Sandra Kay Farmer
Sandra Kay Farmer, 80, a longtime resident of Sitka, passed away in her home on Saturday, September 1.
Sandra was an active member of the Jehovah’s Witness Congregation. Through that organization, Sandra has at one time or another knocked on every door in town with a Watchtower and Awake magazine in hand.
Sandra was born in Spokane, Washington, on September 26, 1937, to Gerald and Bonita Ryker (McKracken). Gerald was descended from Abraham Ryker, an original Dutch settler to the island of Manhattan. They had four daughters: Judy, Jan, Sandra and Bonnie.
The Ryker family moved to Philomath, Oregon, where Sandra met and in time married Erwin Farmer on January 24, 1958.
Their first son, Gregory Allen Farmer, was born in Corvallis, Oregon, followed a year later by their daughter TaRena Louise Farmer. Sadly, TaRena preceded her mother in death, in March of 1960.
In 1961, Erwin took a job in Sitka scaling logs for Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. Shortly after Sandra traveled with their 3-year-old son Gregory, arriving in Sitka on a WWII era PBY float plane. They had two more children born in Sitka: Bradley Scott Farmer (1965) and Carrie Lynn Farmer (1968).
Sandra’s first residences in town were an apartment over the old Sitka Engine (present day National Guard building) on Sawmill Creek Road and Cole’s Trailer court.
For more than 50 years the Farmer family lived at 2113 Sawmill Creek Road on their own little 2-acre homestead where Sandra raised her kids, baked her own bread (a recipe of her sister Judy), canned salmon and venison, smoked fish, raised rabbits and chickens and heated her house with wood. She lived with a gravity-fed water system from a stream that would freeze every winter so the family had to gather and melt snow in barrels placed next to the wood stove for the household water needs. She hammered nails and worked alongside her husband building their ever-expanding home.
She was shopping in Market Center in 1963 when she heard over the speaker the news of the assassination of John F Kennedy. She once went into the old cafe in the Sitka Hotel to interrupt John Wayne eating breakfast with his son (they had just arrived on the first commercial flight into the new airport), to shake his hand; she said he was gracious, polite and that his hands were huge. During the 7.8 Richter scale Earthquake in 1975, she was standing with her son Greg under their water tank watching huge landslides activated on the slopes of Mount Arrowhead.
She had a knack for fixing electronics such as computers, which she would build out of garage-sale components, miraculously configuring them to work together. Without having any formal training, she discovered that she could use a soldering iron to remove and replace suspiciously burnt parts from TVs and other broken appliances, saving them from the landfill to circulate on the shelves of the town’s thrift stores for years longer.
Sandra was loved and admired by her family, who will always cherish the memories of laughter and wit and dignity that she embodied.
She was deeply adored by her community of Jehovah’s Witness, friends who remember her as an outstanding example of their principles and beliefs.
Many in Sitka will remember the kind woman who was always offering a ride, running an errand, or freely doing a favor. She had a generous spirit, giving of her time, attention and her possessions, easily without hesitation.
She touched many lives in small everyday ways. She will be missed by many here and abroad.
Sandra was preceded in death by her husband Erwin Farmer in 2015. She is survived by her eldest sister Judy Graves and her husband Allen; her children, Greg Farmer his wife Rena, Brad Farmer and his wife Maria, and Carrie McGlone and her husband Josh; and her grandchildren, Anthony Farmer, Prana Castallian, Kyra, James and Kirstin McGlone.
Services will be held at the newly re-built Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 519 Monastery St., on October 27, with the time to be announced. All are welcome to join in celebrating Sandra’s life.
