Kathleen Ruth Sutliff, age 87, died April 12 on Bainbridge Island.
She was born Kathleen Ruth Ellis on June 26, 1916, in Boston Mass., the youngest of three children. Her father, Frederick Ellis died in 1922 from pneumonia related to mustard gas from his service in World War I.
Her mother, Agnes Ellis, moved the family into her father John Kelly’s home, where Kathleen and her sister Marjorie were raised among a bevy of aunts. She graduated from Jamaica Plains High School and worked at the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.
In 1940 she met Ensign Sherman Sutliff of Denver, Colo., at a family Christmas party. Sherman was completing naval studies at Harvard; they fell in love, and before he shipped out on the USS Haselwood, he sent her a telegram asking her to marry him. She took a three-day cross-country train trip, arriving in San Francisco only to find the ship was gone from its slip.
But Sherman found her walking down the street — the ship had only been repositioned — and they were married later that day at Mare Island. The Haselwood shipped out three days later, and they were not reunited for 18 months.
The couple moved to Denver, Colo., and began a family; daughter Janet Ellen was born in 1946, and Nancy Anne was born in 1948. During the Korean Conflict, Sherman was recalled to active naval duty, and the family moved to Brooklyn.
After the conflict, the family returned to Denver, where daughter Joan Mary was born in 1954.
In 1961, the family moved to Ogden, Utah, where Kathleen learned to drive. In 1966, the family moved to Seattle.
The year 1969 brought an overseas assignment for Sherman as a civilian attorney attached to the Army Corps of Engineers, and the family moved to Seoul, South Korea. He battled cancer, and succumbed in 1974 after the family returned to Seattle.
Kathleen worked for Highline Community College for several years and then BBC Dodge in Burien and finally for AARP as a librarian in the local office.
After a stroke in the mid-1980s, she moved to Winslow Manor on Bainbridge Island to be closer to her family. She lived independently until 2003, when she moved to Wyatt House; she moved to Messenger House in January.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Sherman, her daughter Janet, and her brother William V. Ellis.
She is survived by her sister, Marjorie Keleher; sister-in-law, Mary Ellis; daughters Nancy Pedersen and Joan Sutliff; granddaughter Lori Sutliff; nephews Jeffrey Harstad, Michael Keleher, and niece Susan Fernandes; and six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Arrangements are by Kass Funeral Home.
