Phyllis Ceratto Evans

Phyllis Ceratto Evans, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend of many, passed away on January 14, 2024 at the age of 97 at her home near Bellingham, Washington. She was born on June 17, 1926, in Tacoma, Washington. Her parents were George and Mildred Ceratto. Phyllis proudly told anyone and everyone she had grown up in Tacoma in the same neighborhood where her mother had grown up and liked to recall that her 2nd grade teacher often called her by her mother’s name, since she and her mother had both attended Bryant Elementary in Tacoma and had the same teacher. Phyllis also spoke of enjoying going to baseball games as a child with her grandfather. She liked to tell her own children that her grandparents’ home was one of many homes relocated in order to build Interstate 5. Phyllis attended Bryant Elementary and Stadium High School, both in Tacoma and graduated from St. Alphonsus Parish School in Seattle.

After Phyllis got married, she moved to Moclips, Washington where they lived by the beach and her 3 youngest children attended school. They moved to Hoquiam where she was divorced and raised her children on her own until marrying Bob J. Evans in 1964. They bought a home in Aberdeen and had one more child. Phyllis lived and worked in Aberdeen for 20 plus years. Since her parents had owned restaurants, Phyllis worked in the food service industry for many years then became a teacher’s aid in the early 1970s.

Phyllis found her true calling in teaching children to read and worked in early childhood education for the remainder of her working years until she retired. She was a teacher’s aide in the Aberdeen School District and in the late 1980s, after her husband’s death, she moved to Bainbridge Island and worked at the Montessori Country School.

All of her life, Phyllis loved the outdoors and especially camping and hiking. She was in her 60s when she embarked on longer, solo hikes beginning on the Olympic Peninsula and eventually hiking in Switzerland and around Mount Blanc and then in the early 1990s she solo hiked the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier. She also traversed the Olympic Mountains twice with her son Wally, via both the Low and High Divide routes. Phyllis saw so much beauty in her hikes that she combined her love for nature and hiking with her passion for sewing and fiber arts by creating beautiful fiber collages using antique silk from discarded kimono fabric. Her artwork was exhibited in various galleries and in corporate displays, and she sold many pieces of her art over the years. In 2010 Phyllis left the Olympic Peninsula and moved to Bellingham to a fun, senior community, to be closer to her youngest grandchildren. Phyllis always had a love for travel and besides years of camping, her travels included several visits to Northern Italy to visit relatives, and also trips to a variety of other places including Machu Pichu, a Caribbean Cruise and travels to Minnesota and Nova Scotia for genealogy research. She embarked on day or overnight bus trips once she moved to Bellingham, because she still loved to travel.

Phyllis’s booming laugh could always be heard in crowded rooms or at parties, because she was usually having fun and loved talking to anyone and everyone. She was barely ever sick and as she slowed down in her late 90s, her doctors and caregivers were always so surprised to hear she took zero medications. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.

Phyllis is survived by her four children: William (Bill) Hampton, Wally Hampton (and wife Wendy), Janice Hampton, and
Lita Evans DeBoer (and husband Walter), along with 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. She was preceded in
death by her husband, Bob J. Evans, her granddaughter Kandice Hampton Nickerson, and her brother Robert Ceratto.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to any dementia or memory care research in her honor.