Ann Marie Stone, 91, photographer

Across Seattle, on walls and mantels, in yearbooks and wedding albums, in tattered black-and-white mementos and hand-restored photographic treasures, a little bit of Ann Marie Stone soldiers on.

Ms. Stone died Saturday (Aug. 18), 10 days after her 91st birthday, after falling into the later stages of Alzheimer's disease. But her work endures in the tens of thousands of portraits she took for school annuals and during her 45 years as owner and operator of Ralston Studio.

"She would inspire people to respond," said Gary Jentoft, a longtime friend and fellow member of the Professional Photographers of Washington. "She would draw them out. She had a magnetic personality."

Ms. Stone was also something of a proto-feminist, said her son, Larry, former mayor of Sunnyvale, Calif., and the Santa Clara County, Calif., assessor.

"I called her the original feminist 20 years before the term was coined," he said yesterday. "My mother was an industrious, vigorous, independent individual. She was very opinionated."

This may have come from being the third-oldest of 13 children. And sharing the burden of raising the family of a Seattle fisherman gone for long spells, Stone said.

She was an athlete in an era when women athletes were not appreciated, running track at Queen Anne High School, swimming and roller skating.

During World War II, she ran a turret lathe for Boeing and later boasted of producing more machine parts than any man in her shop.

She and her second husband, Clifford Stone, also operated a lucrative Actionette street-photography business, taking photographs of people on downtown streets and handing them a receipt with which they could buy a print at a G.O. Guy drugstore at Third Avenue and Union Street.

Families of servicemen killed overseas would often find the receipts in their returned belongings, thereby getting the last pictures taken of their husbands, sons, fathers or brothers.

Soon after the war, the Stones bought the Ralston Studio. Over the years, she took pictures for West Seattle, Lincoln and Franklin high schools, among others.

"When I go to high-school reunions now, my mother is more well known and popular than I am," said Larry Stone, a Franklin graduate.

Later in her career, Ms. Stone mastered the art of retouching and restoring photographs without the wonders of digital manipulation. She was elected president of the Seattle Professional Photographers Association three times and received the national association's National Award of Merit, its highest accolade.

When she reluctantly retired at the age of 81, negatives nearly filled her Mercer Island garage.

"There are pieces of Ann that are in people's lives and will be there through this century and into the next," Jentoft said.

Besides her son, she is survived by daughter Coy Ann Minty of Renton, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. A service was held Tuesday. Donations can be made to the Alzheimer's Association.

Eric Sorensen can be reached at 206-464-8253 or esorensen@seattletimes.com