OBITUARY: Iris Hamn

Published 5:00 pm Tuesday, June 25, 2013

July 12, 1925 Nov. 10, 2012

Iris Iona Hamn, 87, who lived in the Seattle area and was a former Wallowa County resident, died Nov 10, 2012, with her family at her side.

On Saturday, July 6, 2013, the remains of Iris and her late husband, Horace Hamn, will be interred at 11 a.m. in the Lostine Cemetery, where once again they will be in their beloved

Wallowa Mountains. 

There will be a reception, following the interment, at the Church of the

Latter-day Saints in Enterprise at 1 p.m.

Iris was born July 12, 1925, to Ardle Delmar Curry and Zelda Viola (Forhman) Curry and was raised in the Toledo area on the Oregon coast.

Upon graduating from high school, she married Edger Thomas Byerley.   He joined the Navy and they moved across the United States.  After World War II, she returned to Oregon, living in Portland for a while before being again relocated by the Naval Department, where they and their family, Steven Dale, Sylvia Lynn, and Kent Douglas moved to Union County.  Another child was born to the family, Gregg Brent Byerley. 

After a time Edgar and Iris decided to separate and divorce. 

Iris married Horace N. Hamn on Dec. 6, 1959.  They lived in Union County for five years, adding another child, Mary Viola Hamn, to the family before moving to Wallowa County in the spring of 1965.

Originally they settled in the town of Wallowa, and then moved to Lostine to buy a home there. 

On April 28, 2003, Horace passed away after a long

illness.  After one year spent on her own in Lostine, she decided to move to the Seattle area with her sister, Winona June Curry. 

While living there she renewed friendships with friends from Wallowa County that had moved to the Seattle area. 

She made a couple trips back to the county that she always considered home, and often commented that she missed her mountains.  She enjoyed those trips greatly, most recently in the summer of 2012.

She was preceded in death by her husband Horace, daughter Sylvia and son Steven. 

Iris is survived by sons Kent D. and Gregg B. Byerley, daughter Mary V. Hamn and 16 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.