Lorena Osborn

Dec. 12, 1932 – May 3, 2011 Lorena Osborn, 78 years of age,  a loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend. She did not believe in just living together and did not believe in divorce.  She thought family should be important to a person’s life unlike today where everybody appears to be only worried about their own wants and needs.  She was born in Goodman, Mississippi  on Dec. 12, 1932 to Wiley and Ethel Roberson. She passed away at 12:35 pm, Tuesday, May 3rd in Portland.  She had become ill on a family trip to Oregon to see friends and family. She was married to Charles Howard  Osborn  Jan. 1 , 1948 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.  She was only 15 yrs. old and he was 17,  the only man she ever loved and never left his side even when he was ill and passed away with cancer 8 yrs. ago.  They celebrated 63 years of marriage together.  We believe she is with him now or looking for him.  They had made their home in Oregon in 1955, having moved to Stayton in 1971. Her  son, Cliff and his family took care of her the last seven years of her life in Reno when she became ill with Alzheimer’s and could no longer care for herself.  It was made possible with the help of his two daughters, Julie and Charlyn, and wife, Jocelyn, it became the family’s privilege to take care of her.  She will be missed by all of the people who really got to know her.   She had worked at food canneries  and did some farm work in her life but mostly helped her family run different family businesses over the years. Lorena  enjoyed a simple life and did not care much about material things, only having her own house was important to her.  She enjoyed being a homemaker mostly  and being a mother and raising her 5 children.  Having her own family and taking care of them was the great joy of her life.  She always had a hot meal waiting for my father after a day at work when he got home.  She never turned anybody away who needed a meal or a place to sleep.  Lorena had taken in animals and cared for them who had no home.  She liked to get together on holidays with family and friends and make a good home cooked meal.  Everybody in her family will miss her cooking it was really good and she really enjoyed cooking for anybody that was hungry.   She enjoyed  dining out on Friday nights and dancing at the Eagles Lodge.  She also liked bowling, watching the Trailblazer basketball , and along with our father was a big dodger baseball fan, she also enjoyed watching movies. The family would like to thank all the friends and family who visited our mother and have offered their sympathy, love and support during this tragic situation.  A special thank you to our dear friend, Bill LaCrosse of Oregon City who has been a close personal friend of the Osborn family for 36 years and who helped make a heartbreaking and impossible situation bearable with his kindness and support and by letting us use his home as ours, cooking for us, and staying up late at night, supplying the beer and telling old stories and making us laugh when we needed to escape the stress.  No family could have a truer friend or brother than Bill, we love you. She is survived by her sons, Fred (Patricia) of Redmond, Howard “Cliff” (Jocelyn ) , Jimmy  (Neima)  of Nevada and daughter, Kimberly ( Robert) Yother of Albany; brother, J. C. Robinson of Alabama;  6 grandchildren; and 6  great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her son; Alford, brother; JW and sister, Verne-May. Funeral service will be Sat. May 14th at 11:00 am at Weddle Funeral Chapel.  Interment at Lone Oak Cemetery, Stayton, OR. Arrangements entrusted to Weddle Funeral Services Stayton, OR.