Kathleen Ann Mercer's Obituary
“A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY” by Kent Mitchell
Owen was born on September 22, 1935, at his grandparents’ farm eight miles outside of Iuka, Kansas. After his birth, he and his parents lived on a farm in Oklahoma, close to the Kansas border, where he lived until the age of 11. He attended a one-room school house where one teacher covered grades 1 through 12. With no siblings in his early years and not another farm-kid within miles, he became a dog-lover early in life and kept this trait on into his last years. When asked what it was like growing up on a farm during the Depression, it often led to him recounting stories of how he made the dogs his playmates. When Owen was six, his mother gave birth to a baby sister, Joan, who stayed living in the Midwest all her life, but over the decades always stayed close to Owen in heart, as she would be the only sibling he ever had. When Owen got older the family moved to McPherson, Kansas, so that he and his sister would have better education opportunities. In adolescence he enjoyed baseball, basketball, hunting and even riding his sister across town on his bicycle so that he could teach her to swim. The trait she uses to characterize him during these years is ‘kind’, another trait he kept throughout his whole life.
He graduated from McPherson Senior High School, at the age of 17, and immediately afterwards, on July 1, 1953, enlisted for eight years in the U.S. Navy Reserve. This plan allowed him to attend Central College in McPherson for two years before being selected for the Reserve Officer Candidate Program in April of 1955. He began his training at Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, during the summers so that he could become an officer in the Navy after he finished his bachelor’s degree. In August of 1955 he was promoted and transferred to the U.S. Navy & Marine Corps Reserve Training Center in Seattle, Washington. In the fall he started on his B.S. Degree in Mathematics at Seattle Pacific University, a small Christian college where he first met his wife Alice Waneta Wilkinson. They started sitting together in chapel, and in less than a year they knew they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together—well before he had money to buy a ring. On August the 9th, 1957, they married in Longview, Washington and spent their honeymoon on the Puget Sound. During their first year of marriage, Alice was the steadfast support that Owen needed to finish his last year of undergraduate study. After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he was ordered into active service aboard the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier docked in Alameda, California. Owen and Alice moved to the Bay Area, away from her family in the Pacific Northwest, and over the next three years of active duty he was sometimes out to sea for six months at a time. During the period of 1961 to 1981 he was an active member of the Ready Reserve and made promotions to Lieutenant in 1962, Lieutenant Commander in 1967, and Commander in 1978.
Owen’s teaching career began in Oakland, in 1961. The colleagues and students he worked with during this stage of the Civil Rights Movement made a lasting impression on him that he spoke of even within the last ten days of his life. This experience nurtured the innate compassion he held, a trait he was known for as a teacher and father and servant in the church. In April of 1963, Alice gave birth to their first son, Mark Owen, and fourteen months later they had their first and only daughter Tamera Lee. Three years after that their second son, Scott Alan, was born, and four years after that came Kent Douglas, their third son and last child. The fall of 1964 is when he started teaching at Washington High School in Fremont, where he would remain for 32 years. He served as chairperson of the math department for many of his years at Washington High. Most people who teach this long in the same town find themselves teaching the kids of students they once taught. Owen also lived in the same town where he taught, so he was always bumping into ex-students all over town—like when a nurse recognized him in the emergency room of the hospital 12 days before he passed.
From the late 1960s to the end of the 80s, Owen faithfully brought his family to Berean Baptist Church in Fremont, where he served in different leadership roles over the years, including deacon, Sunday School Superintendent and Awana Club Leader. He loved taking his kids hiking, camping, backpacking and even sailing. Sometimes he helped coach the sports teams that his kids played on, and when he didn’t, he faithfully attended their competitions. He could be strict when he needed to be but kept a steadfast compassion that
reflected Christ in many ways. He was slow to anger, quick to praise, and seemed to give sound advice in any situation. His children and ex-students and even friends of the family would say he was a pretty mellow guy.
In March of 1976 Owen and his family of six moved to their house on Encanto Way in the Mission San Jose District of Fremont, where Owen lived for the next 46 years and was able to stay surrounded by family for the remainder of his days on this side of Paradise before his passing. In the summers when he wasn’t teaching, he put to use other skills he acquired while younger such as wood-working, pouring concrete and gardening. More importantly, he created a welcoming home where neighborhood kids and extended church family always felt comfortable. Many thought of him as a second dad. While living at this house, Owen would eventually become a grandfather six times and a great-grandfather six times.
Those who knew Owen for long would have to agree that God blessed him greatly over the years, but in addition, God brought him through trials that many will never face. In 2006 he lost his oldest son, Mark, to alcoholism. Several weeks before Mark passed, the family expressed to Owen that he had to be ready to let his son go, if it seemed that nothing could be done. But he never gave up on helping his son get sober one more time. As it turned out, Owen was the one who was there to hear the last words of his eldest son.
Owen was a cancer survivor. In 2008 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and went through radiation treatment. The treatment was effective, and by the end of the next year he was cancer-free. Owen had a great gratitude for life—partly because of what he’d been through in his life—partly because it was his personality. He simply was not one to sulk. It was clear to him that there was no value in feeling sorry for yourself, even in times of trial and tragedy.
In 2010 he lost his second son, Scott, to alcoholism. Owen is the one who found Scott in his apartment. Again through this trial, Owen acted as a rock for the rest of the family, and those outside of the family as well. These tribulations were not in vain. God was creating in him a testimony that in the years that followed impacted many people who were in recovery. As God would have it, the length of time that Owen spent on this earth was almost exactly equivalent to the days lived by his two oldest sons combined.
For the last ten years of his life, Owen struggled with Alzheimer’s disease, but as in the past, he kept an optimistic attitude. In the last year, he felt the frustrations of not being able to remember whose house he was in or where we were driving to, but he somehow accepted that he would have to ask some questions several times. Rather than feeling ashamed about his memory loss, he was good-natured even in this weakness. He kept his sense of humor. He kept physically active well into his 80s. He kept ministering to the disadvantaged in his own community all the way to the very end.
He must have known he would not fully recover from the stroke he suffered on June 7, 2022, but he never complained in the following days as he struggled to regain use of his right hand. Even as the days dwindled down and his Heavenly Father was calling him home, he stayed alive for his family. He preserved his strength for the opportunities God would give him to tell each family member one last time that he loved them. When his strength to speak and eat were gone, God would allow him to stay just a little longer. Owen waited until Father’s Day was finished, and the next day he went home.
Owen is survived by his wife, Alice Mitchell, his sister, Joan Fitzjarrald, his daughter, Tamera Mueller and her husband, Mitch Mueller, his son, Kent Mitchell, his granddaughters, Amanda Mahoney and Heidi Noonan, his grandsons, Winston Mueller, Eric Mueller, Ryan Mitchell and Colby Mueller, his great-grandsons, Jacob Mahoney, Caleb Mahoney, Liam Mahoney, and Jesse Mitchell, and his great-granddaughters, Kynlee Muellerand Braelynn Mueller.
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