Dallas Williams Cole

Dallas Williams Cole died peacefully in her sleep at the age Of 97 on Wednesday morning, October 14, 2026, in her home at Mary's Woods, in Lake Oswego, Oregon. 

Dallas was born on September 8, 1929 in River Forest, Illinois. She was the older of two daughters born to Chauncy and Margaret Scott Williams. She and her sister Varrell grew up primarily in Oakbrook and Wheaton Illinois. Dallas attended college at Northwestern University before transferring to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. where she earned a degree in English. 

After completing her BA she worked as a copywriter at the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago, Illinois, during which time she met the man who would become her husband, John Kenneth Cole, who worked at a competing agency. They married and had three sons, Gilbert, Howard, and Andrew. As a young mother Of three she decided to go to graduate school, earning a Master's Degree in English from North Central Illinois. 

The family lived in Geneva and Downers Grove, Illinois until relocating first to Kiawah Island in South Carolina, and finally to her adopted, cherished Oregon. Throughout her life she consistently contributed to her community. She was active in the League of Women Voters, volunteered with the Urban Gateways Summer program for inner city youth in Chicago, taught Sunday School at the Hinsdale Illinois Unitarian Church, and was avidly involved in her children's school, the Avery Coonley School, where she and her sister had themselves been students as young girls. 

While raising her family, Dallas continued a lifelong interest in art and scupture, creating portrait busts cast in plaster. Dallas' first major public art commission is the high-relief ceramic mural "Gilgamesh" in the Downers Grove Illinois Public Library. Over the next decades she was awarded several more large commissions, notably "Procession' (1982) adjacent to the Hult Center in Eugene Oregon, and the "Garden Of the Mind" at the Children's Library at the Wilsonville Oregon Public Library. 

Dallas was an athlete, an outdoorswoman, and a passionate advocate for the environment. She was a certified SCUBA diver, and hiked extensively throughout the Northwest with the outdoors group Obsidians. 

Dallas was predeceased by her son Howard in 1988, and her husband John in 2012. She is survived by her beloved sons Gilbert of Brooklyn, NY and Andrew Of West Linn, OR and her cherished grandson Roman, also of West Linn. 

A celebration Of Dallas's life, to be held at 1 PM on Saturday, December 12, 2026 in the chapel at Mary's Woods in Lake Oswego Oregon, with a reception to follow in the Nathman room.