Loss of beloved boat captain at sea has Newport Fishermen’s Wives helping family of one of their own

By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle

NEWPORT — Inside the gazebo, dozens of framed photographs of fishermen stand shoulder to shoulder — faces smiling, catch in hand or holding loved ones in their arms.

As Taunette Dixon stood in front of mourners inside the Fisherman’s Memorial Sanctuary she was aware of a painful irony. Her friend and past president of Newport Fishermen’s Wives, Jennifer Stevenson, had spent years comforting grieving families who lost their loved ones to the sea.

Now a photo of her own husband, Jon Stevenson, joined those memorialized, after the F/V Captain Raleigh he piloted sank Friday off Grays Harbor in southwest Washington. The search for the 44-year-old captain was called off Saturday.

For family members, the last three days have been a gamut of emotions — shock, hope, devastation, and grief — and Dixon has been right there beside them.

Founded in the 1970s, Newport Fishermen’s Wives began as a social club for women whose spouses were gone for long stretches fishing at sea. Today the group fills a unique niche, helping fishing families make ends meet, buying safety equipment for crews, and providing meals to grieving loved ones. The organization is uniquely equipped to provide support to grieving fishermen’s families, Dixon said.

But helping the Stevenson family is different.

“We are taking care of one of our own,” Dixon said. “We are unleashing all our talents and love on that family because she’s ours.”

Sitting, waiting

In the beginning, the family hoped Jon Stevenson might have survived, Dixon said. The Coast Guard had rescued three crew members and family members held onto the hope that Stevenson would be found alive too.

“It was a lot of sitting and waiting,” she said.

The 68-foot vessel sank at the entrance to Grays Harbor after Stevenson issued a distress call Friday morning saying the boat was taking on water and its pumps could not keep up.

It’s rare, but it’s possible for people to survive in pockets of air when a vessel goes down, Dixon explained. But after Navy divers knocked on the air pockets without a response, the search shifted from a rescue to a recovery.

The Coast Guard called off the search Saturday and a candlelight vigil was held that evening at the Fisherman’s Memorial inside Yaquina Bay State Recreation Site.

Now things feel stagnant because Jon is still missing at sea, Dixon said.

“When someone is still missing, there’s this crazy trauma you aren’t going to get from any other industry,” she said.

One of their own

As Dixon drove down the streets of Newport, she looked at the people going to work and walking the sidewalk. She felt a small sense of betrayal that the world hadn’t stopped because of this tragedy. Jon Stevenson was gone, leaving behind three children and a wife.

Anyone who knew the man knew his sense of humor, that he was always smiling and that he loved his family, she said. “He just radiated joy,” Dixon said.

Of course, the world goes on turning, she said, and it should.

“It’s just so hard to understand how someone loved so deeply could have this happen to them,” Dixon said.

Jennifer Stevenson was a member of Newport Fishermen’s Wives for eight years, most of those years she held the title of president. In 2022, she wrote in the National Fisherman publication about being a part of a fishing family. Her father was a fisherman and when he died young of cancer Stevenson thought that way of life was lost to her until her husband became a fisherman.

Dixon and Jennifer Stevenson would sometimes go together to visit grieving families.

“Not every woman can do it,” she said. It takes a certain personality to work with grieving families.

Some of the work involves organizing meals so  the family has enough food. When you are grieving, sometimes that’s the only meal you are eating. You don’t have the energy to prepare food.

The nonprofit has set up two GoFundMe pages. One for the Stevenson’s family and another for the surviving crew members.

The donations will help crew members take time off work to process, grieve and not have to be back on the ocean where they just had a very traumatic experience, she said. The three crew members are from Newport, Astoria, and Westport, Wash.

There are also resources for them to receive therapy. Losing a captain, someone you look up to as a leader, is difficult, but so is being a survivor. For those crew members, Dixon said, the last memory they have of their captain is him handing them a life vest but not making it out himself.

Dixon has taken up two roles – she isn’t just representing the Fisherman’s Wives; she is representing her friend.

She’s been the main communicator, getting information from the Coast Guard to the family. She just wants them to focus on grieving and nothing else. Hailing from a fourth-generation fisherman family and losing her son, grief is familiar to her.

“The relationships you form in support groups like this are different,” Dixon said. “It’s different because you’re really going through the most difficult things that people go through together.”

• Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org