Karen Hundemer

1954 - 2025

Shortly after 5 o'clock Friday morning, January 3rd, surrounded by her children and husband, Dr. Karen Hundemer died peacefully in her home. Less than 2 months earlier, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, a nerve conduction test revealed Dr. Hundemer was suffering from ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. She entered Frederick Health Hospital 3 weeks later with pneumonia. On the day after Christmas, she was placed under Hospice Care and was returned to her home on Sunday, December 29. She was 70. Before her battle with ALS, Dr. Hundemer was a breast cancer survivor - a partial mastectomy was performed in 2002 and then a full, bi-lateral mastectomy in January, 2017.

Dr. Hundemer was a family practitioner for over 33 years in Frederick County starting in January, 1990. Upon her retirement August 1, 2023 from Frederick Primary Care Associates. Dr. Hundemer was deluged by hundreds of appreciation cards from her patients.

Dr. Hundemer grew up in Rockville, MD and graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in 1972. Of the 529 students in her graduating class, she and 2 others became medical doctors. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from the University of Maryland in 1976, Karen's applications to medical school were rejected twice before she was accepted to the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in 1978 but only after she was first placed on a waiting list that spring. A minority of 21% of the freshman class that year were women. Starting her sophomore year, Karen was granted a Public Health Service Scholarship. She graduated in the top 10% of the Medical School's 1982 graduating class and completed her 3-year residency in Family Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. From July 1985 to July 1988, Dr. Hundemer served as a Public Health Family Physician at Chatuge Family Practice in Hayesville, NC. She then worked for just over a year as an ER physician at Angel Hospital in Franklin, NC before moving to Walkersville 35 years ago this month. It was her desire to be closer to her and her husband's parents, still in Rockville, where they could enjoy their 2 (at the time) grandchildren.

Dr. Hundemer was born May 8, 1954 at Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC. She is survived by her husband of 47 years, Paul McLellan, and three children: Dylan McLellan and his wife, Waleska, of Frederick; Alyssa McLellan of Columbus, Ohio; and Julia Shaffer and her husband, Evan, of Walkersville. Dr. Hundemer has 4 granddaughters. Karen's passion was sewing and quilting. She made blankets, scarves, and quilts for others and for fund-raising raffles, as well as for her granddaughters including Christmas Stockings and tree skirts, and Advent Calendars. She also loved baking cookies and baked goods including homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast every Christmas morning. She was preceded in death by her mother, Rose (Bennett) Hundemer in 2013; her brother Robert W. Hundemer, Jr in 2007; and her father, Robert W. Hundemer, Sr in 2005. A celebration of life ceremony is being planned for the near future.

The family wishes to express its gratitude for support from the Walkersville community over the past year as well as from the staff of Walkersville High School and Dr. Hundemer's coworkers at Frederick Primary Care Associates.

For those wishing to express an appreciation for Dr. Hundemer, please consider donations to the Hurwitz Breast Cancer Fund, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the North Myrtle Beach Sea Turtle Patrol by contacting the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources at seaturtles@dnr.sc.gov. , and, in tribute to Frederick Primary Care Associates, please vote with a modest $5 donation for the FCPA sail boat entry currently on display in the Sailing Through the Winter Solstice sail-boat flotilla along Carroll Creek.

Karen Hundemer