Jack Lampton

Jack Walter Lampton, long-time Corvallis resident, passed away April 17, 2017. He was born October 4, 1915, in Denver, Colorado. Jack spent his adulthood in California and Oregon. His life partner, Mary Jane Lampton, was with him every step of the way for almost 74 years of marriage. A western entrepreneur, he was a wonderful husband and father who left behind two sons, two daughters-in-law, four grandchildren, four great grandchildren, and friends made wherever he went. A gentleman of many talents, everyone recognized his unsurpassed sense of humor, able to summon the appropriate joke for every circumstance. He was a man of unwavering integrity and patriotism. Graduating from high school in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1933, at age 17, he drove his 1928 Model-A Ford to Los Angeles where he attended Glendale Junior College before going to U.C.L.A. until 1938. He met Mary Jane Adams in 1934 in Fort Collins, as the handsome lifeguard. They were married May 19, 1938. His first job was with a pre-eminent Hollywood interior decorator, working on the residences of such movie stars as Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Joan Bennett and her sister Constance Bennett. In 1941, he and Mary Jane started a greeting card business in Los Angeles. It was growing rapidly when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Enlisting in the Army Air Force, Jack was gone from home for three years, serving in England and France. In his book, The Luck of the Draw, Jack explained the role of fortune in human affairs. “I had been in England on a pass and on the morning I was to return to my base in France, fog was so heavy in London that I was late returning to the airfield and I missed my ride. The plane flew into the `Cliffs of Dover,’ and all aboard were lost.” After the war, Jack ran a sequence of businesses and worked for United Air Lines. In 1974 he and Mary Jane moved to Corvallis, where they purchased The Inkwell gift and furniture store. The Inkwell still operates under the second and third generation of Lamptons, Jack having retired in 1989 at age 75. Mary Jane and Jack were among the first residents of Stoneybrook Lodge. The family asks that any remembrances be donated to Benton Hospice Service.

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Jack Lampton

October 4, 1915 - April 17, 2017