saw a bumper sticker which asked: Where the hell is Coupville? It was our little joke that we would retire to near there.  But in reality we never intend to do so. However, in the back of our minds we remembered taking a ferry decades before from Vancouver Island to Anacortes. We started to search the internet about Anacortes. Very soon we were convinced that we could live there. So in December of 2015 we had sold our house, rid ourselves of 150 boxes of books and personal items and drove up the California Coast (visiting old friends, Andre, Lee and Marzel on the way). After a week we arrived one foggy day on highway 20 just outside Anacortes on December 16, 2015. We knew no one in town.  If we had moved here individually, it would have been a lonely place but being together made everything just fine. We were together and starting a new adventure.



We stayed for a month in a one bedroom apartment, it was cozy and reminiscent of the early days of our marriage living in small apartments in Montreal.  We passed Christmas and New Years with essentially no local social network.  We hadn't made new friends yet. Nevertheless as we explored this little traditional yet touristy town we knew that it would suit us fine. In a month we happened on a new 900 foot 2 bedroom cottage located 5 blocks from the main street. We could walk to the 2 nice market on the main street. We got a United States P.O. Box.  We started attending the ukulele group at the Senior center, started eating lunch each day at the Gere-a Deli (a restaurant owned by the lady mayor),  and daily we shopped at the local markets.

One of the special things about living in Anacortes was that we were near friends who lived across the border in Canada, friends we had known for decades.




   Nastasha from Richmond, B.C.                                               John and Patty King  in Victoria BC                                                             

Rosa & Jeanette in Coquitlam BC



From the beginning of our move to Anacortes we started to eat lunch every day at the Gere-a-Deli located in the old commercial section of our little city. We parked ourselves at a certain table and over a short period of time we gathered a a network of friends--Casey, Chip, Lloyd, Steve, Bob Nixon, Jack, Karen, Gary (and grandchildren) and later Dani, Heather and Nancy. Every day was full of stories. It was a friendly place set in a 100 year old bank. Jeanette looked forward to these daily encounters. (They were like La Bodega, El Gitano and the Bagel table).

Jeanette with Heather (July 4th, 2021 Anacortes city photo)                     Jeanette, Emilia and Lloyd

           Jeanette and Allison                                                 Dani, Nancy, Lloyd, Steve, Jeanette, Casey (Ron is taking photo)

We searched around Anacortes for a house to purchase for 15 months. We were becoming discouraged. In spring of 2017 we were on K Ave on Saturday and I asked Jeanette what house would you like. She said "that big yellow house with the cedar fence right there, but they'll never sell that house." Well, 3 months later it was for sale and we bought it in 9 days. Along with this splendid house came several interesting neighbors. There was a couple across (Les and Carol) who lived in the house their great grandfather had build, a lady lawyer (Marketa), her daughter (Ellie), her pilot husband (Lawrence), his mother (Judy) , their dogs (Nutmeg and Poppy) plus a flock of chickens. Down the block was a master furniture builder (Tom) and his wife (Darlene) who made Fabergé eggs.







Carol, Jeanette and Les Olsen                                                              Tom Krowl with his just made uke and Jeanette                                     Ellie, Marketa's head, and Lawrence


Jeanette liked the house a lot and loved the neighbors. We planted several gardens and decorated the house. All was very good.

During these first years in Washington State we would walk each morning through Washington Park which had a 2-1/8 mile hilly road through 300 acres of forest. We would always walk clockwise and continually meet people and their dogs walking counterclockwise. We did this walk over 500 times and eventually we stopped the counterclockwise people and introduced our selves and Jeanette (as usual) fed their dogs treat from the Blue Dog bakery. So this activity enlarged our friendship network.

The other special activity was pla

ying and singing with the ukulele group at the Anacortes Senior Center. Singing together with 50 people created a great bond.  We continue to do this weekly until Covid broke up the party. We were fond of so many people: Dick, Doreen, Kathy, Laura and Barbara, Karen.....We also made friends at the local shops and the markets in our town. There were people we saw almost everyday and with whom we had a continuous dangling conversations with.





Playing Uke at the Senior Center                                                 Marvin at the Safeway                                                        Janet and Jeanette in Produce Department

During these first few years in Anacotres Jeanette's older sister, Margaret fell ill and Jeanette would travel to Prestwick, Scotland via Vancouver BC a few times a year. She would stay in a hotel for a week and spend time with Margaret in the nursing home. When Margaret died Jeanette flew over and took care of everything since Margaret had lost her son and husband. This was always Jeanette' s way--very kind and caring.

Covid and then Cancer

Just as Covid broke out in March 2020, Jeanette has a side pain which 2 physicians first diagnosed as diverticulitis.  Because she was due a routine colonoscopy a nurse suggest that she have a scan because of the continued pain--it  revealed a 12cm lesion. The surgeon pronounced it stage 4 cancer and said it was inoperable. He turned her case over to Dr. Wang an Oncologist at Skagit Regional Health Cancer Care Center, He suggested that Jeanette to try immunotherapy (Keytruda). It was a drug which marked the cancer with a protein and then the body's cells would fight it off. Amazingly in 3 months the immunotherapy (which had mild side effects) rid her body of the 12 cm cancer. The oncologist looked at the scan result and kept saying "Wonderful, wonderful. When it works it really works." Jeanette continued with treatment for 18 months every few weeks. While it sometimes made her tired it was not devastating like chemotherapy. We continued to walk around the Anacortes Marina each morning until 3 weeks before her death. After 18 months the Keytruda stopped working. About 5 months before her passing she received 2 chemotherapy treatments. Two months before she died the side effects were becoming very difficult to control. The last 3 weeks her body was weakened by the cancer and the treatment and she eventually died in hospital after 11 days of an inoperable obstruction.

Julia came to visit from Tacoma and helped me deal with the medical bureaucracy.

I had her cremated in Anacortes and I intend to scatter her ashes around our island. Anacortes in located on Fidalgo Island which is connected to the mainland Washington by a bridge.

Since her family and friends are spread from Scotland to the Pacific Ocean I decided that the best thing would be to write this story and share it with everyone. For closure I have been phoning, video calling and visiting people. Jeanette was never big on public celebrations she always preferred small get togethers.



   Mike Smolsnik and Jeanette on July 12, 2022 taken on a daily walk by Anacortes Marina a month before her passing.


I hope that these stories and photos brings comfort to everyone. I will be making a video for YouTube which will complement what I have written here.

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Here is a list of her Favorite things


Hedgehogs
the color Blue
Scottish Heather
Lemon Curd
Mystery novels
Sending Christmas and Birthday cards
the accent over the a of Fernández

Dogs (she stopped for most and handed out treats)
For many children she gave books
New York Times in general and Crossword in particular (she did them in ink (usually)
Julia
La Bodega and El Gitano in Montreal
The bagel table in Irvine (and big Fridays)
Gere-a-deli in Anacortes
Her Friends!
Dad, Mom and sister Margaret
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When Jeanette was first diagnosed with a 12cm lesion we of course had heart to heart talks and one of the first things i said to her was that everything was always more fun when she came along.

It's not where you go but who is at you elbow when you do.


Ron Fernández
September 2022
Anacortes, Washington
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                        Around 1970