Catherine B. Gates

On the evening of November 9, 2024, Catherine Balistreri Gates of McLean, Virginia passed. She was the devoted wife of Kirby Kay Gates. Her surviving children are William K. Gates (Jacqueline DesLauriers) of New York City, Dora Marie Levesque (Paul) of Zion Crossroads VA, Gregory S. Gates of Kilmarnock, VA and Lucille M. Gentry (Ronald) of Charlottesville, VA. She was blessed with seven grandchildren – Gerard and Nicole Levesque, Natalie Liddell, Hannah Gentry, Zachary Gentry, Kodi and Caroline Gates – and two great-grandchildren – George and Francis Liddell. She is also survived by two sisters-in-law, Mrs. Nola Anderson and Mrs. Mary Anne Long.
Cathy came to this country from Sicily in 1945, attending high school in Milwaukee, WI. She was the first in her family to attend college, at Mount Mary College (now University), also in Milwaukee, where she graduated cum laude in 1954. Cathy moved to Washington, DC in 1955, where she met her husband, Kirby. They were married in October of that year. In the early summer of 1956, the couple moved to Japan, where Kirby was stationed at Yokosuka Naval Base. Three children later, the family moved back to the US in 1960. Luci was born in 1961.
Cathy had a life-long devotion to learning and to helping people learn. She became an English teacher at Thoreau Intermediate in Vienna, where she worked for 21 years, through 1987. She received her MA degree from George Mason University in July 1986, which allowed her to transition to guidance counselor at Herndon Intermediate, where she stayed through her retirement in 1993. But she never really left education, teaching many newly-arrived immigrants in the English language through church-sponsored ESL programs.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be held on November 19 2024, 11am, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church, 8601 Wolftrap Road Vienna, VA. Internment at Quantico National Cemetery, beside her husband, will be private. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in her name to https://www.covenanthousegw.org or https://www.missionhurst.org.