December 5, 1938 - July 14, 2022

Carolyn Kay Woods, 83, of Bothell, WA, passed away peacefully at her home on July 14, 2022, following a long illness. She was surrounded and loved by her family and friends.

Carolyn was an only child born in Oregon City, OR on Dec 5, 1938, to Frank and Alice Gunn. She was listed on the membership roll of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians as ¼ degree Indian blood. As a child and young adult, she lived in Oregon, Utah, & Montana. On December 16, 1956, she married Earrol Renae Woods, with whom she had four children. Her second child, Baby Woods, unfortunately died at birth.

She moved her family to Washington state in 1969 and finally to Bothell, WA, in 1970, where she lived in the same house for the next 52 years. She purchased vacation property near Granite Falls, WA, where she and her family enjoyed several years of camping, hiking, swimming in lakes and rivers, dirt bike riding, and picking garbage bags full of chanterelle mushrooms!

She earned her master’s degree in June 1980 and her CPA in August 1981. As a Revenue Agent for the IRS, she audited large non-profit organizations, one of which was in Hawaii. She was able to travel back and forth to Hawaii for several years and spent her free time exploring the Hawaiian Islands. She also loved that she could extend this travel experience to family members.

Continuing her love for traveling, she bought herself a motorhome and spent a great deal of time traveling, camping, and exploring the greater Pacific Northwest with her grandchildren.

After her retirement, she managed her own business preparing tax returns for small non-profits and volunteered as an individual tax preparer. In her free time, she spent these senior years traveling all throughout the western side of the U.S. and Mexico with her friend John Burkett.

She will be remembered for being intelligent, brave, determined, thrifty, extremely independent (like her mother), and a diehard democrat. She read thousands of books, loved camping, traveling, drinking wine, margaritas, and champagne, and spending every morning in her hot tub.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Frank Gunn and Alice Stringham, her husband, Earrol Woods, her son, Richard Woods, and her grandson, Christopher James. She is survived, by her daughters, Michelle Hinton and Collette James, her daughter-in-law, Cindy Woods, her sons-in-law, Charles Hinton and Jeffrey James, her grandchildren, Erik Woods, Kevin Woods, Wynnette Skinner, Teresa Hinton, and Ryan Eilertsen.

She will be missed greatly by all who knew and loved her.