Katura Schoene

1945 - 2023

Katura Schoene
12/13/1945 - 12/27/2023
KATURA SCHOENE, San Francisco Bay Area Child and Family Therapist, Dies at 78.
On December 27, 2023, we lost a wonderful star and warrior in the name of Katura Schoene. Katura was visiting with her beloved twin nieces in Seattle, Washington and died in her sleep.
Visiting her nieces and their children were so vitally important to Katura that she tended to ignore the time of year and stress of traveling during difficult weather. Over the past 7 years, she bravely struggled with a variety of ailments including Lymphoma and Gastroparesis. She was a trooper and continued to work almost full time and travel as much as she could.
Katura was a long- time therapist (LCSW) for children and families in San Francisco and San Mateo following her work at the Child Development Center and the Dept. of Psychiatry at Children's Hospital San Francisco (now California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC)). She frequently worked with schools advocating for her patients' educational and mental health needs. She developed an interest and expertise in working with children on the Autism Spectrum and was well known for keeping in touch with them and other patients for many years. Physicians in the area knew that a referral to Katura meant that she would go the extra mile to be sure they were well served.
Katura Noel Schoene was born in Baltimore Maryland on June 13,1945 to Amelia Elizabeth (Cramer) Schoene and Charles Andrew Schoene. She is survived by an older brother, William Jay Schoene II, twin nieces, Clare Butler Schoene and Elizabeth Anne Schoene, three grand nieces, Anne Schoene Hampton, Marie Victoria Hampton and Ellie Hanson Schoene, and one grandnephew, Evan Cogar. Katura was preceded in death, by her older brother, Andrew Yankey Schoene, and her stepbrother, John David Mandell.
Katura's father was an officer in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, so her family moved often during her youth. After Maryland, her family lived for a brief time in Blacksburg, Virginia, where her paternal grandfather, William Jay Schoene, was a professor of Entomology. They next moved to Seattle, Washington, then half-way through her fifth- grade year they moved to Ft. Worth, Texas, and on to Norfolk, Virginia at the end of 7th grade. When Katura was just 13, her mother died suddenly, and this had a lifetime impact on her including on her choice of a profession. Soon after her mother's death she moved to St. Margaret's Boarding School since her father was at sea ten days out of every two weeks. Two years later her father was transferred to St. Petersburg, Florida where he married Laura Fields-her mother's best friend from the University of Louisville. Katura joined them and her stepbrother, John and she finished high school in St. Petersburg.
Katura next attended Randolph Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, a favored destination of her classmates at St. Margaret's. But she soon began to feel that Randolph Macon was a "finishing school for Southern Belles" and not compatible with her emerging views of the world. She had developed quite a social conscience and found herself volunteering at the predominantly black YWCA in Lynchburg. So, after just two years at Randolph Macon, Katura transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, at the height of the free speech movement.
She attended UC Berkeley during the days of demonstrations and was part of the free speech protest in the 60's including an arrest at the protest. Following UC Berkeley, she moved to southern California and attended USC graduate school in Social Work There she met her long- time friend, Audrey Webb, who accompanied her on many travels including yearly trips to the Monterey Jazz Festival. She lived in Venice for 3 years while attending graduate school and then spent part of a summer in Cuernevaca, Mexico learning Spanish. She moved back to the San Francisco Bay area and worked for several years in Santa Cruz, CA in Child Protective Service while pursuing supervision for her LCSW. Following this was her move to the Child Development Center in San Francisco.
A small "Celebration of Life" will be held for family and friends on June 1. Donations in Katura's name can be made to the following organizations: Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), Southern Poverty Law Center, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders.