Kathleen Mary Renner

Katje’s reputation was set once she started driving - her senior yearbook picture included a caption of “Want a ride?” Katje took her final drive on Saturday, May 11, 2024, after 87 revolutions around the sun. Wishing her bon voyage and a safe and comfortable journey were her daughter and son-in-law, Theresa Renner and Mark Herrup. Katje’s brother and his wife, Donald and Patricia (Kochem) Bonk, her sister Karen (Bonk) Buehler, sister-in-law Noreen (Knuckey) Bonk and a multitude of other relatives and friends waved from Schenectady, New York, and across the country.

A graduate of Draper School in Schenectady back when the school had all grades, she later went on to acquire two college degrees through the State University of New York in Albany. She talked about working in a bowling alley when she was young and having to reset the pins by hand. She also worked in the family dairy in Schenectady in the summer, scooping ice cream in the ice cream shop at the front of the Connelly Brothers Dairy, where she developed her taste for chocolate ice cream.

She was adventurous, living in Turkey and Panama while married, as well as Washington state, Louisiana, and twice in the Washington, DC, area prior to her divorce. She rebuilt a '69 Volkswagen Beetle engine in the mid-1970s spending 6 months on the project with the engine sitting on the dining room table, then returned to college in the 1980s to earn a Bachelor of Arts, followed by a Master of Fine Arts degrees.

Katje gave all the time. She donated blood to the Red Cross – 31 units confirmed, more possibly, but the family doesn't have any records. She volunteered when needed, including teaching English as a second language twice – in Turkey in the early '60s, then again in her hometown of Schenectady, NY in the '80s; she also volunteered with Army Community Service in Panama, taking care of military families; and later trained as a hospice volunteer to help others pass peacefully, giving caregivers respite.

Katje loved to drive and would gladly accompany anyone wanting to make a road trip wherever they wanted to go. She drove cross country twice, the second time accompanying one of her good friends in a road trip that sounds like it would have made a great movie, as well as innumerable trips up and down the East Coast. Why take the most direct route when one can wander the back ways? Katje was notorious for taking “Katje routes.” Her choices could be called whimsical - a recent local drive that would normally be less than 4 miles ended up being just over 6 miles, as recorded by her daughter, cutting through back roads and even through a local park and past the local lake.

She spoke with many people, sometimes for hours on end on the phone, like a teenager. Everyone commented on how good a listener she was and how much some depended on her to just be that non-judgmental listener, allowing people to be and feel however they needed. She also had a unique ability to take stories and relate it to an associated story about Schenectady, to which she felt a life-long attachment.

A voracious reader, the public library estimated she’d saved $24,573.03 by using the library since they first started tracking. She frequently recommended books to others, relatives and friends commenting on how interesting they found those books. Her daughter has a list of the books she was reading at the time of her passing, if interested.

No formal services will be held, but gatherings to drink milkshakes (chocolate milkshakes were her favorite) and to celebrate her life are being planned.

For those who wish to do so, donations to a local public library in her name would be right up her alley and would help other voracious readers.