John Marvin Taves

John was born in St. Paul, Minn., on May 13, 1947, and passed away on July 29, 2026, in Spokane, Wash. He was the son of Caroline Dilgard and Marvin Taves (Toews) and the brother of Peter Allen Taves. John spent most of his childhood in St. Paul and many summers at Forest Lake in Minnesota. After graduating from high school in Alexandria, Va., he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and served in the U.S. Army from October 1968 to May 1970, spending over a year in Vietnam. Afterward, he went on to earn his master's degree in social psychology and later his Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University. In Pullman, Wash., he met fellow graduate student Joellen Denney from Spokane, Wash., and they were married in August of 1972. After John's first job as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas , he returned to the Pacific Northwest to take a sociology-related job at Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Ore. He remained with Bonneville from 1976 through 2012 in various capacities; his most lengthy and respected position was as a Constituent Account Executive, acting as Bonneville's liaison with the many public interest groups and government agencies that interacted with Bonneville. John's sense of fairness, his patience, and his calm demeanor made him a perfect person for the job and he was equally respected by the administrators at Bonneville and by the many public agencies that he dealt with. John and Joellen had one daughter, Janelle Elizabeth Taves, in 1979. She definitely lived up to her initials JET during her busy childhood. John and Janelle had a favorite tradition of going out to breakfast before church on Sunday mornings while Joellen was busy at choir rehearsal and then sitting close together during the service. John was an excellent father and teacher to Janelle, sharing his many academic and hobby skills with her. When Janelle and her husband Jared Marcellus had their first child in 2007, John and Joellen moved from Portland, Oreg. to Cheney, Wash. to become active and involved grandparents, just like John's maternal grandparents had been for him when he was growing up. It was a tough act to follow, but they did a great job of it. John enjoyed doing many things with his two grandsons Luke and Jacob, especially drinking Starbucks cocoa and eating doughnuts while watching the trains go through Cheney, playing with the two of them on the living room floor making wooden train set-ups, and spending time with them at the cabin at Newman Lake. John's favorite hobby was gardening and he transformed the double lot at the house in Cheney into a gardener's paradise with 13 fruit trees, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, many flowers, and 8 large raised beds for vegetables. He even promised and made a rose garden for Joellen, full of her favorite roses. Of course he won the local "Yard of the Month" award several times over the years. John was well-known at the Cheney and Spokane Food Banks for his generous donations of fresh produce. John had other interests: having a steady stream of loving dogs, playing Rook with his maternal grandparents and brother, playing cribbage with his father-in-law Don and his son-in-law's grandmother, remodeling their 1922 Portland house by drawing up the plans and doing most of the work himself, being a loyal fan at Joellen's many singing events, going salmon and trout fishing with fishing expert and son-in-law Jared, spending countless hours on the Oregon and Florida beaches helping Joellen pick up seashells and beach agates for her collections, and being loyal and helpful to his mother, mother-in-law, and brother by supporting their moving to live nearby Joellen and him. When the mayor of Cheney found out that John had moved to Cheney, he was told by people in the Spokane Bonneville Power office that Cheney had a new resource. Soon the mayor appointed John to fill a recently-vacated City Council position and that was the beginning of John's nine years on the Cheney City Council. In 2014 he became active with the Cheney Depot Society, a group striving to save the 1929 Cheney Train Depot from demolition. As a Board Member, John was instrumental in making the effort a success and was recently one of those acknowledged at the dedication and opening of the relocated and restored Cheney Depot. John's disease, Multiple System Atrophy, was attributed to his Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. It is a very aggressive and severe neurodegenerative disease and was diagnosed in 2017. The initial loss of muscle control led to his need to stop gardening. Later his inability to use his computer brought an end to his City Council and Cheney Depot duties. During his illness he had two wishes and they were realized: to remain in his home (made possible by his wife and caregivers) and to have a relatively quick and painless end to his disease (this happened because of an unexpected respiratory failure). John's gentle soul served him well during his illness; he was rarely impatient and seldom complained. May he rest in peace, knowing that his life was a life well lived. A military ceremony and interment took place Aug. 12 for John at Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake. A memorial service honoring his life will be at Cheney United Methodist Church, 204 Fourth St., Cheney, Wash. at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026.

John Marvin Taves

May 13, 1947 - September 2, 2026