Doris Joann Hunter Wilson

Doris Joann Hunter Wilson was born to Mabel (Lancaster) and Harold Hunter in Mason County, Shelton, WA, on May 29th, 1926 and died of natural causes, at her home in the Skokomish Valley, on February 16, 2025. She was the oldest of three children, Doris, Carol and Bob and grew up on the family's dairy farm, Hunter Farms, in the Skokomish Valley. Grandparents, Oliva (Woods) Hunter; Frank and Jennie (Thompson) Lancaster all played an important part in her early life.

She attended a three-room school 'the Grange' that was close by, through the 8th grade. She always excelled academically and athletically and learned to work hard at a young age. She would go to school early, in the older grades and start up the wood stove and sweep the rooms out after school.

She went on to college at Seattle Pacific College where she received a degree in Zoology. She was also Student Association VP one year and played women's basketball. She met her future husband, Talmage Wilson, there on the debate team. They were drawn to each other by their shared desire to serve God on the mission field. Following graduation, she attended medical school at the University of Washington where she was one of five women in her class of 1951, the second class of graduates from the UW School of Medicine.

Her internship, begun in July 1951, was at Los Angeles County Hospital, as Tal was already studying at Fuller Seminary nearby. They were married on December 18, 1951, at the First Baptist Church in Shelton. In June 1952 they moved to Pittsburgh, PA where Talmage took his senior year at Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary. She did her residency at Allegheny General Hospital and upon completion they moved to Saxonburg, PA, where Tal had signed on to pastor a church, - Clinton U. P. Church - and continued to work on two Master degree programs. In 1956 they moved to Hartford, CT for six months at the Kennedy School of Missions, with Hartford Seminary.

She and Tal went to Sudan to work with the United Presbyterian Mission in 1956 (Tal had previously served as a missionary in Sudan for about two years, while Doris was in medical school). They were in Khartoum for a year of Arabic language study and then went south to a small village, Obel, while Tal was teaching in the secondary school, where she was the only physician at a medical clinic in Doleib Hill, miles away. There was no running water, electricity, lab or x-ray. Patients were often seen outdoors under the trees due to the small clinic building. Diseases covered the entire spectrum of tropical medicine. She was able to determine that the cause of a mysterious disease, Kala Azar or visceral leishmaniasis, in some of her patients was a tiny parasite spread by the sandfly (with spleen punch biopsies and working with the U.S. Naval Research Medical Unit team in Malakal). She contended with a lack of supplies, medicines and other critical items as well as different languages and people groups in the area and generally poor conditions. She learned the important medical phrases in several languages in her years in Africa.

Besides holding clinics three days a week, she raised and home-schooled four children; Jon, Becky, Carol and Dan. She had a garden and fruit trees wherever she lived and was very interested in the local flora and fauna. She might lay out a dead snake on the floor in the house for a day or two, until she was able to check out its features and identify it.

After the civil war in Sudan began in 1964, the family was forced to leave and returned to Seattle, where Doris was the college doctor at Seattle Pacific College and Tal taught courses in Religion. Another child, Philip, joined the family there.

The family went to South Africa in 1969 with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, where Doris worked at Mseleni Hospital in Zululand. In 1971 they moved to Rundu, South West Africa, where Doris was a doctor at the government hospital. Both of these hospitals were much better-equipped facilities than Doleib Hill had been. Once in a while the patient was an animal or bird - such as an ostrich who had a leg infection and received penicillin injections from her!

They returned to Sudan (now South Sudan), in 1973 - Rumbek and later Ler - where Doris worked in the town hospitals. Conditions were again primitive. Doris sometimes had to do surgeries, i.e., amputations, C-sections, eyelid surgery, etc. as there was little other alternative in most cases, there almost always had to be an attendant to keep flies out of the surgical field and emergency surgery at night included lanterns and someone to hold a flashlight.

In 1981, Doris and Tal returned to the U.S. after about a total of 17 years in Africa, settling in Shelton, WA where they lived with Doris' widowed father. Doris went to work at Shelton Family Medicine and continued there for the next 32 years. She practiced the full spectrum of family medicine including delivering many babies through the years. She went on home and nursing home visits to see patients and rode her bike to one patient's home in Skokomish Valley. She retired at the age of 87, in 2014.

Her Christian faith and trust in God was an inherent part of her life and as a child, she had gratefully accepted the gift of salvation offered through Jesus Christ. She enjoyed reading and studying her Bible and every morning she could be found sitting on the sofa, over by the window, reading Scripture and devotionals. Besides being an invited speaker of her own accord, Doris played an integral part in her husband's churches through the years - often teaching Sunday school or playing the piano. She usually provided the flowers too, from her garden. Besides Charleston Baptist Church in Bremerton, WA, she also went to Skokomish Community Church and Family Bible Fellowship in later years. Her life verses were Proverbs 3:5-6. Her personalized car license plate displayed "PRAYSE."

As a child, she had piano lessons and this grew into a lifelong love of music and piano - particularly hymns. She played piano at church and in Africa, when she had no piano, she learned to play the accordion. She would often sit down at the piano and start playing through a hymn book from the start. She knew much of the popular music from her youth and a word or phrase would often trigger her to sing a tune impromptu.

Every summer, she and her sister would take children and grandchildren to the ocean beach for a few days. She had lunch with her sister Carol almost every week and she initiated monthly lunches with cousins that were held for many years. She hosted family dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas and her trademark yearly Christmas gifts to family members were her special homemade white fruitcake and an Amaryllis plant.

She loved to bake and cook and frequently tried new recipes. She especially enjoyed baking pies - and everyone looked forward to her berry pies during the holidays, Cascade berries were her favorite. She would preserve the garden produce by freezing, drying and canning, and gave much of it away. She also loved flowers and had a large flower garden. She would say that her vocation was medicine but her avocation was gardening.

Her activities and work would make many tired to even think about, yet she would often come home from a long day at the clinic and go out to the garden and yard to work for an hour or two - then cook dinner after that and play Scrabble with Tal during dinner! She would say: "A change is as good as a rest." She was disciplined, organized and very efficient.

She kept in touch with many friends through the years and enjoyed attending alumni events at SPU and the UW. She received the Alumni Humanitarian Award of the year from the UW Medical School in 2001, the Medallion Award from SPU in 2002 and was one of three business women to be honored by the Mason County Hospital Foundation in 2000.

Our gratitude for her life of gracious giving, service and sacrifice cannot be overstated. More about her life may be found in a book that Tal wrote about their lives together - "Golden Memories" or also in the book "CARE: A Hospital For Mason County" by Carolyn Maddux.

Her siblings and husband, Talmage Wilson, all preceded her in death (Tal in 2006). She leaves behind her children: Jonathan Wilson (Mona); Rebekah Wilson; Carol Whitsel (Tim); Daniel Wilson (Susan); and Philip Wilson (Erin); grandchildren: Rachel, Sarah, Paul, Hannah, Madeline, Zachary, Molly, Caitlyn, Levi and Jubilee; as well as 12 great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and many other friends.

Special thanks to Becky, Carol, Phil and grandson Zachary, for caring for her at home, during her final years, as well as Virginia Corey, Sean Silcocks and the Providence Hospice team.

A service will be held on Saturday, March 22nd, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Shelton. Burial was at Shelton Memorial Park on February 22nd, 2025.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to Persecution Project Foundation (www.persecutionproject.org); Bush Telegraph Mission (www.bushtelegraphafrica.com); or Joni and Friends (www.joniandfriends.org).