Remembering first citizen Marteen Wick
Claire Waggoner's mother, Jennifer, right, joined grandparents Kay and Bob King at Saturday's softball game. Some Florence residents may remember Marteen Wick as the owner of Kitchen Klutter on Bay Street.
Or perhaps they knew her as vice president of Oregon Pacific Bancorp, or as a member of many community boards and committees.
Claire Waggoner, the Siuslaw Vikings three-sport athlete, remembers her fondly as Auntie Marteen.
"She was just awesome," Waggoner said Saturday, following the Viking softball team's win over visiting Junction City. "Always smiling, always so sharp. A special lady."
Wick died Monday, March 28. The 1969 graduate of Siuslaw High School was 65.
So many are expected to want to celebrate her life that it will be held at the Florence Events Center at 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 5.
Hundreds are expected to attend.
"I expect people to be standing," Waggoner said. "Personal friends, and there's a ton, and family. I assume there will be hundreds."
Waggoner will be there to speak and sing, giving up a chance to play with her softball teammates against Tillamook in their last game before the start of Far West League play.
"I really feel bad about missing it," she said of the game. "I always want to be with my team. I've thought a lot about it, and (the service) is where I want to be."
Wick and her husband of 46 years, John, were best friends with Waggoner's maternal grandparents, Bob and Kay King. The Wicks are next-door neighbors to the Kings, and nearby neighbors of Jennifer and Dan Waggoner, Claire's parents.
The Wicks often would join the Kings in the grandstands, watching one of Claire's volleyball, basketball or softball games.
"She showed up mainly for volleyball and basketball," Claire smiled. "Softball, well, we have sketchy weather."
Aunt Marteen, despite failing health, was intent on attending Siuslaw softball games this past Thursday and Saturday, both of which were Vikings victories.
"I visited with her husband yesterday, and he said this last weekend that she was looking at the weather and said, 'We're going to some of Claire's games this week.'
"She was bound and determined to do that," Waggoner said. "(John) said he knows she was there when we got our win Thursday. That was special."
Claire has many special memories of Marteen Wick, including their last time together, a week ago this past Tuesday during a meeting of the Rotary Club.
"I got to sit with her the whole Rotary meeting," she said. "We talked, we visited about just about everything. It's a really special last memory I have."
The Wicks were such longtime friends of the Kings that they were there for the same event a generation apart.
"What's actually really neat is Mom started dating my Dad at the end of her sophomore year," Claire said. "She and John came to see my mom leave for the prom."
A generation later, the Wicks were on hand last spring when Claire left for her first prom.
"We watched an old video of my first prom with my husband, Dan, and it shows him meeting John and Marteen for the first time," Jennifer King Waggoner said. "I grew up with them as Uncle John and Aunt Marteen, even though we aren't related."
The loss of Marteen has been felt deeply by all generations of the King and Waggoner families.
"Even my 10-year-old twins had a special relationship with her, and are grieving," Jennifer Waggoner said.
"She shared the same birthday (with the twins, March 13), and as my son said, 'She smiled so much, you could barely see her eyes.'"
Gifts in memory of Marteen may be mailed to or dropped by Burns's Riverside Chapel, 2765 Kingwood St., Florence, OR 97439, according to an obituary notice in the Saturday, April 2, edition of the Siuslaw News.
The family also said money could be contributed to the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum elevator fund or the Florence Rotary Foundation, with a "student scholarships" earmark.
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