Obituary | Frances Joy Taylor, 97, church founder, intrepid traveler

Frances Joy Taylor bought a pair of in-line skates for exercise at age 75, but abandoned plans to use them at the urging of a friend, who suggested something less risky for her hips.

And so it was that Mrs. Taylor found herself sailing through the sky over Elliott Bay, tethered to a boat and harnessed to a multicolored parachute that made it appear as though she were dangling from a rainbow.

The image is a fitting metaphor for Mrs. Taylor's life, and for the charity and friendship she bestowed.

Mrs. Taylor, who lived in Seattle's Northgate neighborhood and helped found the Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists, died Thursday night of complications of Alzheimer's disease. She was 97.

Born the eldest of six children on March 27, 1911, in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, she incorporated deeply the lessons of thrift she learned during the Great Depression, when her family lost its farm and her father found work as a miner.

Following in the footsteps of her grandmother, she left home after high school to attend nursing school in Spokane. There she met her husband, Sterling Taylor, and began working as a medical social worker, providing food, clothing and medical care to people living on the city's streets during the Depression.

The couple moved to Seattle in the 1940s, built a home and developed two apartment buildings — the Sterling Court and the Sennett apartments on Capitol Hill — that provided Mrs. Taylor with a steady income for more than 30 years after her husband died in 1972.

She befriended her tenants, treated them like family and wowed them with her physical prowess, which allowed her to scramble up ladders to the rooftops even as an octogenarian.

She sang in her church choir for more than 40 years, and cooked delicious apple pies for the weekly church potlucks until she could no longer remember the recipe.

An intrepid soul, Mrs. Taylor traveled the globe with members of her church and her sister, Jennie, in the 1980s and 1990s. She seemed to marvel at her own good fortune, and often said that she couldn't believe a small-town girl like her would eventually travel the world. The people she met there became friends and recipients of her charitable giving.

During one trip to Tanzania, Mrs. Taylor developed a lifelong friendship with a minister who is now planning to build an orphanage named after her, according to her longtime friend, Robert Forgrave Jr., of Kirkland.

"She had an uncanny ability to go from acquaintance to long-term friend," said Forgrave, who befriended Mrs. Taylor when he was a young book salesman and grew as close as family. "At a time when so many relationships are ships in the night — almost like transactions — she could make that connection and make it stick."

Though Mrs. Taylor would eventually acquire — and lose — $2 million in assets, she never took a cent for granted and would even reuse a nail if it could be straightened out.

She had intended to leave her estate to children in Africa, but lost everything when her business manager liquidated or leveraged everything she owned, leaving her bankrupt in 2005. The story of how that happened was told in The Seattle Times in December 2007.

After losing everything — including, as her dementia progressed, the memory of losing everything — she moved to an adult-care facility in Lake Forest Park, where she remained until her death.

Mrs. Taylor had no children. She is survived by her sister, Jennie Taylor, and brothers Jack Chamberlain and George Chamberlain, all of California. Memorial arrangements are pending.

Susan Kelleher: 206-464-2508 or skelleher@seattletimes.com