Delores Renee Ratcliff

Delores Ratcliff-wife, mother, daughter, friend, teacher. She loved God, her family, her friends, and her fellow church members. She prioritized people above possessions, conversation above entertainment, and service above leisure. She loved to cook, and to share her food. She loved to garden, and to involve her kids in it. She loved the mountains and people of Washington, her adopted home, but still missed the family and friends of her native Iowa. She went to her rest at home, in Cashmere, WA, on July 18, 2017. After spending her first 25 years as a "corn-fed", half-Norwegian Iowa girl, besides interruptions for school and a year as a student missionary, she spent 2 years in an Indiana classroom, and then gracefully followed her restless husband around the country until they found a home in Cashmere, 17 years ago. Delores was born in Cedar Rapids, IA on May 21, 1966, to Eugene and Donna Enderson, a pureblooded Norwegian electronics engineer, and a Heinz-57 Iowa farm girl who adopted a career as a stay-at-home mom. Delores attended the church school in Cedar Rapids through her elementary school years, and then attended Wisconsin Adventist Academy, graduating in 1985. Her first year of college was at Union College, in Lincoln, NE, before she transferred to Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI, where she intended to major in dietetics. Her career plans took a marked change during the next year, 1987-88, when she taught English on Ebeye, an 80-acre island in the Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific-80 acres that contained about 15,000 people. She taught kindergarten that year, fell in love with her students, and then returned to Andrews and changed her major to elementary education. She graduated in 1991, and taught in a one-room church school in Kokomo, IN for 2 years. Nick and Delores got married in 1993. According to him at the time of their marriage, Delores was neither "Wonder bread", nor a "brick", but rather delicious "whole-wheat bread", and he didn't change that opinion over their 24 years of marriage. In 1994 the couple moved to Riverton, WY, where Nick worked as a physical therapist, and then in 1995 to Tuscaloosa, AL; Delores worked at the physical therapy clinic doing billing and insurance. In 1999 they moved to Moses Lake, WA, where she worked in the home health office, again with billing and insurance, and in 2000, they moved to Wenatchee and then Cashmere, WA. There, she began what she considered her "real career"-being a mom to Jared, born in 2001, and Joyanna, born in 2003. She utilized her education background when she began homeschooling Jared in 2007, and Joyanna in 2010, which continued through the remainder of her life. Through her life, she was an active member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. She was baptized in 1975, in Cedar Rapids, and then found a home in the Cashmere SDA church in 2000. There, she served as a Sabbath School leader and teacher to dozens of children in their younger years, and served as the church clerk for the last 10 years. Delores is survived by her husband, Nick Ratcliff Jr.; children, Jared and Joyanna Ratcliff; parents, Eugene and Donna Enderson of Robins, IA; brother, Daniel Enderson of Castle Rock, CO; brother, David Enderson, of Lincoln, NE; numerous uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, one nephew, and in-laws (who she equally considered to be family, and were, therefore, important to her). A celebration of her life is planned at the Cashmere Seventh-day Adventist church, on Sunday, August 13, 2017, at 3:00 pm. Inurnment will be at the Cashmere, WA cemetery some days prior.

Delores Renee Ratcliff

May 21, 1966 - July 18, 2017