Obituary of Mette Tacheron

Mette was born in Marseilles, France in November 1931. When she was a year old, her family moved to Casablanca, Morocco where they lived under Nazi occupation. Mette welcomed the Allied invasion in 1942 along with her mother, a Red Cross nurse, who handed out cigarettes and mail to German prisoners of war. In 1947, her family immigrated to America, where they lived in New York City for two years before moving to Eugene, Oregon. She graduated from Eugene High School in 1949 after being crowned "Queen of the Dragon Kingdom" at the school's annual Beaux Arts Ball. Later, while attending the University of Oregon as a member of the Chi Omega Sorority, she met her future husband Donald G. Tacheron. After marrying, they moved to the University of Washington where Don completed his graduate studies in Political Science. In 1962, Don joined the American Political Science Association as a Congressional Fellow and the two moved to Washington, D.C. where Mette raised their four children. Mette was an avid supporter of the arts, and her paintings and sculptures had received critical acclaim in juried shows and galleries throughout the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. Her work had been selected and shown in, among others, The Brandeis Third Annual Juried Art Exhibit, the Alexandria Art League's Torpedo Factory, the 18th Annual Montgomery County Juried Art Exhibition, and the 16th Annual Friends of the Yellow Barn show where her drawing won "Best in Show." During a showing at the Rock Creek Gallery, Mette's drawings and sculpture received favorable notice by art critic Mary McCoy of the Washington Post. A student of the Corcoran School of Art and The Yellow Barn Studio, her work is in numerous private collections both here and abroad. After Don's early retirement, Mette enjoyed traveling around the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and New England where the two would spend months at a time camping and bicycling throughout the villages and towns they would encounter. Reluctantly, Mette sold her camper after Don's passing in 1996, but remained an outdoor enthusiast often walking in her community or along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Mette was pre-deceased by her husband, both her parents Mogens and Ellis Brix- Kjelgaard, and her sister Brix Eakin. She is survived by her sons Ben and Sam Tacheron, daughters Katie Tacheron, and Leah Clements, 8 grandchildren, and 1 great grandchild.