Ardonnah Sylver Elligsen Nowlin, 84, died here in Sweet Home, Ore., April 22, 2017.
She was born in Oregon City, Nov. 3, 1932, to Harry Elligsen and wife Maud (Davis).
Ardonnah, or “Donie,” as her friends called her, grew up on a farm between Wilsonville and Tualatin. She was active in 4H.
She graduated from Sherwood High School in 1949, attended Oregon State University for two years, then transferred to Oregon College of Education in Monmouth. There she me her future husband, Dan Nowlin, and obtained her teacher’s degree in 1955.
Her first year of teaching was at Welches.
She and Dan were married May 13, 1956, in Wilsonville. After finishing her first year of teaching, she lived in Versailles, France, to be with her husband who was stationed there during his two-year tour with the United States Army. (In Versailles one day in the spring of 1957, Donie unexpectedly saw the young Queen Elizabeth II in a parade).
In the fall of 1957, the couple moved to Sweet Home, where Dan would teach at Foster School. In the fall of 1958, Donie also became a teacher at Foster and taught to retirement in June of 1994.
In 1995, Donie underwent surgery for breast cancer, from which she eventually recovered. In 2006, she suffered a serious stroke from which she could not recover, and which at last caused her death.
She loved to visit and correspond with friends, to travel, to hike, to play the piano, to make her own clothes, to prepare food for picnics, to see the ocean, to read many books, to wrap gifts and to pet her cat.
Donie will be remembered fondly by her friends for her friendly and helpful ways, her smile, her sense of humor.
After retirement she was a volunteer worker for the church, the Lebanon Hospital, Hospice, and the Citizen’s Review Board in Albany, working until the stroke in 2006.
On Dec. 20, 2016, she went to live at Twin Oaks Nursing Home and remained there until her death.
She was a lovely lady who will be missed in the Sweet Home community.
She is survived by her husband, Dan H. Nowlin; a daughter, Nancy Nowlin Porter of Medford; Dan Nowlin Jr. of Hillsboro; a sister, Lorna Wortman of Havre de Grace, Md., a brother, Keith Elligsen of Aurora; and five grandchildren.
There will be a memorial celebration of her life for immediate loved ones and the care givers who worked so hard for Donie her last two years, at a later time.