Janice Clydene (Weaver) Pankratz

Date of birth  - June 1, 1937

Date of death  - March 8, 2025

Janice Clydene (Weaver) Pankratz, 87, passed on March 8, 2025. Born June 1, 1937 in Clarinda, Iowa to Clyde Dewey Weaver and Helen (Schenck) Weaver. She was the youngest of 5 sisters, Edna, Berniece, Evelyn and Audrey. An uncle reportedly told her father, “Clydie, you can’t farm in ‘I-o-way’ with 5 girls. You’d better move west where farming is easier.” At 5 months old, she was bundled up and travelled west to Oregon. She was fortunate to ride in the front of the 1-ton Chevy truck. Her 4 older sisters huddled amongst the family’s belongings, in the truck bed, under a big tarp. The family settled in the Molalla area of the Willamette Valley, near two of Helen’s sisters who had previously left the drought conditions of the 1930’s Midwest. Life was indeed better for the family as they settled in and were able buy a small farm to grow food and keep chickens. WWII arrived and brought changes…Janice’s mother went to work in the Portland Shipyards as a welder and she was left in the care of her father. Clyde developed health issues and passed in 1946.

Janice attended Rural Dell School, a white clapboard one-room school house. She was a social girl, involved in Camp Fire Girls at a young age and was proud of the Bluebird pin she’d earned, made of the new material, PLASTIC! Janice has kept up with many friends from those early school days, telephoning regularly on birthdays. Janice graduated from Molalla Union High School in 1955. She was involved in tennis, putting on school dances, editor of the yearbook. Her plan after high school was to go to secretarial school, but that plan changed when she was awarded a full scholarship by Crown Zellerbach Corp to get her teaching degree at Oregon State College (now University).

Janice had spent her summers picking the bounty of the Willamette Valley’s farm crops, as did most of her contemporaries. The summer of 1955 she started at a local burger joint, The Gay Way Cafe. Her future husband, Dick (Richard) Pankratz met her there, where he frequently stopped for a chocolate milk shake and burger. She soon realized that 75 cents an hour wasn’t as good as what she could make cutting teasel, so she quit and made 50 cents a basket, easily exceeding her Cafe wage because of her speed. This temporarily frustrated Dick, as she wasn’t as easily ‘found.’ His solution? Flying around the valley in an Aeronca Champ until he found her car near to where she was picking. He would then land in a nearby field and surprise her with a warm beer!

Janice moved to Corvallis in the fall of 1955 and pledged Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. The relationship with Dick became more serious and he followed her to Corvallis. They were married December 22, 1956 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oregon City.

The young couple moved to Seattle shortly after and Janice transferred to the University of Washington to finish her education while Dick started his career in the airline business. They welcomed their first child, Judy, a year to the day after their wedding.

Janice graduated from the University of Washington in 1962 with her BS in Home Economic Education and minors in English and History. She went on to teach Home Economics at Meany Junior High School in Seattle for 4 years. As with previous engagements, she collected more lifelong friends! Janice also taught at Issaquah Sr. High and East Anchorage High Schools before ‘retiring’ to become a full-time homemaker in 1968. She took her role as homemaker to heart and was passionate that a mother was the center of the home. She was involved with her family from being “Mom’s Taxi Service” to planning and hosting many parties and events. Janice was in youth and adult leadership roles in Camp Fire, and maintained her professional contacts with the East Lake Washington Home Economists in Homemaking group for over 50 years.

In the mid 1970’s, Janice became intrigued with her family history. Most of her friends’ families growing up in Oregon were from ‘somewhere’…being recent immigrants from various places in Europe. Her family was just (disappointingly) from Iowa. She gathered bits of information from her mother, youngest of her generation, and other family members, starting her lifelong passion for genealogy research. She spent the next decades researching, travelling to research and compiling records of family history in America and Europe by piecing together records from the US Census, state archives, county courthouse records, and the records of the Mormon Church. She joined organizations to support her research, took classes and travelled to genealogical conferences. She was President of the Eastside Genealogical Society, and active in many national and regional genealogical organizations in addition to state and local historical societies. Janice was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters of the Colonists and Daughters of the Confederacy, having proved her ancestors through her research. Many of her travels involved visits to former homes of various ancestors throughout the Midwest, Iowa, Tennessee and the Virginias in addition to travels to parts of England, Germany, France and surrounds. She researched Dick’s family also, and found many cousins in their travels…like a distant Hasenohrl cousin who they met by chance at the EAA Airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin…which resulted in a trip to Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Dick’s 34-year career with the airlines enabled them to have many wonderful adventures together travelling and of course, researching family history and homes, including many graveyards. There were aviation events for Dick, and Disneyland and Hawaii for the kids, but every vacation involved multiple history lessons and museum visits to balance the fun times. They travelled most of the United States and Europe visiting friends, family and places of genealogical interest.

Janice was preceded in death by her husband of 64 years, Richard Pankratz, in 2020. They are survived by their 3 children, Judy Pankratz-White of Fall City, WA, Elizabeth Bogers (Peter, Jr.) of Redmond, WA, Jeremy Pankratz (Nicole) of Pleasant View, UT, and 5 grandchildren.

Janice’s remains will be interred with her husband in the cemetery at the Smyrna UCC Church, Canby, Oregon.