Edie peacefully passed away of natural causes April 8, 2018, at 95 ½ years of age at Autumn Bridge Adult Family Home in Tumwater, where she received the most loving and comprehensive care anyone could possibly ask for, as her dementia and health issues significantly worsened over an 18 month period.
Although her early years were difficult, Edie lived a simple and wonderful life in her adult years.
She was a telephone operator and later, a typist for DSHS in Aberdeen, from which she retired in 1986. She then moved to a house she had built for herself in Lacey, where she could be closer to family. Her easy-going positive nature, always with a smile, was appreciated by family, neighbors and her circle of lifelong friends, as well as just about everyone else that had contact with her.
Edie’s hobbies were her family, friends, and gardening and some traveling with friends.
Edie was born on Sept. 18, 1922, in Victoria, B.C. Canada to Frank F. and May Florence Thibodeau. Her mother passed away when she was only four years old, and her father eventually placed her, her older brother and older sister in a Catholic Orphanage in Vancouver B.C. He would occasionally visit the kids there. She resided at the orphanage until she was 15 years old.
Because of the Depression, her unemployed father brought them to Washington State looking for work. He dropped her sister, Evelyn, off at a farm, her brother Ray in Raymond, and Edie at a home in Aberdeen, Wash., where she was a maid/housekeeper while she attended school. She only saw her father once more shortly thereafter. Being in that home did not work out well and she was eventually placed in another home, as a live-in maid. In a home next door resided young Robert Ayers and after some time, they became friends and were married after she graduated from high school. So she simply moved in next door with his family. In 1944, she gave birth to a daughter Nancy, and three years later, a son, Don. The family was devastated when Nancy died of cancer at age 11 but time mostly healed everyone. After 25 years, Edie and Bob divorced in 1965 and she remained single from then on.
The apple of her eye was her grandson, Scott Ayers, and recently, his infant daughter Sierra.
Edie was one of those persons that simply made the world a better place for everyone she was near.
She is survived by her son, Donald Ayers (Tumwater); grandson, Christopher Scott Ayers (Tumwater, wife Amy), their one year old Sierra Ayers (daughter of Scott and Amy); a niece Lynnette Esplin (husband Fred, Surrey B.C.); great-niece, Linda Marr (B.C.) and extended family on her ex-husband, Bob’s, side in the Seattle area with whom she remained good friends through the years. She leaves behind her deceased daughter Nancy Ayers, deceased sister Evelyn Morton (Surrey B.C.), and deceased brother Ray Thibodeau (Everett).
Services will be held at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the Coleman Mortuary Chapel, 422 Fifth Street, Hoquiam Wash. A graveside Service will follow at Sunset Memorial Park in Hoquiam, Wash.
Please take a few moments to record your thoughts for the family by signing the on-line register at www.colemanmortuary.net.
