Kay Ruth Eginton

Kay Ruth Eginton passed away peacefully of old age on August 25, 2025. Her daughter Margaret was by her side.

She was born in Lake Mills, Iowa, in 1935, to Walter Bilstad and Louella Jeanette (Peterson) Bilstad. Her parents separated when she was three, and when she was six years old, Walter was killed in a combine accident. For a time, her mother worked in a dry goods store, and Kay often had to stay at home alone. When she was eight, her mother married Edwin Boehnke, a German immigrant and widowed farmer with six children. Ed adopted Kay, and she became Kay Boehnke. On the farm, she taught herself to play the piano, and her favorite activity was reading. She attended the Lutheran Church and attended a one-room school in Iowa until she was thirteen, when she entered high school in Garner. She lived in town by herself in a boarding house until she was sixteen, when Ed and her mother moved to town.

Kay was a straight-A student. Because of this, her uncle, Joe Peterson, gave her $8,000 for college, and in 1952 she began her studies as a freshman at the University of Iowa. She was a Highlander, played the bagpipes and danced the fling, and was a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. She enjoyed creative writing, went to dances, and earned excellent grades. In the late spring of 1954, she met Bill Eginton, a newspaperman seven years her senior, through a couple she babysat for on weekends. They were married three months later and honeymooned in Colorado. Kay intended to stay in college, but her first child was born within a year, and within six years, three more followed.

As a young woman, she was active in the League of Women Voters and helped found the 4-C's, an organization in Iowa City that aimed to provide social and practical assistance to economically disadvantaged young women, including a book and toy library. She was a member of the 19th Century Club and the University International Women's Club, where she taught English and entertained the wives of foreign students. She also taught Unitarian Universalist Sunday School and was an active member of the UU society until her late seventies.

Beginning in her late twenties, Kay was struck by chronic, lifelong mental illness. Despite this, she played classical piano music, read voraciously and widely, entertained, volunteered at Free Lunch, was a member of the Worthley Club, and, for forty years, was a member of a bridge club of close friends. She donated to philanthropic, environmental, and cultural organizations in Iowa City and elsewhere. After her youngest child began junior high school, she returned to college and earned her BA in 1974. With her beloved husband, Bill, Kay traveled widely, camping on Lake Huron, visiting the Southwest, and taking multiple trips to Austria, where they would spend a few months at a time, taking trains to visit other European cities. Together, they developed a lifelong study of classical music.

Kay's true vocation was writing poetry. She wrote nearly every day and kept a pad of paper near her at all times. She published her poems in Lyrical Iowa and in the Canadian Women's Studies Journal, with Writer's Group, as well as in two self-published chapbooks. Until the end of her life, she was working on a book of children's stories about life in rural Iowa at the turn of the 20th century, as well as her own childhood on a farm.

Kay is survived by her four children, Margaret Eginton-Carmichael, Drew Eginton, Alison Eginton, and Robert Eginton (Nora Neukirchen), as well as her grandchildren, Kit, Hannah, Lisa, Grace, Will, and Charley.

A high tea in honor of Kay's life and friends is planned for September 16, at 11 am. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Margaret Eginton-Carmichael at meginton@gmail.com.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating in her name to the Solon Nursing Care Center, CommUnity of Johnson County, or the Iowa City Public Library.

Online condolences and memories may be shared on Kay's Tribute Wall.