Mary Anne Spencer | obituaries

April 6, 1936 – January 1, 2022

Mary Anne Spencer was born (as Catherine Jepson) on April 6, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York and was adopted as an infant by Minerva Bradstreet Spencer, a nurse, and Clifford Wayne Spencer, an architect and artist. She was raised as an only child, as the Spencer’s lost a son, William Wayne, when he was an infant in 1934.

The family briefly lived in Brooklyn and attended the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York before moving to Quebec, Canada. They later moved to Maryland, a small town in Otsego County, New York, eventually settling in Little Neck, Long Island. Mary Anne developed an interest in ballet and tap dancing at an early age.

Her father died when she was eleven. Soon after, she, her mother, and her grandmother, also named Minerva, made the westward journey. Her mother took on nursing jobs in Salem, Oregon and Los Angeles, California to support the trio before settling in Corvallis, Oregon. They arrived at Corvallis High School just before Mary Anne’s senior year.

Mary Anne’s grandmother died around the time Mary Anne graduated from CHS in June 1954. Her mother died three years later.

On March 7, 1958, Mary Anne Spencer married Vance Eugene Brown, also a 1954 CHS graduate. Cousin Manon Bradstreet, who had made a similar trip west to Corvallis with her family, was maid of honor. Mary Anne and Vance had two sons, Vance Evan (1958) and Kevin Michael (1960). They moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1968 and adopted an infant daughter, Jennifer Lynn, in 1970. The Browns moved back to Corvallis in the spring of 1972.

During her career, Mary Anne was a dispatcher for the Oregon State Police Corvallis office, both at the old location near the junction of the Willamette and Marys rivers and at the newer offices on the west side of town off Highway 34. She was a librarian at Jefferson Junior High (in Eugene), Cashier/Clerk in the Business Office at Good Samaritan Hospital (Corvallis) and Media Specialist at CIMC (Corvallis School District).

After retiring, she moved to Hillsboro, Oregon in 2004 and shared a backyard gate with her eldest son’s family to be closer to her granddaughters, daughter, and son-in-law, who lived in Vancouver, Washington at the time. She will be remembered for the quilts, cross stitch projects and scarves she made, all the family tree information she collected, family videos and the love for her dogs that was close to her heart throughout her life.

In 2013, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Mary Anne moved to Appleton, Wisconsin to be closer to her daughter and son-in-law. Eventually she moved to Touchmark’s memory care department on West Prospect in Appleton.

Survivors include their sons Vance Brown (Diane Yanagihara) from Hillsboro, Kevin Brown from Lebanon, Oregon and Jennifer Brown (David Shinkunas) from Appleton, granddaughters Kathleen and Kelsey, and great-granddaughter Penelope.