A staff writer and editor on the old Mademoiselle, Kathleen wrote about-and worked in-the fashion world for ten years. It was the world she had mooned over growing up at the movies in hometown Cincinnati. The glamour eventually faded for Kathleen, but it paid the rent and provided a home for her and her two wore-haired dachshunds, who were world-class barkers! At the point of loosing another apartment, she enrolled the dogs in a training school in Princeton, New Jersey, rumored to be run by a "kind-hearted" veterinarian. The reform was pre-doomed, but Kathleen solved what she called "our housing problem" by marrying the veterinarian, Dr. Jack Blumenthal, and moving to Princeton.
"Being married to Jack freed me to live 'the good life' I had been touting in Mademoiselle," she said. "I chased antiques, romanced the kitchen, and chauffeured our son, Adam. Except for a field guide to old inns and good food, The Inn Book, and an occasional article, I wrote very little."
Now a widow living in New Mexico, where she and Jack had often skied, Kathleen has resumed writing, but these days its poetry. A book? Not yet, but her poems have been published "here and there," and she's won some awards. "But remember," she cautioned, "I'm a late bloomer."
Kathleen has also acquired her late husband's passion for politics, championing causes like animal rights and population stabilization, "without which," she said, "the environmental movement is only a holding action.
"Every movement needs a cutting edge," Kathleen added. "Without it, a movement goes nowhere. Think civil rights. Think the labor movement. On environmental issues, Greenpeace is the cutting edge, both in its fearless activism and its high visibility. Its courage takes my breath away."
Her gifts to Greenpeace include a charitable gift annuity and, more recently, a gift provision in her will. "I think I owe it to the next generations to help preserve the environment," she says. "I'll help in any way I can. If that means writing a check, that's what I'll do. If it means wearing a sandwich board covered in slogans-well, I'll do that, too."
Greenpeace Fund
702 H Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20001
1-800-328-0678 - Corrine Barr
1-800-621-6038 - Tamara Lane
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