Kathryn Ann Kelley

Kathryn Ann Kelley, a pioneer in the data processing industry, passed away peacefully on Sunday, April 14th after a brave and courageous seven-year battle with cancer.

Kathy was born in 1943, in La Porte, IN where her father worked at a defense factory. When Kathy was two years old, the family moved to Montrose, CA in search of warmer weather and sunnier skies. Kathy graduated from Holy Family High School in 1961, the same year John F. Kennedy challenged his nation to land an astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade, with a safe return to Earth.

Kathy attended the University of California Santa Barbara and majored in Political Science. Along with exceptional intellectual gifts, Kathy was a natural athlete. With few opportunities for girls in sports at this time, Kathy became a summer lifeguard at a resort near Yosemite National Park, which was a role very few women held at the time. She shocked her mother when she arrived home at the end of the summer, tan and muscular from weeks of swimming.

After college, Kathy secured a job at IBM as a Systems Engineer. Kathy excelled in her position and rose through the ranks quickly, shattering many a glass ceiling along the way. In 1970, Kathy worked as a consultant on the NASA Apollo 13 mission, the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo Space Program and the third meant to land on the moon. The Apollo 13 mission was the basis of the major motion picture starring Tom Hanks and several other actors, all of whom Kathy found very handsome. She was pleased with the movie even if it didn't portray the control room scenes as accurately as she remembered them. The spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970 - almost 54 years to the day of Kathy's passing - but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module ruptured two days into the mission. The crew instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17.

In the early 80s, Kathy launched her own consulting agency. She consulted for companies such as Bank of America, Tesseract Software Company and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, among many others. While growing her business, Kathy became a member of Mensa, for which the only way to qualify is to score within the upper 2% of the general population on an approved intelligence test.

During this time, Kathy grew frustrated with the gender-based pay gap and limited opportunities for women in the computing world. With some other talented women in the data-processing industry, Kathy formed the Bay Area Chapter of the Association for Women in Computing (AWC) which supported the mentoring and advancement of women in data processing. Kathy served as the first president of the organization and later served on the board of directors.

A free spirit at heart, Kathy semi-retired, sold her house in Mill Valley, bought an RV and traveled around the country with her two dogs, visiting friends and family along the way. After that trip, Kathy lived in Berkeley for a time, visited often by her nieces and nephews. She was the "cool aunt" they all loved hanging out with to watch a 49ers game - of which Kathy was a die-hard and life-long fan - talk politics, listen to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead and snuggle with her menagerie of pets.

When Kathy grew tired of the Bay Area's fast pace, she bought the General Store in Calpine, CA and started a new career selling goods to the local community while also continuing her consulting work, working at times around the world on various projects. After a time, Kathy sold the store. She moved to the end of the road in an octagonal-shaped house with her dogs and cat. Kathy was very proud of her oddly shaped home and loved those peaceful years, surrounded by aspens and pines. She was at her happiest when on long walks with her dogs through the woods. It was around this time Kathy was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. After getting treatment in Davis, Kathy moved to Portola where she continued to enjoy the woods, walking daily with her faithful four-legged companions and her neighbors who became close friends. Kathy would often drive herself to her treatments in Truckee, a testament to her mental and physical strength.

Kathy is remembered as a woman with very strong convictions who lived before her time. She is preceded in death by her mother, Jane, father Robert Sr, brother Bob, and her many four-legged family members she rescued from local shelters. Kathy is survived by her sister-in-law Vivienne, her brother, Kevin Sr (Rosemary), her nieces and nephews - Alexia Kelley (Andrew), Matt Kelley (Roxanne), Emily Kelley Mason (Christian), Kevin Kelley Jr. (Hawa), and Mary Kathryn Kelley (Hamilton), ten great nieces and nephews, and her many close friends, Deb and Mac with whom we will be forever grateful for their love and care of Kathy, Parker, Karen, Cathie, Freddy and many more who Kathy loved dearly. We are deeply grateful for the care she received from the nurses and doctors at the Gene Upshaw Memorial Tahoe Forest Cancer Center.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Kathy's honor may be made to the High Sierra Animal Rescue in Portola, CA and prayers may be sent for a 49er Super Bowl victory in 2024. Let's Go, Niners!

https://www.highsierraanimalrescue.org/donate