Lois Delsman Laughlin

February 12, 1935 – May 25, 2026

Marjorie Lois Delsman (“Lois”) was born in Seattle on February 12, 1935, to Alloys Delsman and Marjorie Scott and spent her early years living in the Laurelhurst home her grandfather built, along with her sister Roberta and three generations of the Scott family.  With the onset of American involvement in World War II her idyllic childhood was dramatically uprooted. At the urging or her uncles, Naval pilots stationed at the Sand Point Naval Air base, the family moved to the relative safety of a farm they bought along the Cedar River in Maple Valley. Lois became a country kid overnight, returning to the city for “Saturday school” to study music and dance at Cornish, but otherwise finding her pleasures in horseback riding and raising Samoyed dogs. A favorite memory were the family’s adventures on long horseback packing trips along sections of the Cascade Crest Trail over several summers in the late 1940s.

Lois graduated from Tahoma High School in 1953 and earned a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in 1957.  While participating in the UW Sailing Club, Lois met Clyde Atwood Laughlin and they were married on February 18, 1957, before their final term at the UW. They settled in Seattle and over the course of their 65-year marriage, raised four children who subsequently provided them with eight grandchildren. 

Lois was instilled with a strong sense of obligation to work for the common good.  In addition to being a devoted mother, she became a lifelong community volunteer and activist.  She volunteered with the nascent Head Start program to get it established in Seattle in the early 1960s and remained an active champion of public education, working to support and desegregate Seattle schools, through the 1970s.  A dedicated member of the League of Woman Voters for over 50 years, she applied her intellect and progressive energy to countless civic studies and campaigns mounted by the League and was recognized with the Carrie Chapman Catt award in 2014 for her long service to the organization. 

Lois was proud of her Scottish ancestry and dove into genealogy research at a time when that meant spending countless hours in libraries and archives parsing historic records to build a detailed story of the family going back generations.  Horticulture and gardening were a lifelong passion sowed by her own mother’s botanical cultivation and subsequently poured into countless happy hours designing and nurturing the gardens at the family home in Madison Park. In her later years Lois helped transform a public land remnant into “Galer Green,” a oasis of native plantings for neighbors’ enjoyment. She always carried her garden clippers in her bag and found ways to continue to garden around her last home at Horizon House up until her final weeks of her life.  

Lois passed away peacefully at home early on May 25th with the calm acceptance of one who knew she had experienced a fruitful life, rich with experience and love. Her warm smile will be deeply missed by her family and friends. She is survived by her four children, Scot (Ferndale, WA), Graeme (Seattle, WA) Tory (Seattle, WA) and Morgan (Tokyo) and eight grandchildren around the world.