Karen Peterson

1944 - 2025

Karen Anderson Peterson died on Oct. 26 in Longview, exactly a month shy of her 81st Thanksgiving-upstaging birthday. She is survived by her adoring husband Larry, who lovingly referred to her by the pet name "Toots," of nearly 60 years; her children Eric, Craig, Mark, and "bonus son" Kim; her siblings Andy and Judy; her daughters-in-law Amy, Kristen, and Dana; grandchildren Randi, Kylee, Blake, Jaeli, Ella, and Cade; great-grandchildren Zayden, Chosen, and Drew; and impressive collections of teapots, masks, antique Red Wing-branded crocks, debatably creepy porcelain dolls, skunk figurines, and cartoon-smiley-face-stamped trinkets.

Karen was born in Albany, California, to Gerald and Catherine Anderson. She grew up alongside Judy, who shared her love of music, and Andy in Richmond. Soon after graduating from Harry Ellis High School, Karen landed a job with Chevron. There she fatefully met her soon-to-be husband Larry, who worked in an adjacent building and got to know her through intercompany phone chats. "To me, Karen stood out in the crowd," Larry recently recounted, "because she was the prettiest California blonde." They wed in 1966, and Larry long joked that he was sort of a "first project" for the worldlier Karen, since he hailed from a folksy town in rural Michigan and was still adjusting to San Francisco's faster-paced big-city life.

After a few years of marriage, Larry and Karen relocated to Redondo Beach, where they lived for 14 years and where their trio of sons was born. They relocated again to Salt Lake City after Larry got professionally transferred there, then to Kelso, where Larry was hired and for the next 20 years remained at J.H. Kelly. Caring, friendship-valuing Karen maintained the connections she made across all the cities in which she made her mark. (The in-person and phone-off-the-hook influx of well-wishes in her last days was a testament to that.) Her unwavering passion for social justice - which memorably manifested early on when she attempted to march alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1960s, only to accidentally fly to the wrong city - and community involvement was tangibly felt in the Longview-Kelso area through her work with PEO, Sister City, TIPPS, Cub Scouts, PTA, and the Kelso City Council, on which she served from 1989 to 1992. Her final year was marked with regular appearances at Longview's biweekly No Kings marches and charmingly relentless Facebook posts decrying the world's injustices. Even after being dramatically slowed down by a stroke in her last days, she made sure to fill out her ballot and push through her newly limited facial mobility to wrinkle her nose at the joked-about prospect of a successful right-wing candidacy.

The list of things Karen will be missed for could go on forever. She laughed easily and regularly. She was aspirationally kind and prone to stop-everything generosity. She had what seemed like bottomless reserves of delight and curiosity. She was a great storyteller and even better listener, with an infinite supply of facial expressions and exaggeratedly shocked gasps and scoffs at her disposal. She rarely encountered a funkily patterned muumuu, oversized sweater or blouse, or estate sale she didn't like. She had a taste in décor that much preferred baseline interesting-ness to practicality. She eagerly looked forward to every kind of family reunion. She had a tendency for hyperbole that could make you and the world more broadly seem special, with a particular habit of greeting people rhetorically over the phone with, "Is this my favorite [insert name] in the whole wide world?" No one who's seen it will forget her smile, which was typically daubed with her favorite shade of coral lipstick and distinguished by a joy-radiating gap between her front teeth. The world was briefly better for having that smile - and her - brightening it.

A celebration of Karen's life is set for 2 p.m. on Nov. 15 at the Cowlitz County Event Center. A private family internment at Longview Memorial Park is tentatively scheduled for a later date.