Gladys Irene Moon

Gladys Irene Moon died in Spokane on September 8, 2026. She was eighty-eight. Born there on June 5, 1938, she grew up knowing the river as a weekday neighbor, and she learned a typewriter before she learned a highway. A correct spelling, she said, is a form of respect. She spent thirty-four years as a school secretary, typing the sick list, the birth list, and the quiet list of children who needed a ride and would not ask. She did not put her name on a committee. She put other people's names in the right order. When a principal left in a hurry she kept the keys and the coffee and the calendar until the next one learned which door stuck. She married Howard Moon in 1958. He sold insurance and died in 1996. They raised a son and a daughter who still argue about who got the last piece of caramel cake. Gladys kept the garden of lilacs, and the habit of leaving a casserole on a porch without a speech. She sat through long meetings the way other people sit through weather. Grandchildren remember a woman who corrected their thank-you notes more than their homework, who kept a biscuit tin of paper clips, and who could name every teacher in the building by the mug she no longer used. She died in Spokane, in the cold she had always said you could live with if you dressed for it. The office is someone else's now. The patience she practiced there is harder to replace than a typewriter.