Kathryn Joan Inman Cartmell was born in Eugene, Oregon at Sacred Heart hospital on Jan. 6, 1947 to Leroy and Iris Inman. She grew up in Roseberg, Oregon with her brother and sisters.
While she was growing up she was active in Campfire Girls and Methodist Youth Fellowship. These groups led her to a love of camp life that included attending and being a counselor at several different camps. It was at one of her Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings that she met her future husband, Jerry Cartmell.
She graduated from Roseberg High School in 1965, and attended the University of Oregon. While attending the University, Kathe and Jerry were married in 1966. While Jerry served in Vietnam, Kathe lived in an in-law flat with Jerry's parents and continued working on her degree in Elementary Ed. After graduating, Kathe followed Jerry to San Diego where he had been stationed by the Navy. After returning to Eugene, she took classes in Library Science and volunteered her sewing skills creating costumes for the local theater group.
1972 brought her back to Sacred Heart Hospital to give birth to her first son, Michael. The next year they moved north to Aloha where her daughter Karen was born in 1976. Following this, the Cartmells moved to Michigan which taught Kathe just how much she loved Oregon, where they returned in 1979. The next year they experienced both the eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the birth of their last child, Rian, at around the same time.
As she raised her children, she also sang in the church choir, studied French, learned to play flue and oboe, became a Girl Scout cookie mom and a Boy Scout troop committee person, did crafts of all sorts, hemmed pants and made doll clothes, baked cookies, went on country drives for ice cream cones and quilt shops, read books and more books, and volunteered at the schools. She was so involved that she was awarded Lay Educator of the Year for her work in the Tualatin High School Library, where she had to endure her portrait on display in the district offices for a whole year. After all her children went off to college, she worked as the secretary for the Sherwood United Methodist Church, where she also sang in the worship team.
A new phase of life began in 2005 with the arrival of grandchildren, where reading to them seemed to be her top priority, but holding babies in general was always high on her list.
We give thanks for the life of Kathe Cartmell who lived so richly for her family and community until her death on June 15, 2018.
Kathe is survived by her husband, Jerry Cartmell, her brother Larry Inman and his wife Maureen, her sons Michael Cartmell and Rian Cartmell, her daughter, Karen Benson and her husband Dan, and three grandsons: Nathan, Jeremy, and Peter. She was preceded in death by her parents, Leroy and Iris Inman, and her sisters, Janet Shepard and Laurel Everett.
Donations may be made in her memory to the Camp and Retreat Ministries of the Oregon-Idaho United Methodist Church at https://www.gocamping.org/donate