Kay Donna (LaBarre) (Zimmerman) Butler, age 72, died early Thursday morning, April 7, 2016, at her home in SE Portland. Kay was born in Portland on January 18, 1944, the youngest of two children, and only daughter of Warren and Kathleen LaBarre. Her older brother Rex passed away in 2004. As a child, Kay was a precocious artist and crazy about horses. Her parents owned a house at the coast just outside of Nehalem, and they were able to give her two horses that lived there. The family spent every weekend at the coast, and in her teen years Kay was resentful of her inability to attend school dances as a result of this practice, but she loved her horses Skipper and Stubby.

A popular straight-A student, Kay was active in many clubs and Franklin High School's Theater Department. She developed a love for costumes and characters that never left her. She had a beautiful singing voice and learned to play guitar in college, where she also studied the art of calligraphy under Lloyd Reynolds. She enrolled at Lewis and Clark College after high school and later claimed she'd done so for the sole purpose of joining the Experiment in International Living program and traveling to Japan. She spent six months there, living with the Mizoguchi family and their daughter Namiko, who was the same age and who remained a lifelong friend.

Kay dropped out of college after her first year to marry Gary Zimmerman, a friend of her brother since childhood, who had just graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. As a Navy wife, Kay moved a lot. She gave birth to their first child, James, the following year, but he tragically and unexpectedly died when just over a year old. Their second son, David, was born in San Diego in 1966, followed by a daughter, Larisa, in 1968.

The couple settled in the Oak Hills neighborhood of Beaverton in 1971, and had their last child, Steven, in 1972. Gary went to work at the Trojan nuclear power plant, and Kay settled into becoming a suburban housewife. She was active in the neighborhood association and the local volleyball and softball teams, and taught folk guitar and calligraphy classes to neighbor children. Kay and Gary converted to Mormonism, and Kay became very active in church activities, especially anything involving putting on a show or doing decorations. Her theatrical flair continued to thrive.

Kay's parents were founding members of the Portland Horseless Carriage Club, and she joined them on tours in their Model T's, later purchasing her own 1930 Model A Ford, and spending hours on creating fabulous vintage outfits to go with the cars. She made reproduction vintage clothing for other old car enthusiasts, eventually focusing on hats, which were her favorite accessory.

For much of the 1980's, Kay worked at Pacific Photocopy (now Pacific Office Automation) as one of their top copier salesmen. The walls of her home office were covered in "Salesman of the Month" plaques, and she helped design a series of logos for the company. A friend encouraged her to use her excellent salesmanship skills in a company she was starting which made specialized tools for the military and NASA. They were very successful and ended up selling Astro Tool Company after just a few years.

In the early 90's, after their son Steven graduated from high school, Kay and Gary divorced. Not long after, Kay met Larry Butler through an old friend from church who had married Larry's sister Jean. Larry shared Kay's love of travel and exploration, and together they bought and fixed up several properties, some of which they retained as rental income.

They settled in The Dalles, OR in the late 90's, first at a mobile home park in Rowena that they bought as a fixer upper, and later in a pretty Craftsman house with some land and a stream running through it. There was enough space there to allow them to install a manufactured home on the property for Kay's mother Kathleen to live in. Kay worked seasonally as a window painter, decorating downtown businesses with Easter or Christmas designs. She also continued making vintage hats for sale under the name "Classics by LaBarrre" and assisted her mother with the layout and design of her "Reference Books of Vintage Clothing" series. When the weather got cold, Larry and Kay decamped to a second home in San Carlos, Mexico.

Around the year 2000, Kay noticed something was wrong with her mind. She was having difficulty finding the words she wanted, she would forget why she had walked into a room, or set something down that she couldn't find later. At first, these seemed like the same lapses everyone experiences once in a while, but over time it became apparent it was more serious. After seeing a series of doctors and neurologists, a diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a variant of Alzheimers, was settled on.

Larry continued to care for Kay's increasing daily needs through a very slow moving and gradual decline, until the end of 2012, when the workload finally became too much for him to handle. He and Kay decided together to move her to an assisted living facility in Portland, so she could be near her children. She moved into Hawthorne Gardens on SE 28 ^th & Taylor, and was a favorite among the staff and other residents for her friendly and outgoing manner. As her brain continued to degrade, she kept looking for ways to have meaning in her life, and decided that bringing happiness to others was a worthy goal to strive for. So she did that. She thought of it as her mission.

In July of 2014, Kay moved from Assisted Living into Memory Care. This was a hard transition for her, because she loved going on the outings and attending the social gatherings in assisted living. But as usual, she kept a positive attitude about her changed circumstances, and gradually adjusted. Reading, writing, and driving had all gone away long before. Now, walking became difficult, due to vision problems that were neurological in origin. Kay went on Hospice care in December 2015, and passed away four months later.

She will be remembered for her friendliness, charm, and sense of style, as well as an inclusiveness that made everyone feel they were important and valuable. She was funny, talented, and beautiful, and will be missed.