Jean Huckins Fagg Sharp's Obituary
JEAN HUCKINS FAGG SHARP
1924 - 2022
Our tender-hearted and resourceful mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Jean Huckins Fagg Sharp, passed away on Sept. 2 at age 97. Her love of gardening, reading, her family, and her faith bloomed through her long life.
She was born in Vancouver, Wash., on Oct. 12, 1924, the oldest of the two daughters of Doris Isabelle Elliott and Joseph Theodore Huckins. Her birthdate, on a day that would become a holiday named for a legendary explorer, seemed fitting for a woman whose lifelong trademark was curiosity.
Jean grew up on a Columbia Gorge homestead above Washougal, Wash. She spent her childhood roaming the nearby woods hunting the season’s first wildflowers, reading any book she could find, and collecting First Day of Issue stamps. She loved Sunday mornings spent fishing with her father, and visits from her two glamorous Portland aunts.
Jean began school in the one-room Fir Grove School where she was skipped ahead a grade because the teacher didn’t want to bother teaching a single first-grader. Jean stayed ahead of her class and went on to be named valedictorian of Washougal High in 1941. That summer, she was a princess on a float entered in Portland’s Rose Festival Parade.
She studied at Washington State University, where she attended dances and learned Gregg shorthand and other secretarial skills. During World War II, while working in Wenatchee, Wash., she volunteered as a USO hostesses. In town on a Sunday afternoon, she met a flyboy from Salt Lake City, Byron Grant Fagg, who was training to become a P-38 pilot in the Army Air Corps. In the summer of 1943, they fell in love while staying up late dancing to Big Band music.
After Grant returned home from the war, the couple were married on Nov. 24, 1945, in Portland, Ore. The couple lived in Salt Lake City while Grant attended the University of Utah, and Jean worked as a secretary. Jean joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often serving over the years as the ward librarian or Primary secretary.
The couple moved to Washington state to be closer to her family. In 1953, they adopted their first son, Allan, and in 1955, their second, Bruce. They lived for nearly a decade in North Seattle, where they added four more alphabet children to their family, all born two years apart — Cindy, Darcy, Ellen and Flinn. In 1966, they moved to a farm in Hubbard, Ore., where they raised their children among alfalfa fields and orchards of filberts, later known as hazelnuts.
Jean sewed school dresses and Christmas pajamas, canned peaches and tomatoes, baked fluffy rolls and flakey pie crusts. Every year, she expanded the family’s garden plot, while supervising endless summer mornings of berry picking and autumn afternoons harvesting filberts. She carpooled kids to endless church and school activities, delighted to become acquainted with her kids’ friends.
Her children joked about her dedication to recycling before it was cool; one time she scandalized her architect son by building a garden retaining wall out of plastic milk jugs. For a time, she likely qualified as the longest living subscriber to “Organic Gardening” magazine. She loved beautiful flowers, and one of her longtime hobbies was pressing and drying flower petals to make notecards labeled “Weeds by Jean.”
Jean sewed beautiful doll clothes for her granddaughters, one of whom named her Grandma Sasse, a nickname that stuck. She read endless bedtime stories and hosted sleepovers and gardening adventures. If the grandchildren brought chaos, Sasse was likely in the center of it, appreciating the noise. To her final days, she delighted in ice cream and any kind of chocolate with nuts, especially filberts.
Throughout her life, she maintained the practicality that came from growing up on a farm during the Depression, yet she was always up for new adventures. In 1978, she traveled with her husband to Israel, and they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in Hawaii. In 1984, the couple moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where Grant worked for the LDS Church Education System. In 1986, they moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to oversee the construction of a new Church Education building.
In 1988, Jean returned home to Portland, where she cared for Grant before his death from brain cancer. In 1996, she married Milton Giles Sharp, who passed away in 2007. Jean always found possibilities in a good fabric store and a library. When she no longer able to drive her hybrid car to those places, she was lovingly cared for by her daughter Cindy and her family.
Jean is survived by her sister, Patricia Jelusich, of Vancouver, and five of her six children: Allan, who passed away in 2013, and daughter-in-law Jean DeFond, who lives in Edmonds, Wash.; Bruce, and his wife, Ginger, in Washougal; Cindy and Quinn Knowles, in Milwaukie, Ore.; Darcy in Orem, Utah; Ellen and Dan Weist, in Salt Lake City; and Flinn and partner Trey, in Palm Springs, Calif. She loved well her 17 grandchildren and her 27 great-grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Jean Fagg Sharp may be made to Providence Hospice, 6410 NE Halsey St., Portland, Ore., 97213, or the LDS Church’s Humanitarian Aid Fund.
A graveside service will be held 10:00 am, Saturday, September 10, 2022 at the Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park, 3401 S. Highland Dr., Salt Lake City, Utah. An Oregon celebration will be held at a later date.
Her family celebrates the soaring curiosity Jean exhibited throughout her life, characterized by a hot air balloon ride she chose to mark her 85th birthday, which she enjoyed but thought was “too short.” To mark her 90th birthday in 2014, she enjoyed a tandem paraglider flight, and was thought to be the pilot’s oldest passenger.
In a photo from the flight, Jean is wearing a silver helmet, sitting on the glider seat ahead of the pilot, pointing her toes like a 1940s pinup girl. That’s the way her family will remember Jean, boldly riding on a cushion of air, fearlessly ascending into the unknown.
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