Roberta Jean (Stout) French
Portland April 3, 1934 — March 3, 2017
Roberta Jean (Stout) French, 82, of Portland, died March 3, 2017, in Portland.
She was born April 3, 1934, in Iowa, to Orval D. Stout Sr. and Lois E. Stout. She graduated from Moulton High School in Moulton, Iowa, in 1951.
On July 29, 1951, she married her high school sweetheart, E. Eugene French, in West Des Moines, Iowa. They started out their married life in Kirksville, Missouri. He preceded her in death Nov. 24, 2007.
She was a nursing assistant in Bloomfield, Iowa. In 1962, the couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she worked as a data entry operator. In 1968, she began her long career at GTE in Beaverton, Oregon. Roberta started out as a telephone operator, and by her retirement in February 1989, she had risen to the position of network analyst in Dial Office Administration. She remained close to her friends and colleagues, attending the monthly breakfast meetings, luncheons and barbecues.
She cared deeply for her family and friends. She was interested in people, and impacted quietly and many times individually. She was curious about the world, always eager to learn, read extensively, enjoyed travel and pursued her passions, including collecting antiques (especially glass) and gardening. She was even chastised just a few months ago by the homeowners association that she had too many plants on her deck, and would need to pare them down. She would just roll her eyes, and informed us they just didn’t understand.
She is survived by a sister, Betty Frazier of Winterset, Iowa; two sons, Steven French of Minooka, Illinois, and Craig French of Portland, Oregon; a daughter, Cheryl Johnson of Beaverton, Oregon; and three grandsons, Adam and Austin Johnson of Beaverton, Oregon, and Doug French of Minooka, Illinois.
She was preceded in death by a sister, Donna Frazier; and a brother, Dale Stout.
Funeral services will be held Friday, March 10, 2017, at 1 p.m., at Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mortuary, 1165 Franklin Ave., in Astoria, Oregon.
Private burial will follow at Ocean View Cemetery in Warrenton, Oregon.
Please sign our online guest book at www.caldwellsmortuary.com
