Kathryn H. Ross

My sister Kitty died of organ failure in November 2004 at the age of seventy-three. Posted below are comments I delivered at her memorial service in New York, and a few photographs of the childhood we shared growing up in Chappaqua, New York and Edgartown, Massachusetts.

The house in Chappaqua where we grew up. The house was sold in 1991 when Mother moved to Kendal in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Kitty and Johnny at home in Chappaqua, c.1941.

Sunset Camp on Edgartown's Trapp's Pond — Summer 1938.

The house was owned by Prof. Marcus Jernegan and his sister Laura Jernegan Spear, ancestral relatives who had houses nearby. There was a stuffed deer's head (that we called "Oscar") above our fireplace, and leaks in the roof. Whenever it rained, water ran down Oscar's nose and dripped from his lips. I used to laugh, saying Oscar was spitting. Mary Taylor, our maid/nanny who came with us to the Vineyard in those early years, would invoke Jesus each morning as she bent her ample frame over the kerosine stove trying to light its circular wicks. On Sunday evenings we would take Mary to the "colored" church in Oak Bluffs — sometimes returning early to pick her up in order to enjoy the final celebrations and meet some of her friends.

The family at Sunset Camp — Summer 1939. Kitty and Mother at work. Daddy reading on the porch.

Rowing lesson on Trapp's Pond — Summer 1939.

Taking Kitty for a ride on Trapp's Pond with my outboard motor — Summer 1939.

(Circling my index finger around the bottom of the pan simulated the exposed spinning flywheel used to start the outboard motors of that time.)

Kitty and Johnny on our front porch in Chappaqua. Kitty sitting on the front step, Johnny reading from the porch bench. Sketch by house guest Peggie Kruger — May 24, 1942.

Kitty at riding camp in New Hampshire — Summer 1942.