Katharine P. Bailey, born February 22, 1944, died February 14, 2009 at her home in Millerton, New York, U.S.A. of ovarian cancer. Katharine had an extraordinary life. She grew up in Tuxedo, NY, a suburb of New York City, went to high school in Connecticut, and attended a college for one year in Massachusetts. She briefly worked as a secretary in New York, but soon became restless and began a series of travels that took her to most corners of the globe. One memorable “trip” was a three week vacation to Florence, Italy that turned into a three year epic. She worked on a kibutz in Israel, traveled to Egypt, took a boat up the Nile, went overland to Somalia, sailed on a dhow down the coast of East Africa to Mombasa, Kenya, worked for a year in Nairobi, taking safaris all over East Africa, hitched her way to South Africa, rode a steamer across the Atlantic to Buenos Aires, hitched on boats and trucks through Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile, south to Tierra del Fuego, back up to northern Chile to Bolivia, took a small boat 1000 miles down the Rio Maldonado to Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, and she ended up living and working as a tour guide for an animal dealer hotel owner in Leticia, Amazonas, Columbia. After about five months in Leticia, she was flown back to New York with hepatitis in a cargo plane with 1200 monkeys and 1000 parakeets.
There were other trips that took her to India and Nepal, where she lived for some time at an ashram, and other corners of the globe. Eventually, she settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earned a Bachelors degree in nursing and a Masters in Psychiatric Nursing. She joined the faculty of Nursing at Yale University and enjoyed several years of scholarship and teaching, before moving to the northwest corner of Connecticut, where she met the love of her life, Albert Francke. She and Albert had only four years together, before cancer took Katharine from her multitude of friends and her family.
Katharine was an inspiration to so many. She had the courage to break out and follow the road less travelled. As she accumulated new friends around the world, she kept in touch with her old friends. All her experiences never changed her essential character as a person intensely interested in others, someone who reached out, determined to understand and to assist others to achieve their very best.
It is appropriate in many ways that a special fund be created as part of HEAL in Katharine’s memory. HEAL is all about helping and caring about others, and HEAL’s activities are targeted to helping people in Kenya, where Katharine worked, lived and visited. Katharine the nurse, the teacher, the global traveler, the lover of East Africa, the woman known and loved by so many honors HEAL with her trust in what we are trying to accomplish. We aim to return that trust with countless good deeds in her memory.
