Katherine Koelsch Kriken

Katherine Koelsch Kriken, beloved wife of John Lund Kriken, died at her home in San Francisco on June 5, 2017.

Katherine was born on June 29, 1940 in Boise, Idaho to the Hon. Montgomery Oliver Koelsch and Virginia Lee Daley Koelsch. Her father was the prosecuting attorney for Ada County, Idaho at the time of her birth and went on to become Idaho district probate judge, taking the place of his father Charles Frederick Koelsch, until he was appointed in 1959 to the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Her family was centrally involved in the history of the state of Idaho, a place she remained strongly connected to throughout her life even after she moved to San Francisco. She loved growing up in the wholesome environment of the Rocky Mountains and enjoyed the colorful cross-section of people who were drawn to Idaho, particularly the hip musicians in the Boise music community and their idols like Duke Ellington, Clark Terry, Louie Ventrella and Errol Garner who all frequented Cliff's House of Music & Hi-Fi where she had her first summer job.

Travel and art, design, music and architecture represented the two poles Katherine would gravitate to for the rest of her life. She received a B.A. in fine arts from the University of Idaho, Moscow in 1962, where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority, SPURS National Honor Society and Phi Beta Kappa. At the University of Idaho she began to paint the vivid and graphic watercolors of the exotic places and people she would then go on to see firsthand over the course of her life. Her paintings were, on the one hand, precise and exacting, but on the other hand, reflected the lightness, creativity and elegance that could be seen in all areas of her life.

Katherine's insatiable curiosity about the world and all the people in it motivated her to begin what would become her "flying life." After working in the Virgin Islands during college, she set out on her first major international trip: a one-year trip to Europe with a Eurail pass, a youth hostel card and her first suitcase with wheels. While in Europe she worked at Eastman Kodak in Stuttgart, Germany and then at the advertising agency McCann Erickson in San Francisco when she returned. Katherine then joined Pan American World Airways as a stewardess in 1966. Her decision to take up that work was not to fly with just any airline, but instead to be part of the golden age of air travel that Pan Am represented. The iconic blue globe logo spoke to her keen interest in graphic design and the elegance of upper deck first class travel – like a formal dinner party – appealed to her fascination with people and her love of language and communication. At the same time she never forgot the stark contrast of flying young soldiers to Vietnam on those same airplanes. At first her family was shocked by her decision to become a stewardess but they eventually enjoyed how the people she met and the places she visited became part of their lives, too. Although she knew that she should have left the airline industry many years before, Katherine's time with Pan Am was a pivotal period her life and how she made several of her closest friends.

Katherine loved to explore cities and was always proud of her excellent sense of direction wherever she was in the world. Regardless of her destination, she always had a swimsuit, books and a transistor radio in her suitcase. She had a particular love for Tahiti and for the exotic atmosphere and terrain of Latin America, its flora, fauna, folks and even its fragrance – apart from the diesel. But after being out in the world, she was always happy to return to her local life in San Francisco. In 1979, while living on Telegraph Hill, Katherine first met her husband John Lund Kriken, renowned urban planner and senior partner at the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Their conversation began about Tahiti, Pago Pago, Guatemala, Iran, India, and the thousands of other destinations on all continents they had both visited in the course of their careers. They married on August 8, 1988 in Olema, which she described as the best day of her life.

Katherine loved San Francisco's historic neighborhoods, steep streets and hill climbs which she scaled with boundless energy until the last months of her life. She was an active member of a variety of local civic groups and a contributor to a number of social, cultural and environmental causes. She fondly recalled her volunteer work for the San Francisco Symphony, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association, the Sunday Afternoon Watercolor Society, Food Runners, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, the San Francisco Airport Commission Museum Library and the Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum. In particular, she supported Save the Bay, a non-profit organization that fights for the conservation of the San Francisco Bay and the restoration of its natural habitats (1330 Broadway, Suite 1880, Oakland, CA 94612), as well as the Californians Against Waste Foundation (922 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814), two central organizations in California's environmental movement in recent years. She and her husband also established the John Lund & Katherine Koelsch Kriken Urban Design Graduate Student Award, a family endowment to the University of California, Berkeley (230 Wurster Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720), to support exceptional graduate students in urban design. Donations to these causes in memory of Katherine are sincerely appreciated.

Friends and family agree that she made everything around her more beautiful – but not without challenging us all to become better people at the same time. She made sure we all moved forward and reflected on the world around us, encouraging a strong sense of independence, an awareness for global community and an openness for all the experiences a fully lived life can offer. At the same time she was very conscious of the importance of family, which she understood to include the many close friendships she so treasured throughout her life. To sit at her table was always an encounter with culture, not just through her love of cooking but much more so for her remarkable ability to bring together fascinating people of all generations for stimulating conversation and new ideas.

Katherine is survived by her husband, John Lund Kriken, her brother and sister-in-law John Oliver Koelsch and Leslie Haas Koelsch of San Francisco, her sister Dorothy Jane Koelsch Houghton and her husband Dean Palmer of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law Rolf Nord Kriken and Rita Abbey Kriken, her nephew Ryan Nord Abbey Kriken, all of Kelseyville, California, her nephew Luke Lund Abbey Kriken of Umbuto, New Mexico, her brother-in-law Dennis Patrick Houghton of Benton City, Washington, her nephew Peter Gabriel Houghton of Los Angeles, his wife Sara Pelone Houghton and daughters Audrey Neil and Piper Jane, and her niece Katherine Jane Houghton of Kiel, Germany, her husband Jens-Michael Jensen and their son Henning Oliver.

Her ashes will be scattered in Idaho.