Mary Tatarka, 49; Liked Teaching, Clowning Around With Children

As "Buckwheat the Clown," Mary Tatarka danced, juggled and hammed to the max, entertaining hundreds of Northwest children.

After landing a tenure-track job as an assistant professor of physical therapy at the University of Puget Sound, she stashed the clown suit. But she remained a cut-up in other things, including writing Groundhog Day letters in lieu of Christmas cards, and acquiring odd relics such as a mounted boar's head found on a trip to Eastern Europe.

"She really liked teaching," said her husband of four years, Dan Foe of Seattle. "It allowed her to do a little drama in her classes. She was a great teacher - fun-loving, but very rigorous about her teaching."

Ms. Tatarka died of a brain aneurysm Sunday (June 7). She was 49.

Born in Sterling, Colo., Ms. Tatarka grew up in Denver and earned a physical-therapy degree at St. Louis University. Then she hopped freight trains cross-country to Portland and joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, doing physical therapy with children.

She soon developed a clown act to help in her work with young people. For a time she lived in a primitive cabin and refused to pay taxes because she felt the money was financing the Vietnam War.

After Portland, she practiced physical therapy in Spain, and posed as an expert on bones in England so she could help at an archaeological dig.

Later she moved to Marysville to do physical therapy for disadvantaged children. She also worked at Tacoma's Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, training staff members for the newborn intensive-care unit. She once traveled to Saudi Arabia to train helpers of Down syndrome children.

She earned master's and doctorate degrees in physical therapy from the University of Washington, and joined the UPS faculty last fall.

She admitted in a recent Groundhog Day letter to having succumbed to middle age. She diagnosed herself with "Aging Hippie Syndrome."

Other survivors include her father, Bill Tatarka, and brother Joe Tatarka, both of Englewood, Colo.; her brother Martin Tatarka of Seattle; and her sister, Agnes Tatarka of Washington, D.C.

Services are scheduled for 6:30 tonight at the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University. Remembrances may go to the Mary Tatarka Pediatric Scholarship Fund, c/o Steve McGlone, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner Ave., Tacoma, WA 98416.

Carole Beers' phone message number is 206-464-2391. Her e-mail address is: cbee-new@seatimes.com