.

Poems for Kathie

Uintah Springs Press

Fiction and nonfiction from the Mountain West
Katherine Foster Shepherd

nine children:  Lee (Debbie ), Duane (Kelly), Preston (Wendy), Kristine, David (Becky), Paul (Heather), Stewart (Jamie), Brad (Kelli), and Karabeth. She earned her degree while Ray earned his by raising the children and typing an endless number of master’s theses and doctor’s dissertations. She was in great demand by graduate students at BYU because she not only put the papers in great form but she was fast and could correct spelling and composition as she typed them. Her reputation extended to the University of Utah, whose graduate students would drive to Orem to have their papers prepared by her. In 1986 the family moved to Stansbury Park where they purchased the old Clark farmhouse, a place she

 

Katherine Foster Shepherd

1944 — 2009

Katherine Foster Shepherd passed away from heart failure at her home in Stansbury Park, UT on May 23, 2009 at the age of 65. She was born March 12, 1944 in Salt Lake City, the first of 16 children of Arthur Glenn and Gloria Thompson Foster. Her father was an officer in the US Air Force, so she had the opportunity to live in many parts of the world including Tripoli, Libya; Anchorage, Alaska; Washington D.C.; Dayton, Ohio; and Lompoc, California. She graduated with high honors from Lompoc High School in June 1962 where during her senior year she was a Sterling Scholar in Mathematics. After graduation she attended the University of Utah on a scholarship. However, after a semester she decided to marry the young airman she had met at Vandenberg AFB, Raymond L. Shepherd. On June 4, 1963 they married in the Idaho Falls LDS Temple. Divorced October 2005. They moved to Great Falls, Montana where Ray was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, MT until his release from the military in 1965. While he attended Ricks College in Rexburg, ID and then Brigham Young University, she bore

Poems for Kathie is available now as a PDF file for $2. (To order, click on “How to Order” button at left.) If you’d like to reserve a hard copy, shoot an e-mail to uintahsp@tds.net.)

 

This collection of portraits of Mormon women was inspired by the 2009 death of the poet’s sister and is dedicated to her.

 

 

from Poems for Kathie...

dearly loved and where she swore she would live until her end. She was where she wanted to be when she left this life. She loved her family and many friends dearly. She was very much aware of her responsibility to her ancestors and loved ones. She spent her last day in this life visiting the graves of her family who had gone before her. Kathie will be missed by everyone. Kathie was preceded in death by her parents, Glenn and Gloria Foster, and two brothers, Brian and Kelly. She is survived by her children, 32 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren, and 13 brothers and sisters. Burial at Wasatch Lawns in Salt Lake City. (Obituary by Raymond L. Shepherd)

 

TRIBUTES ENTERED ON KATHIE’S ONLINE GUESTBOOKS

 

Kathie was a mentor to thousands. She devoted her life to helping others. I'm so grateful for her influence in my life. One of the things I loved about her was her sense of humor and her practical way of looking at things. She will be deeply missed by many. My condolences go out to her family. I will always be grateful to have known this amazing lady.

                                    Grantsville, Utah

 

I knew Kathie as an online friend. I was one of the hundreds of lives she touched through the Food Storage and Canning2 Yahoo Groups. I looked forward to her cheerfully sharing her knowledge and friendship. While her online friends will miss her, I know that it is nothing compared to the loss her loved ones are feeling. I will keep you all in my prayers.

                                    Garretson, South Dakota

 

Oh, I miss her so much already! I know it is hard for folks to understand how close online friends can become even though we may never meet - Kathie was such a friend that I am mourning deeply. I will likely never in my lifetime ever know such an amazing woman and will never forget her or our many hundreds of emails over the years as we worked through sad and happy times over grown kids and everyday issues. She taught me and often consoled me (and hopefully I did the same for her at times) - more than she would ever know - and was so humble she wouldn't want to hear it anyway :)

To Kathie's kids - she loved you all SO much!!! And deeply and with eyes wide open. She rejoiced in every family addition (oh I loved the pics) and grieved over any troubles you faced. I don't know that you may ever know how far her knowledge and bright light reached - across the globe, actually. US, Ireland, Australia, Nova Scotia, Canada .... - oh all are expressing their grief in our Yahoo groups. My heart is broken. But a rainbow tonight brought me an unexpected peace here in WV. I love you Kathie Shepherd and all of your family can be quite proud and amazed at how wide your circle of friends extends....
                                    Bridgeport WV

 

I only knew Kathy from two yahoo groups we were members of but she touched my life in a profound way. when I was down she was always uplifting. When I needed advice she was always there. She was the most giving person I ever knew. She blessed my life. God bless and keep you, her family in this time of sadness.

                                    Farmington, Arkansas

 

Take comfort in knowing that now you have a special guardian angel to watch over you.

                                    Riverton, Utah

 

Kathie was a very dear friend -- compassion to almost a fault! Even on her down days she would do her best to make all around her feel bright and cheerful! A true saint and excellent follower of Christ. She will be missed but I am grateful to have had her grace my life for the years she did.

                                    Fort Collins, Colorado

 

[My wife] and I will always remember Kathy as a good neighbor, excellent pianist/organist/singer, a faithful and courageous woman of God. Marilyn followed in Kathy's footsteps as a Stake Choir Director and has several fond memories of their mutual love of music and the members of the choirs and congregations they have served over the years in Stansbury Park.

                                    Stansbury Park, Utah

 

If rewards in heaven are meted out proportionate to the good deeds done on
Earth, friends made, and knowledge passed on, then Kathie is certainly among
the wealthiest residents! I only knew Kathie through Canning2 and Canning2chat lists (and off-list e-mails), but she was a FRIEND! I will miss her deeply.

She is at peace, in the ultimate fruit, vegetable, and flower garden, and rejoined with her departed loved ones. Her knowledge and humor will be greatly missed by all.

Pax vobiscum.

                                    Central KY

 

I am but one of many who will greatly miss this wonderful woman. Kathie not only is a kind soul, but a generous one as well. Generous with her time; generous with her knowledge, and I feel deeply indebted to her.
To Kathie's family, may you find peace and comfort in this time knowing that she is not really so far....

                                    Taylorsville, Utah

 

Kathie was very helpful to me on a canning group on yahoo. Very nice lady. I always enjoyed her postings. I am already missing her so much. I admire her for all she did. many people will miss this great lady.

                                    Killeen, Texas

 

I believe Kathie truly influenced more people for good in her kind and gentle way, more than anyone else I have known. She will leave a very real gap in the lives of her many on-line friends who have grown to love and appreciate her. I will personally miss her examples of never-ending patience with all of us on her "lists". My thanks to her family for sharing her with literally thousands of us! May you know that we truly did appreciate her knowledge, kindness, patience, charity and wisdom. She will be missed. My blessings and condolences to you all.

                                    Salt Lake City, Utah

 

 

 

 

Kathie Shepherd, Rebecca Bartholomew, grief poems, poems about child abuse, child abuse, Mormon women, 2009 deaths, Utah women, poems for my sister, sisters, Elizabeth Johnston Shaver, Florence Shaver, Lavinia Fielding, excommunication  of Lavinia Fielding,

Text Box: KATHIE IN THE RAINBOW I sit in a violet rain under wild plum in the little canyon with the stream that used to run as clear as glass, now a backwater where trout must try to breach the culvert to pour winelike to the sea. The blue-grey mist stirs up deep thoughts. I ask her Is it different there than here? For us it’s been a messy life—debts piling, unions failing, children in distress. Did things reach such an impasse that you just gave up? But Kathie doesn’t answer, gives no sign from her new cobalt residence. The rain has ended and my crying too yet I still want that word that everybody wants. Linden shadows stipple the mossy water. A pfitzer profile broods atop the point. A juniper forest blurs the canyon base, so narrow here I set out for the cul-de-sac with its sudden vista Of fields above the cliffs, sunlight glinting between those clouds above, that green-apple earth beneath. It’s the magic hour, minutes long like life, a limey panorama starred with tiny gnats and sheening turquoise dragonflies. Then, arcing over the fields, the cliffs, over everything, comes the rainbow. First it’s merely pallid, fluorescent sparklies left on the ground after a child’s party. But as the sun declines its oranges deepen, focus, sharpen edges, turning apricot to fiery flaming copper, rinsing with tangerine the sweet river air, washing the road and cliffs in cool gold. I see what She’s saying, it isn’t as I thought. Edges bleed to carmine, rose, magenta, speaking not the language of this world but born to joyous new perceptions and demesnes. When a redwing blackbird lights upon a rock across the water it is no surprise and we’re not left behind but added to. Kathie and the rainbow taught me this. Text Box: ON HAPPENING UPON A TV INTERVIEW OF AN OLD FRIEND History is dangerous she says oh how true it was those thirty-odd years ago my husband flying daily missions over the Bay of Tonkin the B52 crewmen sitting silent as stones on the back row of church a plane lost every day as back home our President was under impeachment and I my toddler and newborn postpartum depression during the worst winter in half a century three feet of snow laid in our driveway every blessed Monday night so Tuesdays I’d be up at dawn shoveling to get to my old ladies but never able to clear the mailbox so our letters went undelivered and my father chose this moment to give us a visit impounding my car by day rambling naked through my house at night while my friend fed me history: Arrington Brodie Brooks Bailey Hunter Sorenson— fresh mind-rousing intellect was queen and raise my consciousness we did in elaborate phone talks until she’d have to go to class or the baby would cry together we conscioned me strait into a home for the bewildered she then of course too busy to take my children it was the church ladies who did that God bless church ladies everywhere and God keep historians

Copyright 2011 by R. Bartholomew

Last updated 6/511
Text Box: SPRING SONG Don't care about my lessons, truth-telling and I don't care about cleaning house. Want to watch the cats dawdle, light paw through the bay window, and lap sunned air before it touches the trees. Want to hear the trees breathe deep and purr it out all over the morning, spring morning, and I want to sing Text Box: TO GRANDMA FLO Life was simpler then: two of her ten died early, one by drowning, the other pneumonia shortly before penicillin. Your grandpa never got over that, that was what started the drinking. Grandma got over it. Grandma got over everything including my mother's marriage, 'though years into it (twelve of us as produce) she would say I never liked that man. Grandma was poor. Not thrift store, discount foods, do-it-yourself credit strapped but poor: one pot of stew a day, no doctor, no hot water poor. Later there was heat but there never was a doctor or a car. She once hitchhiked twelve hundred miles to reach a son in trouble. The warden let him go: Such a mother, he can't be all that bad. But he was bad, he stole again and she wrote letters to him in the Pen: I know you didn't do it, son. The warden censored them— can't you see, Grandma, he had to censor them— how I long now, looking back, to make her see. But she did not need me. There were books floor to ceiling and the big uncurtained window looking into a narrow orchard. She had thirty astonished years of sleeping late in the deep- pillowed bed between three walls of books and the big, uncurtained window. And never were there not flowers. If I couldn't have nice things I could always afford seeds. That was what she left to me— the drive to dirt, to earthworms, furrows, flowers, wind— the hurting for trees, for unveiled windows looking into space. Kathie Foster and Becky Foster

Kathie in the Rainbow

Alaska Girlhood

On Finding a Photo of My 4th Grade Teacher

Northern Lights

The Excommunication of Lavinia Fielding

A Grief

To the Little Girl in Yellow

Fantasy

Refugee

To Grandma Flo

A Proof of Evolution

Epitaph for Florence Shaver

Mormon Matron 1982

Elizabeth Jensen

On Happening Upon a TV Interview

To All the Jack-Mormons

Mormon Matron 2009

Anniversary

On Reading Turner (Rodney)

Boxes

 

Discipline

Fencing

East Canyon Autumn

Stillborn

Visitation

White Magic

I Wanted Thunder

Divorce

Enough

Spring Song

Farewell to the Colonel

Retrieving Blaine’s Belongings

Coming of Age

On Spaying the Kittens

Small Graces at Middle Age

Florence’s Son

Hummingbirds

The Finger of God

Broken

White Rock Bay

Poems for Kathie Table of Contents