Kathleen Carlisle Christensen

Kathleen Carlisle Christensen

April 30, 1949 ~ October 23, 2022

Vivian Kathleen “Kathy” Carlisle Christensen, 73, passed away October 23, 2022, at home in San Marcos, California, with her family around her, after bravely fighting multiple myeloma for several months.

Kathy was born April 30, 1949 in Columbus, Georgia, to Roy and Lorene Knox Carlisle. She married Laurence Christensen of Springville, Utah. They are the parents of four children: Andrew, Alex, Emily, and Elisabeth, and the grandparents of six adored grandchildren. They lived in Columbus, Georgia; Provo, Utah; Athens and Augusta/Martinez, Georgia; Logan, Utah; and Pocatello, Idaho, before moving to San Marcos in 1992, where they made their home for the next 30 years.

Kathy was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from young adulthood, playing the piano, singing in the choir and working in the temple and at the family history library. She graduated from Jordan Vocational High School in Columbus, graduating in the Class of 1967, where she was the editor of her school newspaper.  She attended the University of Georgia in Athens, graduating with honors in English. She could read Chaucer aloud in Middle English, and did. She did graduate work at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; Idaho State University in Pocatello; and Portland State University in Oregon, focused there on teaching the blind and visually impaired, and learning Braille. She was a 43-year survivor of thyroid cancer before her recent illness, and survived serious COVID infection illness in December 2020, before vaccines and boosters became available.

Kathy loved people, reading and writing, music, the arts, her church, pet cats and dogs (to which she was somewhat allergic), and shared these loves with her family and friends. She was her children’s first teacher, and taught in public schools in Georgia, Alabama, Idaho and California, retiring as a teacher for the blind and visually impaired after a decade and a half with the San Diego County Office of Education. She also worked as an editor for Bookcraft Publishing in Salt Lake City, at the Watts music store in Logan, and as a private child’s tutor until COVID precautions.

Kathy sewed stylish clothes for herself as a young woman and sewed for her children and home decoration later, including amazing toys, Easter bunnies, Halloween costumes and Christmas stockings. She was a wonderful cook and delighted in attending family reunions and gatherings, and in hosting family dinners, holidays and birthdays, always filled with great food, humor, and fun. She particularly enjoyed spending so much time with and caring for all of her grandchildren when they were young and all lived nearby, and in later calls and visits. She was an uncommonly strong, bright, loving, patient, compassionate and devoted person and is loved and missed by her family, students, friends, co-workers and church family.

She is survived by her husband Larry, children Andrew and Rebecca Christensen, Alex Christensen, Emily and Matt Milla, Lissy and Mike Burrell, grandchildren Evie and Auji, Isaac and Audrey, and Lily and Sierra, her sister and mother, Susan Carlisle Dobbs (Steve) and Lorene, now 95, her nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews and many close cousins and friends. As children her cousin Paul told her, “I’d walk a mile to see Kathy’s smile.”

A memorial service will be held on Thursday, November 10, 2022 at a local LDS chapel in San Marcos, California. Interment will be in the Annabella Cemetery in Utah, on November 4, 2022. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (themmrf.org) or Elizabeth Hospice (elizabethhospice.org).

Special thanks to Allen Brothers Mortuary in San Marcos, California, and to Magleby Mortuary in Richfield, Utah.

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