Katherine C. Crerar

The Army had a huge influence on Katherine Cooper Crerar. She was raised in an Army family and married a young Army officer. He was straight out of West Point; she had just finished her Bachelor’s in psychology. Throughout her life, she traveled the world, accompanying her family and her husband, living at various times in Panama, Heidelberg and Berlin Germany, Thailand, and Belgium, and numerous places in the United States. It was a point of pride that she learned the local language wherever she was living. She raised seven kids to adulthood on an Army salary and never refused a seat at the table for hangers-on. She was always taking in her children’s strays. She had a lifelong love of learning. For a time, she studied the martial art Aikido; at the same time she mastered the art of cake decorating. In her later years, she took up quilting and learned how to clean, mend, and preserve antique quilts. She out-guilted a Catholic nun into allowing her children to attend the nun’s school, and was once told to pull over by a police officer while she was flying in a hot-air balloon. She is survived by her children and grandchildren.