Pamela Jane Bladine 1944 - 2024

Pamela Jane Bladine, 80, died August 10, 2024, at her home in McMinnville, Oregon, where she was raised from infancy after being born May 31, 1944, in San Angelo, Texas.

Her memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, August 24, at McMinnville’s St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, followed by a luncheon reception at the church.

Pam was the daughter of Philip Newell Bladine, who predeceased her in 2008, and Margaret Eleanor Greene (Meg) Bladine of McMinnville. Meg temporarily returned to her Texas family hometown for Pam’s birth while Phil served as a U.S. Naval officer in WWII.

Back in McMinnville, across from the large field now holding Memorial Elementary School, Pam began her series of unique and remarkable lives.

First came the kind of happy childhood so many experienced in America’s small towns of the 1940s and ‘50s.

One family friend recalls her as the best athlete in the neighborhood from scrappy softball games on a small city lot; others remember her years as a cheerful friend, tennis player, cheerleader, water ballet artist and all-American teenager who graduated in 1962 from McMinnville High School.

Pam spent one high school summer in Brazil as an American Field Service exchange student; spent college-year summers working at Mount Hood Golf Course (now Mt. Hood Oregon Resort); and graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism and lifetime friends from her Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. In those years, her coaches considered her near-Olympian in water ballet – now “Artistic Swimming” – except the sport didn’t reach Olympic status until 1984.

That life was left behind after University of Oregon President Arthur Flemming gave this charge to her Class of 1966: “Seek Peace.” Pam joined the Peace Corps, spent two years in Venezuela and, after revisiting Brazil, returned to McMinnville and a much-changed world dominated by the Vietnam War. It wasn’t her happiest year in small-town America, where opposition to the war and politics of the day often fell on deaf ears.

But another life awaited: While living in Newport, Oregon, after attaining an interdisciplinary master’s degree at the U of O, Pam engaged the cast and crew nearby filming “Sometimes A Great Notion." The following year, she found herself living in Los Angeles, partnered with cinematographer Rexford Metz, helping to raise his four young sons, and enjoying the travel and stimulation of the movie industry.

Her work in film production was highlighted in part by becoming location manager for “Quarterback Princess,” an iconic made-for-TV movie filmed in 1983 throughout and around McMinnville.

When that life ebbed after 12 years, Pam moved to Texas in 1987 to help care for her 100-year-old grandfather. By the time he died six years later, Pam was a Texan again, beginning her 28-year relationship with acclaimed potter Roger Allen and with operations of his widely known Old Chicken Farm Art Center.

During those years, Pam became a professional massage therapist, licensed in both Texas and Oregon, and a certified Somatic Educator for the Somatic Systems Institute of Northampton, Massachusetts. As a Somatic therapist, Pam once wrote, she incorporated “eight or nine different bodywork disciplines including trager, myofascial release, Ortho Bionomy, cranial-sacral work, zero balancing, deep tissue, Swedish and others. The work is deep, therapeutic, relaxing and rehabilitating.”

Pam always returned to Oregon for summer and Christmas holiday family visits, except when family members and friends traveled to Texas instead. She and Roger were married in a home ceremony five days before he died of prostate cancer in early 2019, survived also by his children, Tami Allen Anderson and Toby Allen.

Unknown to even her closest friends, Pam’s 1960s time with fellow Venezuela Peace Corps volunteer Frank Schultz created lifetime bonds that were reconnected when she found herself taking over full ownership and operation of the Art Center. Together, they sold the Texas property and moved to McMinnville in 2022, but Pam’s genetic disposition toward Alzheimer’s-type dementia had started to evolve, and her death followed complications from that disease.

As one of Pam’s many favorite cousins wrote: “Pam always lit up the room with her unforgettable, lovable laugh and twinkle in her eyes. She will be missed by all who were touched by her presence.”

Pamela Bladine was predeceased by her father, Philip N. Bladine of Oregon; uncles, Jack Bladine of Oregon, and Jock March of Texas; aunts, Gayle Bladine of Oregon, and Jane March of Texas; and first cousins, Phyllis Anusich and Bill Bladine of Oregon, and Bill March of Texas.

She is survived by her mother, 104-year-old Margaret G. Bladine of McMinnville; brother, Jon E. (Jeb) Bladine and Michelle Malone Bladine of McMinnville, and their children, Philip Ossie Bladine (Lacy) and Chelsey Bladine Nichol (Brent); first cousin, Patricia Griffin (James) of Fremont, California; first cousin, John Abe (Bub) March of Texas; cousin-in-law, Jennifer Bladine (Bill) of McMinnville; five great-nieces and nephews (Nora and Oliver Nichol, and Kingsley, Sloane and Axle Bladine); and a growing collection of cousins once and twice removed.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made through Macy & Son Funeral Home to Providence Oregon Hospice of Portland or The Soup Kitchen at St. Barnabas of McMinnville.