From Seattle Times:

By Paul de Barros, Seattle Times staff writer

Delores Hall Hamm, who played a major role in raising Seattle rock star Jimi Hendrix, died Tuesday.

Ms. Hamm suffered from complications related to stomach cancer. She was 92.

For Hendrix, whose childhood was marked by poverty and neglect, Ms. Hamm was a pillar of stability. She was the sister of Hendrix's mother, and he called her "Auntie Delores."

Ms. Hamm nicknamed Hendrix "Buster," by which he was known growing up, because he reminded her of the cartoon character Buster Brown.

Ms. Hamm also took in Hendrix's parents, Al and Lucille, when they had no place to live after Jimi was born in 1942. They all lived in her apartment at Yesler Terrace.

Hendrix lived again with Ms. Hamm in 1949, when he entered second grade at Horace Mann Elementary School.

Along with Hendrix's maternal and paternal grandmothers, a friend name Dorothy Harding and a few other people in the neighborhood, Ms. Hamm served as one of the only real parent-figures the guitarist ever had. He often wrote letters to "Auntie Delores" when he grew up.

"She was essentially a surrogate mother for him," said Charles R. Cross, author of the Hendrix biography "Room Full of Mirrors."

Ms. Hamm was known for her good nature and for inviting people into her home. Other people in the neighborhood also called her "auntie."

"She was the matriarch of our family," said Ms. Hamm's granddaughter Meliah Hall, of Berkeley, Calif.

Hall said her grandmother told her she and Hendrix "would sit around and laugh and laugh and laugh. He had such a strong sense of humor. I understood where that came from."

Born Delores Jeter in 1919 in Seattle, Ms. Hamm grew up near a farm on Beacon Hill, which instilled in her a lifelong love of nature. Her father, who had worked in the coal mines in Roslyn, bought a piano and the family often gathered around to sing.

When Ms. Hamm's mother developed tuberculosis and went to a sanitarium, she and her siblings were sent to a foster home near 95th Street and Stone Way North.

Details of her early life are sketchy, but she apparently lived for a time in Rainier Valley and the Central District and attended several schools, including Asa Mercer and Meany junior highs, Ballard High School and Queen Anne High School.

According to her granddaughter, she did not graduate, as she was offered extra pay as a nanny if she would drop out.

Later, however, Ms. Hamm became avidly interested in education, attending several community colleges. At one point, she took a class in the then-up-and-coming plastics trade and wound up getting hired by the airline industry.

"She worked at Boeing," said Hall, building the chairs for the planes."

Ms. Hamm later got a nursing degree and worked at Group Health hospital, according to her son Eddy Hall.

Hall, who grew up in New York state, affectionately remembered her grandmother's visits. "She always read to us," she said. "She loved school. She loved talking about medicine. She wanted to be a doctor."

Ms. Hamm married twice. She had five children with her first husband, Robert Hall, whom she married in 1938. She later divorced and married Harrington Hamm.

Her survivors include her first husband, Robert, of Seattle; four of her five children — Roberta Langworthy, Delores Hall Bundy, Robert Hall and Eddy Hall; 16 grandchildren; and a number of great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren the Hall Hamm clan is still trying to count, according to Hall.

The family is gathering for a private service Friday. A memorial service is planned for April, with details to be announced later.