Rachael Woodhouse Kester

1916 - 2021

Kester, Rachael Woodhouse
11/26/1916 - 12/23/2021

Rachael W. Kester died at home on Dec 23 at the age of 105, surrounded by her loving family. Rachael Lenore Woodhouse was born Nov 26, 1916 in Bloomington, WI, the middle child of Linn A. and Esther Perky Woodhouse. She graduated from Bloomington High School in 1933 and, at the height of the Great Depression, the family moved to Madison so she could attend the University of Wisconsin, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an AB in French and Spanish in 1937. In 1940 she married Randall Blair Kester, and the two of them settled in Portland, OR, where Randall practiced law, and where they lived until his death in 2012. Rachael then moved to Boulder, CO to be near her three daughters.
When the children were young, Rachael was a stay-at-home mother devoted to the family. She was a Girl Scout leader and took the troops camping in Oregon and Washington, often primitive camping at Spirit Lake (since buried by Mt St Helens' eruption), and sailing in the San Juan Islands. When the troop was locked out of Duck Lake Lodge at Wind Mountain Girl Scout Camp, she pulled her trusty Swiss Army knife out of her knapsack and took the door off its hinges. Since then her daughters always have a pocketknife in their purses. She supported her daughters' swim teams, becoming a timer and driving endless hours to practice and meets. She sewed many of their clothes, and even wove the cloth and sewed the wedding dresses for two daughters. She encouraged a love of reading, with weekly library visits a part of our childhood.
Once her youngest daughter left for college, Rachael became an accomplished fiber artist. She started with weaving and then expanded to spinning, knitting, needlepoint, and natural dyeing, eventually teaching spinning and natural dyeing at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts. In 2000 she had a one-woman fiber arts show at the Doll Gardner Gallery. In 1966 she took a class at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry on petroglyph rubbing, and many of her rubbings from the northwest now hang in museums and tribal buildings. She believed that lifelong learning kept her young and continued to learn new art techniques throughout her life. She always maintained that she was not an artist, just worked hard at it, but we knew that she really was a talented artist. In 2010, at age 93, she learned pastel portraiture and became a certified teacher. In 2019 at age 102 she had a show of her life's artwork, showing 20 different techniques starting with metal work in the 1950s to watercolors at age 100.
When Rachael arrived in Oregon after their marriage, the first thing Randall bought her was a pair of hob-nailed hiking boots. From then on, she was a northwestern outdoors-woman, participating in mountain-climbing (until the children arrived), camping, hiking, power boating, rafting, canoeing, and bicycling. She was a life-member of the Mazamas. She was a long-term member of the West Hills Unitarian (now Unitarian-Universalist) Fellowship and especially active in WHUF outdoors activities, the gummy worm lady.
Rachael was predeceased by her parents, her sister Ella Jane Swan and brother Milton K. Woodhouse, and husband of 71 years, Randall Kester. She is survived by her daughters Laura Kester and Lynne Kester-Meyer of Boulder, Dr. Sylvia Oboler (Steven) of Denver, and grand-daughter Virginia Kester-Meyer (Sam Phillips) of Boulder. In lieu of services, please remember Rachael by enjoying time in the outdoors or taking up a new art project. Contributions to a food bank would be appreciated.