Obituary of Arlene Richardson

Frances Arlene Oglevie (Fiscus) Richardson

Arlene was born October 1, 1935 in Burr Oak, Kansas at home, to Albert and Frances Oglevie and joined her older sister and brother, Agnes and Dean. When Arlene was a year old the family moved from the dusty plains of Kansas to a farm near Greenleaf, Idaho. She attended Greenleaf Friends Academy graduating in the Spring of 1953 and went on to George Fox College in Newberg, Oregon in the Fall. While at Greenleaf Academy she was active in various clubs, basketball and played her accordion accompanying various gospel team groups in nursing home and jail ministries as well ministering in music during the summer to a migrant farm workers camp in a near-by town on Sundays.

Arlene Attended George Fox College for two and a half years, where she met Robert Fiscus. they were married in January of 1956 and she worked as a telephone operator at West Coast Telephone Company in Newberg while he completed college. Following seminary, they accepted a pastorate at Maplewood Friends Church in Portland.

Eventually Arlene Worked for the Friends Church Headquarter's, Barclay Press, for several years as a typesetter for its church and missionary publications. When the Friends Church Headquarters and Barclay Press moved from Portland to Newberg, Bob and Arlene also served as pastors at what was then Chehalem Center Friends Church near Newberg, eventually moving to McKinley Avenue Friends Church in Tacoma, Washington as pastors.

During those years they adopted a baby son and a baby daughter, then a baby daughter was born to them shortly after the second adoption. Bob eventually decided to leave the ministry to follow his passion in music, and in 1970 deserted the family to join up with a dance band and disappeared, leaving his family and realatives to wonder where he had gone to. His whereabouts finally came to light some twenty years later in another state, when he passed away due to a stroke and serious head injury, someone from his "new secret life" was able to locate and notify his brother in California.

Arlene took a job in 1977 as a clerk-typist for the Boeing Comercial Airplane Company in Seattle, Washington, in order to support her little family. She became a procurement specialist in airline after market support for the company and retired from the Boeing company in 2002. She married John Richardson in 1978, which ended in divorce in 2006. John passed away of a massive heart attack in July of 2007. 

DUring the years following her retirement Arlene served as church office secretery for her local church in Bonney Lake, Washington for seven years and was active for more than twenty years with the church music worship team. Playing organ and keyboard, before moving to Newberg and retirement at Friendsview Retirement Community.

She is survived by three children, Ronald (Kowanda) Richardson, Rhonda Richardson, Renee (Robert) Clark, and six grandchildren as well as nieces, nephews and cousins.

She was preceded in deathy by her parents, Albert and Frances Oglevie; a sister Agnes Tish, and a sister Velma who died at birth. Also, grandparents John and Jessie Oglevie, Kansas;and Isaac and Myrtle Dailey of Greenleaf, Idaho.