Birthdate: March 3, 1952 URS: September 14, 2022
Katherine Ann Klarkowski (also known as Kate and Shakura) had the spirit, the hands, and the eye of an artist. Whether she was gathering bouquets from her garden, painting, embroidering a gift for a granddaughter, working with clay, finding overlooked treasures at garage sales, or tending sacred altars, Kate manifested beauty in this troubled world.
It is often said that to pass away peacefully in one’s sleep—without suffering pain or a protracted decline—is the best way to go, but all the family and friends who mourn Kate after her unexpected death overnight on September 14, 2022 can’t help but feel that we’re saying goodbye much too soon.
Kate was born in San Antonio, Texas, on March 3, 1952 to Francis and Lauretta (McCluskey) Klarkowski. In December 1956, her father, an Army medic who served in the South Pacific during World War II and in Korea, was transferred to duty in Stuttgart, Germany, and he brought the family with him. The kids would never forget the 11-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean on a military transport or their attendance at the local German–American school. In 1959, Frank was posted to duty at San Francisco’s Presidio, and at that point the family settled in Marin County, where young Kathy (as she was known then) and her siblings grew up.
Kate had golden memories from the days of bopping around Scabo—as she and her friends called their beloved Santa Venetia. Kathy was a ball of energy and very much the leader of the pack. In her own telling, she was an athletically rather than academically inclined youth and proud of her nickname earned on the baseball diamond: Mrs. Willie Mays. Her mother was a driving force behind the Girl Scouts in the Bay Area, so scouting was naturally a part of Kathy’s young life. But she embraced Scouting enthusiastically and for the rest of her days could be counted on to belt out a long-remembered campfire song (or two or three) whenever she was in a silly mood. It’s no coincidence that her children were all active in Scouting, and she just about cried tears of joy when she first saw her kindergarten-age granddaughter in a Daisy Girl Scout uniform last year.
A child of public servants, Kate eventually embarked on a career of service herself. Over a span of decades, she worked at the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) teaching and supporting people with developmental disabilities. Initially, she worked as an adult education teacher through the Santa Rosa Junior College, specializing in developing sensory motor skills
and using of adaptive technology, and later she worked in Quality Assurance for SDC as a program coordinator, demonstrating a passionate commitment to advocating for her clients.
It was demanding work, and doing it while being a divorced parent meant that these were sometimes challenging years. For a few years in the early aughts, her mother Lauretta came to live with her, and Kate cared for her—all while working full-time and wrangling two teenage sons—until Lauretta’s death in 2004. It was with a sense of both accomplishment and relief that Kate retired in 2015.
Surely, she found her greatest joy in life in motherhood and the love she shared with her daughter and twin boys. She had a true gift for the domestic realm of family life, and her children will treasure memories of her as a loving, creative, engaged presence, always ready with a story on car trips, an impromptu dance, another handmade birthday cake or Halloween costume, and the bottomless patience required for a week in the woods as a solo parent with kids at Sufi camp. Holiday celebrations and household customs were informed equally by a Swedish pride that she inherited from Lauretta as well as the culture of Waldorf education, which attracted Kate enough that she had pursued Waldorf teacher training at one point as a young mother.
In recent years Kate found renewed delight in her three cherished granddaughters, watching them grow; sending them small packages, drawing, and notes just because; boxing up and sharing the bounty of her fruit trees; conducting story time on the phone or the computer screen; or making extended trips out east for playing, snuggling, walking, and reveling in every minute together. The beaming smile on her face in all her photos with the little ones tells the tale.
Kate lived a life of deep faith and spiritual practice, gracefully weaving together her Christian faith from her upbringing in the Episcopal Church with Universal Sufism, a path she came to in her adulthood. She lovingly gave many years of dedicated service to the Altar Guild and Vestry of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Petaluma and was also ordained as a Cherag (minister) in the Sufi Ruhaniat International. For at least 35 years, she was an integral part of a Sufi women’s group that playfully calls itself the Luscious Fruitcake Mamas.
Kate was preceded in death by her sister Susan and is survived by her twin sister, Judith, and her wife Kathleen; brother, Rick, and his wife Pam; sister Karen; children Peter, Henry and his wife Erica, and Diana and her husband Kevin; granddaughters Frances, Ella, and Cora; six nephews; and her former husband, Russell Lyon.
A memorial service will be held on October 8 at 3:00 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Petaluma, followed by a reception in the church hall. According to her wishes, her body was cremated, and her earthly remains will be interred in the columbarium at St. John’s.
Donations to COTS (www.cots.org), Kate’s favorite local charity, can be made if you would like to honor her memory. May her life—so full of devotion, service, love, and beauty— continue to touch and change lives. As in life, so in death. Ameen. Amein. Amen.
