Dixie Johansen, 65, had a love for friends and view of the sea

Dixie Davis Johansen had to be by the water. As a child, she walked the beaches of what was then Zenith so much that the bottoms of her feet were as thick as sandals. She could scale rocks and hop across shells without a care.

As a young mother, Ms. Johansen lived on Seattle's Capitol Hill in a home that she loved, save for the view: The house faced the Cascades, and not her beloved Puget Sound. She later moved to Seattle's Blue Ridge neighborhood, where from the back of the house she could see nothing but water.

Ms. Johansen died Nov. 2 — suddenly, and in her sleep — at her retirement home on Camano Island, where she spent her days walking the beach, just as she did as a child. She was 65.

"The Norwegian part of her needed water," said friend Judy Bashor of Seattle.

Ms. Johansen was born Oct. 27, 1942, in Zenith, now part of Des Moines. She was the eldest of three sisters.

"Dixie was the brilliant one, I was the artist and Kristen was the pretty one," said her sister Susan Dolacky of Edmonds. "We joked about that all our lives."

Ms. Johansen attended the University of Washington, and then Washington State University, earning a master's degree in communications.

She went on to teach high-school speech communications, then worked at Boston College, and returned to Seattle to teach at Shoreline, Seattle Central and Green River community colleges.

Later, she opened Johansen Consulting, focusing on training and conflict resolution. She was especially proud of a training book she wrote on how management and employees can deal with domestic violence and its effects in the workplace.

"She was so placid in the face of conflict," Bashor said. "She was helpful at sorting out people's frustration, and brilliant with the bureaucracy: the patience, the resourcefulness, the ability to find the right people and talk with them in the right way."

Ms. Johansen had many close friends, including one circle of professional women who have gathered for dinner every month for the last 25 years.

When they turned 40, she and friend Ann McCartney (they met as freshmen at the University of Washington) started saving money for a trip to celebrate their 65th birthdays. They had $42,000 put away, with plans to go to Iceland next year.

Family members found a passport application on Ms. Johansen's desk the other day.

McCartney, of Bellingham, will take the trip alone.

"That's what we agreed," she said, adding that she will put half of the money into a trust for Ms. Johansen's first grandchild — a girl, expected next month. Ms. Johansen was finishing the last row of the hood on a hand-knitted baby bunting when she died.

"It will travel back with us and keep my daughter warm since her grandmother can't," said Ms. Johansen's son David Canfield.

Ms. Johansen was just as comfortable in front of a room of suits as she was behind the counter at Oddvar Ogland's Ballard auto shop, where she worked part time, managing the books and keeping things calm. She made many close friends from the customers and then put them together, whether it was for a ride downtown or a business venture.

"I want people to know how much she did, and that it wasn't to be noticed," Dolacky said. "She just did it."

Ms. Johansen is survived by her mother, Olga Mayes, and stepfather, Lee Mayes, of Federal Way; her two sons and their wives, David Canfield and Jenny Foster, of Cambridge, Mass., and Dylan Canfield and Liane Stephens, of Seattle; her partner of 30 years, Oddvar Ogland, of Camano Island; sisters Susan Dolacky and Kristen Romberg; and nephew Jon and niece Andrea Dolacky.

Friends and family will gather to honor Ms. Johansen's life from noon to 3 p.m. today at 177 Lagoon Lane in Port Ludlow. All are encouraged to wear comfortable clothes.

Better to walk along the beach, as Ms. Johansen loved to do.

Nicole Brodeur: 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com