James Robert Allen
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October 4, 1941 - November 3, 2025 |
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James had a gentle kindness, smile lines on his face, and a twinkle in his eye. He had a keen intellect, was an original thinker, and had a sense of humor and ease that endeared him to whomever he encountered. He is deeply missed by his friends and family, to whom he was dedicated and loving. He grew up on his family’s dairy farm in an enclave of Belgians who crossed the ocean to settle in the Green Bay area in the 1850s. Until the eighth grade, James attended a one-room school house. He worked on the farm every morning and evening alongside his mother, father, and ten brothers and sisters, with his father Alvin yelling up the stairs “loafers, time to get up!” on cold Wisconsin mornings. In 1959, he graduated from East De Pere High School, where he lettered in multiple sports, played Peter in a theatrical production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” was on the prom court, and was class President. After enrolling in the University of Wisconsin at Madison, James became a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, and went on to earn a Master of Computer Science degree in 1967 from the same institution. Serving in the Navy and Army helped him pay for his college education. James stayed in the Madison area for two more decades, working as a scientific analyst and programmer for the university, and as a freelancer for several private clients, including the Consumers In 1990 he moved from Madison to Seattle, Washington. Instead of working with big software companies, James became a systems analyst with After a long career with the Department of Public Health, James retired north of Seattle. He delighted in the natural beauty of Washington, taking visitors to Mt. Rainier and Deception Pass Bridge. He learned two-step and line dancing, and if Reba McEntire was on tv, no one could get in the way. He often returned to the Allen farm in De Pere to help with harvest season. He traded jokes with One year James brought two kittens back from the farm, claiming he saved them from getting lost in the tall grass. He stopped on the way home to visit his young grandchildren Jenny and Jeffrey in Colorado where his daughter Michele had settled, naming the kittens Miss Kitty and Mr. Dillon, and then taking them back to Washington. In 2010, Michele took her own life after a long illness, devastating him and his family, and he grieved her loss the rest of his life. As time went on, he moved further and further north of Seattle with his kitties as he lived an RV life, finally settling in pastoral Skagit county.
James was one of a kind. His loss falls hard on a family and friends who will miss his kind heart and smiling eyes. James is survived by his adult child, BJ Allen; grandchildren Jennifer Hage and Jeffrey Hage; siblings Kevin Allen, Russell (Sineenath) Allen, and Yvonne Baumann; sisters-in-law Marija Allen and Karen Allen; Karen Muench, the mother of his children; and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Michele Lee Hage; parents Alvin and Alice Allen; siblings Larry Allen, Leslie Allen, Cletus Allen and wife Theresa, Bonita Geurts, Robert Allen, Josephine Hermsen, and Gerilynn VandeHey. His family sends a special thank you to his caretakers at the Sammamish Adult Family Home and his hospice care nurse. Their skilled and compassionate care provided much comfort to James and his family in his final days. His family is also grateful for the work of Michelle Richards, a Hospital Care Coordinator at Skagit Valley Hospital. Her generosity, warmth, and dedication will not be forgotten. A memorial celebrating James’ life will be held at a future date. We ask that contributions in James’ memory be made to the Natural Resources Defense Council. | |
With great sadness, we share that James (“Jim”) Robert Allen, age 84, of Mt. Vernon, Washington, died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, November 3, 2025. He was born on October 4, 1941, in De Pere, Wisconsin, to the late Alvin and Alice (Vandenbergh) Allen.
Union and the World Bank. He raised his two children, Michele and BJ, keeping pictures they drew in colored markers, giving them math problems at the breakfast table, and scrutinizing every report card. In the 1980s when they were teenagers, he continued driving lessons that began years earlier on gravel roads around the Allen farm. He urged them to “listen to the car,” usually a timeworn Peugeot 504 he was optimistically repairing. He encouraged Michele to take calculus, and was gracious to BJ’s colorful friends. Then he quietly put both of them through college, encouraging them to of course love math, and be resourceful.
the King County Department of Public Health. He won a Washington State award in 1997 for an innovative program, VistaPHw, that allowed epidemiologists and others to analyze health data and demographics geographically through a data visualization portal. His colleague and friend, Tianji Yu, who eventually took over James’ work, describes how he “soon discovered just how intricate VistaPHw was: dozens of modules, over twelve thousand lines of code, and layers of sophisticated logic.” The foundations built by James’ work are still in use and he is considered a trailblazer, with Tianji relating that “VistaPHw is one reason why King County is a national leader in community health assessment.” Outside of the office, James helped his supervisor Jim Krieger build a shed in his yard, while his colleague and friend Lin Song remembers his “free spirit and a wonderful sense of fun,” and that he always lived his life on his own terms.
his brothers and sisters, and gently teased his many nieces and nephews ranging from wide-eyed toddlers to sassy teenagers coming in from working in the barn. In the evening he would sit in the darkly lit living room with brothers and sisters, remarking on politics and family news late into the night, the 70s Wurlitzer organ and old family portraits as silent witnesses.
A jack-of-all-trades, James was reputed to have taken apart the engine of a Volkswagen Rabbit and put it back together overnight in a hotel room on a cross country trip. When living in the country, he grew large and beautiful gardens, full of favorites like green beans, corn, strawberries, and towering sunflowers. In his 40s, he worked as a logger in the north woods of Wisconsin, and he made his living as a carpenter when he first moved to Seattle.