Janet Marie Southall 1951 - 2021

Janet Marie Southall passed away at Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville on the evening of June 8, 2021, having recently reached her 70th birthday. A funeral will be held at 1 p.m. Monday, June 14, at Macy & Son Funeral Home in McMinnville.

 The oldest of three siblings, she was born May 18, 1951, to Jack and Jackie Hartman. Janet was a strong-willed woman and a fighter. She was a cancer survivor who battled breast cancer twice and won.

Janet met her husband, Larry Southall, in 1978, and they married in 1980. He took her on many adventures in the outdoors, including a memorable hiking trip through the North Cascades in Washington. In Portland, her passion for gardening became a nursery business. They bought Dott’s Greenhouse in Portland, growing fuchsias, geraniums, cyclamen and poinsettias.  She became active in the Oregon Fuchsia Society and was elected president in 1988. Janet’s expertise with fuchsias was no secret; she became known as the “Fuchsia Lady of Portland.”

 Her son Clayton was born in 1990. Janet worked as a teaching assistant in his elementary school where she discovered a new passion: education. When the family moved to McMinnville in 1999, she started working as a teacher's aide for Memorial Elementary and the Continuation High School. She later became a facilitator for the SMART program at Grandhaven Elementary.

 Janet started working at the paint desk at Lowe's in 2008, where her eye for color and her desire to help people made her an indispensable member of the Lowe's family. She fought cancer and went through treatment while working full time. She retired in 2018.

 Janet was a caring, devoted mother and wife. She loved nature, the beach, animals and art. She could always make the plants grow, and she took great pride in her garden. She was passionate about early childhood education and reading to children. Her favorite place in Oregon was Rockaway Beach. Janet is survived by her husband, Larry; her son, Clayton; her beloved pets, Ruby and Matilda; her younger sister, Joyce Klinski and Joyce's husband Lee; three nieces, Leanne, Laura and Lisa; Lisa's husband, John, and their daughters; her husband's extensive family in California; his brother, Randy and wife Della and their daughter Kim; his older sister, Annette, her husband Jeff, and their daughters Dawn and Kristi, and their husbands, Chad and Steve; his younger sister, Karen, and her daughters, Laurel and Emily. She also leaves behind many dear, dear friends. Sadly, some of Janet's family preceded her in death: her mother and father, Jackie and Jack Hartman; and her brother, John Hartman.