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Katharina Youll

After a long illness Katharina Youll, 88, died at home on March 10, attended by her family. She had lived a full and interesting life. She is mourned by her loving husband, Joe; her daughters, Susan and Jennifer; her cherished grandchildren, Milo and Maggie; her sister Ursula in Ontario, Canada; and many other relatives and friends in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and England.

The youngest of four daughters of Fritz and Frieda Krause, Katharina was born in 1934 in Militsch, a town then in Eastern German. Childhood tranquility was disrupted by the start of the war in 1939. With Russian forces advancing into the area in 1945, the family suffered an arduous evacuation westward but ended up in the new communist East Germany. Katharina was educated at local schools and then earned her professional diploma in hospital lab technology at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. She went to live and work at a hospital in East Berlin. In 1961, she managed to slip over to West Berlin just shortly before the Wall was built. She was flown out to Stuttgart, where she lived and worked for a period before emigrating to join her sister Ulla in Canada and, as she said, “to learn English.” She was soon working at Toronto General Hospital.

One day a mutual friend introduced her to Joe Youll. The rapport was immediate. They were married in 1965 and moved to New York for Joe’s new job. Susan was born there. The next year, they moved to Connecticut, which became Katharina’s adopted home for the rest of her life. They settled in Riverside, and Jenny was born there. Katharina made the transition gracefully to suburban life, devoted to children, schools, the beach, tennis, and so forth. As the girls grew up, she went back to hospital work at St. Joseph’s in Stamford and later Greenwich Hospital. This period was interrupted for a couple of years when Joe’s work took them to live in Singapore and Holland.

In 1998, following friends, they retired to Essex. Katharina quickly came to love the town, its people, and the beautiful countryside of the river valley. She enjoyed hiking and kayaking, gardening, book clubs at the library, and the local music scene. She loved her faithful German Shepherds: Bailey, Anna, Scylla, and Miro. She drove for Meals-on-Wheels. Also, over the years, she enjoyed many trips to Europe, particularly bike trips with her daughters.

Katharina was a woman of strong spirits and strong loyalties, intelligent and with a quick wit — a dedicated wife, loving mother, and grandmother, a loyal friend. She will be sorely missed.