John Albright, 68, of Fenton, Mich., formerly of Morgantown, passed away Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. John was born in Berkeley Springs, Aug. 25, 1955, the son of Richard Neil and Lu Allen Albright.
He graduated in 1973 from Morgantown High School, in Morgantown, where his family had moved in 1972 from Tallahassee, Fla., and where he met his first wife, Linda McClain (now Lutman).
In his youth, John enjoyed surfing and other outdoor activities. He fondly remembered a summer road trip in the late 1970s with Linda when his surfboard came unattached from the roof of their car and blew over a rural hillside he had to climb down to retrieve it. He was a lifeguard at the local pool and played in a gospel band as a drummer.
Following the birth of the couple’s only child, Jason, in 1977, John worked as a manager of a jewelry store in Morgantown. John thereafter moved to the state of Washington, where his parents and siblings then resided, and where he later built a career of many years as a jeweler and master goldsmith.
Jason remembers wonderful times with John in and around Seattle as a child and young adult. John pioneered some of the best lattes the world — and even Seattle — had known, he had a passion for any kind of new or experimental music, and he encouraged Jason’s musical enthusiasms, including at an unforgettable Seattle Symphony New Year’s Eve concert, at which John hilariously turned and asked if a certain opera singer was “Carmina Burana.”
John also had a contagious appreciation for the sublime in nature. As much as the beach, John loved the mountains. His favorite hike was to the breathless heights on a mountain in the Washington Cascades called Pinnacle Peak, where the path crossed glaciers, the view of Mount Rainier expanded during the ascent to fill up the northern horizon, and Mounts St. Helens, Adams, and Hood were visible from the summit to the south on a clear day.
John loved to travel, and he spent a great deal of time on the road. He and Linda would drive the expanses of West Virginia when he worked as a delivery driver for a medical lab in St. Mary’s. He spent several years living on the Hawaii island of Maui, where he surfed and drove a bread truck. Later, during his career as a jeweler, he lived in Seattle and Issaquah, Washington, in Lompoc, California, and in the Washington town of Grayland Beach, near the Columbia River’s encounter with the Pacific, and where he operated his last jewelry store. In 2011, while traveling to Michigan with Diane Horvath, to whom he was later married, John had a series of strokes from which he never fully recovered.
John is survived by his wife, Diane of Fenton, Mich.; his son, Jason, of Washington, D.C.; his parents, Richard and Lu of Olympia, Wash.; his sister, and brother, Tina Albright Hubbard of Kennewick, Wash., and Richard Albright of Olympia, Wash.; and their families.
Donations can be made to The Nature Conservancy at: https://preserve.nature.org/page/81523/donate/1?chain or by mailing a check to: The Nature Conservancy Attn: Treasury 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100 Arlington, VA 22203 USA.
Condolences:
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