Obituary: Barbara Jean (Shearer) MacKinnon

March 18, 1934-June 8, 2025

The light shines a little brighter in Heaven as Barbara S. MacKinnon joined her loved ones June 8, 2025.

Barbara Jean (Shearer) MacKinnon

Born in Oregon City, Oregon, on March 18, 1934, to Dorothy Beryl (Jewell) and Gilbert Marshall Shearer, Barbara loved growing up in Oregon. Briefly, she played volleyball and played the trumpet. She attended schools in West Linn, graduating from West Linn High School where her father was a teacher. She continued her education at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, completing a degree in elementary education.

Barbara’s first teaching job was in an elementary school in Albany, Oregon, where she met two of her lifelong friends and team teachers. Ready for a new challenge and adventure, a principal encouraged her to look for jobs in Alaska. She applied and accepted a job teaching first grade at Harborview Elementary School. Barbara moved to Juneau, Alaska, in the late 1950s and soon met her future husband, local high school teacher Donald Lokke MacKinnon Jr. They married Aug. 19, 1961, and celebrated 60 years together.

Barbara and Don raised three children, Donald III, Carolyn, and Mary Lynn. They had many adventures while living and working in Juneau, Hoonah, Cordova, and returning again to Juneau. They owned several boats and traveled to several smaller Southeast communities on them. She loved to fish and was insistent on holding her own pole and was not afraid to bait the hook. Barbara was a skilled seamstress making clothes for the family, as well as blankets, and her many stuffed dolls and animals.

She and Don moved to Oregon in 1987 to take care of her parents and only returned to Juneau in 2019. They owned an RV while south and traveled over much of the Western United States, and even led a group of campers on a lengthy trip into Alaska. In every place they lived up until their return to Juneau, she was an active church member. Barbara was Sunday superintendent and a Sunday school teacher. She was quite active in the youth programs at church while raising her own. Barbara was active with the swim club both in Cordova and Juneau as a timer, judge, and clerk at meets. She and Don were also active members of Springwater Grange and the Clackamas Campers in Oregon. In her later years, while living in her Juneau condominium or assisted living, she loved visits from family, friends, and staff.

Barbara was preceded by her husband Don in 2021. She is survived by son Donald and Roslyn MacKinnon of Sitka, daughter Carolyn and Scott Kelley of Juneau, and Mary Lynn and Mark Fuette of Juneau, five grandchildren: Ian Kelley, Alex (Ariana) Kelley, Elyssa (Trevor) Pfaff; Macey Fuette, Malcolm Fuette; five great grandchildren (Adrienne, Aries, Alexi, Alana Kelley; Isabell Pfaff: and many extended family members both in Alaska, and up and down the western United States.

The family is grateful for the care Barbara received in her last years at Riverview Senior Living and briefly with Juneau Hospice.

Services will be held in Juneau on July 20, 2025, at 3 p.m. at the Chapel by the Lake, and at a smaller gathering in the fall at Springwater Church and Springwater Grange in Oregon.

The family asks that memorials be made to Springwater Presbyterian Church in Springwater, Oregon, to Springwater Grange in Springwater, Oregon, or to Chapel by the Lake in Juneau, Alaska.