Stephen James Ness

Stephen James “Jim” Ness passed away on January 24, 2025, aged 85. He is profoundly mourned by Sue, his wife of 63 years; his children Joe, Melissa, Patrick and Jeff; eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren; and his brother Phil and his sisters Liz and Edie. He is preceded in death by his beloved brother Joe, after whom his eldest son is named. 

There are facts about a man, and then there is the real man behind them. The facts about Jim are that he was born in Bellingham, WA on March 10, 1939, the son of Halvor, a Norwegian immigrant and lumberjack turned evangelical minister, and Faith, a homemaker. He spent his youth traveling around the Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada for his father’s ministry, before enlisting in the US Army at age 18, where he served, in total, twenty years and twenty days. 

He met Sue while stationed at Fort Belvoir, VA (where his son Patrick would later be born) while attending church. They were married in 1961 and stayed together for over six decades, which included Jim’s multiple tours of Vietnam as a soldier and civil engineer in the Army. 

Jim retired from the army in 1981 and settled his family in Puyallup, Washington. After a stint working in the army civil service, he took a job at Boeing and worked there until he retired, enjoying many years of living near his children and grandchildren. 

But these are facts. The man behind them, the one his family knew, was a man of tremendous kindness. He sometimes had a gruff, military exterior that could make people think he was unapproachable, but to his family, he was a man of genuine, committed love and of hoping constantly that we were safe and happy and loved. 

He was quiet, and he was funny, and he was gentle, and he was brave and ferocious when he needed to be, almost exclusively when his children needed help. He was especially beloved by his grandchildren. If you have never heard a retired army sergeant in his 80's recite an extremely complicated coffee order that he knew his granddaughter liked at a Starbucks drive through, well, that’s the sound of love. 

He is and will always be deeply, deeply missed. 

Jim was a devout church goer, finishing his life as a regular member of The Life Center in Tacoma, Washington, before relocation to Phoenix in the summer of 2024 to be near his daughter. He will be remembered at a ceremony at Life Center on March 10, 2025, on what would have been his 86th birthday, at 10am, with a private military interment service to follow that afternoon at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington.