Kathleen Morgenstern, a 25-year resident of Pacific Palisades, passed away on June 10. She was 85. Born Kathleen Amy Harris on July 19, 1923 in New York, Kathy was raised in New York City and later worked as a legal secretary while going to night school for her college degree. She met John Morgenstern on a blind date in 1949, and they married four months later, commencing what she always described as ‘a 42-year love affair’ through their lives in France, Scotland, upstate New York (where her daughters were born), then Beverly Hills and Pacific Palisades. After raising her two daughters, Kathleen returned to the work force and became the executive assistant for a psychoanalytic center, among other jobs. Her husband John was the school psychologist at Beverly Hills High School. He passed away in 1991, after eight golden sunset years with Kathleen in their beautiful ocean-view home, where she continued to live. Kathleen remained active, and taught the 55-Alive senior drivers class for several years. She became involved with Theatre Palisades, and felt happily embraced into their familial community. Kathleen was a wonderful mother, and her daughters acknowledge her being a tremendous role model as a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working, loving woman with a great sense of humor, and above all, a tremendous respect and appreciation for people of all walks of life, regardless of race, religion, gender or job. She lived by her creed’that all people had value, deserved appreciation, and were to be treated with equal respect and dignity. Kathleen will be greatly missed by her two daughters, Susan and Diane; her son-in-law, Jerry Prendergast (regarded by Kathleen as ‘more like a son than a son-in-law’); and everyone who had the great fortune to know her. Memorial donations can be sent to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International at www.gorillafund.org.
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