Karen Coleman Newsom

14 January 1943 - 17 May 2026

Karen, she's a silver sun -James Taylor

Daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, and her favorite title, Grandma.

Born in Bakersfield to Marjorie Starline-Beard and John Cyril Coleman, who divorced when she was 3, Karen split time between her parents and her paternal grandparents. She graduated from Bakersfield High School in 1960.

After skateboarding through the campus of BYU wearing a trench coat over her two-piece swimsuit, she eloped to Idaho with her 18-year-old beau and created an institution over the next 62 years. Despite Karen's dad initially wanting to have the marriage annulled, it's a good thing it wasn't, because Fall Michael arrived 9 months later.

She was a pivotal person in her family line, determined to create a more stable foundation for her descendants than she knew as a child.

Fall remembers his college-age parents collecting bottles along the side of the road to have enough gas money to go visit Grandma Goldie. They knew they would be sent home with a bag of groceries.

Karen worked at Hewlett-Packard in Colorado while Terry attended Colorado State University.

She had filled out the CSU application for him as a transfer student from BYU as a surprise gift. Fall remembers that when he was a small boy, his mom made the railroad tracks running loudly behind their rental house seem a bonus feature, rather than a detriment.

Terry went to work for APECO, a copier company, and Brooks Coleman joined the family in 1969.

They bought their first house... right before Terry was transferred to Kansas City. They never got to live in that newly purchased home.

The next several years were a whirlwind, following promotions from Colorado to Kansas to Texas to California.

"To me, the moves were exciting, because that's how my mom treated it. There was always something to look forward to," said Fall.

When APECO put the Portland branch up for sale, Karen and Terry decided to buy it and settled in Oregon. That branch eventually became Pacific Office Automation. Karen was the architect of the company's 401K retirement savings program, which has provided important benefits to thousands of employees.

Karen learned to create a warm home environment quickly with her energy and resourcefulness. Both Brooks and Fall remember their friends always wanting to hang out at their house-it was the desired place to be, largely because of Karen.

She was a cool mom: she loved Creedence Clearwater Revival, James Taylor, the Moody Blues, Elton John. She was tan and naturally beautiful with gorgeous blue eyes. She loved to ski and do aerobics with her friends.

After moving to Oregon, she was less-than-thrilled when her first "company car" was a green Chrysler Cordoba that Terry had selected. It was very quickly replaced by a Datsun 280Z, in which she would occasionally go airborne at the top of 185th and Springville Road.

When the King Tut exhibition came to Seattle, she commandeered a POA delivery van and filled it with kids from the ward - no seats, let alone seatbelts, were involved in the transport of teens to Tut.

Karen was a voracious reader and created a library at her home. In later years, she was never without her trusty Kindle by her side-never bored, she said, because she always had a book.

Her love of reading has flowed to the next three generations.

She was handy, creative and hardworking. She could sew and paint and draw. She once crafted the best homemade airplane costume out of chicken wire when her 4-year-old granddaughter wanted to coordinate with her brother, who was dressing up as a pilot. She always had costume ideas and the skills to make them happen. Everyone who needed a bow tied properly went to Karen.

She illustrated Fall's children's book, Fred the Monkey.

She made her own yogurt, jam, whole grain bread, and ate next to no sugar-except for her amazing Hershey cakes that were shared with many friends. She made German's chocolate cake for Terry and Fall and marshmallow cakes for Brooks. She knew how to garden and was a big believer in organic food.

Her Sunday dinners would rival any holiday feast; she was an incredible cook and hostess. No one has ever crafted a layered green salad or cut up fruit as beautifully as Karen Newsom. But day-to-day, she ate the same thing on repeat: plain yogurt with granola and mashed ripe bananas or blueberries.

She always loved being a mother, and enthusiastically embraced being a grandma, to the point of jumping up and down and wetting her pants when told that the first grandchild was on the way. She emphasized traditions to strengthen family ties. She felt incredibly fortunate to have all her 8 grandchildren living nearby as they grew up.

She attended many ballet recitals-often driving granddaughters to daily rehearsals with All Classical 89.9 playing in the background. She created a ballet room in her attic where several of them taught ballet classes. She was the ultimate cheerleader of family members in golf, basketball, baseball, football, cross country, academics-and loved to watch them shine, but wasn't above adding a little pressure, telling Brooks "not to embarrass the family" before every game.

She had wisdom about how a household should run. She set up many of her own and guided many others. She knew what was needed to make things flow best. She was the best sock folder-no half-tucked pairs in her home-all immaculately folded flat. She knew how to decorate and repair and make do. She created happy memories in Indian Wells and Neskowin for her children and grandchildren: tennis lessons, driving a golf cart, swimming, playing on the beach.

She told her family she wanted to build an equestrian barn and the general reaction was, "Yeah, right ... ": Enter FallBrooks Farm, a state-of-the-art equestrian facility and haven for every useless horse in the western hemisphere. It became a place where Sunday dinners migrated and grew into a larger tradition around a bigger table.

The number of people who lived with Karen and Terry over the years would be hard to enumerate-they generously opened their doors to countless friends to provide a leg up.

She had a gift of spotting talents and abilities that others might not see as possibilities. She provided experiences. She hired one of her grandsons and his friend to build a bridge, a treehouse, and a torii gate; they learned invaluable skills in the process.

She had an unfailing generosity in sharing what she had to make the lives of others better- usually focused on ways to strengthen relationships. She and Terry hosted annual holiday and summer parties for many years, eventually settling on just the garden party, which many people claimed to be the highlight of their summer.

She had a soft heart for animals from childhood, with a special fondness for springer spaniels ... the line included Zany, Noel, Walker, Apollo, Artemis, Percy. But there was the time Fall walked in and she asked if he was wearing a belt. He confirmed, and she said, "Give it to me." Why? "Because I'm gonna beat the sh*t out of Shelby," she announced. (Her son's dog had aggressively chased one of her cats.)

In her younger years, she spent every August at Neskowin to avoid hay fever in the Willamette Valley. As she grew older, she organized annual "Girls' Trips" with her friends, traveling all over the world. Her final vacation was a cruise from Montreal to New York last fall, with family members spanning four generations.

She loved to travel and took many trips with her children and grandchildren-finding joy in her favorite stewed plums in New Zealand, taking her older grandchildren on safari in Africa-hauling a down pillow for each of them on the trip-and cramming in as many musicals and plays as possible in the West End or on Broadway. She took several grandchildren on individual trips-to Boston, Uganda, Italy, Ireland, Germany. She visited every continent except Antarctica. Her most intense joy in traveling was in seeing others experience new things.

Karen was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served in many positions, including years in the Young Women, Relief Society, and Primary organizations. She maintained lifelong relationships with many of her young women. In a church that doesn't assign seating, the front row was her regular spot. She had faith in Jesus Christ and emulated his love and kindness-she always said she wanted to be an angel, a goal we are confident she is fulfilling.

She is survived by her husband, Terry; sons, Fall (Jill) and Brooks (Debbie); grandchildren Zachary Newsom (Alanna); Grace Carter (Caden), Christina Newsom, Claire Newsom, Coleman Newsom, Grady Newsom, and Lilly Newsom; and four great- grandchildren: Fall Newsom, Juniper Newsom, Goldie Carter, and Cleo Carter, with one more great-grandson on the way.

She was preceded in death by her granddaughter, Chloe Newsom.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, June 5, at 1 p.m. at the Cedar Mill Stake Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 955 NW 173rd Ave., Beaverton, Oregon.

Interment at Skyline Memorial Gardens, Portland, Oregon.