Karen G Malinowski

Foreign Service Spouse, Social

Activist

Karen Gerlach Malinowski, 63, a social activist who accompanied her husband of over thirty-six years, former Ambassador Michael E. Malinowski, on his assignments for the Department of State, died of adenocarcinoma cancer in Washington, DC September 3.

After graduation from the University of Michigan with degrees in dramatic arts and anthropology, Karen Malinowski worked as a social worker for Cook County and the State of Illinois in the inner city of Chicago. She married her husband in 1975 and, upon his entry to the Foreign Service the next year, moved to Washington. She accompanied her husband on fourteen tours of duty, including three at the Department of State. Her tours began in Mexico City, where she worked in the Consular Section. On her next two tours, she was one of the pioneer Embassy Community Liaison Officers, serving at a very dangerous time in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1979 and in Colombo, Sri Lanka 1980 to 1983. In Peshawar 1987 to 1989, she taught English at an American Rescue Committee sponsored high schools for Afghan girls. The school was the only one of its kind in Peshawar and, unfortunately a target of radical elements in Pakistan and from Afghanistan. Karen Malinowski showed considerable courage in her commitment to provide education opportunities to young Afghan women. During two tours in Nepal, 1991 -1994, and 2001 to 2004 when her husband served as Ambassador, Mrs. Malinowski led the American Women of Nepal, later Active Women of Nepal (AWON) then the largest non-government organization in Nepal, providing health care to the impoverished, maintaining a free English language lending library, fostering self employment of women through creation and sale of handicrafts, running a nation-wide literacy program, and a widespread scholarship program in conjunction with the US Peace Corps. Mrs. Malinowski was the President of the U.S. Embassy Club in Manila, Philippines and also served with her husband in Venezuela, Swaziland, at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington. She resided at her home in American University Park since the retirement of Ambassador Malinowski from the Foreign Service in 2009.

Karen Gerlach was born in Alma, Michigan on January 23, 1948 and grew up in Wyandotte, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. She is survived by her husband, her sisters Susan Anderson and her husband Mark, Jeanne Lewis and her husband Steven of Pentwater, Michigan and Fort Wayne, Indiana, Patricia De Proto and her husband Michael of Guerneville, California, and Deborah Gerlach and her husband John Forman of Allen Park, Michigan. She also is survived by brothers Charles Gerlach and his wife Nancy of Birmingham, Michigan and John Gerlach of Wyandotte, Michigan and also by many nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews.

Arrangements under the direction of Joseph Gawler's Sons Inc., Washington, DC.