Christine Winton Jones July 20, 1952-May 11, 2013

Chris Jones was someone of many talents, with a rare combination of great intellect and great heart. She touched everyone she met with her unassuming competence, her quick sense of humor, her wisdom and professional integrity, her warmth and generosity, her focus on the task at hand, her care and concern for others, her humility. Few, if any, disliked her; many, maybe most, respected her and counted her among their very best friends.

Born in New Jersey in 1952, she was fiercely determined from an early age. She loved learning, and school was always a joy. She wanted to go to clown school but left home at 16 instead to attend Simon's Rock boarding school, and got a degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago. When she joined the Peace Corps, she showed her independence again by requesting a posting as far from home as possible - teaching mathematics for two years, living in primitive quarters in eastern Congo - beyond the bend in the river and in the real heart of darkness.

Like so many Peace Corps alumni, she returned to the U.S. committed to studying something practical for once, earning a PhD in economics from Harvard, where she also taught and worked on economic problems in African countries. She drove her Blazer through rice paddies in Cameroon, where her thesis on women farmers was one of the first to analyze the economic power of women in traditional societies. She sat with peanut farmers in The Gambia and maize farmers in Malawi. She eventually shipped her bicycle to Malawi and somehow solved the puzzle of how to wear cycling shorts in a country that required women to wear skirts.

Over time, she followed friends and colleagues to the World Bank, the pre-eminent development institution in the world, continuing her work in Africa, and, later, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

She drank champagne mid-morning with the Congolese Minister of Finance after she informed him that his national debt was nearly worthless.

In difficult negotiations, she was patient and gentle, but firm.

She led teams that published major, well-respected and often-cited books on the impact of economic policies across Africa and on the plight of the poor in eastern European and Soviet countries.

At the same time, she started her family and began putting needle to cloth - a personal expression of her abiding love of textiles.

Chris crossed the country to bring her family to Sisters in 2003. Besides indulging her love of the outdoors, her goals were simple: to raise and educate her sons, and to quilt. She accomplished both, and more. She never ceased exploring how to find appropriate education for her sons, even when it meant the painful decision to send them away from Sisters. On her deathbed, her last smile, wan but sure, was for her oldest son, as he donned his cap and gown and bore his high school diploma. She worked so hard to prepare her sons to be able to thrive without their mother, though no one ever expected they would have to.

Her quilting bloomed. Her stash outgrew her cabinets, and she blushed at her excess. She ordered yet more fabric from her hospital bed. One class challenged her visual comfort and tickled her sense of humor by teaching that red is a neutral color. She sweated the design of her patchwork as much as any economic or school issue - working and reworking it until her eye saw the harmony her mind wanted. Never satisfied, she took up knitting again - the more intricate the pattern, the better. She leaves a legacy of beautiful quilts and scarves, and a pile of projects waiting to be finished.

Before long, she emerged as an impassioned classroom volunteer and advocate for better schools, and began her six years on the Sisters School Board, mostly as chair.

She may have left behind the glamour and excitement of her work at the pinnacle of the field of development economics, but she didn't leave behind her analytical appetite, her pursuit of excellence, her wisdom or warmth or wit.

She pored over budgets until everything made sense or, in some cases, simply didn't.

Recession be damned, she masterminded the Local Option renewal in 2009.

Despite distractions from littler issues, she never gave up on the proposition that our schools should meet the needs of all our kids, and that good enough is, well, simply not good enough.

Perhaps she was such a good leader because she brought out the best in others, giving credit to them no matter how much of the work she did herself. Or perhaps because she always put service above self. Last year, the chamber of commerce honored her tireless and exceptionally effective volunteer work by naming her Sisters Citizen of the Year.

Within months of that award, she was diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Chris faced this illness without anger or self-pity, but with the same clear-headed determination that she brought to everything else - quietly accepting, Zen-like, what she could no longer control and concentrating on what she could.

At OHSU's Bone Marrow Transplant Center, her tenacity and resolve became legendary during her weeks and weeks of hospitalization - her incessant walks around the floor, necessary to keep up her strength, earned her the moniker Marathon Mama.

Her wit and smile, her ability to connect personally to her nurses and aides, her concern for the comfort of her visitors-all made her a favored patient.

She carried on through this Sisyphean struggle with a great deal of steady courage and quiet dignity.

But ultimately, her strength ebbed and all the medical skill, all the force of her own will, all the love and caring from family and friends could not stem the ravages of her leukemia and its treatment.

She ended her final journey in peace and calm late on a sunny afternoon at the Hopewell Hospice in Portland.

It might not be too much to imagine her final thoughts as coming from among her favorite songs - that it was, finally, time to send in the clowns, or, perhaps at last, here comes the sun.

Her journey would have been so much more difficult without the incredible outpouring of love, support, goodwill, resources, thoughts and prayers of this community. It buoyed her during her illness, and now it buoys her family. On her behalf, thank you to everyone on Team Chris who kept the vigil, who never gave up, who were always there.

Her immediate family resides in Sisters - her husband of 25 years, Chuck Humphreys; and their two sons, Christopher Humphreys, 18, and Zachary Jones, 16. In addition, she is survived by her 95-year-old mother, Sally Jones; her younger sister, Sara Carlin; and brother, Boomer Jones.

To celebrate her life, there will be a memorial at FivePine Conference Center on Friday, May 24. Come raise a glass to Chris at 5 p.m., with the service beginning about 5:30 p.m.

Donations to honor her can be made to charities of choice.