Marilyn E. Pfaendler

Marilyn E. Pfaendler, age 84, of Grants Pass, died Saturday, May 11, 2013 at Royale Gardens Health & Rehabilitation Center.

No services are planned. Southern Oregon Cremation Services are in charge of arrangements.

Remembrances may be made to Community Bible Church, PO Box 127, Cave Junction, Oregon 97523.

She was born Marilyn Elizabeth Thayer on July 14, 1928 in Crescent City, California to Al & Frieda Thayer. In the early 1940s her parents returned to the Illinois Valley where they had strong ties to Cave Junction as Frieda’s parents, Rose & Sylvester Carter had been pioneers arriving to the area by wagon train in the 1890s. Many family heirlooms were donated to the Kerbyville Museum as well as the Crescent City and Astoria Museums. Marilyn married Melvin Gill and they later divorced. They lived in Stockton, California where she began her own family with two sons, Edward Gill (1945) and Donald Gill (1948). After a brief time in Seattle, Washington she returned to Cave Junction, adding two more sons, Jack Kessler (1954) and Denver Kessler (1957). In the mid 1960s Marilyn married Sigfred Ness, who died in 1979 . She began a career selling Artex (embroidery paints) and teaching her customers to use the paints. In 1969 she bought her “moon car” station wagon the same day that Apollo 11 landed on the moon. She sold paints all over Southern Oregon and nearly had enough miles on the odometer to have reached the moon. In 1981 Marilyn married her sister’s husband’s brother, Hank Pfaendler and this caused much confusion over the last 30+ years.

Marilyn was very active in many ways for nearly 50 years at Community Bible Church in Cave Junction.

Survivors include two sons, Jack Kessler of Beaverton, Oregon and Daniel “Denver” Kessler of Portland, Oregon; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by a sister, Ruth Pfaendler; her parents, Al & Frieda Thayer; her husband, Henry “Hank” Pfaendler; two sons, Edward Gill and Donald Gill; her former husbands, Sigfred Ness, Melvin Gill, and Ora Kessler; and many dear friends.