OBITUARY

Sharon Kay Penner

February 23, 1947–May 30, 2023

Sharon Penner slipped away peacefully at their rural home surrounded by her husband on Tuesday, May 30, following a very private one-and-a-half-year battle with kidney failure.

Sharon was born in Spokane, to parents Gordon and June Lederer of Latah, Wash., on Feb. 23, 1947. Her childhood was spent with a group of seven neighborhood kids whose parents and grandparents treated each of these kids as their own with love and watchful nurturing. Her elementary education was in Latah and high school was at Liberty High School at Spangle, Wash. She was crowned Queen of the Southeast Spokane Fair in 1963.

Sharon graduated from WSU in 1969 with a BA in English and a fifth-year teaching certificate. In this college setting was where she met her future husband, Ted Penner. Following graduation, she got her first teaching position at Issaquah Jr. High School in Western Washington. Following his discharge from active military service, Sharon married college sweetheart Ted and spent the next two years teaching in Waitsburg Wash.

After the birth of their daughter in 1972, she left teaching to love and raise their daughter. In the spring of 1973, she and her husband began construction of their forever home on the Kellogg with occupancy during that winter. When their daughter entered elementary school at Dayton, Sharon returned to teaching, taking a kindergarten position in neighboring Starbuck, leaving home alter departure of the school bus in the morning and returning home prior to the return of afternoon school bus. She called it the perfect job. Here she stayed until their daughter got into Jr. High School and extracurricular activities became the focus.

Sharon again left teaching to become a full-time chauffeur from their country home to town. She wore out several vehicles and numerous sets of tires but enjoyed every moment of it but sighed relief on daughter's sixteenth birthday and realization of her own legal driver's license.

With college expenses looming, Sharon returned to teaching again in Starbuck, leaving for the final time in the spring of 1992. Sharon then immersed herself in her church activities, book club, lunches with her friends and even tried playing some golf.

Following active farming retirement, Ted and Sharon refreshed their country home and enjoyed several seasons of wintering in Kona, Hawaii, before COVID shut the world down.

Sharon was a long-time member of Dayton Methodist Church; BJ Chapter PEO; and numerous community organizations.

She was proceeded in death by her birth mother June Lederer, her step-mother Geri Lederer and her dad Gordon Lederer.

She is survived at home by her husband of 52 years; daughter Karen (Pat) Doherty of Bellevue, granddaughter Megan Doherty of Bethesda, Md., and two cousins in California.

Suggested memorials are Liberty Community Education Foundation in Spangle; Touchet Valley Arts Council in Dayton; or Dayton Methodist Church Memorial Fund.

Burial was in the family plot at Mountain View in Walla Walla and a Celebration of Life Service will be held at the Dayton Methodist Church on Tuesday July 25, 2023, at 10 a.m.

Funeral arrangements are entrusted to Corbeill Funeral Home. RIP Tp.