By Staff
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Julie Locke (Photo provided by the Locke family)
Julie Locke died in Seattle on April 6. She was 90.
According to her son, the former governor of Washington, Gary Locke, “Mom passed away … peacefully and without any pain and in the comfort of her home.”
Locke said his mother suffered a massive stroke on March 20.
Born on Jan. 11, 1927 in Hong Kong, Julie married James Locke in Hong Kong in 1947 and moved to the United States shortly after. She was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in 1954.
“What many don’t know is that she had a thirst for learning,” Locke told the Northwest Asian Weekly. “She went back to community college when she was 50 years old to take courses in tailoring — even though she was already an amazingly gifted seamstress, having made suits for my Dad and re-upholstered our living room sofas—and a course in idioms of American expressions!! And she was always reading newspapers and magazines and looking up unfamiliar words in her Chinese-American dictionary and practicing writing out the words on recycled scraps of paper.”
Julie Locke is survived by Gary Locke, Rita Locke Yoshihara, Marian Monwai, Jannie Chow, and Jeffrey Locke.