Kathy, as she was known to friends and family, founded NEVA Associates, Engineered Noise Control Solutions, a New England-based company specializing in room acoustics and industrial and commercial noise control. She was an innovator who co-invented two patented noise-abatement products, working on projects with DuPont, the US Navy, Northrop Grumman, General Electric, Raytheon, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, among others.
Kathy was born Kathleen Ann Chalmers on June 5, 1946, in Baltimore to William and Margaret (Stroble) Chalmers; she was the second of five children. She spent most of her childhood in Maryland, graduating from Woodlawn High School. She earned a BA in Psychology from Chatham College in Pittsburgh in 1968, followed by a fellowship in Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong.
In 1970 she married Andrew “Andy” George Kondylas, traveling to Alaska where she studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and worked for BP Oil Corporation on the Alaskan Pipeline on the North Slope. They eventually settled in Midlothian, Virginia, where Andy died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in January 1988, leaving her with two young sons. Through her industrial engineering background she became a national expert in the field of noise and vibration abatement, eventually becoming the founder and president of NEVA Associates in 1998.
In 2000 she moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts where her business thrived with projects that included the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, known in Boston as the Big Dig. It was in Newburyport where she developed a strong interest in Tai Chi and became an instructor. She was also an accomplished member of an adult soccer league, participating well into her sixties, and volunteered to protect nesting habitats for plovers and sandpipers near Plum Island, Massachusetts.
In 2015, she retired and moved to Raleigh to be closer to her sister, children, and grandchildren.
She is survived by her sons, Drew Kondylas of Rockville, Maryland, and Alex Kondylas and his wife, Katie, of Zebulon, North Carolina. She was the devoted grandmother and “GM" to Dillon and Addison Kondylas. She is also survived by a brother, William E. Chalmers of Asheville, North Carolina, and three sisters: Rita Collins of Eureka, Montana; Margaret Chalmers of Raleigh, North Carolina; and Jeannette Warner of Easton, Maryland.
Expressions of sympathy may be made as charitable donations to the The Robert Packard Center for ALS Research, 550 North Broadway, Suite 731, Baltimore, MD, 21205 or at www.alscenter.org/donate with a note indicating the donation is in memory of Kathleen Chalmers Kondylas for the benefit of ALS research.
Memorial Services will be private at a later date.
