Marsha Louise Dempsey was born the first of four children to Joan Sadie Kinnan and John Eugene Dempsey in the late summer of 1951. She loved and treated her family with the truest heart as she matured into a young woman. She was a gentle, kind, generous, trusting soul; the type of person who never stopped believing in the best from the people she came to know.
Growing up in West Seattle, Washington, Marsha moved through her adolescence and into her young-adulthood navigating a rapidly changing American society. Not long after graduating from Sealth High School in 1968, she moved to Escondido, California where she lived with her mother’s sister, Dione, adopting her family’s Mormon religion and completing a two-year term as a missionary in the state of Texas.
Returning to Seattle in the mid 1970s, Marsha continued her career as an information assistant with the Bell telephone company. Over the better part of two decades, she continued to work toward her goals in both her professional life and her involvement with the church.
Marsha always had a keen interest in travel, and accompanied her mother and stepfather, Robert McDonald, over many journeys across the United States in their motor home. In the late 2000s, Marsha met Jim Tipton with whom she had a long and loving relationship until her death. She and Jim would make a number of adventures out of the Seattle area to as near as the Olympic Mountains or as far as far away as southern California to visit family. When she wasn’t traveling or enjoying the company of family and friends, Marsha was playing piano or taking time to write letters to loved ones.
Marsha passed on August 15th just one day short of her seventy-third birthday. She’s preceded by her parents and younger sister Madeline. She will be fondly remembered by her remaining family and step-family members and will be interred with her mother and father in Escondido, California.
The post first appeared on Barton Family Funeral Service.