Janice began life as an engaging and adventuresome kid who joined her older sister, Sally (Winkel, husband Bob, Kingston), in many adventures and misadventures near their parents’ home in the Richmond Highlands area north of Seattle, and later in their Green Lake neighborhood.

Janice graduated from Lincoln High School in 1957 and attended the University of Washington, a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. There, for a second time (they had been briefly introduced as teenagers years before) Janice met Pete. Janice Lee Wood and Peter E. Peterson married in Seattle on February 24, 1961. 

Janice’s willingness to explore, discover and to be surprised by the unknown led her on many driving trips down the Baja Peninsula, through the British Isles, France and the countries of northern Europe, all with her husband, Pete, almost always without reservations, and often without fixed destinations.

Janice came to enjoy the remote, wild and beautiful property she and Pete acquired in 1968 on the Colville Reservation, along the shores of Lake Roosevelt. For many years Janice would make the pine forested, wilderness camp a fun and comfortable vacation “home” for her family.

When walls and windows were wanted as a vacation amenity, Janice and Pete had their beach cabin on Camano for gatherings of family, extended family and of friends.

Her energy seemed boundless and her cheerful efficiency made work appear effortless, especially when the couple purchased a burnt-out hulk of a home on Tiger Mountain near Issaquah in 1974. With the house being set to right largely by her labors, Christmases on Tiger Mountain were events to behold, produced almost solely by Janice and immensely enjoyed by family and friends.

Janice was an avid recreational athlete; for years she enjoyed tennis and later, golf, with many treasured and ever expanding circles of friends, including the “Klutzes,” the “Snohomish Couples”, her “Girl Friends”, the annual Solvang golf sojourns with Canadian “snowbird’ friends, among others. Old friendships were continued and new bonds built. And so, Janice’s friendships endured, and some of the longest of these were among of the “New Year’s Gang”, surpassing five decades and encompassing Janice’s entire adult life.

That it was so was no wonder; Janice’s smile would light up a room. If you met her measure of character, no other criteria mattered; her love and friendship was for a lifetime. People of all ages responded to her friendship and constant cheer, even to her last, most difficult days when her smiles, courage and good humor captivated her final caregivers.

So it is that friends of her children came to call her “Mom” and those of her grandchildren, “Grandma Janice.” Even her more casual acquaintances were moved to describe Janice as classy, kindest, sweetest, dearest, beautiful, inspirational, and accepting. But the often repeated comment, “Janice was the first one to make me feel welcome”, says the most.